Page 10 of Brash for It
I stand straighter.“I asked you a question.”
The silence is a suspended thing.The ocean thrums impatiently beyond the glass.He exhales.He walks to the nightstand.He picks up the phone.My heartbeat is a drum solo.He unlocks it with his face and scrolls like he’s bored.He’s not.A muscle jumps in his jaw, betraying him, and the petty part of me feels a tiny victory.
He sets the phone down again, casually, calmly.“You could have asked me instead of snooping.”
“If I had asked you, would you have told me the truth?”
He laughs.It’s quick, sharp, mean.“You already think you know the truth, Kristen.”
“I saw pictures,” I reply, and I surprise myself by not crying.The tears are somewhere far away, maybe on a beach at low tide, waiting for their turn to roll in.“I saw texts.”
“Right.”He scratches the back of his neck, unaffected.“So you broke my trust to confirm your paranoia because you’re insecure and this is my problem.”
I stare at him.In the bathroom mirror behind him, my face looks like a stranger’s—pale, eyes too big, mouth a flat line someone drew with a ruler.“I broke your trust.”
“Did I stutter?”
“You’ve been sleeping with someone else,” I state, each word a laid-out stone I dare him to step around.“More than once.For how long now, weeks?Months?I don’t even know.”My throat tightens again, but the words keep coming because there’s momentum in the truth.“You laughed in a hotel bed together.You bought her jewelry.You forgot your toothbrush at her place.”My voice changed and I couldn’t help the sharpness in my tone, “don’t worry though, she’s keeping it safe beside hers on the vanity.”
He doesn’t flinch.He doesn’t even blush.He considers me like I’m a bill he could pay or not.“You done?”
“No,” I whisper.
He rolls his shoulders once and shrugs, the gesture infuriating in its simplicity.“You’re free to leave any time.”
The line lands flat and horrifying.He says it like he’s telling me the time, like he’s pointing out a takeout menu, like generosity.You’re free to leave.
“Brian,” I manage to get my voice back, but it comes out shredded.“That’s your answer?”
He lifts his chin.“You’re not a prisoner here.You don’t like how I handle my life, leave.”
He turns, picks up a pair of slacks from the top of his dresser.As he slides them on his eyes don’t meet mine.He grabs his wallet, slips it in his back pocket.Keys.His phone goes into that favorite pocket like it’s the conclusion of a ritual.He doesn’t look at me until he’s at the bedroom door.
“Don’t break anything,” he states mildly.“It’s expensive.”
The door opens on his back like I’m an audience to his exit.He walks down the hall, whistling the tail end of a tune I can’t place, like he didn’t just split the skin of my life with a few expert cuts.The front door clicks a second later.Then silence.Not ocean silence.House silence.The particular kind that’s all fan and refrigerator and a slow settling of wood.The kind that amplifies your breath and makes it sound like someone else’s.
I stand in the middle of the room, every muscle in my body locked, waiting for him to come back and say he didn’t mean it.Waiting for this to be the part of the story where the misunderstanding resolves and he apologizes and we try.
I’m waiting like a fool.
Hoping like an idiot.
Wishing like a naïve girl that I had it all wrong.
Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t come home.
Three
Pretty Boy
The smellof oil clings to me before the sun even burns off the morning mist.Garage doors roll up slow, rattling on their tracks like old bones.Light spills in, sharp and gold, catching dust notes in the air.It’s another day at the shop—Hellions insignia on the sign, Hellions hands on the work, brothers working together, and the hum of engines the only music I need.
I tug my cut tighter around me, leather already hot even this early, but it feels wrong not to wear it.The patch isn’t something to wear like a watch.It’s who I am.Who I’ll always be.
“Morning, grumpy.”Tripp’s voice comes from under a hood, grease already streaked down his forearm.He grins like he woke up to a joke he hasn’t finished telling.
“Don’t call me that.”
