Page 62 of Brash for It
“Kellum,” he mutters, pleased with himself.“To what do I?—”
Kellum hits him.
There’s no wind-up.No speech.Just a fist, as clean as a professional boxer, snapping Brian’s head sideways.The sound is a crack that makes my stomach flip.Brian stumbles backwards into the doorjamb, shock wiping his smirk clean for the first time in his life as blood trickles out of his mouth.
“I told you,” Kellum states, voice low, the kind of low that makes dogs sit down.“You disrespect her again, you feel it.”
He hits him again.
Brian tries to square up, but he’s never squared anything in his life that didn’t fit neatly into a portfolio.He swings, sloppy, cagey, and Kellum steps inside it like he’s been doing this since he learned to walk.Another punch.Another.
It’s not a fight.It’s a lesson.It lasts too long and not long enough, my breath hitching out in useless little sounds while my hands clench and unclench.My brain tries to sort the two things at once.The part that wants to cheer until my throat turns raw because someone finally, finally made the outside of Brian match the inside.
And the part that wants to scream because the man I love is about to break something we can’t afford to replace—his own freedom.
The thought takes root somewhere deep inside me.The feelings I have for Kellum that have creeped up in me slowly, delicately, and I want to protect them.
I want to protect him.
“Kellum!”
He doesn’t hear me over the rage inside him.The punch thrown, his fist makes contact in Brian’s stomach this time, knuckles sinking into a button up suit shirt he didn’t bother to change out of.Brian wheezes, folds, and Kellum lets him hit the porch before he grabs the front of his shirt and hauls him up like a rag doll.
“I told you,” he repeats, quiet enough to make the hair on my arms stand up.“You got one warning.Didn’t fuckin’ listen.
Brian spits something that was probably going to be a word and ends up a sound and I think a tooth flies out onto the ground.He goes for Kellum’s face with an open hand because he doesn’t know how to do otherwise.It skids off cheekbone and fury.Kellum’s fist answers and Brian’s nose goes—there’s a flash of red; I look away before I catalog it.Kellum’s breathing hard now, chest heaving, the restraint I’ve seen him put on himself every day snapping like a belt you stretched too far.
In front of me the man I’ve known is gone and in it’s place is a dragon full of fire and breathing smoke like his tattoo.
“Kellum.”I’m at the bottom of the steps now, one foot on the plank, hands up like I’m approaching a wounded animal.“Kellum, stop.Baby, look at me.”
The word lands.His head jerks like a compass needle finding north.He keeps his fist wrapped in Brian’s shirt for one more breath.He turns his face toward me.
He sees me.
I see him see me.
And then the most terrifying thing happens, his eyes change.Not the color.The temperature.Fury drains just enough for fear to flood in.
Not fear of Brian.
Fear of me.Fear of what I’m seeing and what it will do to the picture I’ve been holding of him.
He lets go of Brian like the man burned him.Brian slides down the doorjamb and sits, ugly and human on his expensive porch, sucking air like he invented it.Kellum takes a step back, then another, still looking at me like he walked in on himself and didn’t like what he found.
“Kristen,” he whispers, like my name is the only thing he believes in.
I climb one more step and stop there.My heart is pounding so hard the world has a rhythm.My hands are steady, which surprises me.I look at Brian long enough to see that he’s breathing, that he needs medical attention but will probably be okay.I also know that he will weaponize this in whatever rooms he thinks will listen.Especially for the reconstructive surgery it’s going to take to put his nose back together.But I don’t care about any of that.I stop looking at him because he’s not my problem.
Kellum is.
I take a breath that smells like copper and lawn chemicals.“You told him once,” I state, voice low.“You kept your promise.Lesson has been taught.Now we leave.”
Behind me, a thunderous sound rolls in.I sense them without looking, the Hellions.
Kellum’s shoulders rise and fall like ocean.He nods once, slow, like he’s testing whether his neck still works.He looks down at his hands and winces at something that isn’t pain.Then he looks back at me and I watch him try to measure the distance between the man who installed a porch camera to keep me safe and the man who just did this.
“I scared you,” he whispers..
