Chapter 18
The compound smelled like hickory smoke and cold beer, and for one afternoon, nobody was trying to kill anyone.
Maggie had the big pit going since dawn—pork shoulders and brisket and a rack of ribs that Buckshot could smell from the dock—and the deck over the cove was strung with lights that nobody had bothered to take down since the last party and nobody would bother to take down before the next one.
Seventy bikes in the gravel lot, catching the afternoon sun.
Kids running the dock, jumping off the end into water that had gone from cold to warm sometime in the last week.
Brothers at the bar, at the pit, at the horseshoe pit behind the cabins.
The old ladies moving through all of it like they ran the operation, which they did.
Buckshot stood on the deck rail with a beer and watched Tamsin.
She was in the middle of it. Not at the edge, not hanging back, not doing any of the things a woman who'd been in this life for two weeks did at her first compound cookout.
Jolene—Limestone's woman, the one who ran the salon—had put a beer in her hand before Tamsin got off the deck steps, and Darcy—Current's woman, who ran the bakery—had handed her a baby thirty seconds later without explanation, the way old ladies tested new women: here, hold this, let's see what you do.
Tamsin held the baby like she'd been doing it her whole life.
One arm, tucked against her hip, her beer in the other hand, the kid's fist wrapped around her finger.
She bounced it absently while she talked to Proof, and the conversation—Buckshot could hear pieces of it from the rail—was about shot patterns.
Shot patterns. His woman was standing at a cookout holding someone's baby and arguing with the club armorer about the spread differential between a sawed-off and a full-length twelve-gauge at twenty feet.
"She's not wrong," Proof said, loud enough for Buckshot to hear. "The full-length gives you a tighter pattern at distance, but at room-clearing range, the sawed-off puts more pellets into more space."
"Which is why he uses it," Tamsin said, nodding toward Buckshot without looking at him. "He doesn't aim. He fills the room."
"She's got your number, brother," Cottonmouth said from the horseshoe pit. He was leaning on the stake with a beer and that cold half-smile he wore when he was as close to relaxed as he ever got.
"She's had my number since she opened a man's face with a keyring," Buckshot said.
Tamsin looked at him then. Across the yard, through the smoke and the noise and the press of people, her gray eyes found his and held for a beat longer than casual, and the corner of her mouth moved in a way that was only for him.
She handed the baby back to Darcy and walked to the horseshoe pit, and Buckshot watched her go—the squared-off shoulders, the way she moved through the compound like a woman walking her own fence line, the keys still on her belt loop even though there was nothing to lock today.
Cottonmouth said something that made her laugh—actually laugh, head back, the sound of it carrying across the cove—and Buckshot felt it in his chest like a round going off.
He'd heard her laugh once. In the chapel, after the vote. This was the second time, and it was different—easier, lighter, the laugh of a woman who wasn't bracing for the next thing but standing in the middle of something good and letting it land.
"You're staring," Still said.
Buckshot hadn't heard him come up. The president leaned on the rail beside him with a plate of ribs and the same patient, unhurried presence he brought to everything—chapel votes, war plans, Saturday cookouts. The man ran the same whether the world was burning or barbecuing.
"Yeah," Buckshot said. "I am."
Still ate a rib. Looked at the party—the brothers, the old ladies, the kids on the dock, the bikes in the lot, the smoke rising off the pit and drifting across the cove. He looked at it the way a man looks at something he built and maintains and would die to protect.
"This is the whole thing," Still said.
Buckshot looked at him.
"This." Still gestured with the rib bone—at the deck, the cove, the people.
"The smoke and the beer and the kids in the water and the women who tell us we're idiots.
This is why we answer when an outside outfit puts hands on a woman on our highway.
This is why we ride. This is what we're protecting. "
He dropped the bone on his plate and wiped his hands.
"A man who forgets that is just a man with a gun. And we've got plenty of those."
Buckshot watched Tamsin throw a horseshoe.
She had a good arm—straight, no wobble, the kind of throw that came from years of doing physical work—and the shoe clanged off the stake and Cottonmouth shook his head and said something that made her shoot back a reply Buckshot couldn't hear but could feel from fifty feet away.
"I want her claimed," Buckshot said.
He hadn't planned to say it. Hadn't rehearsed it, hadn't worked up to it, hadn't done any of the things a man was supposed to do before he said something that would change the shape of his life.
It came out the way the first you're mine had come out—fast, certain, pulled from somewhere deeper than planning.
Still looked at him. No surprise. The man had seen it coming before Buckshot had.
"Then claim her."
"Properly. In front of all of it. The patch, the ceremony, the whole thing."
"You're asking my blessing or telling me your plans?"
"Both."
Still almost smiled. "You've got both. Talk to your woman."
Buckshot set his beer on the rail and walked down the deck steps and across the yard to the horseshoe pit.
Tamsin was lining up another throw, and he came up behind her and put his hand on her hip—automatic, possessive, the gesture that had become as natural between them as breathing—and she leaned back into him without turning around.
"I'm winning," she said.
"I need to ask you something."
She threw the shoe. It rang off the stake and Cottonmouth swore, and she turned in Buckshot's arm and looked up at him with those gray eyes, and the noise of the party—the music and the laughter and the kids shouting on the dock—went soft around them.
"I want you claimed," he said. "Properly. My property patch on your shoulders, in front of every brother and old lady in this club. I want everyone in the Ozarks to know you're mine and I'm yours, and I want to do it right."
She looked at him for a long time.
The party moved around them. Cottonmouth picked up the horseshoe and walked away without being asked, because the man read situations the way he read threats—immediately and without needing an explanation.
The space around Buckshot and Tamsin cleared the way spaces did when two people were having a moment the whole compound could feel.
"Ask me again," she said.
"What?"
"Ask me again when nobody is trying to kill me." Her hand came up to his chest, over the scars, the way it always did. "I want to say yes to you, not to the situation. I want to say yes when I'm standing on ground that isn't shaking."
He looked at her. The answer was no and it wasn't no, and he understood the difference because she'd taught him the difference—between running and choosing the ground, between needing protection and wanting partnership, between saying yes because you're afraid and saying yes because you're free.
"When this is over," he said.
"When this is over. Ask me again."
He kissed her forehead. She put her face against his chest. The party kept going around them—Maggie calling that the brisket was ready, kids dripping lake water across the deck, brothers lined up at the pit with plates. The life. The whole thing. The reason for all of it.
Tailwater came up the dock steps with a phone in his hand.
He moved through the crowd with the long, patient stride of a man who watched behind because he'd learned what comes up when you're focused forward, and his face had the tight look of someone carrying news he didn't want to deliver at a party.
He stopped in front of Buckshot.
The sound of the cookout went out of Buckshot's ears—the music, the laughter, the kids, the horseshoes, all of it dropping to nothing like someone had pulled a plug.
Tamsin felt him tense and stepped back, and her eyes went from his face to Tailwater's face and back, reading the situation the way she read everything.
"What is it?" she asked.
Tailwater held out the phone.