Chapter 10
Three days at the compound, and Reagan couldn't take it anymore.
Not the protection. Not the borrowed cabin. Not even the way Channel looked at her every time she walked into a room, like she was something precious he was afraid to touch.
No, what finally broke her was the lodge closets.
She'd wandered into the main building looking for coffee and found herself staring at a storage situation so catastrophic it made her teeth hurt.
Boxes stacked without system. Clothes shoved into spaces that defied logic.
Holiday decorations mixed with emergency supplies mixed with children's toys no one had touched in years.
Four years of running a thrift store had given Reagan many things. Patience was not among them. Not when it came to chaos.
"What are you doing?"
Maggie's voice came from behind her, but Reagan didn't stop pulling boxes off shelves. "Fixing this."
"Fixing what?"
"This." Reagan gestured at the disaster. "Whoever organized this was drunk, blind, or both. There's no system. No categorization. I found a box of Christmas lights inside a box of motorcycle parts inside a garbage bag of kids' clothes."
Maggie leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching Reagan work with something that might have been amusement. "That closet's been like that since before I got here."
"And nobody thought to fix it?"
"Nobody cared enough to try."
Reagan pulled out another box and opened it. Baby clothes. Perfectly good baby clothes, folded once and forgotten. "This is criminal. Some of these pieces are vintage. This onesie is original Osh Kosh, probably worth twenty dollars to the right buyer."
"It's a closet, not a store."
"Everything's a store if you know how to look."
She didn't wait for permission. By noon, she had the contents of three closets spread across the lodge floor, sorted into categories that made sense. By evening, she'd reorganized the entire storage system, labeled boxes, and created an inventory list on the back of an old flyer.
The old ladies found her surrounded by piles.
"Jesus." Carmen stopped in the doorway. "Did a bomb go off in here?"
"Organization," Reagan said without looking up. "It looks worse before it looks better."
Darcy laughed and stepped over a stack of winter coats. "I've got boxes in my truck. Kids' clothes the compound children outgrew. Was going to donate them, but if you're organizing..."
"Bring them in."
Within an hour, Reagan had three more old ladies bringing her boxes—Tessa, Bree, and Nadine, whose names she learned as they delivered armloads of clothes their families no longer needed. She sorted, priced in her head, redistributed based on what the compound families might actually use.
"This one's too small for anyone here," she said, holding up a toddler dress with hand-smocked detailing. "But it's worth forty dollars on consignment. You could sell it and buy three dresses that actually fit."
"I never thought about it that way," Nadine said.
"Most people don't." Reagan set the dress in the "sell" pile. "They see hand-me-downs as charity. I see them as inventory."
Carmen settled onto a crate and watched her work. "You're good at this."
"I've been doing it since I was twenty-two." Reagan's hands kept moving, sorting by size, by condition, by potential value. "Started with a folding table at a flea market. Built my whole business on other people's castoffs."
"And now you're doing it for free."
"Not for free. For room and board." Reagan looked up, met Carmen's sharp gaze. "I don't take charity. This is work."
Something shifted in Carmen's expression. Respect, maybe. Or recognition of something familiar.
"Fair enough," she said.
The women stayed until the lodge storage was transformed.
Reagan had created zones—seasonal items, children's clothing by size, emergency supplies, compound maintenance—with labels clear enough that anyone could find what they needed.
The "sell" pile went into a separate box, ready for consignment when Second Chances reopened.
If it reopened.
Reagan pushed that thought down and kept working.
Through the lodge windows, she could see the compound in its afternoon rhythm. Brothers moving between buildings, bikes gleaming in the afternoon sun, the easy camaraderie of men who'd chosen to be family.
And Channel.
He was everywhere. Hauling supplies, cleaning bikes, running whatever errands the patched brothers assigned.
She watched him carry a stack of lumber from the garage to a cabin being repaired, then return for more without being asked.
Watched him stop to help Tailwater with a jammed trailer hitch, then sprint across the lot when Cottonmouth called for backup on a gate check.
Working harder than anyone. The prospect hunger visible in everything he did.
She understood that hunger. The desperate need to prove yourself, to earn a place, to show that you belonged somewhere. She'd felt it every day of her life since she left home.
Watching him feel it too did something complicated to her chest.
"He's a good one."
Reagan turned to find Maggie beside her, following her gaze through the window.
"He works hard."
"They all work hard. But that boy—" Maggie shook her head. "He's got something to prove. Lost something before he came to us, I think. Not that he talks about it."
"He told me. A little." Reagan watched Channel accept a list from Limestone, nodding at whatever instructions came with it. "Said he came home to nothing familiar."
"That's the way of it, sometimes." Maggie's voice was neutral. "Men like these, they're looking for a place to belong. When they find it, they hold on with everything they've got."
"Is that a warning?"
"Just information." Maggie smiled. "What you do with it is your business."
She left, and Reagan went back to sorting, but her eyes kept drifting to the window. To Channel, crossing the compound with that restless energy, that relentless drive to prove himself worthy.
He didn't know he was already worthy. Couldn't see it.
Maybe neither could she.
The evening sun was slanting through the trees when he finally came to find her.
Reagan had moved to the cabin, her boxes of jewelry spread across the bed, organizing for the third time because her hands needed work. She heard his boots on the porch before the knock came.
"It's open."
Channel stepped inside carrying something wrapped in an old t-shirt. He looked tired—they all looked tired, these days—but his eyes lit up when he saw her surrounded by inventory.
"Still sorting?"
"Always sorting." She gestured at the organized chaos. "It's how I think."
"I noticed." He crossed to the bed, unwrapping the bundle in his hands. "Found something in the compound storage. Thought you might want to see it."
A lamp emerged from the fabric. Small, brass-based, with a cone shade in a distinctive atomic-age style. Reagan's breath caught.
"Let me see that."
She took it carefully, turning it over in her hands. The base was heavy, solid brass with minimal patina. The shade was original fiberglass, slightly faded but intact. The switch clicked smoothly when she tested it.
"Do you know what this is?"
"A lamp?"
Reagan laughed—actually laughed, the sound surprising her. "This is a 1950s Gerald Thurston for Lightolier. Original shade, original base, working condition." She looked up at him. "Channel, this is worth three hundred dollars. Maybe more to the right collector."
His eyebrows shot up. "For a lamp?"
"For this lamp." She set it on the dresser, positioning it where the light caught the brass. "Mid-century modern is hot right now. Serious collectors pay premium for pieces in this condition."
"I found it in a box marked 'broken lights.'" Channel shook his head. "Damn."
"Somebody didn't know what they had." Reagan studied the lamp, already calculating shipping costs, photography angles, which online platforms would give her the best price. "This could cover a month of inventory for my store."
"Then it's yours."
She looked at him sharply. "What?"
"The lamp. It's yours." He shrugged like he was offering her a cup of coffee, not hundreds of dollars. "I found it for you."
"You can't just give me—"
"I can do whatever I want." He stepped closer, that intensity back in his eyes. "And what I want is to give you something. You've been sorting other people's stuff for three days. This is something for you."
Reagan stared at him. At this prospect who worked himself to exhaustion proving his worth to men who already saw it. Who'd found a lamp in a junk box and thought of her. Who looked at her like she was the valuable thing, not the three-hundred-dollar Thurston.
"You don't even know what it's worth."
"I know what you're worth." His voice dropped. "The lamp's just a lamp."
She should argue. Should tell him she didn't accept gifts, didn't let people give her things, had learned that presents always came with strings attached.
But he was standing there with that hopeful look on his face, that eager energy of a young man who wanted to make her happy, and for once in her life, Reagan couldn't find the words to push someone away.
"Thank you," she said instead. "It's beautiful."
His grin transformed his whole face. Lit him up from the inside, knocked years off the deployment shadows in his eyes. He looked like a kid who'd brought his teacher an apple and watched her take a bite.
God, she was in trouble.
"There's more in that storage," he said. "Boxes nobody's touched in years. If you want, I could—"
"Don't you have prospect duties?"
"Always. But I've got time." He was still grinning, still glowing with the simple pleasure of making her smile. "Tomorrow, maybe. We could go through them together."
Together.
Such a small word. Such a dangerous one.
Reagan looked at the lamp, at Channel, at the boxes of inventory she'd organized and reorganized because keeping busy was easier than feeling things.
"Tomorrow," she heard herself say. "After your prospect duties."
"Deal."
He kissed her forehead—that same gentle press he'd been giving her since the night at the cabin, like she was precious, like she might break—and left her alone with the lamp and the boxes and the complicated feelings she didn't know how to sort.
Tomorrow. Together.
She traced the brass base of the Thurston and thought about a man who found treasures in junk boxes and gave them away without knowing their worth.
Maybe that was its own kind of value.
Maybe she was starting to learn something new about what things could cost—and what they could give back.