Chapter 12
Elise sat with Roughcut in the morning light while the compound buried its dead.
They'd found a quiet spot behind the garage, away from the somber procession of brothers carrying flag-draped coffins toward the back acreage where Savages had been laid to rest for decades.
She could hear Permafrost's voice carrying on the wind—words about brotherhood and sacrifice and the price of defending what mattered.
Roughcut hadn't gone to the service.
"They wouldn't want me there," he'd said when she asked. "Prospects don't stand with patched members for funerals. Not yet."
So instead he sat with her on the frozen ground, his back against the garage wall, her shoulder pressed against his. Close enough to feel the warmth of him through layers of flannel and leather.
"Tell me about the spotter," she said.
He went still.
She'd been circling the question for days, piecing together fragments from things he'd said and things he hadn't. The sadness in his eyes. The way he held everything like it might break. The careful, deliberate gentleness that seemed less like personality and more like penance.
"You don't have to," she added. "But I want to know. All of it."
For a long moment, he didn't speak. Then:
"His name was Danny Kowalczyk. Forty-two.
Three kids, youngest was six." Roughcut's voice was flat.
Controlled. The voice of a man reciting facts because feeling them would be too much.
"We were working a reclamation site in northern Minnesota.
Old mine land, unstable as hell. The company had been cutting corners for months—ignoring flagged safety concerns, pushing schedules, saving money in ways that were going to get someone killed. "
"And they did."
"Yeah." He stared at the treeline. "I was in the dozer cab. Danny was spotting—standing on the slope, guiding me through a tricky cut. We'd flagged that section twice. Told the foreman the grade was wrong, that the hillside wasn't stable. He said do it anyway."
Elise's hand found his. He gripped it like a lifeline.
"The slope gave," he continued. "Forty tons of overburden came down in maybe three seconds. I watched Danny's hard hat disappear. Watched the ground swallow him whole while I sat in that cab, close enough to see everything, too far to do a goddamn thing."
"It wasn't your fault."
"Everybody says that." His voice cracked, just slightly.
"The company said it was an act of God. The safety board said it was an accident.
Danny's wife said she didn't blame me." He turned to look at her, and his eyes were wet.
"But I was the one in the cab. I was the one running the machine.
And I've spent every day since then wondering if I missed something.
If I could have read the terrain better, moved slower, done something different. "
Elise didn't offer platitudes. Didn't tell him it wasn't his fault again. He'd heard that enough, and it clearly hadn't helped.
Instead, she said: "That's why you hold everything so carefully."
"That's why I hold everything so carefully." He nodded. "Because I know what happens when heavy things move without thought. When someone isn't paying attention. When you trust the wrong ground to hold."
She thought about the way he carried her guitar. The way he opened doors. The way he touched her—even in the desperate heat of last night—like she was something precious that might shatter if he wasn't gentle enough.
"The drinking," she said. Not a question.
"A year. Maybe more. Lost track somewhere in the middle." He shrugged. "Dried out in a cabin outside Ely. Started prospecting for the Savages because they were the only people who didn't tell me it wasn't my fault. They just gave me work to do and expected me to do it."
"And that was enough?"
"It was something." His thumb traced circles on the back of her hand. "Something to do with the attention. Somewhere to put the weight that wasn't stuck in my own head."
Elise let the silence settle between them. The sound of the funeral carried faintly on the wind—a woman crying, the rumble of bikes being started for the traditional ride-out.
"I used to think freedom was the road," she said finally.
Roughcut turned to look at her.
"Ten years of bar gigs. Driving from town to town, sleeping in parking lots, eating at gas stations.
Everyone told me I was crazy—my mom, the guys I dated, the bar owners who said I'd never make it.
" She smiled, but it was bitter. "I kept telling myself it was worth it.
That the struggle was the price of following my dream. "
"Was it?"
"I don't know anymore." She pulled her knees up to her chest. "I spent so long convincing myself that the loneliness was romantic. That being alone meant being free. But somewhere along the way, the freedom started feeling like a cage I'd built myself."
"What changed?"
She looked at him. At the sadness in his eyes and the strength in his shoulders and the way he listened like every word she said was worth hearing.
"You walked into a bar," she said. "And put yourself between me and a man twice your size like it was the most natural thing in the world."
His breath caught.
"I've spent ten years handling everything myself," she continued. "Not needing anyone. Not letting anyone close enough to matter. And then you show up with your sad eyes and your gentle hands and you just... decided I was worth protecting."
"You are."
"I know that now." She held his gaze. "But nobody ever made me believe it before."
He raised their joined hands to his mouth and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. Soft. Reverent. The gesture of a man who was learning to believe he deserved good things again.
"The showcase," he said. "Minneapolis. Is that still what you want?"
"I don't know what I want anymore." The admission surprised her. "A week ago, I would have said yes without hesitating. Now..."
"Now?"
"Now I'm sitting in an outlaw compound wearing your shirt and thinking about how this feels more like home than anywhere I've been in ten years." She laughed, but it came out shaky. "That's terrifying."
"Why?"
"Because wanting things has always hurt me." She turned to face him fully. "Every time I've let myself want something—a career, a relationship, a place to belong—it's fallen apart. So I stopped wanting. Started just surviving instead."
Roughcut's hand came up to cup her face. His touch was gentle, but his eyes were fierce.
"I'm not going to fall apart," he said.
"You don't know that."
"Yeah, I do." His thumb traced her cheekbone. "Because I've already fallen, Elise. All the way. And the only direction left is wherever you're going."
Her throat tightened. "Sam..."
"I know what I am. I know what I've done." He held her gaze. "But when I look at you, I don't feel like the man who let Danny Kowalczyk die. I feel like someone who might be worth something again."
The words cracked her open.
She'd spent a decade building walls. Teaching herself not to need anyone. Convincing herself that independence was the same as strength.
And here was this broken, beautiful man—this killer with gentle hands—telling her she'd saved him just by existing.
"I don't know how to do this," she admitted. "The relationship thing. The staying thing. I've never been good at it."
"Neither have I."
"What if we mess it up?"
"Then we mess it up together." He smiled—actually smiled, that rare, devastating expression that transformed his whole face. "Seems better than messing it up alone."
She laughed. It came out wet and raw and real.
"You're ridiculous," she said.
"Probably."
"This whole situation is ridiculous. I'm a bar singer who's been living out of a van for a decade, and you're an outlaw biker with a dead man living in your head, and we're sitting behind a garage while your club buries two of its members."
"Pretty much."
"And I'm still choosing you."
His smile widened. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." She leaned into his side, and his arm wrapped around her—careful, gentle, holding her like she was something he'd finally decided he was allowed to keep. "I'm choosing this. Whatever this is."
"It's messy," he warned.
"I know."
"It's dangerous."
"I noticed."
"It's going to get worse before it gets better. Wennberg's still out there. The club isn't going to let this stand."
"I know that too." She pressed her face into his shoulder, breathing him in. "I'm still choosing it. Choosing you."
His arm tightened around her.
For a long moment, they sat in silence. The funeral sounds had faded, replaced by the everyday noise of a compound recovering from war. Engines. Voices. The clang of tools in the garage.
Life going on. The way it always did.
"The showcase is in five months," Elise said quietly.
"I know."
"I'm going to need to figure out how to keep working. Build my set, maintain my chops, actually show up prepared."
"We'll figure it out."
"The blacklist is still active. Every bar on the Range is still terrified of Wennberg."
"Not for long." His voice went cold. Hard. "Wennberg's about to learn what happens when you threaten something that belongs to the Savages."
She should have been disturbed by the casual promise of violence. Should have flinched at the reminder of what these men were capable of.
Instead, she leaned closer.
Because whatever was coming, she wasn't facing it alone anymore.
And for a woman who'd spent ten years proving she didn't need anyone, that felt like the most revolutionary thing in the world.