Chapter 12
The gate was hanging by one hinge.
Amy stood in the compound's front lot at three in the afternoon, staring at the damage from Friday night's drive-by.
She'd heard about it secondhand—four of Kyle's remaining crew rolling past the compound entrance at sixty miles an hour, unloading handguns into the fence line like it was a firing range.
Nobody had been hit. The brothers had been inside, the lot empty, the timing either lucky or deliberate. But the gate had taken the worst of it—steel frame twisted, one hinge sheared clean off, the other bent at an angle that made the whole thing sag like a broken jaw.
"It's fixable," Trauma said from behind her. He was carrying a welding rig across the lot, mask pushed up on his forehead, already assessing the damage with those triage eyes that saw problems in order of severity.
"I know it's fixable." Amy crouched beside the concrete base where the post had shifted. Cracked. The rounds had hit the hinge but the impact had traveled down, fracturing the footing. "But the base is shot. You can weld the hinge all day and it'll still wobble."
"You know concrete work?"
"My aunt repoured the diner's front steps when I was fifteen. I held the forms while she mixed." Amy poked at the crumbled footing. "We need to break this out and start fresh."
Trauma set down the welding rig and looked at her. That expression she was learning to read—not surprise, exactly, but something close. Like she kept showing him pieces of herself he hadn't expected.
"I'll get the sledge," he said.
They worked through the afternoon.
Amy broke out the old concrete while Trauma cut the damaged hinge off the gate frame with an angle grinder.
The work was loud, physical, the kind of labor that left your arms aching and your mind quiet.
She swung the sledge in steady rhythm—crack, pry, clear—reducing the footing to rubble while sweat soaked through her shirt.
"You're good at that," Trauma said during a water break.
"Destroying things?"
"Knowing what needs to come out before you can build something new."
She wiped her forehead with the back of her glove. "That sounds like a metaphor."
"It's an observation."
Amy mixed the new concrete in a wheelbarrow she'd found behind the garage—Portland cement, gravel, water, the ratio burned into her memory from a dozen repair jobs at the diner.
Her aunt had believed in doing things yourself.
Plumbing, electrical, concrete work—if it could be learned from a library book and a weekend of practice, June Lawson didn't pay someone else to do it.
Amy had inherited the philosophy along with the diner.
She poured the footing while Trauma held the post plumb, his hands steady on the steel despite the awkward angle. The concrete settled into the form she'd built from scrap lumber, gray and wet and solid.
"Twenty-four hours to cure," she said, troweling the surface smooth. "Don't let anyone bump it."
"Yes ma'am."
She threw a chunk of broken concrete at him. He caught it without looking.
"Show-off," she muttered.
Trauma welded the new hinge while the concrete set.
Amy held the gate steady, bracing it with her shoulder, feeling the heat from the arc through her leather gloves. The welding mask's glow threw sharp shadows across the lot, and the smell of hot metal mixed with Carolina pine in ways that shouldn't have been pleasant but were.
"Worst job you ever had," she said over the hiss of the torch.
"Besides this one?"
"Besides this one."
He killed the arc, flipped his mask up, inspected the bead. "Goat surgery."
"Excuse me?"
"18D training. Special Forces medics practice surgical techniques on goats before they're cleared for human patients." He struck a new arc, started the next pass. "My first attempt, I was supposed to perform a tracheotomy. Clean procedure, ten minutes, textbook simple."
"What happened?"
"The goat woke up."
Amy laughed—a real laugh, startled out of her by the image. "During surgery?"
"Sedation wasn't deep enough. Goat came up swinging. Knocked the tray, scattered instruments across the floor, kicked me in the chest hard enough to crack a rib." The corner of his mouth twitched. "Instructor said it was the most realistic combat medicine scenario he'd ever seen."
"Did the goat survive?"
"Goat was fine. My pride wasn't." He finished the weld and killed the torch. "Your turn. Worst job."
Amy shifted her grip on the gate, testing the new hinge. Solid. "Burning pies."
"That doesn't sound that bad."
"A hundred of them."
He looked at her.
"I was seventeen," she said. "First time Aunt June trusted me to run the ovens alone. Saturday morning, biggest pie order of the year—church picnic, fifty apple, fifty cherry. I set the timers, loaded every rack, and went out front to help with the breakfast rush."
"And forgot about them."
"I didn't forget. I miscalculated. Set all the timers for forty-five minutes instead of thirty-five.
By the time the first alarm went off, I had a hundred pies in various stages of charcoal.
" Amy leaned against the gate frame, the memory still sharp enough to sting.
"The kitchen was full of smoke. The church called asking where their order was.
I stood in the middle of it crying while Aunt June came in from the front and looked at a hundred ruined pies. "
"What did she do?"
"She handed me an apron and said, 'Better start over. They need them by noon.'"
"Did you make it?"
"We made it. She worked the ovens with me for the next four hours—rolling, filling, baking, starting from scratch. Didn't yell once. Didn't lecture. Just worked beside me until every pie was done." Amy's throat tightened. "She never mentioned it again. Not once in fifteen years."
"Sounds like she was teaching you something."
"She was teaching me everything." Amy straightened, brushing concrete dust from her jeans. "That's what she did. Not with words. With work."
Trauma was quiet for a moment. The welding rig hissed as it cooled.
"My instructor," he said. "The one who watched the goat kick me. After I got the procedure done—goat sedated properly the second time, tracheotomy completed, everything textbook—he pulled me aside."
"What did he say?"
"He said, 'The goat's going to wake up every time. The question is whether you finish the surgery anyway.'" Trauma set the welding mask on the ground. "I think about that more than any tactical briefing I ever sat through."
Amy looked at the gate. New hinge, fresh concrete, the steel frame straightened and solid. Not perfect—you could see where the welds met old metal, where the repairs joined the original structure—but strong. Functional. Built to take another hit if one came.
"Gate's done," she said.
"Base needs to cure."
"I know. But the hard part's finished."
They cleaned up the work site—tools stowed, scrap metal piled for disposal, the wheelbarrow rinsed and returned to the garage.
The sun was dropping toward the tree line, throwing long shadows across the compound lot, painting everything in that golden Carolina light that made even chain-link look beautiful.
Amy found two slices of leftover pie in the compound kitchen—cherry, from the batch she'd made Thursday, slightly past its prime but still better than anything from a grocery store.
She carried them to the front steps where Trauma was sitting, boots propped on the new concrete form, watching the gate like it might wander off.
She sat beside him and handed over a plate.
"Cherry," he said.
"It's what was left."
"I'm not complaining."
They ate in silence. The compound was quiet around them—a few bikes in the lot, the distant sound of music from the clubhouse, the constant backdrop of C-130s banking toward drop zones that never stopped running.
Amy finished her pie and set the plate aside. Without deciding to, she leaned against his shoulder.
He didn't stiffen. Didn't pull away. Just shifted his weight slightly to accommodate her, his arm settling against hers.
"Thank you," she said.
"For what?"
"For letting me help. With the gate. With all of it." She watched the shadows lengthen across the lot. "Most men would've told me to wait inside."
"Most men don't know you can pour concrete."
"Most men don't ask."
He was quiet for a moment. She could feel his breathing—steady, even, the rhythm of a man who'd learned to control his body in ways most people never needed to.
"I like watching you work," he said.
"That's a weird compliment."
"It's not a compliment. It's a fact." His arm pressed warmer against hers. "You handle things. You don't wait for someone else to fix what's broken. You pick up the sledge and start swinging."
"My aunt—"
"Your aunt taught you. But you chose to learn." He turned his head, looked at her. Those steady eyes, seeing her in ways that still made her pulse skip. "That's not inherited. That's earned."
She didn't have a response to that.
She didn't need one.
The sun dropped behind the pines. The compound lights flickered on, casting pools of white across the lot. The new gate stood solid in its fresh concrete, steel gleaming where the welds had set.
"We should go in," Amy said.
"Should we?"
"It's getting cold."
"Is it?"
She elbowed him. He caught her arm, held it, pulled her closer.
"Five more minutes," he said.
"You said that twenty minutes ago."
"I'll say it again in twenty more."
She stayed.
The concrete cured overnight, and in the morning the gate swung true.