Chapter 11 #2
"I'm going to trust you."
Something cracked open behind his eyes. The gruff walls, the organizer's control, the careful distance he kept between himself and anything that could break him the way his father's union had broken his father.
"Diane—"
"I haven't trusted anyone since my father died." She held his gaze. "I haven't let anyone close enough to trust. But you walked into my shop with picket line scars and you looked at my work with respect, and you've been standing between me and everything that wants to destroy me ever since."
His hand tightened on hers. The pin dug into both their palms, a sharp point of history pressing into the present.
"I don't break," he said. "That's not a promise. That's a fact. I don't break, and I don't leave, and I don't stop fighting for what's mine."
"I know."
"Do you?"
"I'm a mechanic." She pressed her palm harder against his, the pin sharp between them. "I know the difference between something that's built solid and something that's going to fail. You're built solid, Union."
He kissed her again—slower this time, deeper, the kind of kiss that wasn't a beginning but a confirmation. His arms wrapped around her, pulling her against his chest, and she felt the rumble of a sound he made low in his throat that wasn't quite a word.
More like a claim.
"Go upstairs," he said. "Get some sleep."
"Come with me."
The words hung between them. An invitation and a dare and a test, all at once.
Union studied her face in the dim light—looking for doubt, she realized. Looking for the thing that was about to break.
He wouldn't find it.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "Okay."
He pocketed his grandfather's pin with one hand and held hers with the other. They walked through the dark garage together, past the bikes she'd fixed and the tools she'd organized and the lifts that smelled like honest work.
The compound was silent around them as they climbed the stairs. His room was closer than hers, and she followed him inside without hesitation, because hesitation was for people who weren't sure.
Diane was sure.
The door closed behind them, and Union turned to her in the darkness of his room. His hand found her face, thumb tracing her cheekbone with a gentleness that contradicted everything about his scarred knuckles.
"You're sure," he said. Not a question.
"I've been sure since you came back for the second time with a bike that didn't need fixing."
She pulled him down to her, and this time neither of them stopped.
His hands shook when he touched her.
Not from cold. Not from nerves. From the effort of holding back something he'd been carrying since the first time he'd watched her diagnose an engine with her eyes closed and her fingers reading metal like braille.
Diane caught his hands and placed them on her waist. "Here," she said, and his fingers curled into the fabric of her shirt, then under it, finding warm skin.
"Diane." Her name came out rough, half-wrecked. "If we do this—"
"We're doing this."
She pulled her shirt over her head and watched his expression change. The gruff walls collapsed. The organizer's control went with them. What was left was raw and hungry and looking at her like she was the answer to a question he'd been asking his whole life.
He kissed the hollow of her throat. The ridge of her collarbone.
The scar on her shoulder from a hood latch that had caught her at sixteen.
He mapped her body with calloused hands that trembled against her skin, and every tremor told her something words couldn't—that this man who held picket lines without flinching was shaking because of her.
She pulled at his shirt until he helped, dragging it over his head.
Her hands found scars she hadn't seen before—the thick ridge on his ribs, the faded starburst on his shoulder, the layered history of a man who'd been fighting since before she knew him.
She traced each one with her fingers, then her mouth, and the sound he made when her lips touched the scar on his ribs sent heat flooding through her.
"More," she said against his skin.
He gave her more.
They fell onto the narrow bed in a tangle of denim and need, kicking off boots and jeans with the graceless urgency of people who'd waited too long.
Union settled over her, his weight braced on his forearms, and she arched up into him because the inch of space between their bodies was an inch too many.
"Look at me," she whispered.
He did. Dark eyes, stripped bare, every wall down.
"I trust you," she said. "Now show me why."
He pushed into her slowly, watching her face the entire time, and Diane's breath left her in a rush that was half gasp and half surrender. He filled her completely—solid and certain, the way he did everything—and held there, his jaw clenched, his arms shaking with the effort of not moving.
"Breathe," she told him, because his control was cracking and she wanted to watch it break.
He breathed. And moved.
Slow at first. Deep, deliberate strokes that made her fingers dig into his shoulders and her hips rise to meet him. She matched his rhythm and then pushed past it, rolling her hips in a way that made his breath catch and his control slip another notch.
"Diane." Her name was a warning and a plea.
"Don't hold back." She pulled his face down to hers, speaking against his mouth. "Not with me. Not ever with me."
His control broke.
He drove into her harder, faster, and she wrapped her legs around him and took everything he gave. The bed creaked. His breathing went ragged. She felt the tension building low in her belly, spreading through her thighs, tightening every muscle.
"Mine," he growled against her throat. "Say it."
"Yours."
"Again."
"Yours, Union. I'm—"
"James." His forehead pressed against hers, his hips still moving in a rhythm that was driving her out of her mind. "Right now, it's James."
"James." The name changed everything. Made it closer. Made it real. "James, I'm yours, I—"
The orgasm hit her like a live wire—sudden, total, radiating from her core through every nerve.
She cried out against his mouth and felt her body clamp around him, felt his rhythm stutter, felt his hands fist in the sheets beside her head.
He drove deep one last time and buried his face in her neck and she felt him come apart—his whole body shuddering, a sound torn from his chest that was her name and his grandfather's language and something wordless that meant more than either.
They stayed like that. Connected. Breathing.
His face was still pressed against her neck, his lips moving against her skin, saying something she could barely hear.
"What?" she whispered.
"Thank you." His voice was wrecked. "For trusting me."
She wrapped her arms around him and held on.
Afterward, they lay tangled together in the dark. Union's hand rested on her hip, heavy and warm, his breathing slowing against her hair.
"Diane."
"Yeah."
"The pin stays in my pocket."
She smiled against his chest. "I know."
"But you can hold it whenever you want."
She pressed closer, feeling the calluses on his fingers where they rested against her skin. Rough hands. Worker's hands. Hands that had held picket signs and broken scabs and just now held her like she was the most important thing he'd ever touched.
"Go to sleep, James."
He pulled her tighter against him, his arm heavy across her waist—possessive even in the drift toward sleep. Holding on like letting go would mean losing something he couldn't afford to lose.
Outside, the L train rumbled past, shaking the windows.
Inside, Diane fell asleep listening to his heartbeat, her body still warm from his, the knowledge settling into her bones that for the first time in five years she wasn't carrying everything alone.
His hand tightened on her hip even as his breathing deepened.
She covered it with her own and let sleep take her.