Chapter 14
Union woke to an empty bed and the distant sound of tools.
Six in the morning, gray light barely touching the window, and Diane was already working. He lay there for a moment, listening to the familiar sounds of a wrench on metal, before swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
A mechanic's internal clock didn't have an off switch.
He pulled on jeans and grabbed two cups of coffee from the common room, ignoring Fang's knowing look from his usual corner. The Sergeant at Arms didn't say anything—he never did—but the slight raise of his eyebrow spoke volumes.
Union flipped him off and headed for the garage.
He found Diane elbow-deep in Razor's bike, her dark hair pulled back, grease already streaking her forearms. She didn't look up when he entered, just kept working with the focused intensity she brought to everything.
"Coffee," he said, setting a cup on the workbench beside her.
"Thanks."
She didn't stop working.
Union leaned against the tool chest and watched her, sipping his own coffee. He knew better than to ask what she was doing—she worked when she was scared, the same way he organized when he was angry. Last night had been intense, and she was processing the only way she knew how.
"Transmission again?" he asked after a while.
"Clutch this time. Someone adjusted it wrong and now it's slipping." She finally looked up, her gray eyes tired but steady. "How'd you know I'd be here?"
"Same reason I knew you'd check brake lines at six in the morning back at your shop." He shrugged. "We handle things the way we handle them."
She studied him for a moment, then went back to the bike. "You organize when you're angry. I noticed that. The supply run, the coordination yesterday—you were furious and you channeled it into logistics."
"Old habits."
"From the union?"
Union set down his coffee. He'd been dancing around this story since they met, giving her pieces but never the whole picture. But after last night—after she'd screamed his real name and slept in his arms and woken up still there—she deserved the truth.
"My grandfather was a union man," he said. "Stockyards. Worked the killing floor for thirty years, walked picket lines when the companies tried to cut wages. He died with a union pin in his pocket and pride in his heart."
Diane's hands stilled on the bike, but she didn't look up. Listening.
"My father followed him. Different union—trucking instead of meatpacking—but same principles. Solidarity. Collective action. The idea that workers standing together could beat money and muscle." Union's jaw tightened. "He believed that until the day he died."
"What happened?"
"The company broke the union. Brought in scabs, lobbied politicians, dragged out negotiations until the strike fund ran dry." The old anger rose in his chest, familiar and bitter. "They won. The local closed. My father lost his pension, his healthcare, everything he'd spent thirty years building."
"And you?"
"I was twenty-three. I'd been organizing for five years by then—picket lines, parking lot negotiations, the whole thing. I watched my father's local collapse and thought I could do better. Thought I could save the next one."
He laughed, but there was no humor in it.
"I couldn't. Watched three more locals go under in the next ten years.
Every time, the same story—workers standing together until money and politics tore them apart.
" He met her eyes. "My father died two years after his union closed.
Heart attack, officially. But I know what really killed him.
Watching everything he believed in turn to nothing. "
Diane set down her wrench and turned to face him fully.
"You joined the Wolves because they can't be broken."
It wasn't a question.
"I joined the Wolves because collective action still works here." Union held her gaze. "We protect each other. We fight for each other. And nobody—not corporations, not politicians, not anyone—can vote us out of existence."
She was quiet for a long moment. Then she wiped her hands on a rag and walked over to him, close enough that he could smell the familiar combination of grease and soap that seemed to cling to her.
"I understand," she said softly. "More than you know."
"Tell me."
She leaned against the tool chest beside him, their shoulders almost touching.
"The first year after my father died, I didn't know how to be the boss. I'd been a mechanic my whole life—his mechanic, following his orders, doing what he taught me. Suddenly I had to make all the decisions. Payroll, scheduling, customer disputes. Things he'd handled while I just turned wrenches."
"But you figured it out."
"Eventually. After a lot of nights sitting alone in the empty garage, talking to his tools like they could answer back.
" Her voice cracked slightly. "I'd ask him what to do.
How to handle a difficult customer. Whether to take a risk on a new service line.
He never answered, obviously. But sometimes, if I sat there long enough, I could hear what he would have said. "
Union reached over and took her hand, his scarred fingers wrapping around her grease-stained ones.
"Some nights I still do it," she admitted. "Sit in the garage after closing and talk to him. Tell him about the shop. About Eddie Bartosz. About—" She hesitated. "About you."
"What do you tell him about me?"
"That you walked into my shop with picket line scars and a solidarity tattoo and looked at my brake line work with respect instead of surprise." She met his eyes. "That you didn't assume I needed help because I was a woman. You assumed I needed help because I was outnumbered."
"You were outnumbered."
"I was. And you did something about it." She squeezed his hand. "That's not nothing, Union. That's everything."
He pulled her closer, tucking her against his side. She fit there perfectly—had since the first time he'd held her in the safehouse, crying out six months of fear against his chest.
"This is permanent," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"What?"
"This." He gestured between them. "Us. Whatever we're building here. It's not temporary. It's not until the Bartosz thing is over. It's permanent."
Diane pulled back enough to look at his face, searching for something in his expression.
"You're sure about that? You've known me for—"
"Long enough." He cupped her face in his hands, his calloused palms rough against her cheeks.
"I knew it when you threw a shop rag at my head for watching you work.
Knew it when you barricaded that door yesterday with a floor jack and held it until we got there.
Knew it when you screamed my name last night like it was the only word you remembered. "
Color flooded her cheeks, but she didn't look away.
"I'm not easy," she warned. "I'm stubborn and independent and I don't like being told what to do."
"I noticed."
"I have a shop to rebuild. A life that doesn't involve motorcycle clubs and gang wars."
"We'll figure it out."
"You can't just decide things are permanent without—"
He kissed her.
Not hard this time. Not desperate. Just a steady, certain kiss that said everything his gruff words couldn't quite manage.
When he pulled back, she was breathing hard.
"I knew," she said quietly.
"Knew what?"
"That this was permanent." She touched his face, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw.
"I knew it when you walked into my shop with picket line scars and looked at my brake line work with respect instead of surprise.
When you came back three days later with a bike that didn't need fixing, just to check on me. "
"You noticed that?"
"I'm a mechanic. I know when something needs work and when it doesn't." Her smile was soft, almost shy. "You were obvious."
"I was thorough."
"You were obvious."
He laughed—a real laugh, surprised out of him the way only she seemed able to manage.
"Fine. I was obvious." He pulled her close again, pressing his forehead to hers. "But you weren't exactly subtle either. Throwing shop rags. Falling asleep on my couch. Screaming my name loud enough for the whole compound to hear."
"I didn't scream—"
"You definitely screamed."
She shoved his shoulder, but she was laughing now too.
They stood in the garage as the compound woke up around them, wrapped around each other like they'd been doing it for years instead of days. Union could hear brothers moving in the clubhouse, bikes starting in the lot, the familiar sounds of a morning at the Wolves' den.
His life. His family. And now, his woman.
"Come on," he said, releasing her reluctantly. "Breakfast. Then we figure out next steps on Bartosz."
"I should finish Razor's clutch first."
"Razor's clutch can wait."
"It's half-assembled. I can't just leave it."
Union looked at the bike, then at her, then shook his head.
"Fine. Twenty minutes. Then breakfast."
"Thirty."
"Twenty-five."
She grinned and picked up her wrench. "Deal."
Union grabbed his coffee and settled back against the tool chest to watch her work.
This was what permanent looked like. Engine grease and stubbornness and a woman who negotiated timeframes for bike repairs like she was closing a business deal.
He could get used to this.
Hell, he already had.