Chapter Fifteen
She made him sit down.
Not on the edge of the bed the way he usually landed—perched, ready to stand, one ear on the hallway. She guided him to the center of the mattress, back against the headboard, and stood in front of him while he watched her with dark eyes that still carried mine dust and someone else's blood.
"Hands," she said.
He offered them without argument. Josie took the first-aid kit Linnea had left on the dresser—the woman had a sixth sense for when brothers came home damaged—and sat beside him, pulling his hand into her lap.
The knuckles were split again. The cuts from the compound fight had reopened and new ones had joined them, and there was blood under his fingernails that didn't belong to him.
She cleaned each wound with peroxide and cotton, feeling him watch her face while she worked.
She'd done this with horses a thousand times—cleaned the damage, assessed the severity, decided what needed care and what just needed time.
But horses didn't look at her the way Anvil was looking at her right now.
Like she was the only gentle thing left in his world.
"You don't have to do this," he said.
"I know."
"Linnea can—"
"Linnea's stitching up Ironside's leg for the second time this week. I've got you." She wrapped gauze around his right hand, careful over the worst of the splits. "Besides, I want to."
"Why?"
She finished the bandage and looked up at him.
"Because in two days, you're riding into an abandoned mine to kill a man who wants me dead. And before that happens, I want one night where nobody's bleeding and nobody's standing guard and the only thing either of us is thinking about is this."
She set the first-aid kit on the floor.
Then she reached for the hem of his shirt.
This time there was no urgency. No torn fabric, no desperate hands, no adrenaline making every touch feel like a live wire. Josie pulled the shirt over his head the way you'd unwrap something valuable—slow, careful, letting the fabric drag across his skin.
The bruises from Clete's fists had gone deep purple, yellowing at the edges. The scrapes from the compound wall had scabbed over. Beneath all of it, the older scars—Minneapolis doorways, buckshot graze, the map of a life spent standing between harm and the people it wanted.
She'd traced these scars before. In the dark, in the desperate tangle of their second time, in the tender exploration of their first.
But she hadn't studied them. Not like this.
Josie put her mouth on the scar below his collarbone—the knife wound from his bouncer years—and felt his breath catch.
"This one almost killed you," she said against his skin.
"Missed the artery by an inch."
She moved to the next. A round, puckered mark on his left side, just above the hip.
"Buckshot. Last year." His voice had gone rough. "Ironside dug the pellets out with a hunting knife and a bottle of whiskey."
"Romantic."
"That's what he said."
She laughed against his skin, and the vibration made his stomach muscles tighten under her lips.
She mapped every mark she could find—the burn on his forearm from a bar fight, the thin white line across his ribs where someone had gotten lucky with a blade, the newer bruises layered over everything like a fresh chapter written on old pages.
This body. This man. Every scar a moment when he'd chosen to stand in the way of something dangerous, and every healed wound proof that he'd survived the choice.
She sat back and pulled her own shirt over her head.
Anvil's hands came up—then stopped. Hovered. Waiting.
"You can touch me," she said. "You don't have to be careful tonight."
"I'm always careful with you."
"I know. That's not what I'm asking for."
His hands found her waist. Callused palms against bare skin, his thumbs tracing the ridges of muscle along her sides—farrier's muscle, earned through years of handling animals that outweighed her ten to one.
He mapped her the way she'd mapped him, his touch slow and deliberate, learning the geography of a body that had been its own tool and its own weapon for twelve years.
"These hands," he said, turning her right palm up, running his thumb across the calluses. "You built everything with these."
"And lost everything."
"You'll build it again." He pressed his lips to her palm. "We'll build it again."
The kiss that followed was different from every one that had come before.
Not the careful testing of their first night.
Not the collision of the post-combat desperate tangle.
This was slow, thorough, the kind of kiss that said I know your mouth and I'm choosing it again.
His hand cradled the back of her head, fingers threaded through her hair, and Josie leaned into him and let the slowness of it undo her.
She pushed him back against the headboard and climbed into his lap, her knees bracketing his hips, her hands braced on his shoulders. The position put them eye to eye, and she held his gaze while she reached behind her and unhooked her bra, letting it fall between them.
His jaw tightened. His hands flexed on her waist.
"Josie—"
"I'm right here." She took his bandaged hand and pressed it flat against her chest, over her heart. "Feel that?"
His palm was warm through the gauze. Steady.
"That's yours," she said. "Not because you rescued me.
Not because you killed for me. Because I'm choosing to give it to you, and I don't do that.
I have never done that. But I'm doing it now, with my eyes open, because you're the first person in my life who made me believe that staying is better than running. "
Something broke in his expression.
Not the way things broke in violence—sharp and sudden and destructive. This was the other kind of breaking. The kind that happened when something rigid finally gave way to something true. The wall behind his eyes crumbled, and what she saw underneath was raw and fierce and completely unguarded.
"I don't deserve—"
"Don't." She put her fingers over his mouth.
"Don't you dare tell me what you deserve.
I've watched you stand guard over me for two weeks.
I've watched you fight for me, bleed for me, kill for me.
I watched you sit in a kitchen and tell me about your brother because I asked and you trusted me enough to answer.
" She moved her hand from his mouth to his jaw.
"You deserve someone who stays. So here I am. Staying."
He surged up and kissed her, and this time the slowness caught fire.
Not the wildfire of their second time—not the consuming blaze that burned everything in its path. This was a forge fire. Controlled heat, sustained and purposeful, the kind of fire that shaped metal instead of destroying it. Josie knew forge fires. She'd built her life around them.
This one was building something new.
They moved together with the familiarity of bodies that had learned each other—his hands knowing where she was sensitive, her mouth knowing what sounds she could pull from him, both of them fitting together with the ease of something that had been built to work this way.
But underneath the familiarity was depth.
Weight. The gravity of two people who understood that this wasn't just tonight.
This was every night. From now on.
Josie said his name when the heat crested—his real name, spoken against his throat like a brand, like a vow, like the word she only used when every wall was down and the only truth left was the one pressed against her skin.
He answered with her name, just her name, his voice breaking on it like it was the most important word he'd ever learned.
Afterward, they lay face to face in the narrow bed, legs tangled, his bandaged hand resting on her hip. Diesel snored from the bathroom—the dog had given up on the bedroom entirely and claimed the bath mat as his territory.
"Tell me about the forge," Anvil said.
Josie smiled. "What about it?"
"Everything. What you want to build. Where you want to put it. How big, what equipment, all of it."
"You want a forge tour at eleven o'clock at night?"
"I want to hear you talk about the future." His thumb traced circles on her hip. "I want to hear what it sounds like when you plan something you're excited about instead of something you're surviving."
The crack in Josie's chest—the one that had been widening since the night he'd pulled her out of a fire—split open completely.
"Okay," she said. "The forge goes behind the garage. South-facing, so I get afternoon light for detail work. Coldstart's already drawn up ventilation plans—the man's a genius with airflow. I want a proper coal forge, not propane, because coal gives me better heat control for corrective shoeing."
"Coal forge. Got it."
"And a covered area for the horses. Big enough for two at a time, with rubber matting so they don't slip on concrete. Tie rings at three heights for different sizes."
"Rubber matting, tie rings."
"You're memorizing this."
"Damn right I am."
She laughed and pressed closer, her forehead against his chin.
"I want to expand into therapeutic work.
Corrective shoeing for horses with founder, laminitis, navicular issues.
It's specialized—most farriers won't touch it.
But I'm good at it, and the Iron Range has enough horses to keep me busy year-round. "
"You'll need clients."
"The old ones are already calling. Mrs. Lindquist, the Mortenson ranch, the Amish families south of Ely.
Word travels on the Range. People know what happened to me, and they're coming back anyway.
" Her voice softened. "Turns out being the farrier who survived a drug lord and a biker war is good for business. "
"I'll put that on the sign."
"Don't you dare."
His arm tightened around her, pulling her flush against him. "What else?"
"A heated corner for Diesel. The old setup had him lying on cold ground all day. Coldstart said he could rig a radiant panel under a platform."
"Spoiled dog."
"He's earned it." She tilted her head back to look at him. "And I want you there."
"I already said—"
"Not helping me build it. There. Every day. Handing me tools, holding lead ropes, running interference when a client's horse is being a brat." She held his gaze. "I want to look up from a hoof and see you standing there. Not because you're guarding me. Because you belong there."
His eyes were dark in the low light. Dark and fierce and full of something she'd spent her whole life believing she'd never find.
"I belong there," he said.
Not a question. A fact. Settled and permanent, the way metal was permanent once the forge had done its work.
"Yes," she said. "You do."
He kissed her forehead. Her temple. The bridge of her nose. Small, deliberate kisses that mapped her face the way her fingers had mapped his scars—learning the territory, claiming it, making it his.
"Two days," he said.
"I know."
"When I ride out—"
"You'll come back." She said it with the certainty of a woman who'd spent her life being disappointed by people and had finally found one worth believing. "You'll come back because you've got a forge to build and a dog to spoil and a farrier who needs someone to hold the lead rope."
"That's a hell of a reason to come back."
"It's the only one that matters."
He pulled her closer—impossibly close, every inch of her pressed against every inch of him, his arms wrapped around her like he could hold the future in place by holding her tight enough.
Josie closed her eyes and breathed him in. No gun smoke tonight. No mine dust, no blood. Just soap and skin and the warmth of a man who'd finally stopped standing guard long enough to lie down beside her.
Two days until the endgame.
Two days until he rode into an abandoned mine after a man who wanted her dead.
But tonight, in a room that smelled like gauze and clean sheets and the particular warmth of two bodies choosing each other, Josie Kinnear wasn't thinking about Brogan or mine shafts or the violence that was coming.
She was thinking about a forge behind a garage, afternoon light on her hands, and a man standing beside her who finally believed that someone meant it when they said they'd stay.