Chapter 10
The compound cookout was the last thing Colleen expected from an outlaw motorcycle club.
Kids chased each other through the courtyard, shrieking with laughter.
Old ladies clustered around picnic tables, trading gossip and side-eye.
Brothers manned the massive grill like it was a military operation, arguing about char levels and seasoning with the intensity of men who'd kill for each other without hesitation.
It felt like a family reunion.
A heavily armed, leather-clad, probably-wanted-for-multiple-felonies family reunion.
"You look confused," Grace said, appearing at Colleen's elbow with two beers. "First cookout's always a trip."
"I just—" Colleen accepted the bottle, cold and sweating in the Sunday afternoon heat. "I expected something different."
"Strip clubs and drug deals?"
"Maybe."
Grace laughed. "That's Tuesday. Sundays are for family.
" She nodded toward the courtyard, where a little girl was trying to climb Gallows like he was playground equipment.
The stone-faced enforcer let her, expression unchanged as she scaled his shoulders.
"These men are monsters when they need to be.
But they're also fathers, brothers, husbands.
The violence protects this—" She gestured at the chaos. "Not the other way around."
Colleen watched Anchor move through the crowd. He stopped to help an elderly woman to her seat, accepted a plate from Kate at the food table, ruffled a kid's hair as he passed.
And his eyes found hers across the courtyard.
Always watching.
"You've got it bad," Grace observed.
"I've got nothing."
"Honey, the way you're tracking him says otherwise." Grace clinked her bottle against Colleen's. "Just enjoy it. There's worse things than a dangerous man who looks at you like you're the only woman in the world."
She drifted away to join Patriot, leaving Colleen alone with her beer and her racing thoughts.
Enjoy it.
Easier said than done when every nerve ending felt like a live wire.
"You setting up?"
Colleen turned to find Pounder bouncing on his heels beside her, all manic energy and eager eyes. He nodded toward the table she'd claimed in the corner—tattoo equipment laid out, flash designs pinned to a board she'd improvised from cardboard.
"Flash station," she said. "Simple designs for anyone who wants ink and a story about where they got it."
"Sick." Pounder was already scanning the options. "Can you do an explosion?"
"I can do whatever you want."
"Sick," he repeated, grinning like a kid on Christmas. "I'm first in line."
He wasn't.
Within twenty minutes, Colleen had a crowd. Brothers wanting club symbols, dates, names. Old ladies requesting matching pieces with their men. Even a few teenagers, chaperoned by watchful parents, getting their first small tattoos under her steady hands.
She worked in focused rhythm, needle buzzing, skin taking ink, art appearing one careful stroke at a time. This was what she loved—the transformation, the permanence, the trust people placed in her hands.
"You're good at this."
Anchor's voice came from directly behind her. She hadn't heard him approach.
"It's what I do," she said without turning.
"No." He moved closer, close enough that she felt his body heat against her back. "You're good at this. Making people feel seen. Giving them something permanent to carry."
Colleen finished the small anchor design on a prospect's forearm—fitting, somehow—and set down her machine.
"Everyone wants to be remembered," she said. "Ink does that. Puts something inside on the outside."
"Is that what you did for me? Put my inside on the outside?"
She finally turned.
He was standing too close, filling her vision, blocking out the party behind him. His eyes were dark and warm, searching her face like she held answers he'd been looking for.
"Yes," she said simply. "That's exactly what I did."
His breath caught. Just barely, just enough to notice.
"Take a break," he said. "Come sit with me."
It wasn't a request.
She followed him anyway.
The firepit was at the edge of the courtyard, far enough from the main party to offer something like privacy. Anchor settled onto one of the log benches and pulled her down beside him, arm snaking around her waist like it belonged there.
Maybe it did.
"You've been working all afternoon," he said. "Anyone tell you to stop?"
"Would I have listened?"
His mouth curved. "Probably not."
They sat in comfortable silence, watching flames dance in the pit. Music drifted from the main party—classic rock, something about highways and freedom. The sky was shifting toward evening, painting everything gold and soft.
"My mother would have loved this," Anchor said quietly.
Colleen turned to look at him. His profile was sharp against the firelight, jaw tight with something he was holding back.
"Why doesn't she come?"
"Pride." The word tasted bitter. "She knows where the money comes from.
Knows what I do. But she won't take anything that feels like charity, and she won't set foot in a place built on—" He stopped.
Breathed. "She lost everything because of work like this.
The port, the unions, organizations that promised safety and delivered nothing. She doesn't trust it anymore."
"But you still send her money."
"Every month. She pretends it's from her pension, even though she doesn't have one." His arm tightened around Colleen's waist. "I bought back her house. She doesn't know. I put it in a trust, made it look like some government program. She thinks she won a lottery she never entered."
Colleen's chest ached. "Anchor—"
"She lost that house because my father couldn't adapt. Because he drowned in a bottle instead of fighting." His voice hardened. "I swore I'd never let her lose anything again. Even if she hates how I keep that promise."
The weight of it pressed down on her. All that love, twisted up in pride and silence, neither of them willing to say what they meant.
"My first soldier died because I hesitated," she said.
Anchor went still.
"He was nineteen," she continued, staring at the fire. "Same age as my little brother back home. Same stupid grin, same I'm invincible attitude. Took shrapnel to the gut during an ambush, and I just—"
She stopped. Breathed.
"I froze. One second. Maybe two. And by the time I started working, it was too late." Her hands curled into fists in her lap. "He bled out under my fingers, looking at me like I could save him, and I couldn't. Because I hesitated."
"Colleen—"
"I got his name on my arm." She pulled up her sleeve, showing the small script along her inner forearm. Private First Class David Chen. "First tattoo I ever got. Reminder that hesitation kills. That hands can't shake when someone's counting on them."
Anchor's fingers found the ink, tracing the letters with a gentleness that cracked something in her chest.
"You carry him," he said.
"Every day."
"And the others?"
She thought about the sleeve of names and faces climbing her arms. All the soldiers she'd lost. All the ones she couldn't save, no matter how steady her hands.
"I carry all of them," she said. "It's the least I can do."
His hand moved from her arm to her face, turning her toward him. Firelight danced in his eyes, and something fierce burned underneath.
"You're extraordinary," he said. "You know that?"
"I'm just—"
"Don't." His thumb traced her cheekbone. "Don't tell me you're just anything. You carry the dead like armor. You turned trauma into art. You told a loan shark to go to hell and put two bullets in his collectors." His voice dropped. "You're the strongest person I've ever met."
Tears burned at the corners of her eyes. She blinked them back, refusing to break.
"So are you," she whispered. "Buying back your mother's house. Sending money she won't acknowledge. Protecting people like me, even when we don't ask for it."
"You're not people like you." His grip tightened. "You're you. And that's—"
He stopped. Swallowed hard.
"That's everything, Colleen. You're everything."
The party faded. The music, the laughter, the chaos of family and violence and Sunday afternoon—all of it dissolved into background noise.
There was only Anchor, looking at her like she was the answer to every question he'd ever asked.
And Colleen, finally understanding that this wasn't just protection.
This was something real.
Something that terrified her and pulled her in all at once.
"This isn't just about Warren Driscoll anymore," she said. "Is it?"
"It never was."
His forehead pressed to hers. His breath warm on her lips.
"When this is over," he murmured, "when Driscoll's in the ground and your shop is rebuilt and all of this is done—I'm not letting you go. I can't."
"Anchor—"
"Tell me you feel it too." His voice cracked, just slightly. "Tell me I'm not alone in this."
She could have lied. Could have built walls, pushed back, protected herself the way she'd been doing since she came home from the war.
Instead, she told him the truth.
"You're not alone," she whispered. "You never were."
His exhale shuddered through both of them.
He didn't kiss her. Not yet. Just held her there, foreheads touching, breathing the same air, letting the truth settle between them like something permanent.
Something real.
The fire crackled. The party continued. The world kept spinning.
But for Colleen, everything had changed.
This wasn't protection anymore.
This was falling.
And she didn't want to stop.