Chapter Seventeen
Becca heard his bike before she heard the door.
The rumble cut through the compound's late-night quiet like a heartbeat—steady, strong, unmistakable. She'd been sitting on the edge of his bed for an hour, waiting, her hands still for once because there was nothing left to arrange.
Nothing except the single rose on the nightstand.
She'd found it in the wreckage of her shop, wedged behind the register where Jay Sikora's crew had missed it.
One stem, slightly wilted, petals bruised at the edges but still holding their color.
Pink fading to cream. She'd carried it back to the compound in her jacket pocket like contraband, put it in a water glass, and set it where the lamplight could reach it.
One flower. The only survivor.
Boots on the stairs. His footsteps—she knew the rhythm now. Fast, uneven, that restless cadence that meant his body was still running on whatever fuel the night had given it.
The door opened.
Blast stood in the frame, his knuckles dark with blood that wasn't his, his jaw tight, his eyes carrying the aftermath of violence the way other men carried briefcases. He looked at her. Then at the rose on the nightstand.
Something in his face shifted.
"You saved one," he said.
"It saved itself. I just gave it water."
He stepped inside and closed the door. Leaned against it. She watched the energy move through him—that familiar crackle, the restless hum that usually sent him pacing or talking or reaching for something to dismantle. His hands flexed at his sides. Opened. Closed.
"Jay Sikora's dead," he said.
"I know."
"You know?"
"You left to kill him. You came back." She held his gaze. "I know."
He pushed off the door and crossed the room, but he didn't reach for her. Stopped two feet away, close enough to touch, far enough to vibrate with the effort of standing still. His energy filled the small room like heat from a furnace.
Becca stood.
She took his left hand—the scarred one, the one missing a finger—and brought it to her mouth. Pressed her lips to each damaged knuckle, one at a time. Tasting copper and leather and the sharp undertone of adrenaline still bleeding out through his skin.
His breathing changed.
"You don't have to be fast right now," she said against his hand. "You don't have to fill the room."
"I just—" His voice was rough. Wired. "The energy doesn't have anywhere to go. After a job, it's always—"
"I know where it goes." She placed his hand against her chest, over her heart. "Here. Put it here."
He stared at her. The manic mask flickered—she could see him fighting it, the instinct to crack a joke or deflect with charm or turn the moment into something loud enough to drown out whatever he was actually feeling.
She waited.
The mask dropped.
What was underneath wasn't frantic. Wasn't wild. It was focused and certain and aimed entirely at her, and the intensity of it stole her breath.
He kissed her.
Slow. His mouth found hers with a deliberateness that she felt in her spine. Not the tender discovery of their first time. Not the desperate collision after the fires. This was something else—a man who knew exactly what he wanted, choosing to take his time getting there.
The slowness cost him. She could feel it in the tension of his jaw, the slight tremor in the hand cupping her face, the way his body strained toward hers like a wire pulled taut. Every instinct in him screamed to go faster, harder, louder.
He didn't.
"I see what you do," she murmured against his lips. "The noise. The motion. It's armor."
"Becca—"
"You don't need it here." She pulled back enough to look at him. "Not with me. Not tonight."
His thumb traced her cheekbone. Rough skin against smooth. The scar tissue on his palm catching slightly, a texture she'd come to associate with safety in a way that would've seemed insane a month ago.
"What if it's all I know how to be?"
"It's not." She turned her head, pressing a kiss to his scarred palm. "I've seen you still. I've seen you quiet. I've seen the man underneath the blast radius, and he's worth knowing."
He exhaled—a long, shuddering breath that seemed to drain something essential from his shoulders. The tension didn't disappear, but it changed. Shifted from combat-ready to something warmer.
He undressed her like he was unwrapping something irreplaceable.
His hands moved down her body with a patience that contradicted everything about him.
Each button on her shirt opened with care.
Each inch of skin revealed was studied, touched, committed to memory.
When her shirt fell away, he traced her collarbone with his fingertips like he was mapping terrain he intended to hold forever.
"My turn," she said, and pulled his shirt over his head.
The scars greeted her like old friends. She knew them now—the burn patterns on his hands and forearms, the shrapnel mark across his ribs, the mottled patch below his jaw. She pressed her mouth to each one, feeling his muscles tighten and release under her lips.
They made it to the bed without hurry.
He laid her down and stretched out beside her, propped on one elbow, his free hand continuing its slow exploration.
Down her ribs. Across her stomach. The curve of her hip.
Learning her the way she learned flower arrangements—by feel, by instinct, by the particular attention of someone who understood that the structure underneath was what made the surface beautiful.
"I keep thinking about after," she said.
His hand paused on her hip. "After?"
"After Frank. After all of this." She turned her head on the pillow, meeting his eyes. "What does it look like? The life on the other side?"
"What do you want it to look like?"
"Mornings." The word came out soft. "I want mornings that smell like flowers instead of smoke. I want to unlock my shop at seven and build arrangements for people who are celebrating something. I want Mrs. Orozco to bring me carnations on Wednesdays and pay in cash and tell me I'm too skinny."
His mouth curved. "What else?"
"I want to come home to you." She reached up, tracing his jaw. "Even if home is a converted meatpacking plant that smells like engine oil."
"We could fix that. The smell, I mean. Few flower arrangements in the right places—"
"I already started."
He laughed. Quiet, warm, nothing like the sharp crack he used in public. This was the laugh that belonged only to her. Only to this room.
"What about you?" she asked. "What do you want the after to look like?"
He was quiet for a moment. His hand resumed its path along her body—slow strokes that made her skin hum, the contact grounding him the way noise usually did.
"I want to stop counting," he said finally.
"Counting what?"
"Who's missing." His voice dropped. "Every time I walk into a room, I count. How many people, where they're standing, who's not there. It's reflex. Six years of walking into spaces and looking for the person who should be there and isn't."
"Danny."
"Danny. And everyone else I couldn't—" He stopped. Breathed. "I want to walk into a room and just see who's there. Not who's gone."
Becca pulled him down. He came willingly, his weight settling over her, and the press of his body was an answer to a question she hadn't known she was asking. Are you real? Are you staying? Is this the thing that lasts?
"You're here," she said. "I'm here. That's who's in the room."
"Yeah." His forehead rested against hers. "That's enough."
He kissed her again, and this time the patience wasn't a struggle. It was a choice. His mouth moved against hers with the certainty of a man who'd stopped running and found that the ground held.
They came together without urgency.
Slow. Deep. His eyes open, watching her face, reading every shift in her expression the way he read burn patterns and blast radii—with total attention, missing nothing.
She held his gaze and let him see everything.
The pleasure building in her like warmth spreading through cold hands.
The emotion swelling behind her ribs. The absolute certainty that this man—scarred, loud, wired for destruction—was the thing she'd been building toward her whole life.
"Yours," she whispered.
Not a revelation. Not a desperate claim. A fact. Settled and permanent, like the foundation of a building designed to stand.
"Mine," he agreed. The same tone. The same certainty. A matched pair.
He moved inside her with a rhythm that felt like breathing—natural, unhurried, the kind of pace that let every sensation register fully before the next one arrived. She arched into him, her hands on his shoulders, feeling the muscles work under scarred skin.
"Keith." His name left her mouth like a prayer. "Stay with me."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"I mean right now. Stay here. Stay slow."
He groaned—the sound pulled from somewhere deep, somewhere he usually kept locked behind noise and jokes and the constant forward motion of a man outrunning his own silence.
But he stayed. Held the pace. Let the slowness build into something that felt tidal—inevitable, unstoppable, cresting without breaking.
When she came, it wasn't an explosion.
It was a bloom. Pleasure unfurling from her center outward, petal by petal, each wave deeper and warmer than the last. She said his name again—his real name, the one that belonged to quiet rooms and still hands and the man he was when nobody else was watching.
He followed her with a shudder that moved through his whole body, his face pressed against her neck, his breath hot and ragged against her pulse. She held him through it, her arms tight around his back, feeling every tremor, every aftershock, every small surrender.
The silence afterward was their best one yet.
Not empty. Not threatening. Not the terrible vacuum where ghosts lived and twenty-year-old Marines hummed country songs they'd never finish.
Just quiet. Warm. Full of breathing and heartbeats and the faint smell of roses from the water glass on the nightstand.
"I'm going to rebuild the shop," she said eventually.
"I know."
"Same location. Same block. Same neighborhood."
"I know that too." His fingers traced lazy patterns on her hip. "Stockyard's already got a construction crew lined up. Brothers who owe us favors."
"You planned that?"
"Planned it the day I brought you to the compound." He pressed a kiss to her shoulder. "Knew you'd go back. Knew you'd rebuild. Figured I might as well have a head start."
Her throat ached. "You were that sure?"
"About you? Yeah." His arm tightened around her. "Never met anyone more stubborn in my life. You were always going to rebuild. I was always going to help."
She smiled against his chest. "And after the shop?"
"After the shop, we figure out the rest." His voice was getting heavy. Drowsy. The adrenaline finally metabolized, the energy finally spent, the constant hum that defined him fading to something low and warm. "Mornings. Flowers. Whatever comes next."
"Whatever comes next," she echoed.
His breathing slowed. Evened. His arm grew heavy across her waist, his body relaxing into the mattress one muscle group at a time, surrendering to sleep the way he surrendered to nothing else.
Becca watched him.
The quiet on his face was something she'd seen only in fragments—three seconds here, a minute there, stolen moments when the noise dimmed and the man underneath surfaced.
But tonight the quiet held. His jaw unclenched.
The lines around his eyes softened. The restless energy that crackled through him every waking moment went still, truly still, and what remained was someone she recognized.
The man underneath the blast radius.
The one who carried a dead Marine's memory like a compass pointing toward guilt.
The one who filled every room with noise because silence meant someone was missing.
The one who'd walked into a flower shop looking for proof that beautiful things still existed and found a woman who made him want to stop running.
He'd found her. And she'd found him.
Tomorrow he'd be loud again. Fast, sharp, crackling with the energy that made brothers laugh and enemies flinch. He'd plan the assault on Frank Dvorak with that manic focus that turned violence into art. He'd crack jokes and make promises and fill every room he entered until the walls shook.
But tonight, he slept.
Becca reached over and touched the rose in the water glass. Its petals were soft under her fingertips, bruised but holding on. Wilted but alive.
One flower, saved from the wreckage.
Proof that some things survived the fire.
She pulled the sheet higher, pressed herself against the warmth of the man beside her, and closed her eyes.
The compound settled around them like a held breath.
And on the nightstand, the rose kept blooming in the dark.