Chapter Twenty
Becca heard the bikes at twelve-fourteen a.m.
She'd been counting minutes since midnight — sitting at the compound bar with cold coffee and steady hands and three old ladies who understood exactly what waiting felt like.
Claire had stopped talking an hour ago. Natalie was knitting something small and blue.
Molly was reading a paperback with the spine cracked so far back the cover had given up.
Nobody pretended it was fine. Nobody pretended they weren't listening for engines.
The rumble hit the compound walls like a wave — low at first, then building, the unmistakable sound of a pack rolling home. Becca was off her stool before the first bike cleared the gate.
She hit the lot barefoot.
The bikes poured through the gate in formation — headlights cutting the dark, chrome catching the compound's floodlights, exhaust mixing with the cold lake wind. Blast was at the front. Leading. Alive.
He killed his engine and swung off the bike, and she covered the distance between them at a dead run.
The kiss was not subtle.
She grabbed the front of his cut with both hands and pulled him down, and he caught her around the waist and lifted her off the ground, and for three seconds the entire Windy City Wolves MC ceased to exist because her mouth was on his and he was here and breathing and warm and home.
Stockyard's whistle could have cracked glass.
"Get a room!" someone shouted from the line of bikes.
Fang looked at the pavement like it had personally offended him.
Becca didn't care. She kissed Blast until her lungs burned, until the cheering from the brothers became a roar, until he set her down with that grin splitting his face and his eyes holding something she'd never seen there before.
Peace.
"It's done," he said. "Frank's gone. The warehouse is ash. Every developer who ever signed one of his contracts is going to vanish by morning."
"I know." She pressed her forehead to his chest. "I knew the second I heard the bikes."
"How?"
"Because you were leading." She looked up at him. "You always lead when it's good news."
His laugh was bright and surprised and it cracked through the compound like a gunshot made of joy.
Brothers poured off their bikes around them.
The lot filled with noise — engines dying, boots on asphalt, the particular chaos of men coming down from an adrenaline high and reaching for the nearest bottle.
Someone had staged coolers of beer near the fire pit.
Someone else had the speakers going before the last bike parked.
The celebration erupted without permission.
Becca moved through it with the flower arrangements she'd built at four a.m.
She'd raided her workshop supplies while the old ladies slept — couldn't stop her hands, couldn't quiet her mind, needed to create something while the man she loved was riding toward violence.
Daisies from the compound fence line. Wild asters from the lot behind the garage.
Sprigs of whatever green and growing thing she could find within fifty feet of the building.
Not her best work. But alive.
She placed them on every flat surface — picnic tables, the outdoor bar, the brick ledge beside the fire pit. Small arrangements, nothing fancy, just color in a space that had never known any.
"The hell are those?" Stockyard squinted at a cluster of daisies like they might bite him.
"Flowers."
"In a biker compound."
"You're welcome."
He stared at the arrangement for a long moment. Then he picked up his beer and clinked it against the nearest vase — a mason jar she'd found in the garage.
"To the florist," he said.
And then, impossibly, the toast spread.
"To the florist!" Lakeshore raised his bottle from across the lot.
"To Becca!" More voices joined — rough, loud, beery, carrying across the compound with the force of men who meant what they said.
"The woman who wouldn't sign the damn buyout!" Stockyard bellowed, and the roar that followed shook the floodlights.
Becca stood in the middle of it with tears she didn't bother hiding and a smile so wide it hurt.
These men. These hard, violent, dangerous men who solved problems with fists and bullets and the cold mathematics of territory. Raising their drinks to a woman who arranged flowers.
She belonged here.
The realization hit her like a wave — not new, exactly, but fully formed for the first time. Not just Blast's woman. Not just a civilian under protection. Part of this. Woven into the fabric of the brotherhood through fire and stubbornness and the simple, stubborn act of showing up.
The old ladies found her near the food tables.
Claire arrived first, pulling Becca into a hug that smelled like coffee and relief. Natalie followed, then Molly, the three of them surrounding her with the warmth of women who'd survived this exact night with their own men.
"Welcome to the family," Claire said. "For real this time."
"Was there a probationary period I didn't know about?"
"There's always a probationary period." Molly's smile was dry. "You passed it somewhere around the fire escape."
"These men will move heaven and earth for the women they claim," Natalie said. "But the claiming goes both ways. You chose this life. You chose him. That means something to every person in this lot."
"Even Fang?"
"Especially Fang." Claire glanced at the big man, who was standing near the fire pit holding a beer with the enthusiasm of someone attending a mandatory meeting.
"He doesn't show it the same way. But he was the one who loaded your flower buckets into the van that night at the safehouse. Without being asked."
Becca remembered. The buckets appearing in the van, carefully positioned so they wouldn't tip. She'd thanked him, and he'd just nodded.
That was Fang's version of a welcome speech.
"Thank you," Becca said. "For the coffee and the company and the not-pretending-everything-was-fine while we waited."
"That's what we do." Claire squeezed her arm. "We wait together. We worry together. And when they come home, we celebrate together."
"And when they don't?"
Claire held her gaze. "Then we hold each other up. But tonight isn't that night."
"No." Becca looked across the lot to where Blast was holding court near the bikes, telling a story with his whole body — hands moving, grin blazing, brothers laughing at whatever impossible thing he was describing. "Tonight is a good night."
"Go." Natalie gave her a gentle push. "He's looking for you. He just doesn't know it yet."
Becca crossed the lot.
Blast spotted her when she was ten feet away. His story cut off mid-sentence — she watched the brothers' faces register surprise, because Blast never stopped talking mid-sentence — and his entire focus swung to her like a spotlight finding its mark.
"There she is." His voice carried the warmth of three bourbons and one victorious night. "The woman who sent me to war with a flower on the nightstand."
"The flower's still alive, by the way."
"Of course it is. You're its mother. Nothing you raise is allowed to die."
She reached him, and his arms came around her waist with the easy possessiveness of a man who'd stopped pretending he wasn't completely, irreversibly gone for the woman in front of him.
"I have news," he said.
"What news?"
"The shop." His eyes were bright — that manic energy back, but different now. Lighter. Pointed at something constructive for once. "Stockyard's got a crew lined up. Construction brothers from Bridgeport who owe us favors going back years. They can start Monday."
Becca's heart stuttered. "Monday?"
"New coolers. New shelving. New display cases. We'll have you back in business before the month's out." His hands tightened on her waist. "I told you we'd rebuild. I wasn't messing around."
"You planned this before tonight."
"Planned it the day I brought you here." No shame. No hesitation. "Knew you'd go back. Knew you'd rebuild. Figured I'd make sure the tools were ready when you were."
Her throat ached with something too big for words. She pressed her face into his chest, breathing leather and bourbon and the faint trace of smoke that would probably never fully leave his clothes.
"I called my supplier," she said against his shirt.
He went still. "What?"
"This morning. While you were sleeping." She pulled back, meeting his eyes. "Placed an order for roses, lilies, daisies, baby's breath, greenery — enough to stock every cooler twice over. Delivery's scheduled for Thursday."
"You ordered flowers before you knew I was coming back?"
"I knew you were coming back." She touched his face. "I've known since the fourth bouquet of daisies."
His expression cracked open. The grin dissolved into something raw and unguarded, and for one second — just one — the manic energy went completely quiet.
"Four bouquets," he said softly. "That's all it took?"
"Nobody buys that many daisies for a grave they visit once a year." Her thumb traced the scar below his jaw. "You were finding reasons to walk through my door. I just had to figure out why."
"And?"
"And you were looking for something beautiful." She smiled. "Turns out you found a flower shop instead."
"I found you." He caught her hand, pressing her palm flat against his chest where his heart hammered through leather and cotton. "The flowers were just the excuse."
He kissed her — not the desperate crash from earlier, but something slower. A promise. The kind of kiss that said this is real, this is permanent, this is the thing that lasts.
Stockyard catcalled from across the lot. Blast responded with a single raised finger without breaking the kiss, and the brothers' laughter rolled across the compound like thunder.
The party stretched past two a.m. Brothers drank and argued and told stories that grew taller with every retelling.
Old ladies gathered in clusters near the food tables, trading quiet conversation and the occasional sharp laugh.
Kids who shouldn't have been awake chased each other between the bikes while their mothers pretended not to notice.
Becca sat beside Blast on a picnic table, her legs dangling, his arm around her shoulders. The compound buzzed with life around them — loud, messy, chaotic.
Home.
"Thursday," she said.
"Hmm?"
"The flower delivery. Thursday morning." She leaned into his side. "I'll need help unloading."
"I'll round up some brothers."
"Bikers carrying flower buckets. Again."
"It's becoming a tradition." His grin was lazy, bourbon-warm. "Pretty soon Fang's going to ask for his own arrangement."
"Fang already has an arrangement. He just doesn't know it yet."
Blast laughed — that bright, sharp sound she'd fallen for in a destroyed shop on a burning block — and pulled her closer.
The fire pit crackled. The speakers played something old and loud. The L train rumbled past in the distance, a reminder that Chicago kept moving even while they sat still.
Becca closed her eyes and let the noise wash over her.
Not the noise of destruction. Not the noise of fear.
The noise of people who'd chosen each other. Who'd fought for each other. Who'd burn the world down for each other and then sit around a fire pit drinking cheap beer and arguing about whose turn it was to clean the grill.
Family.
She opened her eyes and looked at Blast.
He was watching her. That focused intensity aimed entirely at her face, reading her the way he read everything — with total attention, missing nothing.
"What?" she asked.
"Just looking."
"At what?"
"At what comes next." His arm tightened around her shoulders. "And thinking it looks pretty damn good."
She kissed his jaw — the scarred side, the rough side, the side most people couldn't stand to look at.
"It does," she said. "It really does."