Chapter Nine
Diane didn't plan it.
One moment she was holding Burial's hand in the firelight, her chest aching from the honesty he'd given her. The next, his soft voice was filling the darkness between them, and she was leaning closer because the words were pulling her in like gravity.
"The floods came every spring," he said. "The Mississippi would swell and the water would creep up through the parish, and the graves would give back what they'd taken."
His thumb traced circles on her palm, absent and gentle.
"I spent ten years putting them back down. Reburying the same people, sometimes three or four times. Learning which soil held and which let go. Learning that the ground isn't permanent—it's just patient."
"That sounds like grief," she said quietly.
"It is grief." His eyes stayed on the gates, but his hand tightened on hers. "Every time I put someone back in the ground, their family had to say goodbye again. Had to stand at a graveside they thought was finished and watch me fill it in. Again. And again."
"Is that why you left?"
"I left because I buried a brother the sheriff wouldn't investigate.
Because I put him in the ground knowing he deserved answers and nobody was going to give them.
" His voice dropped. "Because I realized I was tired of being the one who handles the aftermath.
I wanted to be the one who makes the aftermath happen. "
Diane understood.
She understood in the way that a woman who built funeral arrangements understood—intimately, completely, with the bone-deep knowledge that came from spending your life in the space between beauty and grief.
"Jonah," she said.
His real name. The one the club didn't use, the one that belonged to the man before the patch.
He went still.
"I know that's not what they call you," she continued. "But I want to know the man who buries things. Not just the brother who rides rear guard."
He turned to look at her then, and whatever she saw in his eyes made her breath catch.
"Nobody's called me that in twelve years."
"Then maybe it's time someone did."
The fire crackled. The compound was quiet around them, the brothers gone to their rooms, the night settling over the Delta like a warm dark blanket.
Diane didn't plan what happened next. But when she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his, it felt like the most inevitable thing she'd ever done.
He kissed her back like a man who'd forgotten how—careful at first, tentative, as if she might break or disappear or turn out to be a dream. His calloused hand came up to cup her face, and she felt the tremor in his fingers.
The dangerous man who'd killed in a viewing room was shaking because she'd kissed him.
"Diane." Her name was a breath against her lips. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
She stood, pulling him with her. He followed without resistance, his hand still holding hers, his grave-quiet eyes never leaving her face.
His room was at the back of the compound. Of course it was—the rear guard even in his living space, positioned to watch what came from behind. It was sparse, functional, with a bed and a dresser and a mason jar of wildflowers on the nightstand.
The flowers she'd put there that morning.
He'd kept them.
"You kept them," she said.
"I keep everything you give me."
The words undid something in her chest.
She turned to face him, reaching up to trace the scar across his jaw. He held perfectly still, barely breathing, letting her explore the map of violence written on his skin.
"You're beautiful," she said.
"I'm scarred."
"Same thing."
She kissed him again, and this time he didn't hesitate.
His hands found her waist, pulling her close with a possessiveness that sent heat spiraling through her belly.
She could feel the strength in him—the coiled tension of a man who could kill with those hands—but his touch was gentle.
Reverent. Like she was something precious that needed tending instead of taking.
"Tell me what you want," he murmured against her mouth.
"You. All of you. The gravedigger and the brother and whatever's underneath."
"That's a lot to ask for."
"I'm not afraid of a lot."
His breath shuddered out. Then his hands were moving, finding the hem of her shirt, sliding beneath to trace the curve of her spine. His palms were rough, calloused from years of spade work, and the friction of them against her skin made her gasp.
"Jonah." His name again, spoken into the darkness between them.
"Yeah." His voice was wrecked. "I'm here."
They undressed each other slowly, learning as they went. His shirt came off first, revealing more scars—a map of violence across his torso that told stories she didn't know yet. She traced each one with her fingertips, and he shivered under her touch like a man unaccustomed to gentleness.
"You handle death," she said, "but you don't know what to do with someone who wants to touch you."
"I know what to do." His hands found the clasp of her bra, working it free with surprising deftness. "I just forgot what it felt like to want it."
"And now?"
He pulled back to look at her, and what she saw in his eyes made her breath catch.
"Now I want everything."
He laid her down on the bed like she was something sacred. His mouth found the hollow of her throat, trailing heat down her collarbone, across the swell of her breast. She arched into him, her hands fisting in the sheets, a sound escaping her that was half gasp, half plea.
"Beautiful," he murmured against her skin. "You're so damn beautiful."
"Less talking," she managed. "More touching."
He laughed—a low, rough sound she'd never heard from him—and obliged.
His hands mapped her body the way she'd mapped her flower arrangements, learning the shape of her, discovering what made her gasp and shiver and cry out.
He was patient in this the way he was patient in everything, taking his time, building sensation layer by layer until she was trembling beneath him.
"Please," she whispered. "Jonah, please—"
"I've got you."
He slid home, and she forgot how to breathe.
The pace was slow at first, deliberate, each movement a question and an answer. She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him deeper, and felt him shudder with the effort of holding back.
"Don't," she said. "Don't hold back. I want all of you."
Something broke in his expression. The careful control shattered, and what emerged was raw—hungry and desperate and completely, utterly alive.
He drove into her with an intensity that matched every brutal thing she'd seen him do, but this wasn't violence. This was worship. This was a man who buried things for a living finally finding something worth keeping alive.
The pleasure built in waves, cresting higher each time until she was crying out his name—his real name—into the darkness of his room. He answered with her name on his lips, the sound of it breaking as he followed her over the edge.
Afterward, they lay tangled together, breathing hard, sweat cooling on skin.
Diane reached for the mason jar on the nightstand. Her fingers closed on a wildflower—one she'd picked that morning, walking the fence line at dawn—and she laid it on his bare chest.
Burial looked down at the flower. His hand came up to hold it there, calloused fingers gentle against the petals.
"I build things from cut stems," she said quietly. "Temporary things. Beautiful things that are already dying from the moment I arrange them."
"I know."
"But I build them anyway. Because temporary doesn't mean worthless. It means precious. It means now."
His chest rose and fell beneath her palm.
"I've spent my whole life putting things in the ground," he said. "Accepting that everything ends. Making peace with the dirt because the dirt is the only thing that's permanent."
"And now?"
He turned his head to look at her. In the darkness, his eyes were soft in a way she'd never seen—not the grave-quiet watchfulness, but something warmer. Something alive.
"Now I'm lying here with a wildflower on my chest and a woman who builds beauty from dying things." His voice dropped to a whisper. "And I'm thinking that maybe I don't want to put this in the ground."
"Then don't."
"It's not that simple."
"It is." She propped herself up on one elbow, looking down at him. "You choose what you bury, Jonah. You've always chosen. And right now, in this room, you're choosing what you keep."
He was quiet for a long moment. His hand stayed pressed over the wildflower, holding it against his heart like it might disappear if he let go.
"I'm not good at keeping things," he said finally.
"Then let me teach you."
She lay back down, her head on his chest, her hand covering his hand covering the flower. His heartbeat was steady beneath her ear—the rhythm of a man who handled death but was learning, slowly, how to handle life.
The gravedigger had finally found something he didn't want to put in the ground.