Chapter Eleven
Diane's hands wouldn't stop moving.
She'd been in her flower corner for three hours, building arrangements she didn't need from stems that were already dying.
Her mind kept running worst-case scenarios—Burial dead on some Greenville street, his soft voice silenced forever, the gravedigger finally put in the ground himself—and the only thing that kept her sane was the feel of stems between her fingers.
Cut. Trim. Arrange. Repeat.
The compound was too quiet. The brothers who hadn't ridden out were on edge, checking weapons, watching the gates. The old ladies had gathered in the main room, their faces tight with the specific worry of women who'd sent their men into violence before.
Diane couldn't sit with them. Couldn't pretend to be calm. Couldn't do anything but work with her hands and pray to whatever listened that the man who'd held a wildflower to his chest would come back to hold her.
The engines announced them before the gates opened.
She heard the thunder of V-twins first, then the shouts of brothers calling all-clear, then the rumble of bikes pulling into the lot. She forced herself to stay where she was—counting stems, breathing slow, refusing to run out like some desperate girl who couldn't handle a few hours of uncertainty.
Then he was there.
Burial stood at the edge of her flower corner, his cut spattered with something dark, his knuckles scraped raw. He looked like violence made flesh—every line of his body carrying the weight of what he'd just done.
But his eyes found hers, and what she saw in them wasn't violence.
It was need.
"You're hurt," she said.
"Not my blood."
"Guidry?"
"Dead."
The word landed between them, heavy and final. Diane set down her scissors.
"Come here."
He didn't move. "I should clean up. Debrief with Cottonmouth. There's—"
"Come here."
Something in her voice broke through whatever wall he'd built between them. He crossed the space in three strides, and then his hands were in her hair and his mouth was on hers and she was being pressed back into the shelves of flower buckets like they were the only solid thing in the world.
This kiss was nothing like their first time.
That had been slow. Reverent. Two people learning each other in the dark. This was desperate—hungry and rough and tasting of adrenaline and the copper tang of violence. His hands pulled at her clothes like gentleness was a luxury they couldn't afford.
"Jonah." His name, spoken against his mouth.
He groaned, the sound vibrating through her chest. "Say it again."
"Jonah."
A bucket crashed to the floor. Water splashed across concrete, petals scattering. Neither of them stopped.
Her back hit the cooler, the cold metal shocking through her thin shirt. His hands found the hem and yanked it over her head, his mouth immediately finding the curve of her neck, her collarbone, the swell of her breast above her bra.
"Need you." His voice was wrecked. "Diane, I need—"
"I know." She pulled at his cut, his shirt, anything between her skin and his. "I know. Take what you need."
He lifted her like she weighed nothing, setting her on the edge of a workbench that groaned under their combined weight. Flower buckets wobbled. An arrangement she'd spent an hour building toppled to the floor, petals crushing under their feet.
She didn't care.
Her legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him closer. She could feel the evidence of his need pressing against her, could feel the tremor in his hands as he worked at the clasp of her bra. This man who'd just killed with those hands was shaking because of her.
"Diane." Her name came out like a prayer. "Tell me you're sure."
"I've never been more sure of anything."
The bra fell away. His mouth descended, hot and demanding, and she arched into him with a cry that echoed off the garage walls. Let the brothers hear. Let the whole compound know. She didn't care about anything except the feel of his hands on her skin and the desperate need burning between them.
"Mine," he growled against her breast. "You're mine."
"Yours." She pulled his head up, forcing him to meet her eyes. "And you're mine, gravedigger. Every scarred, soft-voiced inch of you."
Something ignited in his expression. The careful control he always wore—the rear-guard patience, the gravedigger's acceptance—burned away, leaving nothing but raw hunger.
He took her mouth again, harder this time, his hands fumbling with her jeans. She helped, kicking them off along with her underwear, her hands already working at his belt. When she finally freed him, when her fingers wrapped around the hard length of him, he made a sound that was almost a growl.
"Now," she demanded. "Right now, Jonah. I need you inside me."
He drove into her in one fierce stroke.
The sound she made wasn't gentle. It was primal—a cry of satisfaction and possession and the overwhelming relief of being alive and together after hours of fear. He buried his face in her neck and moved, hard and fast and exactly what she needed.
No reverence this time. No patience. Just the desperate claiming of two people who'd come too close to losing each other.
She matched him stroke for stroke, her nails scoring lines down his back, her teeth finding his shoulder. They crashed against the workbench, against the cooler, against shelves that sent more buckets tumbling. Water pooled beneath them. Petals stuck to sweat-slicked skin.
"Harder," she gasped. "I need—"
He gave her harder. Gave her everything, all the violence and fear and desperate love channeled into each thrust. She felt the pressure building, felt herself climbing toward something that glittered just out of reach.
"Come for me." His voice in her ear, rough and commanding. "Come for me, Diane. Let me feel you."
She shattered.
The orgasm tore through her like wildfire, her whole body clenching around him. She screamed his name—his real name—and felt him follow her over the edge, his body going rigid as he spilled inside her with a groan that sounded like surrender.
They collapsed together against the workbench, breathing hard, surrounded by fallen flowers and spilled water and the wreckage of arrangements that no longer mattered.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Burial—Jonah—laughed.
It was a rough, exhausted sound, but real. More real than anything she'd heard from him.
"Your flowers," he said.
Diane looked around at the devastation. Buckets overturned. Water everywhere. Petals crushed into the concrete floor. The arrangement she'd been building lay in ruins, stems scattered like casualties.
"I'll make more."
"I'll help you clean up."
"Later." She pulled him closer, not ready to let go. "Right now, just... stay."
He gathered her against his chest, his arms wrapping around her like he could shield her from anything the world might throw. She could feel his heartbeat slowing, his breathing evening out. The adrenaline was fading, leaving something softer in its wake.
"The brothers," she said quietly. "They heard us."
"Probably."
"And nobody came to check?"
"No."
She smiled against his chest. The Tail Gunner's woman. The florist who'd claimed a corner of the compound and filled it with beauty. They'd heard her crying out his name in the dark, and they'd left her alone because she was part of the club now.
Whether she'd meant to be or not.
"I was terrified," she admitted. "While you were gone. I kept thinking—"
"Don't."
"I kept thinking about the funeral arrangements I'd have to make." Her voice cracked. "Your funeral arrangements. What flowers I'd choose. What ribbon. Whether anyone would know that the woman building them had been—"
His arms tightened around her.
"I'm here," he said. "I came back."
"You came back carrying death again." She pulled back to look at him, her eyes searching his face. "That's what you do, isn't it? Handle the aftermath. Put things in the ground. Carry weight so others don't have to."
"It's what I've always done."
"But who carries it for you?"
He was quiet for a long moment. In the dim light of the flower corner, surrounded by the aftermath of their desperate claiming, his eyes held something she hadn't seen before.
Vulnerability. Real vulnerability, not the careful version he showed the brothers.
"You do," he said finally. "You carry it now."
The words landed in her chest and stayed there.
She held him among the scattered petals, her hands stroking his scarred back, her lips pressing soft kisses against his shoulder. The violence was draining out of him, leaving exhaustion in its wake—the specific exhaustion of a man who had been carrying aftermath for too long alone.
"What I do isn't the opposite of what you do," she said quietly. "You think we're different—the gravedigger and the florist, death and beauty, endings and beginnings."
"Aren't we?"
"No." She tilted his chin up, forcing him to meet her eyes. "I build arrangements from dying flowers. You put bodies in the ground. We're both working with things that are already gone—just handling them differently."
Something shifted in his expression.
"What I do is the same thing from the other end," she said. "You make death bearable. I make it beautiful. Same work. Same grief. Same love for the temporary things that matter anyway."
He stared at her, and she watched the realization settle into his bones.
The gravedigger and the florist. Two halves of the same work.
She held him in the wreckage of her flower corner, petals clinging to their skin, water soaking into their clothes. Outside, the compound was settling into the grim aftermath of victory. Brothers were being tended. Reports were being made. The war was still happening.
But in this corner, among the ruins of beauty, a woman who built things from dying flowers held a man who put things in the ground and told him the truth he'd never let himself believe.
It was the same thing from the other end.