Chapter 10
The compound threw a cookout like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Delaney woke to the smell of hickory smoke and the sound of kids laughing somewhere near the water. She dressed quickly, grabbed the borrowed camera, and stepped outside to find the compound transformed.
Picnic tables had appeared on the lawn between the lodge and the dock.
A massive grill was sending clouds of smoke into the clear blue sky, tended by a brother whose road name she didn't know.
Families were everywhere—wives, girlfriends, children running between adults' legs, old ladies organizing food with the efficiency of generals commanding troops.
It looked like any summer barbecue in any American backyard.
Except for the cuts. The bikes. The armed men positioned at the gate with casual vigilance.
Delaney raised her camera and started shooting.
She caught kids splashing at the dock's edge, supervised by mothers who kept one eye on the water and one eye on their men.
She caught brothers laughing over beers, the violence of their lives invisible beneath sun-faded t-shirts and easy grins.
She caught old ladies circling the food tables, making sure everyone had plates and drinks and second helpings.
It was the most normal thing she'd photographed in years.
And somewhere between the third hot dog handoff and the fifth belly-laugh, Delaney realized what she was capturing.
Happiness. Uncomplicated, unposed, unaware of being observed.
The opposite of everything she'd documented in the Army.
She lowered the camera and let herself just watch. Families being families. A community existing in the spaces between danger. The kind of belonging she'd forgotten existed.
"You're not shooting."
Float appeared beside her with two plates of food. He handed her one without asking if she was hungry.
"Just watching." She took the plate. Brisket, coleslaw, corn on the cob. Enough food for two meals. "They're beautiful, you know. When they're not thinking about cameras."
Float followed her gaze to the gathering. Something softened in his expression—a crack in the constant hustle, a moment of stillness.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "They are."
They ate side by side on the lodge porch, watching the compound live its life around them. Float was actually sitting still for once, plate balanced on his knee, tension easing from his shoulders with every passing minute.
Delaney photographed him without lifting the camera. Just memorized the way he looked in this moment—relaxed, present, almost peaceful.
"Come on the water with me."
She blinked. "What?"
"The river." Float jerked his chin toward the dock, where a canoe was tied alongside the compound's motorboats. "I borrowed a canoe. Best way to see the cove."
"You want to take me canoeing? In the middle of a cookout?"
"I want to show you something." He stood, collected their empty plates. "Something I can't show you from shore."
Delaney should say no. She should stay here, surrounded by people, safe in the crowd. Getting in a canoe with Float felt like stepping off a cliff she couldn't see the bottom of.
She stood up anyway.
"Lead the way."
The canoe sliced through water like glass.
Float paddled from the stern, guiding them away from the dock with easy, practiced strokes. Delaney sat in the bow with her camera around her neck, watching the compound shrink behind them as they moved into the cove.
The water was impossibly clear. She could see the bottom—rocks and silt and the occasional flash of fish darting away from their shadow.
The banks rose on either side, thick with cedar and oak, and the sounds of the cookout faded until all she could hear was the dip of the paddle and the whisper of water against the hull.
"You've done this before."
"Six years." Float's voice was easy, unhurried. "Ran canoe rentals on the Current River. Float trips, camping excursions, anything that kept people on the water and money in the register."
She turned to look at him. He was backlit by afternoon sun, muscles moving smoothly beneath his t-shirt as he paddled.
"What happened?"
"Partner happened." Something flickered in his expression—old pain, mostly healed but not forgotten. "Trusted the wrong guy. He cleaned out the business account while I was running trips. Came back from a three-day float to find everything gone."
Delaney raised her camera and captured him mid-stroke, paddle cutting through water, face angled toward the far bank.
"That's why you hustle."
"That's why I hustle." He didn't flinch from the assessment. "Stand still long enough, someone takes what you built. Keep moving, keep working, keep proving you're worth something—maybe you get to keep it."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It is." Float guided the canoe around a bend, revealing a stretch of river that sparkled gold in the afternoon light. "But it's better than the alternative."
Delaney photographed the river, the trees, the way the light played on the water. But mostly she photographed him—the competence in his hands, the ease in his posture, the first real peace she'd seen on his face since she'd met him.
"You love this," she said.
"The river?" Float stopped paddling, letting the canoe drift. "The river's the only thing I trust."
"Why?"
"Because it doesn't lie." He rested the paddle across the gunwales and leaned back, looking up at the sky. "Current goes where it goes. Water does what water does. No hidden agendas, no surprises. You learn to read it, and it tells you the truth every time."
Delaney lowered her camera.
She'd spent the last week documenting everything—the compound, the brothers, the old ladies, the violence and the peace and everything in between. Behind the lens, she could keep distance. Could observe without participating. Could protect herself from feeling too much.
But right now, floating on a river with a man who'd given her his real name and his hardest truth, she didn't want distance.
She wanted to be here. Present. Part of this moment instead of just capturing it.
Float was watching her, paddle forgotten, eyes steady.
"You stopped shooting."
"I know."
"Why?"
Delaney set the camera in the bottom of the canoe and turned to face him fully.
"Because some moments aren't meant to be documented. They're meant to be lived."
The words hung in the air between them. Float's gaze dropped to her mouth, then back to her eyes—a question, a want, a barely-leashed hunger.
"Delaney."
"I know." She held his gaze. "Not yet. The timing thing."
"It's killing me." The words came out rough, honest. "Being this close to you. Watching you move through the compound like you belong there. Seeing you with the camera, seeing how you see things—" He cut himself off, jaw tight.
"Seeing what?"
"Seeing a woman I want so bad it's burning a hole in my chest." Float picked up the paddle but didn't start rowing. "And knowing that if I rush this, I'll lose you. Because you're not the kind of woman who gets swept up. You choose. And I want you to choose me."
Delaney's heart was doing something complicated. Something that felt like falling.
"What makes you think I haven't already?"
Float went still. Completely, absolutely still—the first time she'd seen him motionless without effort.
"You told me you wanted me," he said carefully. "Wanting and choosing aren't the same thing."
"No." Delaney leaned forward, closing the distance between them by inches. "They're not. Wanting is easy. Choosing is terrifying."
"And?"
She looked at him—really looked. At the man who'd thrown an enemy off a cliff for her. Who'd given her his real name. Who was sitting in a canoe in the middle of a river, letting her set the pace even though it was clearly killing him.
"And I'm terrified," she said. "Which means I've already chosen."
Something blazed in Float's eyes. He started paddling again, turning the canoe back toward the compound with strokes that were faster now, more urgent.
"Tonight," he said. "Come to my cabin tonight."
It wasn't a question. It wasn't quite a command. It was something in between—a claim wrapped in a request, possessive and hopeful at once.
Delaney picked up her camera, but she didn't raise it to her eye.
"Tonight," she agreed.
They paddled back to the dock in charged silence, the cookout noise growing louder as they approached. Brothers waved from shore. Kids ran along the bank, shouting about the fish they'd seen.
Normal life, wrapping around them like a promise.
Float tied off the canoe and helped her onto the dock, his hand lingering on hers longer than necessary.
"I'll find you after sunset," he said.
Then he walked away to rejoin the cookout, leaving her standing on the dock with her camera and her racing heart and the taste of choice on her tongue.
She watched him go.
Watched the way he moved through the crowd, the way brothers clapped his shoulder, the way he glanced back at her once with eyes that burned.
She didn't raise the camera.
Some moments weren't meant to be documented.
They were meant to be lived.