Chapter 17
Dana finished washing the blood from his hands and realized she wasn't ready to let go.
The bathroom was quiet around them, just the sound of water running and their breathing mingling in the small space. Forge stood at the sink, letting her work, letting her take care of him in a way he probably hadn't allowed anyone to do in years.
She turned off the water. Dried his hands with a towel, gentle around the split knuckles. Then she lifted her eyes to his and saw something she'd never seen before.
Vulnerability. Raw and unguarded, stripped bare by the violence of the night.
"Dana." His voice was rough, scraped hollow.
"I know." She rose on her toes and kissed him—soft, careful, nothing like the desperate heat of the night before. "Come to bed."
She led him back to their room, their fingers intertwined. The walk was short but it felt significant somehow, weighted with everything that had happened and everything still to come. He'd killed for her tonight. Avenged what had been taken. And now she needed to give him something in return.
She needed to prove to both of them that she could still find beauty in the ashes.
The room was dark except for the moonlight filtering through the window. Dana guided Forge to the edge of the bed, pressed gently on his shoulders until he sat. He looked up at her with those steel-gray eyes, waiting. Patient. Giving her control in a way that made her heart ache.
"Let me," she whispered. "Just... let me."
She undressed him slowly. Peeled away the ruined shirt, let it fall to the floor where it couldn't remind them of what he'd done.
His chest was a map of scars and ink, stories written in flesh that she was still learning to read.
She traced each one with her fingertips, feeling him shudder under her touch.
"You're beautiful," she said.
He made a sound that might have been a laugh. "I'm a mess."
"You're my mess." She leaned down and kissed the scar over his heart—the one he'd told her about, the one from a fight in his second year at Graterford. "And I'm keeping you."
His hands came up to grip her hips, an instinct he couldn't quite suppress, but he didn't try to take over. Didn't flip her beneath him or claim control. Just held on, anchoring himself to her while she explored.
Dana stepped back and reached for the hem of her own shirt.
She stripped slowly, letting him watch. Letting him see her—all of her, without pretense or armor. The body that wasn't perfect but was hers. The woman who'd lost everything and chosen to stay anyway.
"Dana." Her name on his lips was a prayer and a promise. "You're—"
"Yours," she finished. "I know."
She climbed onto his lap, straddling his thighs, and felt the sharp intake of his breath as their bodies pressed together. His hands tightened on her hips, then relaxed with visible effort. Letting her lead. Trusting her to take what she needed.
"I was thinking," she said, her forehead resting against his, "about what I lost. The store. My mother's sewing machine. Five years of building something from nothing."
"Dana, we don't have to—"
"Let me finish." She pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. "I was thinking about all of it, and I realized something. I spent so long believing that my value was tied to what I created. To the store, the inventory, the proof that I could make something beautiful out of broken things."
"You can. You did."
"I know. But Grimes burned it down anyway. Everything I built, gone in a single night." Her hands framed his face, thumbs tracing his cheekbones. "And you know what I felt when I watched it burn?"
"Anger. You said you were angry."
"I was. But underneath that—underneath all of it—I felt free.
" Dana let the confession spill out, the truth she'd been carrying since they'd stood in front of the smoking rubble.
"Because for the first time, I realized that my value doesn't live in a building.
It lives in me. In what I know, what I can do, what I can build again. "
Something shifted in his expression. Understanding dawning, mixing with something that looked like awe.
"You're not broken," he said softly. "Even with everything they took."
"Neither are you." She kissed him then, pouring everything she felt into the connection. "And tonight, I need to prove that. To myself. To you. I need to prove that I can still find treasure in the wreckage. That I can still see value when everything else is ashes."
His arms wrapped around her, pulling her closer. "What do you need?"
"You." The word was simple, certain. "Just you. Let me have you."
She set the pace this time. Slow and deliberate, taking her time with each touch, each kiss, each whispered word. She mapped his body the way she'd mapped a thousand pieces of vintage furniture—looking for the beauty underneath the damage, the worth that others had missed.
When she finally sank down onto him, they both stopped breathing.
"Look at me," she said, echoing his words from their first time.
His eyes found hers and held. Gray steel, warming slowly, the walls finally crumbling.
"I see you," Dana whispered. "I see all of it—the violence, the scars, the things you've done to survive. And none of it makes you less valuable. None of it makes you less mine."
"Dana—" His voice broke on her name.
"I love you." She started to move, slow rolling waves that built and crested and built again. "I love who you were before Graterford. I love who you became inside. I love who you're still becoming, every day, with every choice you make."
He was trembling beneath her now, control fraying at the edges. His hands gripped her hips hard enough to bruise, but she welcomed the marks. Welcomed the proof that this was real.
"You make it worth it," he gasped out. "Freedom.
Being out. Learning to live again." His hips surged up to meet hers, rhythm faltering as emotion overwhelmed control.
"I spent five years surviving. Just surviving.
Going through the motions, waiting for my time to end.
And then I walked into your store, and—"
"And?"
"And you looked at me like I was something worth finding.
" His hand came up to cup her face, thumb tracing tears she hadn't realized she'd shed.
"You're the first person who's made freedom feel worth having, Dana.
The first thing I've wanted since before the bars that wasn't just about the club or surviving or paying debts. "
She kissed him, swallowing the words, taking them inside her where she could keep them safe.
The pace shifted then—not faster, but deeper. More intense. Every movement a declaration, every gasp a promise. They moved together like they'd been doing this forever, like their bodies had always known how to fit.
When Dana shattered, it was gentle—a wave cresting and breaking, leaving her trembling and whole. Forge followed moments later, her name torn from his throat like a vow.
Afterward, they lay tangled together in sheets that smelled like them.
Dana traced lazy patterns on his chest, her head pillowed on his shoulder. The violence of the night felt distant now, softened by what they'd shared. Outside, the compound slept. Inside, it was just the two of them.
"I want to rebuild," she said quietly.
Forge's arm tightened around her. "The store?"
"Everything." She propped herself up to look at him, her hair falling around them like a curtain. "The store, but bigger this time. Better. Not in Kensington—somewhere else. Somewhere Ray can't touch, even if by some miracle he survives what's coming."
"He won't survive."
"I know. But even after he's gone, I want something that's ours.
Something we built together, you and me.
" She traced his jaw, the stubble rough under her fingers.
"I want to stay, Forge. Not because I have nowhere else to go.
Because this is where I belong. With you.
With the club. With the family that took me in when I had nothing. "
His eyes searched her face, looking for doubt or hesitation. Finding none.
"You're sure?"
"I've never been more sure of anything." She leaned down and kissed him softly. "I love you. I want you. I want this life—all of it, including the parts that are ugly and dangerous and nothing like I imagined my future would be."
Something cracked open in his expression. Hope, maybe. Or the final surrender of walls he'd been holding up for years.
"I did five years for the club," he said quietly. "Five years without complaint, because that's what loyalty means. Because protecting my brothers was worth any price."
"I know."
"But if something happened to you—if you needed me to, if keeping you safe meant going back inside—" His voice roughened with the weight of the admission. "I'd do it again, Dana. For you. In a heartbeat."
Dana's breath caught. She'd known he loved her. He'd said the words, proved it with actions over and over. But this—this was something else. This was a man who'd survived hell saying he'd walk back through the flames if it meant protecting her.
"Don't." She pressed her forehead to his. "Don't go back to that place. I need you here, with me, building something instead of surviving something."
"Then that's what we'll do." His arms wrapped around her, pulling her close until there was no space between them. "We'll build. Together. A store, a life, whatever you want. And I'll spend every day proving that you were right to stay."
"Right about what?"
"About second chances." He kissed her softly, reverently. "About nothing being too broken to salvage. About me being worth saving."
Dana smiled against his lips. "You've always been worth saving. I was just the first one who bothered to look."
He pulled her closer, and she went willingly, tucking herself against his chest like she belonged there.
Because she did. She belonged here, with this man, in this life she'd never asked for but couldn't imagine leaving.
The store was ashes. Her old life was over.
But lying in Forge's arms, listening to his heartbeat steady beneath her ear, Dana knew she'd found something better than anything she'd lost.
She'd found home.
And no one—not Ray Stoltz, not anyone—was going to take that from her.