Chapter 15
Elise sat on the bunkhouse bed with her guitar and a legal pad full of lyrics that wouldn't come right.
Every line sounded like an argument instead of a song. The showcase was five months away, her mother was sleeping in the room next door, and somewhere in Virginia a man was plotting how to destroy everything she'd built.
Hard to write love songs when your life felt like a war zone.
She set the guitar aside and stared at the wall.
The compound had gone quiet hours ago—brothers sleeping, old ladies tucked into cabins, the particular silence of a place that had learned to rest between battles.
Tomorrow there would be church. Planning.
The next phase of something that had spiraled so far beyond a booking dispute that she could barely remember how it started.
A knock at the door. Soft. Familiar.
"Come in."
Roughcut stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He'd showered, changed into clean clothes, the bandage on his forearm fresh and white. But his eyes still carried the weight of what he'd done tonight.
"Couldn't sleep?" he asked.
"Couldn't write." She gestured at the legal pad. "Everything sounds wrong."
He crossed the room and sat on the floor with his back against the bed frame, his weight settling against her knees. The position was becoming familiar—him grounding himself against her, her anchoring him to something other than the violence in his head.
"What are you trying to write?"
"Something for the showcase. Something new." She laughed, but it was hollow. "Something that isn't about death and gunfights and men who threaten old women in grocery stores."
"That's a lot to avoid."
"Tell me about it."
Silence settled between them. Comfortable despite everything. The kind of quiet that came from knowing someone well enough to not need words.
"What happens after?" she asked finally.
Roughcut turned to look up at her. "After what?"
"After this is over. After Wennberg is... handled." She chose the word carefully. "What happens to us?"
"What do you want to happen?"
"I'm asking you."
He was quiet for a long moment. His hand found her ankle, thumb tracing circles on the bone through her sock.
"I want you to make your showcase," he said. "I want you to walk into that Minneapolis venue and blow their minds the way you blew mine the first night I heard you through a bar wall."
"And then?"
"And then you come home." His voice was simple. Certain. "To me. To this."
"This being... the compound? The club?"
"This being wherever I am." He turned more fully, resting his chin on her knee, looking up at her with those sad brown eyes that had learned to hold something other than grief. "I'm going to patch in. Permafrost as good as told me after tonight. Full member, full vote, full commitment."
"Is that what you want?"
"It's what I've been working toward for two years." His hand slid up her calf, warm through the fabric. "But it's not everything I want anymore."
"What else?"
"You." The word was quiet. Absolute. "I want you. Not just for now—for keeps. I want to wake up next to you and fall asleep beside you and spend every day in between figuring out how to deserve you."
Her throat tightened. "Sam..."
"You don't have to answer." He pressed a kiss to her knee through her jeans. "I just need you to know. Whatever happens tomorrow, whatever we have to do to finish this—you're what I'm fighting for. Not the club, not the patch, not anything else. You."
She set the legal pad aside and slid off the bed, settling onto the floor beside him. Face to face. Close enough to feel his breath.
"I've been running my whole life," she said. "From Hibbing, from expectations, from anyone who tried to make me stay. The road was safe because it kept moving. As long as I was driving, nobody could catch me."
"And now?"
"Now I'm sitting in an outlaw compound, writing songs about a man who kills people with his bare hands and holds me like I'm made of glass." She cupped his face in her palms. "And I don't want to run anymore."
His breath caught.
"I'm scared," she admitted. "I'm scared of wanting this much. Of needing someone after ten years of needing nobody. Of building something that could be taken away."
"It won't be taken away."
"You can't promise that."
"Watch me." His hands covered hers, pressing them harder against his face. "I will burn down anyone who tries to take this from us. I will stand between you and every threat this world throws at you. I will love you until loving you is the only thing I know how to do."
"Sam—"
"I'm not finished." His voice was rough. Raw. "I spent two years thinking I didn't deserve good things. Thinking these hands were only good for destruction. And then you walked into my life and made me believe something different."
"What?"
"That maybe I was built to hold things after all." He turned his head, pressed a kiss into her palm. "That maybe all that care wasn't weakness. It was just waiting for the right thing to be careful with."
Tears pricked at her eyes. Stupid. She never cried.
But this man—this broken, beautiful, violent, gentle man—kept finding ways past every wall she'd ever built.
"I love you," she said.
The words had been building for days. Maybe longer. Since the truck cab, since the garage firefight, since she'd watched him strangle a man to protect her and then hold her afterward like she was the most precious thing in the world.
Roughcut's expression cracked open. Vulnerability flooding through the cracks.
"Say it again."
"I love you, Sam." She pulled him closer, foreheads touching. "I love you, and I'm staying, and I'm done running from things that scare me."
He kissed her.
This wasn't the desperate heat of the bathroom wall. Wasn't the tender exploration of the truck cab. This was something new—slower, deeper, a kiss that said we have time and I want all of it.
His hands slid into her hair, tilting her head, changing the angle. She opened for him and felt his groan vibrate through her. Tasted coffee and something clean and the particular rightness of being exactly where she belonged.
They undressed each other slowly. No urgency. No adrenaline pushing them faster than they wanted to go. Just the deliberate revelation of skin against skin, his rough hands mapping territory they already knew, her fingers tracing scars she'd memorized in the dark.
He laid her back on the floor—not the bed, not yet, just the rug beside it—and covered her body with his. His weight was grounding. Real. The feeling of being held down by someone who would never let her fall.
"You're beautiful," he murmured against her collarbone.
"You're biased."
"Doesn't make it less true."
She laughed, and he swallowed the sound with another kiss. His mouth traveled lower—throat, shoulder, the curve of her breast—and she arched into him, fingers digging into his back.
"Sam. Please."
"Please what?"
"Everything." She pulled his face up to look at him. "Give me everything."
He slid inside her with a slowness that made her gasp. Inch by inch, watching her face, reading every flicker of reaction like she was a song he was learning to play. When he was finally seated deep, they both went still.
"Okay?" he asked.
"Perfect." She wrapped her legs around his waist, drawing him deeper. "You feel perfect."
He started to move.
This wasn't fucking. Wasn't even sex, exactly.
It was something else—a conversation conducted without words, a claiming that went beyond possession into something like communion.
Every thrust was deliberate. Every touch intentional.
His hands moved over her body like he was memorizing every curve, every response, every sound she made.
"Yours," she whispered against his mouth.
"Mine." Not a demand. A statement of fact. Settled and absolute. "Always."
"Always."
The pleasure built slowly. Not the sharp, desperate climb of their other times together—this was tidal, rising in waves that crested and retreated and crested higher. She felt herself opening, softening, becoming something larger than just her body and his.
When she finally broke, it wasn't an explosion. It was a release—tension she'd been carrying for years finally letting go, muscles unclenching, walls crumbling, everything she'd held so tightly finally allowed to breathe.
She called his name. His real name. And felt him follow her over, his whole body shuddering as he poured himself into her.
Afterward, they lay tangled on the floor, the rug rough against her back, his weight half on top of her and half beside her. His hand moved through her hair in those slow, careful strokes. His heartbeat slowed against her chest.
"The showcase," he said quietly.
"What about it?"
"I want to be there." He lifted his head to look at her. "When you play Minneapolis. When you blow their minds and get that producer's card and start building the career you've been working toward for ten years. I want to be standing in that room, watching you shine."
"You might be the only biker in the audience."
"Then I'll be the proudest biker in the audience."
She laughed. It came out wet and raw and real.
"What about after?" she asked.
"After what?"
"After I shine. After the producer's card and the record deal and whatever comes next." She traced a finger along his jaw. "Musicians travel. Tour. Spend months on the road."
"Then I'll be waiting when you get home." His voice was simple. Sure. "Or I'll come with you. Prospects do a lot of driving anyway—might as well be useful."
"You'd do that? Follow me around to gigs like some kind of biker roadie?"
"I'd do anything." He kissed her forehead. "That's what I've been trying to tell you. Whatever your life looks like—wherever your music takes you—I want to be there. Not holding you back. Not anchoring you to one place. Just... there."
She felt the words settle into her chest. Roots she'd never let grow before, finally finding purchase.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay?"
"Okay." She pulled him down for another kiss. "Let's build something."
They made it to the bed eventually. Curled together under blankets that smelled like compound laundry and wood smoke. His arm wrapped around her, her head on his chest, the slow rhythm of his breathing a lullaby she didn't know she'd needed.
Outside, the Minnesota night stretched cold and endless. But in here—in this room, in these arms—she was warm.
She was wanted.
She was home.
And for the first time in her life, that didn't scare her at all.