Chapter 9
Caroline couldn't sleep.
The compound had gone quiet hours ago—brothers retreating to their quarters, the rumble of motorcycles giving way to the endless moan of Panhandle wind. She'd tried lying in her narrow bed, staring at the ceiling, counting the breaths it would take to surrender to exhaustion.
But every time she closed her eyes, she saw steel glowing orange. Heard the ring of her hammer on the anvil. Felt the weight of Hatchet's gaze as he'd watched her work.
The best metalwork I've seen outside a machine shop.
She threw off the thin blanket and pulled on her boots.
The compound at midnight was a different creature. Shadows pooled between buildings, security lights casting harsh circles on the gravel. Caroline walked toward the armory without planning to—drawn by instinct, by the pull of something she didn't want to name.
The door was cracked open. Light spilled through the gap.
She pushed inside.
Hatchet sat at his workbench, a .45 disassembled in front of him. His damaged hand gripped a cleaning rod, dragging it through the barrel with slow, methodical strokes. The tremor was worse tonight—visible even from across the room, the rod shaking against the steel.
He didn't look up when she entered.
"Can't sleep?" he asked.
"No."
"Neither can I. Never do, after a fight." He set down the rod, flexed his fingers. The tremor subsided, then returned. "The hand gets worse when the adrenaline fades. Like it's punishing me for using it."
Caroline crossed to the workbench. Sat on the stool across from him, the way she might sit across from a horse she was trying to gentle.
"How long?"
"Since the shaking started? Five years. Since it stopped being manageable?" He laughed—a short, harsh sound. "Depends on the day."
She watched him try to pick up the slide. Watched his fingers fumble, the metal slipping, clattering against the bench.
"Here."
She reached across and took the pistol from him. His eyes snapped to her face—surprise, wariness, something else she couldn't read.
"I know my way around a .45," she said. "My father taught me. Said a woman working alone needed to know more than just horses."
She field-stripped the weapon with the same precision she used on hoof nippers. Slide off, recoil spring out, barrel free. Each piece laid on the bench in order, ready for cleaning.
Hatchet watched her hands the way he'd watched her at the forge.
"Where'd you learn that?"
"Same place I learned everything. From a man who believed in doing things right." She picked up the cleaning rod, ran it through the barrel. "He worked horses for forty years. Hands like leather, back like iron. Then one morning he woke up and couldn't stand."
"What happened?"
"Disc blew out. Three of them, actually—decades of holding horse legs finally caught up with him." She kept her eyes on the gun, her voice steady. "I was twenty-two. Had been working as his assistant for years, learning the trade. Suddenly I wasn't the assistant anymore."
"You took over his route."
"His clients, his schedule, his reputation. All of it." She reassembled the slide, checked the action. Smooth and clean. "I was terrified. Convinced I'd fail, lose everything he'd built. But I kept showing up. Kept doing the work. And eventually—"
"Eventually the work became who you are."
She looked up.
He was watching her with those amber eyes, and something in his gaze made her breath catch. Understanding. Recognition. The look of a man who knew exactly what she meant because he'd lived it himself.
"Afghanistan?" she asked.
He nodded slowly. Leaned back on his stool, his damaged hand resting on his knee.
"Second tour. We were running convoy security through Helmand when the IED hit. I don't remember the explosion—just waking up in the field hospital with my hand wrapped in gauze and half my squad in body bags."
"The friends you mentioned."
"Four of them. Good men. Better soldiers than I ever was." His voice was flat, controlled. The voice of someone who'd told this story before, or refused to tell it for so long that the words came out cold. "I got a Bronze Star and a medical discharge. They got flags and folded letters."
Caroline set down the reassembled pistol. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. They knew the risks. We all did." He flexed his hand again, watching the tremor ripple through his fingers. "But sometimes I wonder if the shaking is my body's way of remembering. Reminding me that I'm still here and they're not."
"That's a hell of a thing to carry."
"So is a father's legacy." He met her eyes. "We all carry something. The question is whether it breaks us or makes us stronger."
The silence stretched between them. Not uncomfortable—charged. Electric. The air thick with everything they'd just said and everything they hadn't.
Caroline stood up.
Walked around the workbench.
Stopped in front of him.
"What are you doing?" he asked. His voice was rougher now.
"I don't know." She was close enough to see the pulse jumping in his throat. Close enough to smell gun oil and leather and something underneath—warm, male, him. "I just know I'm tired of being careful."
"Caroline—"
"You called me a test. Said I passed." She reached out, touched his damaged hand where it rested on his knee. Felt the tremor vibrate against her palm. "So did you."
His breath caught.
"I'm not good at this," he said. "The talking. The feelings. I know how to fix things, how to break things. But this—" He gestured between them. "I don't know how to do this without screwing it up."
"Neither do I." She lifted his hand, pressed it against her chest, over her racing heart. "But I'm tired of being alone. I'm tired of trusting nothing but my tools and my work. I want to trust something else."
"Something?"
"Someone." She held his gaze. "You."
He moved.
One moment he was sitting on the stool; the next he was standing, towering over her, his hands on her face, his mouth a breath away from hers.
"I don't do casual," he said. "If we do this—if I touch you—you're mine. Not protected. Not under the club's wing. Mine."
"I know."
"I won't share you. Won't let you go. Won't pretend this doesn't matter."
"I know."
"Then tell me to stop." His thumbs traced her cheekbones, gentle despite the strength in his hands. "Tell me you don't want this, and I'll walk away. I'll keep you safe from a distance. I'll never mention it again."
Caroline looked at this man—this quiet, damaged, fierce man who killed for her and watched her work and saw her as someone worth keeping.
"Liam," she said.
His whole body went still.
"My name—"
"I know what your name is." She rose on her toes, brought her mouth close to his. "I'm using it because I want you to hear me when I say this: I don't want you to stop. I don't want distance. I want you."
He broke.
His mouth crashed into hers, and Caroline felt the world tilt on its axis. He kissed her like a man who'd been starving for something he didn't know he needed—desperate, consuming, his hands fisting in her hair as he pulled her closer.
She kissed him back just as fiercely.
Her hands found his chest, his shoulders, the hard planes of muscle beneath his shirt. He was solid everywhere, warm and real and present in a way that made her head spin.
She heard metal clatter—his arm sweeping the workbench clear, gun parts and cleaning supplies scattering across the floor. Then his hands were on her waist, lifting her onto the bench, stepping between her thighs.
"Tell me if I'm too rough," he growled against her mouth.
"You're not."
"Tell me if you want me to slow down."
"I don't."
He made a sound—half groan, half growl—and his mouth found her throat. Her head fell back, her fingers digging into his shoulders as heat flooded through her.
This was nothing like she'd expected. She'd thought he'd be careful. Controlled. The way he was with his weapons, his work, his damaged hands.
But there was nothing controlled about the way he touched her now.
His hands slid under her shirt, rough palms against her skin, and she gasped at the contact. He froze.
"Don't stop," she breathed.
He didn't.
The shirt came off—hers first, then his. She traced the burn scars on his forearm, the old wounds on his chest, the map of violence written on his body. He watched her touch him, his breath ragged, his damaged hand trembling against her hip.
"You're shaking," she whispered.
"I know."
"Does it hurt?"
"No." He cupped her face, tilted it up to meet his eyes. "It only shakes when something matters. When I'm holding something I'm terrified of dropping."
Her heart cracked open.
She pulled him down to her.
Later—much later—they lay tangled together on the narrow cot in the corner of the armory. Gun oil on the sheets. Forge soot on her skin. His arm around her, solid and warm, his damaged hand resting over her heart.
Caroline had never felt so utterly, completely claimed.
Not owned. Not possessed in the way that diminished. But chosen. Wanted. Held by a man who'd looked at her—at all of her, the stubborn independence and the bone-deep fear and the desperate need to be something more than alone—and decided she was worth keeping.
"Stay," he murmured against her hair. "Don't go back to your quarters."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Good." His arm tightened around her. "Because I'm not letting go."
She smiled in the darkness. Pressed her lips to his chest, over his heart.
"Liam."
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"For seeing me." She traced patterns on his skin, words she didn't know how to say. "Everyone else sees the farrier. The woman with the tools and the stubborn streak and the broken life. But you—"
"I see you." His voice was rough with something that sounded almost like wonder. "I've seen you since the first moment, when you picked up that rasp and fought back. I've seen you every day since."
"What do you see?"
He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper.
"Someone worth keeping. Someone I don't want to lose." He pressed his lips to her forehead. "Someone who makes me think maybe I'm worth keeping too."
Caroline closed her eyes.
Let his heartbeat steady her. Let his arms hold her. Let herself, for the first time in longer than she could remember, simply be held.
The armory hummed around them—the smell of gun oil and metal, the tools of violence made quiet by the darkness. But in this moment, wrapped in this man, she felt something she hadn't felt in years.
Safe.
Home.
His.
She fell asleep with the sound of his breathing in her ears and the weight of his arm across her body, and for the first time since Munn's men had scattered her tools in the dirt, she didn't dream of horses screaming in the dark.
She dreamed of steel singing under her hammer and amber eyes watching her work and a voice saying mine like it was a promise he intended to keep.