Chapter 10
The cookout was Ash's idea, which meant it started with an argument about lighter fluid and ended with Debbie running the entire operation while fourteen grown men stood around drinking beer and pretending they knew how to grill.
"You're burning them," she told Hollow, hip-checking him away from the massive charcoal setup in the courtyard. "Move."
"I'm not burning them. That's char. It's a technique."
"It's a crime against ground beef." She took the spatula from his hand—he let her, his fingers brushing hers in the transfer, lingering a beat too long. "Go get me the cheese. And the onions I sliced. And tell Ash if he puts any more lighter fluid on anything, I'm banning him from eating."
"You can't ban a man from eating at his own compound."
"Watch me."
Hollow grinned, wide and warm, and went to do what she told him.
Debbie watched him cross the courtyard—big, unhurried, stopping to clap a prospect on the shoulder and steal a sip of Gibbet's beer, which took a kind of courage she wasn't sure she possessed—and turned back to the grill before anyone caught her staring.
The courtyard had transformed. String lights glowed overhead in the late afternoon sun, picnic tables dragged into a rough circle, a cooler the size of a coffin sweating condensation in the corner.
Music came from a speaker someone had propped in a window—classic rock, loud enough to feel, quiet enough to talk over.
The compound felt alive in a way she hadn't seen yet, the grim industrial edges softened by food and noise and the particular chaos of people who liked each other enough to give each other hell.
She worked the grill the way she worked her diner—fast, efficient, plates moving, nothing sitting long enough to dry out.
Burgers, dogs, some chicken thighs she'd marinated that morning because she couldn't help herself.
The brothers lined up like it was a mess hall and she was the only cook on duty, which was basically true.
"This is better than my mother's," one of the prospects said, and the look on his face when he bit into the burger was so earnest she almost hugged him.
"Don't tell your mother that."
"She'd agree. She's a terrible cook."
Hollow materialized beside her with the cheese and onions and a beer he hadn't asked for, setting the bottle on the edge of the grill where she could reach it.
"Didn't ask for that," she said.
"You've been cooking for an hour. Drink."
"I'm working."
"You're at a party. At a grill. In a courtyard. This isn't your diner—nobody's paying you and nobody's going to complain about the wait." He twisted the cap off and pressed the bottle into her hand. "Drink. That's an order."
"You don't get to give me orders."
"I give orders to everyone. You're the only one who argues about it.
" He leaned against the table beside the grill, positioning himself at her side—close, visible, his arm near enough to hers that she could feel the heat of his skin.
Not touching. Just there. Claiming his spot next to her without asking, the way he claimed everything. "You having fun?"
She looked around the courtyard. Brothers eating, talking loud, Ash demonstrating something with a bottle rocket that was going to end in a trip to the emergency room.
The old ladies were clustered at a picnic table, Maggie holding court, laughter rising from their group like smoke.
The prospects were playing some kind of drinking game that involved throwing bottle caps at a bucket, and losing badly.
And Jimmy. Jimmy was in the middle of it.
Her brother was sitting cross-legged on the concrete near the firepit with two brothers she'd learned were prospects, all three of them eating burgers and arguing about something with the easy intensity of young men who had nothing better to do.
Jimmy's bruises had faded to yellow. His shoulders were straight.
He was gesturing with his burger, making a point, and when one of the prospects shoved him playfully, he shoved back without flinching.
Something in Debbie's chest loosened. A knot she'd been carrying so long she'd forgotten it was there, unraveling in the late afternoon light while her brother laughed with strangers who were starting to feel like something else.
"Yeah," she said to Hollow. "I'm having fun."
"Told you you'd love it."
"I said fun. I didn't say love."
"Give it time."
The party wound down slowly, the way good ones do—the food disappearing, the beer flowing, the conversations getting louder and lazier as the sun dropped behind the compound walls.
Debbie cleaned the grill because she couldn't not clean the grill, scraping the grates with the wire brush she'd found in the garage while the courtyard emptied around her.
Hollow didn't leave. He sat at the nearest picnic table, nursing a beer, watching her work with an expression she was learning to recognize.
Not hungry—or not just hungry. Something deeper, something that looked like satisfaction.
Like seeing her in his space, doing her thing, was filling a gap he hadn't known he had.
"You're staring," she said without looking up.
"Yep."
"It's rude."
"Don't care."
She scrubbed harder, heat climbing her neck. "Don't you have club business? A territory to patrol? Someone to intimidate?"
"Nope. Night off. Pitt's orders—everybody relaxes, recharges, gets ready for what's coming." He took a pull from his beer. "Besides, I'm exactly where I want to be."
"Watching me clean a grill."
"Watching you exist. The grill is incidental."
She stopped scrubbing. Stood up straight. Looked at him.
He was leaning back on the bench with his elbows on the table behind him, legs stretched out, completely at ease.
The string lights caught the scars on his neck, the shrapnel marks that traced his jaw, and turned them gold.
He looked big and rough and happy, and when he smiled at her, it went all the way to his eyes.
"Come sit down," he said.
"I'm not finished."
"Grill doesn't care. Come sit down."
She put down the brush. Walked over. Sat on the bench across from him, because sitting beside him felt like conceding something she wasn't ready to concede.
He noticed the distance. His mouth twitched. He didn't comment.
"I have a proposal," he said.
"Last time you proposed, I told you no."
"Different kind of proposal." He leaned forward, elbows on knees. "The roof. Stargazing. Just us."
"Stargazing."
"Yeah. I know it sounds—look, I'm not a complicated man. I don't have elaborate date plans. But the roof's got a good view and the sky's clear and I want to sit up there with you without anyone else around." He paused. "That's it. No moves, no agenda. Just us and the sky."
She should say no. She should absolutely say no.
She was here under club protection, her brother was sleeping in the next room, her diner was boarded up in Bloomfield, and the man who'd burned her life down was still out there with muscle and motive.
This was not the time for stargazing. This was not the time for whatever was building between her and the man sitting across from her with hope on his face and blood still healing on his knuckles.
But Jimmy was laughing for the first time in months.
And the knot in her chest was looser than it had been in years.
And Hollow was looking at her like her answer mattered more than anything that had happened this week—more than the fights, more than the threats, more than the violence he'd done in her name.
"Okay," she said.
His grin split his face. Pure joy, unguarded, the kind of smile that made him look ten years younger and twice as dangerous because it made her want to keep seeing it.
"Yeah?"
"Don't make it weird."
"I would never make it weird."
"You make everything weird. You proposed to me over meatloaf."
"That was romantic, not weird. There's a difference." He stood up and held out his hand. "Come on. Before you change your mind."
She took his hand. His fingers closed around hers—warm, rough, engulfing—and he pulled her to her feet with the easy strength of a man who could throw someone through a window without effort.
He didn't let go. Just held her hand and led her toward the building, his thumb running over her knuckles, casual and deliberate at the same time.
They passed Ash in the hallway, who looked at their joined hands and opened his mouth.
"Not a word," Hollow said.
"I was going to say have a nice evening."
"No you weren't."
"No, I wasn't." Ash's grin was incandescent. "But I'll save it for tomorrow."
The roof was silver and shadow, the city spread out below them like a circuit board, lights blinking in patterns that felt almost alive. The air was warm, thick with summer and the ghost-smell of the cookout, and the sky overhead was clear enough to see stars even through the city glow.
Hollow had brought the beer. Of course he had. Two bottles and the blanket from the hallway closet, which he spread on the flat section near the railing like he'd done this before. Maybe he had—but something about the way he smoothed the edges told her he hadn't done it with anyone else.
They sat. Drank. Looked at the sky.
"I can't actually identify any constellations," Hollow said after a minute. "I should probably admit that."
"You invited me stargazing and you don't know any stars?"
"I know the Big Dipper. And the one that looks like a W."
"Cassiopeia."
"Gesundheit."
She laughed. Real, full, startled out of her, the sound carrying across the rooftop and out into the night. He looked at her like he'd won something.
"There," he said. "That. I've been trying to get that laugh out of you for three days."
"You've gotten plenty of laughs out of me."
"Not that one. That's the real one. The one you make when you forget you're supposed to be tough." His hand found hers on the blanket, covering it. "You don't have to be tough up here, Debbie. Not with me."
The city hummed below them. His hand was warm on hers. The stars—the ones she could name and the ones she couldn't—burned overhead, patient and ancient, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, she didn't feel like she was carrying anything at all.
She turned her hand over under his and laced their fingers together.
"Tell me something nobody knows about you," she said.
He thought about it. "I sing in the shower. Badly. Springsteen, mostly."
"That's not a secret. I guarantee the whole compound knows."
"Fair point. Okay—I'm scared of the quiet. Real quiet, the kind where there's nothing. It's why I'm always loud, always joking. Fill the space so the bad stuff doesn't fit." He squeezed her hand. "Your turn."
"I haven't taken a day off in four years."
"That's not a secret either. That's a cry for help."
"It's my life. Was my life." She looked out at the city. "I don't know what I am without the diner. Without something to run, people to feed, a crisis to manage. Take that away and I'm just—"
"You're just Debbie. That's more than enough."
She looked at him. He looked at her. The distance between them was measured in inches and closing.
"This is a bad idea," she whispered.
"Probably." He didn't move closer. Didn't push. Just sat there, hand in hers, giving her the choice. "Your call."
She kissed him.
Not gentle. Not tentative. She fisted her hand in the front of his shirt and pulled him to her and kissed him like she'd been thinking about it for three days, which she had, and for two years before that, which she wasn't ready to admit but her mouth was doing it for her.
He responded instantly—one hand in her hair, the other gripping her hip, pulling her closer with a sound in his throat that was half groan and half prayer.
He tasted like beer and smoke and something warm underneath, something that was just him.
His hand tightened in her hair—not pulling, holding, keeping her close like she might change her mind and he wasn't prepared to let that happen yet.
She pushed him back on the blanket and he went, pulling her with him, her body stretched along his, his heartbeat hammering against her chest.
"Debbie—"
"Shut up."
"Yes ma'am."
She kissed him until the stars blurred and the city disappeared and the only thing that existed was his mouth and his hands and the way he said her name like it was the answer to a question he'd been asking his whole life.
They didn't make it off the roof for a very long time.