Chapter 20
The compound was loud in the way only a celebration of survival could be—music shaking the walls, liquor flowing like it had a grudge against sobriety, and brothers telling the same stories louder each time until the truth and the legend were indistinguishable.
Debbie stood at the edge of the courtyard with a beer she'd barely touched and watched the party swirl around her.
Ash was on top of a picnic table, demonstrating the loading dock breach for an audience of prospects who looked at him like he'd hung the moon.
Gibbet sat in his usual corner, nursing whiskey, accepting handshakes from brothers who approached with the reverence of men congratulating a force of nature.
Parkway was at the firepit, quiet and steady, beer in hand, watching the gate out of habit even though tonight there was nothing coming through it but cold air and relief.
Pitt stood near the garage bay with Maggie at his side, his arm around her waist, surveying his people with the calm satisfaction of a President whose territory was secure. He caught Debbie's eye across the courtyard and raised his glass. She raised hers back.
Jimmy was in the middle of it all.
Her brother was sitting on the low wall by the firepit, flanked by two prospects he'd befriended, eating a burger and laughing at something one of them had said.
His bruises were gone. His shoulders were straight.
He looked like a twenty-four-year-old kid at a party, which was exactly what he was—a kid at a party, free, the shadow that had been hanging over him for six months finally lifted.
She watched him throw his head back and laugh, and the feeling that moved through her chest was so big she had to close her eyes against it.
"You're hiding."
Hollow's voice, behind her. Close. She felt his heat before his hands found her waist, pulling her back against his chest. His chin settled on top of her head, his arms wrapping around her from behind, and she let herself lean into the wall of him.
"I'm not hiding. I'm observing."
"You're standing in the dark corner of a party drinking a beer you don't want. That's hiding." His mouth moved to her ear. "Come inside."
"The party's out here."
"I don't care about the party." His arms tightened. "I care about you, and you've been standing over here for twenty minutes looking like a woman who's trying to figure out where she fits."
She turned in his arms, her back against the courtyard wall, his body close enough that the rest of the party disappeared. His face was lit by the string lights—warm, open, the grin that had been her undoing since the first time he'd walked into her diner.
"Where do I fit?" she asked. Not insecure—genuine. A real question from a woman standing in a world she'd never imagined inhabiting, trying to map herself onto its geography.
"Right here." He kissed her forehead. "Exactly right here."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer that matters." He pulled back enough to look at her.
"But if you want specifics—you fit in the kitchen, where you've been feeding my brothers better than they've ever eaten.
You fit in church, where you walked in uninvited and made the smartest tactical contribution of the night.
You fit in my bed, in my room, in my life.
You fit everywhere, Debbie. This place has been waiting for you. It just didn't know it."
She grabbed the front of his cut and pulled him down to her mouth. He came willingly, his hands tightening on her hips, kissing her deep enough to draw a whistle from somewhere across the courtyard.
"Get a room!" Ash shouted from his picnic table.
"Get off my furniture!" Hollow shouted back without breaking the kiss.
Debbie laughed against his mouth, and he swallowed the sound, his hands pulling her closer, his body blocking the courtyard from view.
For a moment it was just them—the noise and the party and the celebration fading to background, leaving only his warmth and his hands and the solid certainty of a man who'd ended a war and come home to her for breakfast.
He'd eaten two plates of meatloaf at seven that morning, sitting at the kitchen counter with his destroyed hands wrapped in fresh gauze, grinning at her over his coffee like the last twelve hours had been just another Tuesday.
"I want to talk to you about something," she said when he finally let her breathe.
"Sounds serious."
"It is serious." She took his hand—the bandaged one, careful of the knuckles—and led him away from the wall, through the party, past brothers who clapped Hollow's back and nodded at Debbie with the particular respect of men who'd accepted her as one of theirs.
She led him to the firepit, where Jimmy sat with his prospects.
"Jimmy," she said.
Her brother looked up. His eyes went from Debbie to Hollow, reading the two of them together, and something settled in his expression. Not surprise—recognition. Like he'd been watching this happen for weeks and was glad it had finally landed.
"Hey," Jimmy said.
"I want to rebuild the diner." Debbie sat on the wall beside him, Hollow standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder. The weight of it—his hand, his presence, the claim it represented—anchored her. "Bigger space, better equipment, new location in Bloomfield. And I want you to help me run it."
Jimmy blinked. "Me?"
"You know the kitchen. You know the neighborhood. And you need something that's yours, Jimmy—something legitimate, something you built, not something someone else trapped you into."
"Deb, I don't know how to run a business."
"Neither did I when I started. I was twenty-two and I figured it out." She took his hand. "You're not the kid who walked into my diner with a black eye. Not anymore. You've been working in the garage, learning, showing up. The brothers say you've got good hands."
"He does," Hollow said. "And he's got family backing him. That counts for something."
Jimmy looked at Hollow—really looked, taking in the patches and the scars and the bandaged hands and the way Hollow's grip sat on his sister's shoulder like it had always been there. Whatever he saw seemed to settle something.
"You're going to take care of her?" Jimmy asked.
"Already am."
"No, I mean—" Jimmy stopped. Started again. "She's been taking care of me my whole life. She never lets anyone take care of her. So I'm asking. Are you going to?"
Hollow's hand moved from Debbie's shoulder to the back of her neck, fingers curling into her hair. Possessive. Permanent. "Every day. For as long as she'll let me, and probably a few years after that, because your sister doesn't know how to stop fighting and I don't know how to stop pushing."
Jimmy looked at Debbie. She was blinking fast, jaw tight, refusing to do the thing her eyes wanted to do.
"Okay," Jimmy said. "Then yeah. I want to help with the diner. I want to cook."
"You'll need to learn Mom's recipes. I don't have the cards anymore, but they're in my head. Every one."
"Then teach me."
She squeezed his hand, and the squeeze said everything the words couldn't—I'm proud of you, I love you, we survived this. Jimmy squeezed back.
The party continued around them. Someone turned the music up.
Ash had moved on from reenactment to actual dancing, which was less dancing and more enthusiastic flailing that the prospects found hilarious.
Gibbet hadn't moved from his corner, but he was on his third whiskey, which for Gibbet was practically raucous.
Maggie appeared at Debbie's elbow, a fresh beer in each hand. She gave one to Debbie and kept the other.
"How are you doing?" Maggie asked, settling onto the wall beside her.
"I'm—" Debbie looked around the courtyard. Brothers laughing, the firepit crackling, Jimmy talking to prospects, Hollow a few feet away comparing bandaged hands with a brother who'd taken a bad hit during the warehouse breach. "I'm good. I think I'm really good."
"You earned it." Maggie clinked her bottle against Debbie's. "All of it."
"Did you? When you—" Debbie stopped herself. Restarted. "When you first got here. To the compound. How long did it take before it felt like home?"
Maggie considered it. "Longer than I expected.
Shorter than I feared." She took a drink.
"It's not a normal life, Debbie. These men aren't normal men.
They ride, they fight, they do things that would make most people run.
But they love fiercely, and they protect absolutely, and once you're in, you're in forever. "
"That doesn't scare you?"
"It scared me at first. Now it's the only thing that makes me feel safe." Maggie looked across the courtyard at Pitt—her man, her anchor, her version of what Hollow was becoming for Debbie. "You'll find your own version of it. You already are."
Hollow came back, drawn to her the way he always was—gravity, magnetism, whatever force kept pulling a two-hundred-and-thirty-pound man into the orbit of a woman who'd threatened him with kitchen equipment on their second meeting.
"Dance with me," he said.
"There's no dance floor."
"There's a courtyard and music and I'm asking." He held out his hand—bandaged, battered, the hand that had ended three men to keep her safe. "Dance with me, Debbie."
She took his hand.
He pulled her into the middle of the courtyard, into the light and the noise, his arm around her waist, his other hand holding hers.
The music was wrong for slow dancing—some classic rock anthem with too much guitar—but he didn't care, and after a second she didn't either.
He held her close and moved like a man who'd never had a dance lesson in his life, which meant badly, which meant perfectly.
"You can't dance," she told him.
"I'm a terrible dancer."
"The worst I've ever seen."
"But I'm your worst dancer." He spun her, clumsy, nearly taking out Ash who'd wandered too close. "And you're stuck with me."
"I'm not stuck with you. I chose you."
"Even better." He pulled her back in, close, his mouth against her temple. "My woman chose me. My brothers respect her. Her brother's going to cook meatloaf. What else do I need?"
"A dance lesson."
"Never. This is my signature style."
She pressed her face into his chest and laughed—the real laugh, the one he'd told her he loved, the one that came out when she forgot to be tough.
His arms tightened around her and they swayed in the courtyard with the music wrong and the dancing worse and every single thing that mattered exactly right.
Around them, brothers watched and grinned and said nothing, because the Vice President was dancing with his woman in the middle of their compound and there wasn't a man among them who'd interrupt that for anything short of war.
And war was over.
Debbie looked up at Hollow—his grin, his scars, his warm eyes—and felt the last wall come down.
The one she'd built at twenty-two, when her father died and her world shrank to a diner and a brother and the weight of carrying both alone.
That wall had kept her standing for fourteen years. It had also kept her alone.
She didn't need it anymore.
"Take me upstairs," she said.
"Yes ma'am." He swept her off her feet—literally, one arm under her knees, the other behind her back, lifting her like she weighed nothing—and carried her toward the building while the courtyard erupted in cheers and catcalls.
"I can walk," she said.
"I know." He grinned down at her, and his face was every good thing she'd ever wanted and never believed she'd have. "But this is more fun."
He carried her through the door and kicked it shut on the noise.