Epilogue #2
Opal stopped walking, turned to face him.
In the evening light, he looked exactly like the man she'd met in her stockroom—solid, steady, dangerous when he needed to be.
But she knew him now. Knew the warmth beneath the iron, the vulnerability he only showed to her, the dreams he'd started letting himself have.
"I love you," she said.
The words came easily now, nothing like the first time she'd said them—stumbling and scared and half-convinced he'd push her away. Iron didn't say them often, wasn't built for easy declarations. But when he did, she knew he meant them with everything he had.
"I love you too." His forehead pressed against hers. "Now come on. Sara's chicken gets cold fast, and Emma Kate will eat your share if we're not there in five minutes."
They walked to the clubhouse together, joining the flow of people gathering for dinner. Opal found her place at the table without thinking—between Iron and Sara, across from Emma Kate, surrounded by the brothers and old ladies who'd become her family.
After dinner, she stood on the clubhouse porch with a drink in her hand, watching the compound settle into evening.
Iron was talking to Hacksaw near the fire pit, their conversation too quiet to hear.
Brothers cleaned up from the meal while old ladies organized tomorrow's schedule.
Somewhere, kids were laughing at a joke only they understood.
Through the darkness, she could see the shape of her store—the sign reading "Iron & Oak" just visible in the security lights, the windows reflecting the night sky, her father's workbench standing sentinel inside.
Everything had changed since the night she'd found her delivery truck vandalized, since the morning she'd watched her father's store burn to the ground. She'd lost everything she thought she was—the store, the legacy, the identity she'd built around being Earl Mullins' daughter.
And she'd found something better.
A man who saw her strength as something to admire instead of something to diminish. A family who valued her competence instead of resenting it. A purpose that went beyond just surviving, beyond just proving she deserved to exist.
Iron appeared beside her, silent as always, his arm sliding around her waist like it belonged there.
"Thinking loud thoughts?"
"Just grateful ones." She leaned into him, feeling the solid warmth of his body against hers. "For you. For this. For everything I didn't know I needed until I had it."
"Goes both ways." His lips brushed her temple. "Ready to go home?"
Home. Their quarters. The bed they shared, the life they were building, the future that stretched out ahead of them like a road through the mountains.
"Yeah," Opal said. "I'm ready."
They walked together through the compound, past the brothers who nodded and the old ladies who smiled, past the workshop where Steel was still tinkering and the clubhouse where someone had started playing music.
Past the store that bore both their names, where her father's workbench stood waiting for tomorrow's customers.
The store was different now—bigger, louder, full of brothers who respected her knowledge and customers who drove from two counties over for fair prices and honest expertise.
But her father's tools were on display and his legacy lived on in every person she helped, every problem she solved, every piece of knowledge she passed along.
Opal had thought losing everything would break her.
Instead, it had shown her what she was really made of.
Iron held the door to their quarters open, and she walked through into the life she'd built from the ashes of the one she'd lost. Tomorrow there would be customers to help and inventory to manage and a workshop to plan.
There would be brothers needing supplies and old ladies bringing repairs and the endless, wonderful rhythm of a community that had made her one of their own.
But tonight, there was just this. Just them. Just the warmth of being exactly where she belonged.
Iron pulled her close, and Opal let herself sink into the embrace that had become her foundation, her future, her home.
Some things got broken. Some things burned. Some things were lost in ways that could never be recovered.
But some things got stronger when they were rebuilt.
And Opal Mullins—Opal of Iron & Oak, old lady of the Thunder Ridge MC, daughter of a man who'd taught her that a hardware store was really about helping people fix what was broken—was proof of that.
Stronger. Rebuilt. Home.
THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I hope you enjoyed IRON’S RAMPAGE. If so, I’d love to hear about it, and so would everyone else! If you’d like to leave a review, here is a link to the amazon page:
www.amazon.com/dp/B0H585T187
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Continue reading for a sneak peek for COTTONMOUTH’S BITE, Delta Destroyers MC #1, the explosive new MC Romance series from Josie Davidson
SNEAK PEEK: COTTONMOUTH’S BITE
Chapter One
The Crooked Porch smelled like it always did—fried catfish, cheap whiskey, and forty years of blues soaked into the walls.
Cottonmouth sat at the end of the bar where the shadows pooled deepest, nursing a bourbon he'd been working on for an hour.
The jukebox in the corner was playing something old and slow, slide guitar crying over a woman who'd done somebody wrong.
A handful of regulars occupied the scattered tables, locals who knew better than to look too long at the man in the leather cut drinking alone.
Friday night in the Delta. Hot as hell even after sunset, the kind of heat that sat on your chest and made you mean.
He'd been coming to this tin-roofed juke joint since before Jolene took it over from her grandmother, back when Miss Bea was still pouring whiskey and telling lies about Robert Johnson selling his soul at the crossroads three miles south.
The place hadn't changed much. Same warped floorboards, same Christmas lights strung along the ceiling year-round, same photographs of Delta blues legends covering every inch of wall space that wasn't holding up the roof.
The woman behind the bar hadn't changed much either.
Jolene Mayes moved through her domain with the efficient authority of someone who'd been doing this work since she was old enough to reach the taps.
Dark hair pulled back, sleeves rolled up, hands that showed every year of keeping this failing business alive.
She had a mouth on her that could strip paint off a barn door, and she used it freely on anyone who gave her trouble.
Cottonmouth liked that about her. Liked it more than he should.
The front door banged open hard enough to rattle the photographs on the wall.
Two men walked in wearing the kind of clothes that screamed Memphis money—pressed shirts, clean boots, gold chains catching the dim light.
They moved like they owned the room, shoulders rolling with the particular swagger of men who'd never had to back up their attitude with anything but borrowed muscle.
The bigger one had a shaved head and a neck like a fire hydrant. The smaller one was wiry, twitchy, the kind who'd pull a knife just to watch someone flinch.
Cottonmouth's hand drifted to the bar top, fingers loose, watching.
"Jolene Mayes." The big one said her name like it tasted bad. "Mr. Ruiz sent us to have a conversation."
Jolene didn't stop wiping down the bar. "Mr. Ruiz can go to hell. I told his last messenger the same thing."
"That wasn't a request." The wiry one moved toward the wall where Miss Bea's photographs hung—forty years of blues history, signed portraits, faded Polaroids of legends who'd played this room when the Delta still meant something.
He pulled the first frame off its nail and held it up.
"Nice pictures. Be a shame if something happened to them. "
"Put that down."
"Or what?" He dropped it. Glass shattered across the floor.
The regulars were already moving, sliding out of chairs and heading for the back door with the particular haste of people who knew trouble when it walked in wearing gold chains. Cottonmouth stayed where he was.
The big one grabbed another photograph—Howlin' Wolf, if Cottonmouth remembered right—and hurled it against the far wall. The wiry one laughed and swept three more frames off with his forearm, sending them crashing to the floor in a spray of broken glass and splintered wood.
"You've got one week." The big one advanced on the bar, and Jolene reached beneath the counter for something—baseball bat, probably, she'd always kept one there. "One week to sign over the property, pack your shit, and get gone. After that, Mr. Ruiz stops being polite."
"This bar belonged to my grandmother." Jolene's voice came out steady, but Cottonmouth could see the tremor in her shoulders, the fury building behind her eyes. "It's not for sale."
"Everything's for sale." The big one reached across the bar and grabbed her by the shirt, yanking her halfway over the counter. "The only question is whether you're alive to spend the money."
He backhanded her hard enough to split her lip.
And Cottonmouth came off that barstool like a killing he'd been waiting twenty years to commit.