Chapter Seventeen
The compound was quiet when Sadie slipped out of her room at midnight.
She'd spent the evening making calls—six of them, one for each customer whose car had been destroyed. Explaining what happened. Promising repairs. Listening to Mrs. Patterson cry with relief, to Eddie Park's stunned gratitude, to Carmen's quiet "your uncle would be proud."
Each call had cracked her open a little more.
The shop could be fixed. The lift controls replaced, the tires restocked, the tools reorganized. Metal and rubber and machinery—those were problems with solutions.
But trust?
Trust was harder. Forty years her uncle had spent building it, one oil change at a time, one honest assessment at a time, one "your car is safe with me" at a time.
And in one night, some twenty-five-year-old with a box cutter had carved her name into six hoods and made her customers question everything.
They'd forgiven her. All of them. Said it wasn't her fault, said they understood, said they'd keep bringing their cars to Morrow's because that's what they'd always done.
But Sadie knew the truth. Some cracks didn't show until the weight settled.
Some damage took years to surface. And she'd spend the rest of her life wondering if every nervous glance, every hesitation before handing over keys, every moment of doubt was the legacy of a night she hadn't been there to prevent.
The clubhouse was dark except for the glow of the bar. Nail sat behind it, alone, a bottle of bourbon in front of him and two glasses waiting.
He looked up when she appeared. Didn't smile. Just reached for the bottle and poured.
"Couldn't sleep?" he asked.
"Couldn't stop thinking."
She slid onto the stool across from him—the same stool where this had started, where she'd first seen his real face, where everything had begun to change. The bourbon he pushed toward her was the good stuff. She could tell by the color, the way it caught the dim light.
"The customer calls," he said. Not a question.
"They forgave me. Every single one." She took a sip and let the burn settle. "Makes it worse, somehow. Like I don't deserve it."
"You don't deserve the blame in the first place."
"I know. Here." She tapped her temple. "Here's harder." She tapped her chest.
His mouth quirked. Recognition. They'd had this conversation before, in reverse, about his father and his smile and the things you know but can't quite feel.
"Come here," he said.
She set down her glass and walked around the bar. He turned on his stool to face her, and she stepped between his knees, her hands finding his shoulders, his finding her hips. Natural now. Familiar in a way that still surprised her.
"The cars will be fixed," he said. "Every one of them, better than before. The customers will bring them back because that's what they've always done. And in a year, maybe two, nobody will remember this night except as the time Sadie Morrow proved that Morrow's Garage keeps its promises."
"You can't know that."
"I know Canton." His thumbs traced circles on her hips through the thin fabric of her sleep shirt. "I know what people remember. They'll remember that their cars got destroyed and their mechanic made it right. That's the story. That's what stays."
She wanted to believe him. Wanted to let his certainty wash away the doubt that had been eating at her since she'd seen her name carved into Mrs. Patterson's hood.
"I'm going to rebuild every one personally," she said. "New engines, new paint, new everything. By the time I'm done, those cars will run better than they did before."
"I know you will."
"It'll take months. Maybe longer."
"Then it takes months." His hands slid up her sides, pulling her closer. "I'm not going anywhere."
She leaned down and kissed him. Soft at first, tentative, testing the weight of what they'd built over the last weeks. He responded in kind—no desperation, no adrenaline, just the slow heat of two people who'd learned each other's rhythms and weren't in any hurry to rush.
"Nail," she murmured against his lips.
"Hmm?"
"What happens after?"
He pulled back slightly, his eyes searching her face. "After what?"
"After Fisk. After this is done." She rested her forehead against his. "You go back to your bar. I go back to my garage. What does that look like? Us, I mean. What are we building here?"
He was quiet for a moment. She could feel him thinking, weighing words the way he weighed everything—carefully, deliberately, looking for the truth underneath the performance.
"Two Canton businesses," he said finally. "Same blocks we grew up on. Your garage, my bar, three miles of waterfront between us." His hands tightened on her waist. "I figure we split time. Nights at my place, mornings at yours. Coffee before you open the shop. Bourbon after I close the bar."
"That's very practical."
"I'm a practical man."
"You're a charming man." She kissed his jaw, his cheek, the corner of his mouth. "Practically is a new look."
"I'm trying something different." His voice was rougher now, affected by her proximity in ways he wasn't trying to hide. "There's this mechanic I know. She doesn't respond to charm. Makes me work harder."
"Does it bother you? Working harder?"
"It's the best thing that's ever happened to me."
She kissed him again, deeper this time, and felt his control slip just slightly. His hands moved from her waist to her thighs, pulling her onto his lap, her knees settling on either side of his hips. The stool creaked beneath their combined weight, and neither of them cared.
"James," she whispered.
His whole body shuddered at the name. The name only she used. The name that meant this is real, this is us, this is something no one else gets to see.
"Say that again."
"James." She cradled his face in her hands. "I'm choosing you. Not because I need protection, not because my garage is burning, not because the adrenaline's running high. I'm choosing you because I've seen who you are without the mask, and that's the man I want."
"Sadie—"
"I'm not done." She held his gaze, refusing to let him look away.
"I know what this life costs. I've seen the bodies, the blood, the way you come home with someone else's death in your eyes.
I know you'll do things I can't watch, things I can't know about, things that would make most people run. And I'm still here."
His breath came ragged. She could feel his heart pounding against her palms, could see the way her words were landing, cracking open all the defenses he'd spent a lifetime building.
"I don't deserve this," he said.
"Neither do I." She kissed his forehead. "But here we are anyway."
He surged up and captured her mouth, and this time there was nothing gentle about it.
This was the claiming she'd felt from the beginning—the possessive, consuming need that had been building since he'd first called her mine.
But it was different now. Settled. Permanent. Not a revelation but a confirmation.
They moved together toward the back office, shedding clothes along the way—his shirt on the floor by the pool table, her sleep shorts kicked aside near the door. By the time they reached the couch, there was nothing between them but skin and breath and the knowledge of exactly what they wanted.
He laid her down like she was precious. Touched her like she was his.
"I love you," he said.
The words hung in the air, heavy and real. She hadn't expected them—not here, not now, not from a man who'd spent his whole life hiding behind a smile.
"Say that again," she whispered.
"I love you." He braced himself above her, his eyes fierce on hers.
"I love the way you see through me. I love the way you challenge me.
I love that you grabbed a wrench and defended my brothers' bikes because you'd be damned if anyone touched something you'd fixed.
" His voice cracked. "I love you, Sadie Morrow. And I'm done pretending I don't."
She pulled him down and kissed him with everything she had.
"I love you too, James."
They came together slowly this time. No desperation, no adrenaline, just the deliberate pleasure of two people who knew each other's bodies and wanted to memorize every inch anyway.
She traced the scars on his chest while he mapped the calluses on her hands.
He found the spots that made her gasp, and she discovered the places where his control shattered into something raw.
The endgame was coming. Fisk was still out there, hiding, waiting. Tomorrow there would be planning and preparation and the violence that this life required.
But tonight, there was this.
His weight above her. Her name on his lips—her real name, the one nobody else got to say. The slow, building pleasure that crested and broke and left them tangled together, breathing hard, clinging to each other in the dark.
"After Fisk," she said, when she could speak again.
"After Fisk," he agreed. His hand traced lazy patterns on her shoulder, her arm, the curve of her hip.
"I want Sundays."
He turned his head, eyebrow raised. "Sundays?"
"At the compound. Crabs and beer and the brothers giving each other shit." She nestled closer against his chest. "I want to be part of that. Not just someone you're protecting, but someone who belongs."
"You already belong."
"I want it official."
He was quiet for a moment. Then his arm tightened around her.
"There's a ceremony," he said. "When a brother claims a woman. When she becomes his old lady. It's not legal—not a wedding—but it means something to the club. It means you're family."
Her heart stuttered. "Are you asking?"
"I'm telling you it exists." His voice was careful, but she could hear the hope underneath. "And I'm telling you that when Fisk is dead and your garage is rebuilt and we've had time to breathe... I want to have that conversation for real."
"James."
"You don't have to answer now."
"I'm not answering now." She propped herself up on her elbow, looking down at his face in the dim light. "I'm saying I want to have that conversation too. When the time is right."
His smile was real. No charm, no performance. Just honest joy that transformed his whole face.
"After Fisk," he said.
"After Fisk."
She lay back down against his chest, listening to his heartbeat steady beneath her ear.
Outside, Baltimore slept—the harbor, the row houses, the waterfront blocks they'd both grown up on.
Tomorrow there would be violence and planning and the final confrontation that would end this chapter of their lives.
But after?
After, there would be mornings at the garage and nights at the bar. Sundays at the compound and the ceremony that would make her his old lady. A life built on the same Canton blocks where they'd been children, where their families had left marks that neither of them could escape.
A life that didn't require performance.
Just two people who'd found each other in the wreckage and decided to build something worth keeping.
Sadie closed her eyes and let herself imagine it—the future they were fighting for, the quiet days between the storms.
It looked a lot like home.