Chapter 10
The cookout happened because it was Saturday and because Hollow declared it was happening and because nobody in the Steel City Outlaws apparently knew how to say no to a man who'd already dragged the grill out of the garage and stolen twenty pounds of ground beef from the walk-in cooler.
"It's not stolen," Hollow argued when the prospect pointed out the missing meat. "It's repurposed. For morale."
Maggie watched from the kitchen doorway with coffee in her hand and something unfamiliar in her chest. The courtyard was transforming—brothers hauling chairs and coolers from storage, the firepit being stacked by a prospect who looked terrified of doing it wrong, Ash wiring a speaker to a battery pack with the focused intensity of a man who treated everything like a potential detonation.
"Does this happen a lot?" she asked the dark-haired old lady, who'd appeared beside her with the quiet efficiency of a woman who knew exactly when to show up.
"The cookouts? Whenever someone needs an excuse to drink before noon." She sipped her coffee. "They work hard and play hard. Today's a play day."
"Is there a reason?"
"The reason is Saturday. That's enough around here."
By noon, the compound courtyard looked like a block party thrown by people who'd never attended a block party but had seen one on TV and decided to improve it.
Smoke from the grill drifted across the lot in lazy clouds.
Coolers of beer lined the wall. Music thumped from Ash's speaker—classic rock, loud enough to feel in your sternum, not so loud you couldn't talk over it.
And children. That surprised her. Three of them, ranging from maybe four to eight, chasing each other around the firepit while their mothers watched from lawn chairs with the relaxed vigilance of women who knew the kids couldn't get past the gate.
The compound's razor wire and steel doors took on a different meaning when you saw a six-year-old riding a tricycle past the garage bays—not a fortress keeping threats out, but a wall keeping family safe.
Maggie drifted into the courtyard because standing in a doorway felt like cowardice, and she'd had enough of that to last a lifetime.
She grabbed a beer from the nearest cooler—Yuengling, because this was Pittsburgh and there was no other option—and found a spot by the wall where she could watch without being in the center of anything.
She lasted about four minutes.
"You're lurking," Hollow said, materializing beside her with a burger in one hand and a beer in the other. "Lurking is for prospects and ex-girlfriends. Come on."
He steered her toward the firepit with the gentle insistence of a man who wouldn't take no for an answer but would make the no entertaining.
She ended up in a chair between Hollow and Ash, drawn into a conversation that ping-ponged between absurd and profane so fast she couldn't tell which was which.
"Tell her about the thing in Bloomfield," Ash said, pointing his beer at Hollow.
"Which thing?"
"The thing. With the van."
"That thing never happened. Officially." Hollow took a massive bite of his burger and talked through it. "Unofficially, if a man can't parallel park a cargo van on a hill in the dark while being chased, that's a character flaw, not a crime."
"He took out a fire hydrant," Ash told Maggie.
"I relocated a fire hydrant."
"Water went forty feet in the air."
"It was majestic."
Maggie laughed—really laughed, the kind that came from the belly and surprised her with its volume. Hollow beamed like he'd won a prize. Ash clinked his bottle against hers.
"She laughs," Ash said. "Prez owes me twenty bucks."
"What?"
"He bet you wouldn't laugh for a week. Said you were too stubborn to enjoy yourself."
"He bet on my—" She stopped. Looked across the courtyard to where Pitt stood at the grill, flipping burgers with the same calm authority he brought to everything, talking to Parkway about something that required both of them to frown at a phone screen.
As if sensing her gaze—or maybe just maintaining the constant awareness of her position that had become his default setting—he looked up.
Their eyes met across thirty feet of courtyard and cookout smoke.
His mouth curved. Not the almost-smile she'd been cataloging for days—a real one. Small, private, aimed entirely at her. It transformed his face from dangerous to devastating, and Maggie's breath caught in a way she hoped Hollow and Ash were too busy arguing to notice.
They weren't.
"Twenty bucks," Ash murmured. "Called it."
The afternoon melted into something Maggie hadn't experienced in longer than she could remember—easy, unstructured time with no crisis at the edges.
She drank two beers, ate a burger that was surprisingly good for having been cooked by a man who seasoned with the subtlety of a hand grenade, and talked to more people in four hours than she had in the last month at the bar.
The brothers were different here. Relaxed, loud, trading insults with the casual brutality of men who trusted each other with their lives and therefore held nothing back.
She met faces she'd only seen in passing—brothers who worked in the garage, prospects who handled security, men with road names she was starting to keep straight.
They treated her with a careful respect that she realized was Pitt's doing.
Not because he'd ordered it—because they watched their president watch her, and the message was clear enough to read from orbit.
She matters. Act accordingly.
Late afternoon, the music shifted to something slower and Hollow dragged one of the old ladies onto the concrete pad by the garage bay that served as a dance floor. Other couples followed—not many, just enough to make the space feel intimate instead of empty.
"You dance?"
Pitt's voice behind her, close enough that she felt his breath on her neck. She hadn't heard him approach, which should've been impossible for a man his size and was either terrifying or thrilling, depending on how honest she was being with herself.
Thrilling. Definitely thrilling.
"Depends on who's asking."
He stepped around her chair and stood in front of her, holding out his hand. Just that—no line, no smirk, no pretense. An open hand and those blue eyes and the last of the afternoon light turning the compound gold around him.
She took his hand.
He pulled her up and led her to the concrete pad, and his other hand found her hip like it lived there. Not a slow-dance grip—something more possessive, his fingers spread wide across her lower back, pressing her close enough that she felt the heat of him through both their shirts.
They moved. Not well—this wasn't a man who danced for recreation.
But he had rhythm in the way all physical men do, an awareness of how his body moved through space, and he led with the same quiet authority he brought to everything else.
His hand on her back, guiding. His thigh between hers, setting pace.
Her hand on his shoulder, feeling muscle shift under leather.
"You're staring," she said.
"I'm looking."
"At what?"
"You." Simple. Direct. No decoration. "You fit here, Maggie."
"I've been here less than a week."
"Doesn't matter. Some people take years to figure out where they belong. Some people walk through the door and it's obvious."
His hand slid higher on her back, pulling her closer, and her body responded before her brain could weigh in—pressing into him, her forehead almost touching his jaw, close enough to feel the rumble of his voice in his chest.
"Your brothers are watching," she murmured.
"Let them."
"The old ladies too."
"Especially them."
She tipped her head back to look at him. This close, she could see everything—the individual lashes around those impossible eyes, the silver at his temples, the thin white line of the scar through his eyebrow. A face that had taken every hit life could throw and kept moving forward.
"You're doing this on purpose," she said.
"Doing what?"
"Dancing with me in front of everyone. Making a statement."
"I don't make statements, Maggie. I state facts." His hand pressed flat against her spine, firm, warm, absolute. "And the fact is, you're here. With me. And everyone who needs to know that is going to know it."
Her heart was doing something acrobatic behind her ribs.
She wanted to argue—she always wanted to argue, it was her factory setting—but his hand was on her back and his eyes were on her face and the music was slow and the smoke from the firepit drifted around them like fog, and for the first time in three years, Maggie didn't want to fight.
She wanted to lean in.
So she did. Let her head rest against his chest, let his arms tighten around her, let the sound of his heartbeat—steady, strong, the heartbeat of a man who didn't waver—replace the music in her ears.
He pressed his mouth against the top of her head. Not a kiss. Almost a kiss. A claim so subtle only she could feel it.
"Maggie," he said into her hair.
"Yeah."
"I'm glad you didn't sign the bar over."
She smiled against his chest. "Me too."
The song ended. Another one started. They didn't move.
He walked her to her door that night the way he'd done every night since she'd arrived—hand on her back, steady pace, stopping at the threshold of her room like there was a line painted on the floor he wouldn't cross.
But tonight was different. Tonight he'd danced with her in front of his entire club, and the line was smudged.
"Thank you," she said, turning in the doorway. "For today. I didn't know I needed that."
"Everybody needs a day off from being scared."
"I'm not scared."
"No." He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, his fingers trailing down her jaw. "You're not. That's what I can't figure out about you."
"Nothing to figure out. I'm a bartender from the South Side who got in over her head."
"You're a lot more than that."
His hand lingered on her jaw. His thumb traced the line of her cheekbone, and she felt herself leaning into his palm, chasing the contact, wanting more of it with a hunger that surprised her.
"Goodnight, Maggie," he said. Rough. Strained. The voice of a man exercising restraint he was running out of.
"Goodnight, Pitt."
He dropped his hand. Stepped back. And she watched him walk down the hall to his own door, every line of his body tight with the effort of walking away.
She closed her door. Leaned against it. Pressed her fingers to the place on her jaw where his touch still burned.
She wasn't staying for safety anymore. She knew that now, standing in a borrowed room in a motorcycle club's compound with her skin on fire and her heart hammering and the memory of his heartbeat still echoing in her chest.
She was staying for him.