Chapter 14
Pitt woke before dawn with Maggie's weight against his chest and no desire to be anywhere else on earth.
The realization hit him with the force of something he should've seen coming but hadn't—or had, and just refused to name until now.
He'd been waking up alone for fifteen years.
Before the Outlaws, before Fallujah, since the last woman who'd tried to love him gave up because he couldn't stop leaving.
Every morning the same—cold sheets, cold room, the immediate pivot to whatever needed doing because standing still meant thinking, and thinking meant feeling, and feeling was a luxury men like him couldn't afford.
This morning, Maggie's hair was in his mouth, her knee was jammed into his thigh, and her hand was curled around his dog tags like she'd grabbed them in her sleep and refused to let go.
He didn't move.
Gray light crept through the curtain. The compound was quiet—that held-breath stillness before the building woke up and became a machine again. He could hear the distant sound of a prospect on gate duty coughing, the tick of the heating system, Maggie's breathing slow and even against his skin.
The wound on his ribs ached. Her butterfly strips had held, which was more than he could say for most professional patch jobs he'd received. The woman could close a wound. Add it to the list—bartender, cook, shooter, field medic. The list was getting long.
She stirred. Her eyes opened—green, unfocused, blinking in the half-light. Then she focused on his face and something soft moved through her expression, a warmth that settled over him like a hand on a bruise.
"Morning," she murmured.
"Morning."
"You're staring at me."
"I'm looking at you. There's a difference."
"You said that at the cookout."
"Still true."
She shifted, propping her chin on his chest, her hair falling around her face in a red tangle that made her look younger than thirty-four and more beautiful than anyone had a right to look before coffee.
The dog tags clinked against his sternum as she moved, the chain still threaded through her fingers.
"You were holding those all night," he said.
She looked down at the tags. Opened her hand, studied them—his name, his blood type, the serial number of a man who'd belonged to the government before he'd belonged to himself.
"They're warm," she said. "I didn't realize dog tags could be warm."
"They're warm because they've been against my skin for twenty years."
"Do you ever take them off?"
"No."
She pressed them against her lips—a quick, private gesture that hit him somewhere behind his ribs, deeper than the wound, in a place he'd thought was scarred over and finished. Then she tucked them back against his chest and laid her palm over them.
"Talk to me," she said.
"About what?"
"About this. About what happens after." She met his eyes. "About whether you've thought about what we are when Victor's gone and there's no crisis keeping me here."
He'd thought about it. He'd thought about nothing else for three days—in Church, on runs, standing at the compound bar watching her pour beers for his brothers like she'd been doing it her whole life. The question wasn't whether he wanted her. The question was whether wanting her was fair.
"You'd be free to go," he said. "When it's done. Rebuild the bar, get your life back. No debt, no obligation."
"Is that what you want?"
"I'm telling you what's available."
"That's not what I asked." She pushed up on one arm, looking down at him with the expression he'd come to recognize as Maggie digging in—jaw set, eyes sharp, zero patience for evasion. "I asked what you want."
He reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear, his fingers trailing down her jaw the way they'd done that first night, learning the geography of a face he wanted to memorize.
"I want you here," he said. "Not because of Victor. Not because it's safe. Because I wake up with you and I don't want to be somewhere else, and that hasn't happened to me since before I can remember."
Her breath caught. Barely—that tiny hitch he'd learned to listen for, the one that told him he'd gotten past her defenses.
"Pitt—"
"I know what this life is," he continued. "I know what I'm asking. You'd be with a man who leads a motorcycle club, who handles violence as business, who can't promise you safety or normal or any of the things a woman like you deserves."
"A woman like me." She said it flat, with an edge. "What kind of woman is that?"
"The kind who rebuilds a bar with her bare hands. Who stands in broken glass and doesn't flinch. Who shoots a man to save someone she—" He stopped. Let the sentence hang.
"Someone she loves," Maggie finished.
The word filled the room. He watched it land on her face—the quick flash of vulnerability, the steadying breath, the decision to hold her ground instead of retreating.
"Yeah," he said. "That kind of woman."
"You think I deserve better than this."
"I think you deserve everything."
"Then stop deciding what that is for me.
" She leaned down, her face inches from his, and he could see the gold flecks in her green eyes, the freckles across her nose, every detail magnified by proximity and morning light.
"I've spent three years making decisions alone.
Every choice, every risk, every early morning and late night—alone.
And then you walked into my bar and threw a man through my window and told me I wasn't fighting by myself anymore, and for the first time in years I believed someone. "
"Maggie—"
"I'm not finished." Her hand pressed harder against his chest. "I don't want safe. I don't want normal. I want this. I want the compound and the brothers and the noise and the danger and you—especially you, you impossible, overprotective, stubborn—"
He kissed her. Not because he wanted to shut her up—because the alternative was saying things he'd never said to anyone, and he wasn't sure his voice could handle the weight.
The kiss was slow. Morning-slow, unhurried, the kind of kiss that happened between people who had time and knew it. Her hands in his hair, his arms around her waist, the whole world reduced to the space between their bodies.
When she pulled back, she was smiling. That rare, full smile that showed her teeth and crinkled her eyes and made her look like trouble in its purest form.
"So I'm staying," she said.
"You're staying."
"And you're not going to get weird about it. No noble speeches about deserving better, no trying to push me away for my own good."
"I don't do noble speeches."
"You just gave one."
"That was an aberration."
She laughed—bright, real, filling his room with a sound he wanted to bottle and keep. He pulled her back down against his chest, tucking her head under his chin, and held on with both arms.
They lay there as the compound woke up around them.
Boots in the hallway, the coffee maker gurgling downstairs, Hollow's voice carrying through the floor—always the loudest thing in any room, even from a floor away.
The sounds of home. His home. Their home, now, if he was going to be honest about what he'd just agreed to.
"Tell me about founding the club," she said. Her fingers traced idle patterns on his chest, following the lines between scars like connecting dots on a map. "Not the mission-statement version. The real one."
"The real one's not pretty."
"I've seen you kill two men in the last week. I think we're past pretty."
He exhaled a laugh. "Fair." His hand moved in her hair—slow, absent, a habit he'd developed in the last five days and already couldn't imagine breaking.
"After Mikey died, I stayed drunk for about three months.
Living in his apartment because I couldn't let it go, watching the neighborhood get worse every day.
Dealers on every corner, people scared to walk to the store, cops driving through without stopping. "
"What changed?"
"I got sober and got angry. Not in that order.
" He stared at the ceiling. "Met Hollow at the VA—he was there for his hearing, I was there because the counselor threatened to report me if I missed another appointment.
We started talking. Turns out we were both the same kind of pissed off—the kind that needs somewhere to go or it eats you alive. "
"So you built somewhere for it to go."
"We built a club. Hollow and me first, then Parkway—he'd just quit the state troopers, showed up at a bar we were drinking at and said he'd heard we were looking for men who wanted to do something that mattered.
Gibbet came next, then Ash, then Shiv. One by one, guys who were done waiting for someone else to fix it. "
"And the territory?"
"Block by block. We rode into neighborhoods that were drowning and told the predators to leave. When they didn't leave, we made them. When they fought back, we fought harder. Took two years before anyone took us seriously. Took five before we held enough ground to matter."
"And now?"
"Now we hold the South Side, most of Lawrenceville, pieces of Bloomfield and the Mon Valley. Brothers who trust me with their lives, people in the neighborhood who know the Outlaws have their back." He paused. "And one bartender who showed up and turned everything sideways."
"I didn't show up. You showed up. At my bar. Uninvited."
"Best decision I ever made."
She lifted her head and kissed the underside of his jaw—a soft, precise contact that sent warmth radiating through his chest.
"What about the bar?" she asked. "My bar. If I'm staying, I still need—"
"We rebuild it."
"Just like that."
"Outlaws labor, Outlaws materials. We've rebuilt half the South Side. One bar's easy."
"It's not just a bar."
"I know what it is." He met her eyes. "It's your father. It's thirty years of history. It's the place where you became you. We rebuild it, Maggie. Every brick, every bottle, every stool. And this time, nobody threatens it."
Her eyes went bright. Not tears—she wasn't a woman who cried easily—but the shine of emotion hitting the surface before she could push it back down.
"You can't just say things like that," she whispered.
"I just did."
She buried her face in his neck, and he felt her breathe—one long, shuddering inhale that carried the weight of everything she'd been holding. Three years of fighting alone, two months of terror, a week of violence and upheaval and falling in love with a man who killed people.
He held her. That was all. Just held her while the morning light strengthened and the compound hummed to life and the world outside their door continued its relentless demand for attention.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. He reached over Maggie's head, glanced at the screen. Hollow.
Church in 30. Petrak's making moves. We need to talk.
Pitt set the phone down and pressed his mouth against Maggie's hair.
"Thirty minutes," he said. "Then the world comes back in."
She tightened her arms around him. "Then we'd better make these thirty minutes count."
They didn't talk. Didn't need to. Just lay tangled together in the gray morning light, breathing the same air, heartbeats syncing the way heartbeats do when two people stop fighting the gravity between them and let it win.
Twenty-nine minutes later, Pitt kissed her forehead, pulled on his boots, and went to war.