Chapter 20
The compound shook with noise.
Maggie stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the common room, a beer she'd barely touched sweating in her hand, and watched the Steel City Outlaws celebrate being alive.
Music pounded from Ash's speaker system—something loud and defiant that she could feel in her sternum.
Brothers filled every corner of the clubhouse, drinks in hand, voices competing with the bass, the kind of volume that only happened when men who'd faced death together needed to burn off the survival high.
Hollow was holding court by the pool table, retelling the breach for the fourth time to a rotating audience of brothers and prospects who hadn't been there.
Each version got louder and more embellished, and nobody corrected him because the truth was impressive enough and Hollow's version was more fun.
Gibbet leaned against the bar with a bag of ice pressed to his ribs, drinking whiskey with the stoic patience of a man who considered bruised ribs a minor administrative issue.
Ash had commandeered the jukebox controls and was taking requests with the seriousness of a man defusing a bomb.
Shiv was nowhere visible, which meant he was everywhere. Maggie had stopped trying to track him.
She moved through the party the way she'd moved through busy bar nights for years—reading the room, feeling the energy, finding the edges where conversations happened.
Brothers she'd barely spoken to before stopped her with handshakes and shoulder touches and the particular male nod that meant you're one of us now, and we don't need to make a speech about it.
"Maggie!" Hollow appeared at her elbow, vibrating with the specific energy of a man who'd had four beers in an hour and earned every one. "You hear the part where Gibbet took a round to the vest and didn't even blink? Just looked down, looked at the shooter, and—"
"I heard. You told me twenty minutes ago."
"That was the short version. This is the director's cut."
"How many cuts does this movie have?"
"As many as the people demand." He threw an arm around her shoulders—casual, brotherly, the kind of contact that would have been unthinkable two weeks ago and now felt as natural as breathing. "Seriously, though. You good?"
The question landed differently than it had the first time someone asked her. Back then—the safehouse, the compound arrival, every moment when you good really meant are you going to fall apart—the answer had been performance. A mask she wore because falling apart wasn't something Kowalskis did.
Now it was just true.
"Yeah," she said. "I'm good."
"Good. Because your man is lurking by the back door looking like he wants to kidnap you, and if I don't send you over there he's going to come get you himself and it'll be embarrassing for everyone."
She looked. Pitt was leaning against the wall near the rear exit, beer in hand, watching the party with the quiet satisfaction of a man who'd brought his people through something and was counting heads to make sure they'd all come back.
His cut was on, patches catching the bar light, his presence filling the corner he occupied the way it filled every space—completely, without effort.
His eyes found hers across the room. The noise, the bodies, the chaos of celebration—all of it dropped away for a second, narrowing to the line between his gaze and hers.
He didn't smile. He didn't wave her over.
He just looked at her with an expression that said there you are in a voice only she could hear.
She crossed the room. The crowd parted around her without anyone seeming to notice they were doing it—Pitt's gravity, pulling her in, the brothers unconsciously clearing a path between their president and the woman everyone in the building knew was his.
"You're hiding," she said, stopping in front of him.
"I'm observing."
"You're hiding in plain sight, which is worse."
He reached out and hooked a finger through her belt loop, tugging her closer with a casual possessiveness that sent heat flaring through her belly. She stepped between his feet, his back against the wall, her hands on his chest.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi."
"We won."
"We won."
"You don't look like a man who won. You look like a man doing math in his head."
His mouth twitched. "I'm doing math in my head."
"What kind of math?"
"The kind where I figure out how to get you out of this room without Hollow making a speech about it."
She laughed—a real one, bright enough that heads turned. "He'll make a speech regardless. It's what he does."
"I know. I've been listening to his speeches for eight years." His hand moved from her belt loop to her hip, settling with the familiar weight she'd come to crave. "Come outside with me."
"It's freezing outside."
"I'll keep you warm."
"That's the worst line you've ever used."
"I don't use lines. I state intentions." He pushed off the wall, took her hand, and led her toward the back door.
They stepped into the courtyard, and the cold hit like a slap—November Pittsburgh, river fog and concrete chill, their breath clouding between them.
The firepit was cold, the picnic tables empty, the courtyard lit by security floods that turned everything silver and sharp.
The noise of the party became a muffled thump behind them, bass line and laughter bleeding through brick.
Pitt pulled her into the shadow beside the garage bay, out of the light, into a pocket of dark where the world shrank to two people and the frost on their breath.
"Maggie."
"Yeah."
"What do you want?"
She looked up at him. The security light caught the edge of his face—the broken nose, the scar, the jaw she'd kissed a hundred times in the last two weeks and intended to kiss a hundred thousand more.
"What do you mean, what do I want?"
"Victor's gone. The threat's over. You can rebuild the bar, get your life back, sleep in your own bed without worrying about someone kicking the door in." His hand tightened on her hip. "So I'm asking. What do you want now?"
"You already know what I want."
"I want to hear you say it."
She took his face in her hands. Callused palms against rough jaw, her thumbs on his cheekbones, holding him the way he'd held her a dozen times—like something precious and dangerous and worth the risk.
"I want you," she said. "I want this compound and these insane brothers and the old ladies who terrify me and the prospect who keeps burning the coffee.
I want to rebuild my bar two blocks from where it stood and pour drinks for people who feel safe in their neighborhood for the first time in twenty years.
And I want to come home to you every night and wake up next to you every morning and fight with you about stupid things because that's what people do when they love each other and neither of them knows how to back down. "
His hands came up to cover hers on his face. Big, scarred, warm. The hands that had built a brotherhood and destroyed an empire and touched her like she was the only thing in the world that mattered.
"One more thing," she said.
"Yeah?"
"I want to be claimed. Properly. In front of your brothers and your club. Whatever that means in your world, I want it."
Something cracked open in his expression—not breaking, blooming. A smile she'd never seen before, unguarded and complete, transforming his hard face into something that made her chest ache with how much she loved him.
"You want the ceremony," he said.
"I want everything."
He kissed her. Not the fierce, claiming kisses she'd gotten used to—something deeper, slower, the kind of kiss a man gives a woman when he's done holding back and done being afraid and done pretending that wanting something this much is a weakness.
His arms went around her waist, lifting her onto her toes, and she wrapped herself around him in the cold courtyard with the party thumping behind the walls and the city spread out beyond the razor wire.
A wolf whistle split the air. Hollow, leaning out the back door with a beer in each hand and a grin that could power a city block.
"Called it!" Hollow shouted. "I called it from day one! Ash, you owe me fifty bucks!"
"Go away, Hollow," Pitt said without releasing her.
"Not a chance. This is the best thing that's happened all night, and I watched a building explode." He raised both beers. "To the Prez and his old lady!"
From inside, a roar of approval—brothers who'd been eavesdropping or just waiting for the excuse, raising their drinks to something worth celebrating.
Maggie buried her face in Pitt's neck and laughed until her ribs hurt, and his arms tightened around her, and the sound of his quiet laughter mixed with hers in the cold night air.
"Your brothers have no boundaries," she mumbled against his skin.
"None whatsoever." His mouth found her temple. "Get used to it."
She pulled back enough to look at him. His face was close, half in shadow, half in reflected light, those blue eyes soft and warm and completely, irrevocably hers.
"His old lady," she said, testing the words. "That's what they'll call me?"
"That's what you are. If you want the title."
"I want the title. I want the ceremony. I want the whole ridiculous, dangerous, loud, beautiful thing." She kissed the corner of his mouth. "And I want you to stop asking if I'm sure, because the next time you ask I'm going to hit you."
"Noted." He pulled her close, tucking her against his chest, his chin on top of her head. The courtyard was freezing, their breath mixing in silver clouds, the party a living thing behind the walls. "Then let's do it. Full claiming, full ceremony, the whole club."
"When?"
"Soon. Let the dust settle. Let the neighborhood breathe. Then we do it right."
She nodded against his chest. Felt his heartbeat—steady, strong, the rhythm she'd fallen asleep to every night since she'd walked down a hallway and knocked on his door.
"Take me inside," she said. "Your brothers are celebrating and you're out here hiding with me."
"I'm not hiding."
"You're hiding."
"I'm prioritizing." But he let her go, kept her hand, and walked them back toward the rear door where the noise and light spilled out like a wave. At the threshold, he paused and looked down at her.
"Maggie."
"Yeah?"
"Welcome home."
She squeezed his hand and pulled him through the door, into the noise, into the light, into the life she'd chosen with her eyes wide open and her heart finally, completely full.