Chapter Nine
Three days at the compound, and Meredith had dirt under her nails that would never come out.
She knelt in the dock garden with pruning shears, cutting back the leggy basil that had been fighting for survival since whoever planted it stopped caring.
The morning sun warmed her shoulders. Lake water lapped against the dock pilings.
Somewhere behind her, a prospect was hauling mulch bags with the enthusiasm of someone who'd never done manual labor in his life.
"Not there." She didn't turn around. "Stack them by the lodge beds. We're working our way down from the main building."
"Yes ma'am."
Ma'am. Three days ago, she'd been a stranger with a truck full of plants. Now she had prospects calling her ma'am and following her instructions like she'd been giving orders here for years.
Strange how quickly life could pivot.
She finished the basil and moved to the tomato plants—spindly things that needed staking and probably wouldn't produce much this season, but would at least survive if she gave them half a chance.
Her grandmother's voice echoed in her head: Every plant deserves a fighting chance.
Give them that, and they'll surprise you.
"You're transforming this place."
Meredith looked up. Maggie stood at the garden's edge, coffee mug in hand, watching her work with an expression caught between amusement and approval.
"It's just pruning. Basic maintenance."
"It's more than anyone's done in two years.
" Maggie gestured toward the lodge, where new transplants lined the foundation—herbs from the dock garden, cuttings from Meredith's truck, a few ornamental grasses she'd found surviving behind the garage.
"The boys don't know what to do with it. Half of them keep stopping to stare."
"It's not complicated. Plants grow if you give them what they need."
"Maybe. But nobody around here thought about giving them anything until you showed up." Maggie took a sip of her coffee. "Still says you've got prospects doing actual work for the first time since they patched in."
Meredith sat back on her heels and wiped sweat from her forehead. "They needed direction. Standing around looking tough doesn't build anything."
"Neither does this life, most of the time." Maggie's voice softened. "It's nice to see something growing for a change."
She walked away before Meredith could respond, leaving behind the faint scent of BBQ smoke that seemed to follow her everywhere. Meredith watched her go, then turned back to the tomatoes.
Something growing. Yeah. Maybe that was exactly what this place needed.
By noon, she had the dock garden cleared and a work crew assembled.
Four prospects, none of them older than twenty-five, all of them looking at trowels like they were foreign objects. Meredith lined them up beside the lodge beds and handed out assignments.
"You're on mulch." She pointed at the first prospect, a lanky kid with nervous eyes. "Three inches deep, no more. Pile it too high and you'll suffocate the roots."
"Yes ma'am."
"You two—" The next pair got stakes and twine. "Tomato support. I'll show you the figure-eight tie once you've got the stakes in."
They scrambled to comply. The fourth prospect stood waiting, clearly hoping for the easiest job.
"You're on watering." Meredith handed him the hose. "Slow and deep. Roots need to reach down, not spread out. If you see runoff, you're going too fast."
"How will I know—"
"You'll learn."
She spent the next two hours teaching men who'd probably killed people how to plant seedlings without damaging root systems. It should have felt absurd. Instead, it felt like the most normal thing she'd done since Hardt's men destroyed her greenhouse.
The compound transformed around her.
Green appeared where there'd been gravel. Structure emerged from chaos. By late afternoon, the lodge beds were planted, the dock garden was producing, and brothers were walking past her work with expressions that ranged from confused to impressed.
"Didn't know plants could do that," one of them muttered to another as they passed.
"Do what?"
"Look like they belong here."
Meredith smiled and kept working.
She saw Quarry throughout the day, always in motion.
He carried lumber from the garage to a construction site near the water.
Hauled equipment for brothers who needed extra hands.
Moved between tasks with the slow, deliberate pace she was starting to recognize as purely him—no wasted motion, no rushed transitions, just steady pressure applied until the job was done.
But she noticed other things too.
The way he paused between loads, rolling his shoulders like something ached. The stiffness in his lower back by mid-afternoon, visible in how carefully he bent. The slight hesitation before he lifted anything heavy, like he was bracing for pain he knew was coming.
Twelve years running rock crushers. His back giving out. The company offering a desk job at half pay.
She remembered him telling her that story at the ridge cabin, voice flat like the wound had scarred over but never quite healed. He'd given his body to work that had given nothing back. Now he was doing it again—hauling, carrying, breaking himself down for a club that at least valued the sacrifice.
It made her want to shake him. And maybe other things.
Around four o'clock, he appeared at the dock garden with two cups of coffee.
"You've been at this since dawn." He held out one of the cups. "Figured you could use a break."
Meredith took the coffee and stood, stretching muscles that had been crouched over soil for hours. "I could say the same about you."
"I'm used to it."
"Doesn't mean you should be."
Something flickered in his eyes—surprise, maybe, that she'd noticed. Then he looked away, out at the water, shutting down the vulnerability before it could take root.
"The compound looks different."
"That's kind of the point."
"No." He turned back to her, and the intensity in his gaze made her breath catch. "It looks like something someone cares about. Like it matters."
"Plants matter. Ground matters. Growing things—" She stopped, suddenly self-conscious. "It's just what I do."
"It's more than that." He stepped closer, closing the distance between them until she could feel the heat radiating off his body. "You've been here three days. In three days, you've turned gravel into gardens and taught four prospects how to handle a trowel. That's not nothing."
"They needed something to do besides stand around looking intimidating."
"They needed someone to show them that building is as important as breaking."
The words landed somewhere deep in her chest. She looked up at him—at this man who broke things for a living, who was watching her create something with an expression she couldn't quite read.
"You could help," she said. "If you wanted."
"Help with what?"
"The beds along the lodge still need finishing. Stakes for the tomatoes." She nodded toward the work site. "Another set of hands would speed things up."
He should have declined. He had club business, real responsibilities, things more important than staking tomato plants for a woman who'd only been here three days.
Instead, he handed her his coffee cup and walked to the garden's edge.
"Show me what to do."
They worked until the sun started dropping, side by side in the dirt.
Meredith taught him the figure-eight tie for tomato support—loop around the stake, cross over, loop around the stem, leave room for growth. He learned fast, hands moving with surprising precision for someone who'd spent his life breaking things instead of building them.
"Looser on the stem," she said, reaching over to adjust his grip. "Too tight and you'll strangle the plant as it grows."
"Like this?"
"Better." Her fingers brushed his, and the contact sent heat racing up her arm. "You're a quick study."
"I pay attention."
She looked up and found him watching her—not the plants, not the stake, but her face. Like she was the only thing in the garden worth studying.
"Quarry..."
"Davis." His voice dropped, rough and low. "When we're alone like this, you can call me Davis."
The name felt intimate in a way she hadn't expected. Davis Holt, the man behind the road name, the one who'd given twelve years to a company that threw him away. She tested it silently, let it settle on her tongue.
"Davis."
Something softened in his face. Just for a moment, just a flicker, and then it was gone.
"Come on." He turned back to the tomatoes. "Show me the next one."
They worked in comfortable silence after that, staking plants as the sun dropped and the compound came alive with evening activity. Brothers heading to the lodge for dinner. The rumble of bikes coming and going. The normal rhythms of a world that had become, somehow, her world too.
She watched him handle the plants with care she wouldn't have expected from hands that had crushed a man's throat three nights ago.
The same fingers that had squeezed the life out of Vince Taber now cradled tomato stems with impossible gentleness.
Adjusting ties. Checking support. Moving through the garden like the work mattered.
"You're good at this," she said.
"It's not complicated." He echoed her words from earlier, a slight smile curving his mouth. "Plants grow if you give them what they need."
"Funny."
"I try."
The sun was almost gone now, casting long shadows across the compound. Quarry finished the last stake and stood, rolling his shoulders with a wince he tried to hide.
His back. Hours of hauling, then hours in the garden, and he hadn't said a word about the pain that was clearly written in every movement.
"You should rest," she said.
"I'm fine."
"You're not." She stood and faced him, close enough to see the tension in his jaw. "Your back's been bothering you all day. I've watched you move—you're hurting."
"It's an old injury."
"I know. You told me." She reached out and pressed her palm flat against his lower back, feeling the muscles locked tight beneath the fabric of his shirt. "That doesn't mean you should ignore it."
He went still. Completely, utterly still, like her touch had frozen him in place.
"Meredith."
"Shut up and let me help."
She pressed harder, finding the knots by feel, working her thumb into the worst of the tension. He made a sound—half groan, half sigh—and some of the rigidity left his spine.
"Better?"
"You have no idea."
"Then stop being stubborn and take care of yourself." She pulled her hand back, immediately missing the contact. "These men need you functional, not broken down from carrying things you don't have to carry alone."
He turned to face her, and the look in his eyes made her heart skip.
"You're one to talk."
"What?"
"You've been working since dawn. Your hands are blistered." He caught her wrist and turned it over, revealing the raw spots on her palms where the pruning shears had rubbed. "You're not exactly taking care of yourself either."
"That's different."
"How?"
She didn't have an answer. He stood there holding her wrist, thumb tracing over her blisters the way she'd traced the tension in his back, and the parallel wasn't lost on either of them.
Two people who'd spent their lives working themselves into the ground. Two people who'd finally found someone worth noticing the damage.
"Dinner," she said finally. "At the lodge. And then sleep. For both of us."
"Is that an order?"
"Yes."
His mouth curved. "Yes ma'am."
She pulled her wrist free and headed toward the lodge, feeling his eyes on her back with every step. At the garden's edge, she paused and looked over her shoulder.
He'd turned back to the plants. Standing in the fading light, running his fingers over a tomato leaf, checking the tie she'd taught him to make. His hands moved with the same careful precision she'd seen when he handled her cuttings at the ridge cabin.
Gentle. Impossibly gentle, for a man built to break things.
She watched him touch the plants like they mattered—like growing something was just as important as destroying something—and felt something shift in her chest.
Something that felt dangerous.
Something that felt like falling.