Chapter Thirteen
Meredith couldn't sleep.
The compound had gone quiet an hour ago—bodies cleared, wounded tended, brothers finally standing down from combat positions.
Quarry had walked her to his cabin and told her to rest while he handled the last of the cleanup.
She'd lain in his bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling the adrenaline still coursing through her like electricity with nowhere to ground.
Three times. She'd hit that man three times.
The memory played on loop—the swing, the impact, the way he'd kept coming. The weight of the fire iron in her hands. The sound his skull made when metal connected with bone.
She'd done that. She'd protected those kids. She'd become someone who could do violence when violence was required.
And she couldn't stop shaking.
At midnight, she gave up on sleep and pulled on her clothes.
If she couldn't rest, she could at least be useful.
The garden. Someone had said a stray round hit the planter box near the lodge.
She needed to check it, needed to know if anything was damaged, needed to do something besides lie in the dark reliving the moment she'd become a weapon.
The compound was silent as she walked. Brothers on watch nodded as she passed, but nobody questioned her. She was one of them now—the woman who'd held the lodge, who'd defended the back room, who'd earned her place with a fire iron and fury.
The planter box had taken a round to the corner, splintering the wood but missing the soil inside.
Meredith knelt and checked the herbs by flashlight, running her fingers through rosemary and thyme and basil that had somehow survived a firefight.
The leaves were intact. The roots were undamaged. Life persisting despite the chaos.
She sat back on her heels and let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding.
The garden was fine. The compound was safe. The threat was over, at least for tonight.
So why couldn't she stop shaking?
She knew the answer. The adrenaline had nowhere to go. She'd spent three hours in crisis mode—fighting, defending, holding a door against men who wanted to kill—and now her body didn't know how to turn off. Every nerve was still firing. Every muscle was still coiled for combat.
She needed release. She needed grounding. She needed—
Him.
Meredith stood and walked to Quarry's cabin.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed when she came through the door, rubbing his lower back with a grimace he probably thought he was hiding.
The strain from battle layered on top of old damage, twelve years of rock-crusher work meeting the demands of a man who'd spent the night anchoring a defensive line.
He looked up when she entered. "Garden okay?"
"Intact." She closed the door behind her and leaned against it. "You're not."
"I'm fine."
"You're not." She crossed to him in three steps and pushed against his shoulders. "Lie down."
"Meredith—"
"That wasn't a request."
Something flickered in his eyes—surprise, maybe, or the recognition that she wasn't in the mood to be gentle with him. He let her push him flat, his back hitting the mattress with a grunt that told her exactly how much he'd been hiding.
"Roll over."
He obeyed, presenting his back to her. She straddled his hips and pressed her palms against the knots she could feel through his shirt—rock-hard tension that had probably been building for days, made worse by hours of combat and the stress of almost losing everything he was protecting.
"This is going to hurt," she warned.
"I can take it."
She dug in.
Her thumbs found the worst of the damage—the chronic injury where his spine had given out, now surrounded by compensating muscles that had locked up like stone. She pressed hard, feeling the knots resist, feeling him tense beneath her hands.
"Breathe," she said.
He exhaled, and she worked deeper.
The sounds he made were somewhere between pain and relief—groans that rumbled through his chest, catches of breath when she hit a particularly bad spot.
She didn't ease up. He'd spent the night putting his body between danger and everyone he cared about.
He'd earned someone taking care of him for once, even if taking care meant causing temporary pain to release permanent tension.
"You're too hard on yourself," she murmured, finding another knot and pressing until it started to release. "Anchoring the gate like you were made of steel. You're not indestructible."
"Neither are you." His voice came out muffled against the pillow. "You held the lodge with a fire iron."
"That's different."
"How?"
"Because I didn't already have twelve years of damage in my spine."
He laughed—a rough, pained sound that vibrated through her hands. "Fair point."
She worked down his back, releasing tension she hadn't even known was there. By the time she reached his lower spine, the worst of the knots had softened and his breathing had changed—deeper, slower, the rhythm of a man finally letting go of the stress he'd been carrying.
"Better?" she asked.
"Better."
She leaned forward and pressed her mouth to the back of his neck. Tasted salt and sweat and the mineral undertone that was purely him. Felt his whole body go taut beneath her.
"Meredith."
"I couldn't sleep," she said against his skin. "I tried. Kept seeing his face when I hit him. Kept feeling the impact."
"That's normal—"
"I know it's normal." She bit down gently on the muscle at the curve of his shoulder, and he made a sound that had nothing to do with pain. "I also know what I need to make it stop."
She rolled off him, and he turned onto his back, looking up at her with eyes that had gone dark.
"You sure? After everything tonight—"
"I'm sure." She pulled her shirt over her head and threw it aside. "I need to feel something that isn't violence. I need proof that we're both still alive. And I need you to stop asking if I'm sure and start touching me."
He moved faster than she expected.
One moment she was kneeling beside him on the bed. The next, she was on her back with his weight pressing her into the mattress, his mouth finding hers in a kiss that tasted like battle and survival and desperate, furious need.
This wasn't like the first time.
The first time had been tender. Careful. A slow exploration of two people learning each other's bodies. This was something else entirely—adrenaline pouring into each other, combat energy channeling into claiming.
"Mine." He growled the word against her throat, his hands already working at her remaining clothes. "You're mine, and I almost lost you tonight."
"You didn't lose me." She yanked at his shirt, needing it gone, needing skin. "I held that door."
"You held it with a fire iron against a man with a gun." He pulled back enough to meet her eyes, and the intensity there made her breath catch. "Do you understand what that did to me? Watching you fight for our people while I was outside handling the breach?"
"I understand we're both still alive." She dragged him down into another kiss. "Now prove it."
He proved it.
What followed wasn't fast, but it wasn't gentle either.
He took her like a man reclaiming territory—every touch possessive, every kiss a brand.
She met him beat for beat, refusing to be passive, demanding as much as she gave.
When he pinned her wrists, she twisted free and reversed their positions, riding him with the same fierce determination she'd brought to the lodge door.
"Meredith—"
"My turn." She pressed her palms flat against his chest, feeling his heart hammer beneath her hands. "You spent all night protecting everyone else. Now let someone take care of you."
She watched his control shatter.
The dangerous, patient man who never rushed anything came apart beneath her, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise, his back arching off the bed as she drove them both toward something consuming.
He let her set the pace, let her take what she needed, let her use his body the way he'd used hers.
Equal. Partners. Warriors who'd fought side by side and were now burning together.
"Davis." She whispered his name like a prayer, like a war cry, and felt him surge beneath her in response. "I've got you."
"You've got me." His voice cracked on the words. "God, you've got me."
The release, when it came, was devastating. She felt it tear through both of them—wave after wave of intensity that left her gasping, shaking, collapsed against his chest while the aftershocks rolled through her body.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. They just breathed, tangled together, hearts pounding against each other.
Then Quarry laughed—a low, exhausted sound that rumbled beneath her ear.
"What?" she managed.
"Just thinking." His hand traced lazy patterns on her back. "You held a door with a fire iron, checked on your garden, fixed my back, and then wrecked me entirely. All in one night."
"I'm efficient."
"That's one word for it."
She smiled against his chest and let herself sink into the comfort of his body beneath hers. The shaking had finally stopped. The adrenaline had finally drained. Whatever had been wound too tight inside her had finally released.
"Your back," she said. "How is it really?"
"Better than it's been in months." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "You've got good hands."
"Years of practice." She propped her chin on his chest and looked up at him. "Working soil, working muscles—same basic principle. Find the tension and release it."
"Is that what you did? Released my tension?"
"Among other things."
His mouth curved. In the low light of the cabin, with sweat cooling on their skin and the night sounds of the compound filtering through the windows, he looked almost peaceful. Younger. Like the weight he carried had finally been lifted, at least for a moment.
"You know," she said, "I've never met a man who's harder on himself than the rock he used to break."
Quarry went still beneath her. "What do you mean?"
"I mean you spent twelve years destroying your spine for a company that threw you away, and now you're doing the same thing for this club.
Carrying everything. Holding every line.
Being the wall that everyone else hides behind.
" She touched his face, traced the line of his jaw.
"You're allowed to let someone else carry weight sometimes.
You're allowed to have someone take care of you. "
"That's not how I was raised."
"Then you were raised wrong." She kissed him softly. "You don't have to break yourself to be valuable. You don't have to crush yourself against every problem to prove you're worth keeping around."
He was quiet for a long moment, his hand still moving on her back, his chest rising and falling with breaths that came slower now.
"The quarry taught me that hard work was the only thing that mattered," he said finally. "That the value of a man was measured in what he could destroy. I believed it for twelve years, until my back gave out and they threw me away anyway."
"And now?"
"Now..." He pulled her closer, tucking her against his side like she belonged there. "Now I think maybe there's more to it. Maybe building something is worth as much as breaking it. Maybe having someone who sees me—really sees me—matters more than being useful."
"You're useful and seen," she said. "That's not a contradiction."
"No." His voice dropped, rough with something that might have been emotion. "I guess it's not."
They lay there in the dark, wrapped around each other, while the compound settled into the quiet rhythms of a place that had weathered another storm.
Outside, brothers still kept watch. Gardens still grew despite the violence.
Life went on because that's what life did—persisted, adapted, reached for the light even when the darkness tried to swallow it whole.
Meredith closed her eyes and listened to his heartbeat, steady beneath her ear.
She'd never met a man who was harder on himself than the rock he used to break.
But she was starting to think she might be the one who could teach him to be gentler.