Chapter Seventeen
Meredith heard the bikes return and didn't move from the garden.
She'd been in the soil since the briefing ended—hands deep in dirt, transplanting seedlings that didn't need transplanting, doing work that didn't need doing. The compound garden had become her anchor over the past weeks, the place she went when the world felt too large and too dangerous.
Tonight, with Quarry out hunting the man who'd destroyed her nursery, the garden was the only thing keeping her sane.
The engine noise died. Boots on gravel. The compound settling into the quiet rhythm of a successful operation. She heard brothers talking, heard Still's voice giving orders, heard the sounds of weapons being secured and men standing down.
Then footsteps, coming closer.
"You've got dirt on your face."
She looked up. Quarry stood at the garden fence, still wearing the clothes he'd ridden out in, still carrying the smell of smoke and something darker. His knuckles were split. His eyes were tired.
But he was whole. He was alive. He was standing there looking at her like she was the only thing worth seeing after a night of violence.
"I needed to do something," she said. "Couldn't just sit and wait."
"So you gardened."
"So I gardened." She sat back on her heels, wiping her hands on her jeans. The dirt didn't come off—it never did, not completely. "Farmer?"
"Done."
The word settled over her like a stone. Done. Another piece of Hardt's operation dismantled. Another man dead because he'd made the mistake of touching what was hers.
What was theirs.
"The staging yard?"
"Burning when we left." Quarry opened the garden gate and stepped inside, moving carefully between the beds she'd planted. "Equipment's being stripped for parts. His enforcement crew won't be enforcing anything anymore."
Meredith nodded. She should feel something—triumph, maybe, or relief. Instead, she just felt tired. Tired and dirty and ready for this to be over.
"Four days," she said. "Until Saturday."
"Four days."
"And then Hardt."
"And then Hardt." He stopped beside her, looking down at the seedlings she'd been transplanting. "You're working on the compound garden at midnight because you couldn't sleep."
"I'm working on the compound garden at midnight because if I don't keep my hands busy, I start thinking about everything that could go wrong.
" She stood, brushing dirt from her knees.
"About you riding out to kill someone and maybe not coming back.
About Saturday and what happens after. About whether any of this makes sense. "
"Any of what?"
"Us." She gestured between them, encompassing everything they'd become. "A man who breaks things and a woman who grows them. An outlaw biker and a nursery owner. The most unlikely combination in the Ozarks, and yet here we are."
Quarry was quiet for a moment. Then he reached out and took her hand—the dirty one, soil still caked under her nails—and lifted it to his mouth. He pressed a kiss to her palm, tasting earth and salt and work.
"Come inside," he said. "Let me show you how much sense it makes."
She pulled him into his cabin and kicked the door closed behind them.
No desperation this time. No adrenaline surge driving them together. Just the deliberate choice of two people who knew exactly what they wanted and had stopped pretending otherwise.
Quarry cupped her face in his hands—those hands that had killed a man hours ago, now touching her like she was precious. She leaned into the contact, letting herself feel the weight of his palms against her cheeks.
"You've got dirt everywhere," he murmured.
"I was gardening."
"At midnight."
"It's when I think best." She reached up and started unbuttoning his shirt, fingers working slowly, revealing skin she already knew by heart. "You've got blood on your knuckles."
"I was working too."
"Different kind of work."
"Same result." He let her push the shirt off his shoulders. "We both make things happen with our hands."
She kissed him, slow and deep. He tasted like smoke and coffee and the particular darkness that always followed violence. She'd learned to recognize that taste, to understand what it meant when he came home carrying it.
He'd done something terrible to protect her. And she wasn't going to pretend that didn't matter.
"Shower first," she said against his mouth. "You smell like burning."
"Are you calling me dirty?"
"I'm covered in garden soil and you smell like you set fire to a construction yard." She pulled back, smiling despite everything. "We're both dirty. Let's fix that."
The shower was small, barely big enough for two, but they made it work. Hot water sluicing over both of them, washing away the night's evidence. She watched smoke and ash and blood swirl down the drain, replaced by steam and heat and the press of his body against hers.
He washed her hair with the same patient attention he brought to everything—working the soap through with slow fingers, massaging her scalp until she melted against him.
She returned the favor, running soapy hands over shoulders and back and the damaged places in his spine that never stopped hurting.
"You're too good to me," he said.
"You killed a man for me tonight."
"That's not being good to you. That's being necessary." He turned her in his arms, her back against his chest, and wrapped himself around her. "Being good to you is this. The quiet moments. The times when we're just... us."
She leaned into him, letting his weight anchor her. The water ran over them both, warm and cleansing, washing away everything except what they were becoming.
They made it to the bed still damp, too impatient for towels.
Quarry laid her down like she was something fragile, even though they both knew better. She pulled him over her, wanting his weight, needing the solid press of his body proving he was real and alive and here.
He gave it to her. Settled on top of her, heavy and warm, covering her completely. His weight wasn't a burden—it was a gift. An anchor keeping her grounded when everything else felt like chaos.
"I've been thinking," she said. "About after."
"After Saturday?"
"After all of it. After Hardt's dead and the threat's gone and we have to figure out what comes next." She traced the line of his jaw, feeling stubble rough against her fingertips. "I want to rebuild the nursery."
"Of course you do."
"Not of course. I could sell. The land's worth something, even scraped flat. I could take the insurance money and the sale price and start over somewhere else. Somewhere without bullet holes in the planter boxes and surveyor's stakes planted like conquest flags."
Quarry was quiet, listening. Not arguing, not reassuring—just giving her space to think out loud.
"But that's not what my grandmother would have done," she continued. "She held that land through drought and tornado. Through losing my grandfather young and raising kids alone and everything else life threw at her. She didn't run. She dug in deeper."
"So you're staying."
"I'm staying. I'm scraping off all that construction fill and finding my soil again. I'm replanting every bed, rebuilding every greenhouse, starting over from scratch because that's what growing things is—starting over, again and again, until something takes root."
She looked up at him, this man who'd spent his life breaking things and was only now learning what it meant to build.
"The question is whether you're staying with me."
Something shifted in his expression. Vulnerability, raw and unguarded, in a man who showed that to almost no one.
"You're asking if I want to be part of the rebuild?"
"I'm asking if we make sense. Long term.
After the danger passes and it's just...
us. A man who crushes things for a living and a woman who grows them.
The opposites that somehow ended up here.
" She touched his face. "I need to know if this is real, Davis.
If what we have survives the war, or if it's just—"
"It's real."
The words came out certain. Absolute. No hesitation, no calculation, just truth.
"It's real," he repeated, softer now. "I spent twelve years giving my body to work that gave nothing back. I know what fake feels like. What temporary feels like. What using someone until they break feels like." He kissed her forehead. "This isn't that."
"Then what is it?"
"It's the first time I've wanted to build something instead of break it.
" His mouth found hers, soft and searching.
"It's the first time I've looked at a woman and thought: this is where I want to be.
Not because she needs me. Not because I can protect her.
Because she makes me want to be more than what I was. "
Meredith pulled him closer, wrapping herself around him. The conversation faded into touch, into the press of bodies and the slide of skin, into the slow rhythm they'd found together.
He moved inside her like he moved through everything—deliberate, patient, unhurried. Taking his time because rushing was never his way. She met him beat for beat, matching his pace, letting the pleasure build in waves that crested and retreated and crested again.
"Yours," she whispered. Not a question anymore. Not a revelation. Just a statement of fact, as true as gravity.
"Mine," he agreed. His hands found hers, laced their fingers together, pinned them gently above her head. "And I'm yours. Whatever that means. Whatever comes next."
The release built slowly, inexorably, the way pressure built in stone before it broke. When it finally crested, she felt it everywhere—in her spine, her chest, her fingertips still threaded through his. He followed her over, his body shuddering, her name on his lips like a prayer.
Afterward, they lay tangled together in sheets that needed washing, neither willing to move.
"The soil," Meredith said finally. "Under all that construction fill. It's still there."
Quarry turned his head on the pillow. "What do you mean?"
"When Hardt's men scraped my nursery flat, they covered everything with gravel and fill. But they didn't remove the soil—they just buried it. The years of amendment, the careful cultivation, all the organic matter I built up over six seasons. It's still there, underneath."
"Can you get to it?"
"Eventually. It'll take work—scraping off the fill, aerating the compacted ground, rebuilding the structure that got destroyed.
But the foundation is still there." She rolled to face him, one hand resting on his chest. "The soil always comes back, Davis.
If you give it time. If you do the work.
If you're patient enough to let it heal. "
He was quiet for a long moment. She watched him process the words, watched them land somewhere deep.
"Nobody ever told me that," he said.
"Told you what?"
"That things come back. That what's broken can be rebuilt.
That giving time and work actually produces results.
" His hand covered hers, pressing it against his heart.
"The quarry taught me that destruction was permanent.
That once you crushed something, it was gone.
That the only direction was down—smaller pieces, finer dust, until there was nothing left. "
"Growing teaches you the opposite."
"Yeah." His voice roughened. "It does."
"The soil comes back," she repeated. "The plants come back.
Even the trees—they can be regrown from cuttings, from seeds, from the genetic material they leave behind.
Nothing in a garden is ever truly destroyed.
It just... transforms. Becomes something else.
Returns to the earth and feeds what comes next. "
Quarry pulled her closer, tucking her against his side like he was afraid she'd disappear.
"That's the first hopeful thing anyone's ever told me about work."