Chapter 14
Stockton woke to sunlight and the sound of fabric snapping.
He opened his eyes to find Trish standing at the foot of the bed, wearing one of his shirts and nothing else, folding a pair of jeans she'd found on his floor. Her movements were automatic—snap, fold, stack—the muscle memory of a woman who'd been doing this her whole life.
"You're folding my laundry," he said.
"You left it on the floor." She didn't look up. "That's practically an invitation."
"It's six in the morning."
"And?"
He watched her from the pillow, something warm spreading through his chest. The shirt hung past her thighs, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, the collar showing the marks he'd left on her neck the night before.
His marks. His shirt. His woman.
"Come back to bed," he said.
"I'm almost done."
"It can wait."
She looked up then, her eyes meeting his, and he saw the smile she was trying to hide. "You're very demanding in the morning."
"I'm demanding all the time. You just haven't noticed."
She threw the folded jeans at his head.
He caught them one-handed and tossed them aside, reaching for her with the other hand. She let herself be pulled back onto the mattress, laughing as he rolled her beneath him.
"The laundry—"
"Will still be there in an hour." He kissed her—slow, thorough, the lazy exploration of a man who had nowhere to be. "You, on the other hand, are exactly where I want you."
She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back.
An hour later, they were sitting on the bed with coffee and the remains of whatever breakfast Stockton had scrounged from the compound kitchen. Trish had stolen his shirt again—she seemed to have claimed it as her own—and was working through a stale muffin with more determination than it deserved.
"Tell me about founding the Wolves," she said. "The real story. Not the version you tell at cookouts."
Stockton set down his coffee and considered the question. He'd told parts of it before—the garage, the five men, the decision to hunt. But the real story was messier. Bloodier. Less heroic and more desperate.
"We were kids," he said finally. "Twenty-two, twenty-three.
Angry as hell, convinced we knew everything, absolutely certain we were going to die before thirty.
" He shook his head. "The neighborhood was falling apart.
Had been for years. Gangs fighting over corners, cartels pushing product through the expressway, nobody giving a damn about the people caught in the middle. "
"So you gave a damn."
"We gave a damn." He stared at the wall, seeing the past instead of brick.
"Alpha—Dom—he'd just come back from his third tour.
Couldn't sleep, couldn't sit still, couldn't stop seeing threats everywhere he looked.
I'd been working whatever jobs I could find, watching the guys I grew up with either leave or die.
We started drinking together, complaining together.
Eventually we decided complaining wasn't enough. "
"The garage."
"The garage." He almost smiled. "Five of us, sitting on milk crates, drinking cheap beer, talking about how someone needed to do something. And then Dom said, 'So let's be someone.' Just like that. Like it was obvious."
"What happened next?"
"We rode out the next night. Found a corner boy selling to kids outside a school—couldn't have been more than nineteen, thought he was untouchable. We touched him." Stockton's voice went flat. "Word spread. Other crews started paying attention. Some pushed back. We pushed harder."
"People died."
"People died." He met her eyes. "Some of them deserved it. Some of them were just in the wrong place. That's how war works—you can't always control where the bullets land."
She was quiet for a moment, processing. He watched her face for signs of horror, of judgment, of the dawning realization that she'd given herself to a man with blood on his hands.
He didn't see any of that.
"You built something," she said. "Out of violence and chaos, you built something that matters. A family. A community. Protection for people who didn't have any."
"That's a generous interpretation."
"It's the truth." She set down her muffin and reached for his hand. "I spent ten years running a laundromat because my aunt believed that keeping the lights on mattered. That giving people a safe place to go at night was worth the sacrifice. You did the same thing. Just with different tools."
"Laundry machines and lead pipes."
"Same principle." She squeezed his fingers. "You keep the lights on. You fight so other people don't have to. That's not something to be ashamed of."
Stockton looked at their joined hands. His, scarred and callused. Hers, roughened by years of work. Two people who'd spent their lives building things that mattered.
"Tell me about the first year," he said. "After Danny died."
Her grip tightened slightly. "You sure you want to hear that?"
"I want to hear everything."
She was quiet for a moment, gathering her thoughts. When she spoke, her voice was distant—the voice of someone revisiting pain they'd learned to carry.
"The first month, I didn't leave the apartment. Mae ran the laundromat, kept it open, kept the lights on. I just... existed. Ate when she made me. Slept when I couldn't stay awake anymore. Stared at walls."
"That's grief."
"That's drowning." She shook her head. "Around month two, Mae stopped bringing me food. Told me if I wanted to eat, I could come downstairs and make myself useful. Tough love, Mae style."
"Did it work?"
"Eventually. I started folding laundry because it was something to do with my hands. Then I started talking to customers because Mae was busy and someone had to. Then I started caring about the business because it was the only thing that still needed me."
She looked at him, and he saw the ghost of that grief still living in her eyes—fainter now, manageable, but never quite gone.
"The laundromat saved me," she said. "Gave me a reason to keep going when I didn't have one. Mae knew that. That's why she pushed."
"Smart woman."
"The smartest." Trish smiled, soft and sad. "When she died, I was terrified. Thought I'd fall apart again, end up back in that apartment staring at walls. But I didn't. Because by then, the laundromat wasn't just hers anymore. It was mine. And I wasn't going to let it go dark."
Stockton understood that. The weight of inheritance. The responsibility of carrying something forward because letting it die would be a betrayal of everyone who'd built it.
"The club was like that for me," he said. "After Ellen. I threw myself into pack business because it was the only thing that still made sense. The only thing that needed me the way she used to."
"We're both good at surviving."
"Too good, maybe." He turned her hand over in his, tracing the lines of her palm. "I spent four years telling myself I was fine. That I didn't need anything else. That the club was enough."
"And now?"
He looked up. Met her eyes.
"Now I want more."
The words hung in the air between them. He felt exposed—more vulnerable than he'd been during any confession, any fight, any moment of violence in twenty years of war.
"This is permanent," he said. "Whatever this is between us. I'm not playing around. I'm not looking for temporary. When this is over—when Warren's dead and the laundromat's open again—I want you here. With me. In this life."
Trish held his gaze. Her expression was unreadable for a long moment.
Then she smiled.
"I knew that," she said.
"You knew?"
"The fourth night you showed up at my laundromat.
" She leaned forward and kissed him—soft, certain, the kiss of a woman who'd made her decision a long time ago.
"You sat in that plastic chair folding shirts you'd already folded, watching me like I was something worth protecting.
Nobody looks at someone that way unless they mean it. "
"You couldn't have known—"
"I knew." She pulled back, her eyes bright. "I just wasn't sure you knew yet."
Stockton stared at her. This woman who'd survived loss and loneliness and six weeks of siege warfare. Who'd walked into his world and started folding laundry like she belonged there. Who'd looked at the blood on his hands and seen something worth holding onto.
"I love you," he said.
The words came out rough. Unpracticed. He hadn't said them to anyone since Ellen, and they felt strange in his mouth—like a language he'd forgotten and was just now relearning.
Trish's eyes went bright with tears she didn't let fall.
"I love you too," she said. "I think I have since you told me about Mae. Since you showed me that someone else remembered why the lights matter."
He pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her hair, breathing in the scent of her—laundry soap and coffee and something underneath that was just her.
"When this is over," he said against her ear, "we're going to build something. Together. The laundromat. A life. Whatever you want."
"I want you," she said simply. "The rest we'll figure out."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
He held her tighter, feeling the warmth of her body against his, the steady rhythm of her heartbeat.
Twenty years of fighting. Four years of grief. A lifetime of carrying weight alone.
And now, finally, someone to carry it with.
"Permanent," he said again.
She laughed softly against his chest.
"I knew that the fourth night," she said. "You were just slow to catch up."