Chapter Nine
She found him on the porch.
The bonfire had burned down to embers an hour ago, the last brothers drifting off to their rooms or their bikes or whatever corners of the compound they disappeared to when the night got late.
Josie had gone to her room, brushed her teeth, changed into the borrowed clothes that were starting to feel less borrowed, and stood at the door for exactly ninety seconds before she opened it again.
Anvil sat on the steps outside the main building, elbows on his knees, staring at the tree line like it owed him money.
He heard her coming. She knew he did because his shoulders shifted—the micro-adjustment of a man who cataloged every sound and decided what it meant before his conscious mind caught up. But he didn't turn around.
"Can't sleep?" she asked.
"Don't sleep much."
"That's not what I asked."
He glanced back at her then, dark eyes catching what was left of the firelight. Something moved in his expression—surprise, maybe, that she'd come looking for him. That she'd noticed he was gone.
That she cared enough to follow.
"What are you doing out here, Josie?"
She sat down beside him on the steps, close enough that her shoulder pressed against his arm. The night air was cool but not cold, pine and wood smoke layered together in a way she was starting to associate with this place. With safety.
"I'm tired," she said.
"Then go to bed."
"Not that kind of tired." She turned to look at him, and the words came out before she could second-guess them. "I'm tired of pretending I don't see the way you look at me."
Anvil went still.
Not the controlled stillness of a man reading threats—something different. Something that looked almost like fear on a face she'd never seen afraid.
"Josie—"
"I'm tired of lying in that bed knowing you're twenty feet away, standing guard, telling yourself it's about protection." She held his gaze. "I'm tired of being careful. I've been careful my whole life, and all it got me was a burned truck and a dog."
"You're under my protection. That means—"
"It means you've decided I matter. You told me that tonight." She shifted, angling her body toward his. "So stop protecting me from you."
His jaw tightened. She could see the war happening behind his eyes—duty and want, the rules he'd built his life around and the woman sitting close enough to break them.
"This complicates things."
"Things are already complicated. Men are trying to kill me, I own nothing but borrowed clothes, and I'm living in a biker compound with a dog who likes it here better than I do.
" She reached out and laid her hand on his forearm, feeling the muscles cord under her touch.
"One more complication isn't going to break anything. "
"You don't know that."
"I know I'm tired of being alone in rooms where I don't have to be."
The silence stretched between them. Somewhere in the compound, a door closed. An engine ticked as it cooled. The last of the bonfire coals popped and settled.
Anvil's hand came up and covered hers.
His palm was rough, warm, big enough to swallow her fingers completely. He held on like he was testing whether she'd pull away.
She didn't.
"If we do this," he said, his voice dropping low enough that she felt it in her chest, "I'm not going to be able to go back to standing outside your door."
"Good."
"I mean it. I don't know how to do this halfway. Never have."
"Neither do I."
She stood, keeping hold of his hand, and pulled. He came to his feet like she'd unlocked something—all that controlled stillness breaking into motion as he rose to his full height and looked down at her with an expression that made her pulse hammer in her throat.
"Inside," she said.
They walked through the compound in silence, Josie leading, Anvil's hand engulfing hers, their footsteps the only sound in the empty hallway. She pushed open the door to her room, pulled him through it, and kicked it shut behind them.
Diesel lifted his head from the dog bed, assessed the situation, and dropped back to sleep with a groan.
"Smart dog," Anvil murmured.
"He knows when to mind his business."
Then her hands were on his chest, feeling the heartbeat that had gone from steady to rapid under her palms. She fisted the fabric of his shirt and pulled him down to her, and when their mouths met, every excuse he'd been making died on contact.
His kiss was careful at first. Controlled, the way everything about him was controlled—measured force, deliberate pressure, the restraint of a man who knew exactly how strong he was and calibrated accordingly.
Josie didn't want calibrated.
She bit his lower lip, felt the sound he made vibrate through her, and the control cracked.
His hands found her waist, her hips, sliding under the hem of her borrowed shirt to find skin that hadn't been touched in longer than she wanted to think about.
His palms were rough with calluses and she arched into them, wanting more of that texture, more of the evidence that these were hands that worked and fought and now—now—were learning her.
"Off," she said, pulling at his shirt. "Take it off."
He stepped back just far enough to strip the shirt over his head, and Josie's breath caught.
She'd known he was big. She'd felt the breadth of his shoulders when she rode behind him on the bike, mapped the width of his chest when she'd pressed against him in the safehouse.
But seeing it—the heavy muscle built from years of physicality, the scars scattered across his torso like a history written in skin, the way his body tapered from those impossible shoulders to a waist that made her hands itch to trace it—
She reached out and touched a scar on his ribs. Thin, old, silvered with age.
"Knife," he said. "Minneapolis. Bouncer work."
Her fingers moved to another, this one on his shoulder. Thicker, newer.
"Buckshot graze. Last year."
She mapped him scar by scar, reading the story of his body the way she read a horse's history through its hooves—every mark a chapter, every healed wound a page in the life of a man who'd spent years putting himself between violence and the people it wanted.
When she looked up, his eyes were dark and fixed on her face with an intensity that should have been frightening and wasn't.
"Your turn," he said.
His hands were gentle when they pulled her shirt over her head, gentle when they unhooked her bra, gentle when they traced the muscles in her forearms and the calluses on her palms. He studied her the same way she'd studied him—reading the story her body told.
Farrier's strength, foster kid's scars, the lean architecture of a woman who'd been her own safety net for twelve years.
"You're beautiful," he said, and the way he said it—matter-of-fact, like he was stating something obvious that she'd somehow missed—cracked something in Josie's chest that she'd been holding together with willpower and stubbornness for a very long time.
"Shut up and come here."
They made it to the bed in a tangle of hands and heat, boots kicked off, jeans peeled away with more urgency than grace.
Anvil settled over her and the weight of him—solid, warm, real in a way that nothing in her life had felt real in months—made her eyes sting with something she refused to call tears.
She pulled him closer instead.
He moved like he fought—deliberate, focused, every action serving a purpose.
But underneath the control there was something desperate, something that matched the ache she'd been carrying since the night her truck burned and this man had shown up in the firelight like an answer to a question she hadn't known she was asking.
"Look at me," he said.
She did.
His eyes held hers as they moved together, and Josie saw everything he kept locked behind that professional calm—the want, the fear, the fierce protectiveness that had nothing to do with duty and everything to do with the woman underneath him.
She came apart with his name on her lips and his hands braced on either side of her head, his forehead pressed to hers, breathing her air like it was the only thing keeping him alive.
When he followed, his arms shook.
Afterward, they lay tangled together in the narrow bed, Josie's head on his chest, his heartbeat slowing under her ear. Diesel snored from his corner, oblivious to the seismic shift that had just occurred three feet from his bed.
"Danny was twenty-three."
Josie didn't move. Didn't look up. Just pressed her palm flat against his chest and listened.
"He drove up from the Cities to surprise me.
Hadn't seen him in months—I was working six nights a week, he was finishing school, we kept saying we'd get together and never did.
" Anvil's voice was steady. Too steady, the way a voice gets when it's told a story enough times to polish the edges off the pain.
"He called me from the parking lot. Said he was outside.
I told him to come around to the front door, I'd get him in. "
His chest rose and fell under her hand.
"He never made it to the front door."
"What happened?"
"Two guys in the lot. Tried to rob him. Danny fought back because that's what Calloways do—we fight back." His voice cracked, just barely, on the last word. "I heard him yell my name. Thirty feet. He was thirty feet from the door I was working."
"Anvil—"
"I got there in time to watch him bleed out on the asphalt.
Thirty feet from where I was standing, and I couldn't get there fast enough.
" His arm tightened around her. "He looked at me like he expected me to fix it.
Like I always fixed it when we were kids—he'd get in trouble, I'd show up, I'd handle it.
And I couldn't fix it. I was on the wrong side of the wall. "
Josie pressed her face into his chest and held on.
"That's why you volunteer for every watch," she said. "Every door. Every guard shift."
"If I'm always watching, I won't miss it again."
"You can't watch everything."
"I know." His hand came up and threaded through her hair, the gentleness of it at odds with everything he'd just told her. "But I can't stop trying."
Josie lifted her head and looked at him. His face was open in a way she'd never seen—the armor stripped away, the professional calm set aside, just a man carrying a weight he'd never put down.
She knew that weight. Different shape, different story, but the same heaviness—the belief that you had to carry everything alone because no one else was going to show up.
"I aged out of foster care with three hundred dollars and a certificate that said I could shoe horses.
" She held his gaze. "No one came to the ceremony.
No one helped me move into the studio apartment I could barely afford.
No one taught me how to file taxes or buy insurance or build a business.
I did all of it alone because that was the only option. "
"Josie—"
"I'm not comparing. I'm saying I know what it's like to stand alone and think that's all there is." She laid her hand on his jaw, feeling the stubble rough against her palm. "It doesn't have to be all there is."
He turned his head and pressed his lips to her palm. The gesture was so tender, so at odds with the man who'd killed eight people four days ago, that Josie felt her chest crack open a little further.
"Stay," he said.
One word. Not a question. Not a command. Something in between—a man who'd spent years standing guard finally asking someone to stand with him.
"I'm not going anywhere," she said.
His arms tightened around her, pulling her against his chest, and Josie settled into the warmth of a man who'd finally stopped standing on the wrong side of the wall.
Diesel snored.
The compound settled around them—creaking wood, distant engines, the particular silence of a place where dangerous men slept and a woman who'd been alone her whole life decided she was done running from something that felt like home.