Chapter 9
Marley lasted exactly one day before she took over the compound bar.
It wasn't planned. She'd wandered into the main lodge looking for coffee and found a brother behind the bar pouring whiskey into a glass that still had ice water in it from the last drink.
The customer—another brother, older, with a beard that probably had its own zip code—was watching the travesty unfold with the resignation of a man who'd given up expecting better.
"That's not how you pour whiskey," Marley said before she could stop herself.
Both men looked at her. The one pouring raised an eyebrow. "You want to do it?"
"God, yes."
She was behind the bar before anyone could argue.
The brother who'd been pouring—Proof, she learned later, the club's armorer—handed over the bottle with a shrug and retreated to a corner booth.
The bearded customer watched Marley dump the ruined drink, rinse the glass, and pour two fingers of whiskey neat with the economy of motion that came from a decade of practice.
"Here." She slid it across the bar. "That's how you pour whiskey."
The bearded man took a sip. Something shifted in his expression—surprise, maybe, or simple appreciation. "Better."
"Damn right it's better."
By that afternoon, word had spread. Brothers who usually didn't show up until evening started drifting in around lunch. By dinner, the bar was busier than Marley had seen it since she'd arrived.
"You're good at this," Tailwater said, watching her work the taps.
"I've been doing it since before I could legally drink." She slid a beer across the bar and took his money. "Your setup here is a disaster, by the way. You've got top-shelf bourbon next to well vodka, your ice bin's too small, and whoever organized the back bar should be shot."
Tailwater laughed—a real laugh, warm and surprised. "Noted."
"I'm serious. Give me a day and I'll have this place running right."
"I'll talk to Still."
By the next morning, she had the key.
Three days in, Marley had reorganized the entire back bar, convinced someone to order proper glassware, and instituted a tab system that didn't rely on brothers remembering what they'd drunk.
The tips were pooled into a jar she refused to touch—"I've got a job," she told them, "I'm just doing yours right"—and the complaints about watered-down drinks had stopped entirely.
It wasn't the Anchor. But it felt close enough.
She poured drafts and mixed drinks and listened to brothers talk shit about each other, and slowly the compound stopped feeling like a prison and started feeling like something she might actually belong to.
The rain started around noon.
Marley was wiping down the bar when she heard it—a sudden drumroll on the roof that grew into a steady roar within seconds. Missouri storms didn't mess around. One minute the sky was gray and threatening; the next, water was coming down like God had turned on a faucet and walked away.
The brothers at the bar grumbled and settled in deeper, ordering another round because no one was going anywhere in this weather. Marley poured and listened to the rain hammer the roof and wondered if the Anchor was flooding.
Nothing you can do about it from here.
She pushed the thought away and looked out the window instead.
That was when she saw Wake.
He was down at the dock, hunched over one of the club's boats with the engine cover propped open.
Rain pounded his back, plastering his shirt to his shoulders, running down his arms in rivulets.
He didn't move. Didn't seek shelter. Just kept working, hands buried in the machinery, utterly focused on whatever problem he was trying to solve.
Crazy bastard, Marley thought.
But she couldn't look away.
She watched him work for almost an hour. Watched him pull something from the engine, examine it, put it back. Watched him reach for tools that were probably soaked through by now. Watched him wipe rain from his eyes with the back of his wrist, leaving a streak of grease across his forehead.
He moved around that boat the way she moved behind a bar. Automatic. Instinctive. Like the work was part of him and he was just letting it happen.
"He's been out there since dawn."
Marley jumped. Cottonmouth had appeared at the bar, silent as his namesake. His cold eyes tracked her gaze to the dock, and something like amusement flickered across his scarred face.
"In this rain?"
"Rain doesn't stop Wake. Nothing stops Wake when there's something that needs fixing." He slid onto a stool and waited for her to pour his usual. "That boat's been giving us trouble for weeks. He's the only one who can figure it out."
Marley set a whiskey in front of him and tried not to be obvious about looking out the window again. "Is he always like this?"
"Like what?"
"Like—" She gestured vaguely. "I don't know. Like the work matters more than anything else."
Cottonmouth was quiet for a moment. Then: "He's got something to prove. To himself, to the club, doesn't matter. Until he gets that patch, he won't rest."
"And after?"
"After, he'll find something else to prove." Cottonmouth knocked back his whiskey and stood. "That's just who he is."
He left her with an empty glass and too many thoughts.
The rain didn't let up. Brothers came and went, ordering drinks to pass the time, making crude jokes about the weather and each other.
Marley poured and smiled and kept one eye on the dock where Wake was still working, still soaked, still refusing to admit that some things couldn't be fixed in a storm.
Around four, Limestone came in shaking water off his cut.
"Prospect's gonna drown himself out there," he said, dropping onto a stool.
"Why doesn't someone make him come in?"
Limestone laughed. "You want to try? Be my guest."
"Maybe I will."
She didn't mean it. Or she told herself she didn't mean it. But an hour later, when the rain had finally slowed to a drizzle and Wake was still hunched over that engine, Marley found herself walking down to the dock with a towel over her arm.
"You're soaked."
He didn't look up. "I'm fine."
"You're going to get hypothermia and die, and then who's going to keep me safe from the scary nomads?"
That made him pause. He straightened slowly, wiping his hands on a rag that was already drenched. When he finally looked at her, his eyes were tired but warm.
"You're worried about me."
"I'm worried about losing my protection detail." She threw the towel at his chest. "Come inside. Get warm. I'll pour you a drink."
For a moment she thought he was going to argue. His jaw tightened the way it did when he was fighting the urge to finish something, to push through until the job was done.
Then he looked down at the engine and back at her.
"One drink."
"One drink," she agreed.
He followed her up from the dock, and Marley pretended she couldn't feel his eyes on her back the whole way.
The bar was quieter now—most brothers had retreated to their cabins to wait out the weather. Marley went behind the bar and pulled a draft without asking, the same beer she'd been pouring Wake since she started.
He sat in the same spot he always sat. End of the bar, back to the wall, where he could see every entrance.
His shirt was still plastered to his chest, and his hair was dripping onto the bar top, and he smelled like rain and motor oil and something else—something warm and male that made Marley's pulse kick.
"You fixed the boat?" she asked, setting the beer in front of him.
"Not yet." His hands wrapped around the glass, grease-black against the amber liquid. "Fuel pump's shot. Needs a new one."
"So you've been out there all day for nothing?"
"Had to figure out what was wrong before I could fix it." He took a long drink, and she watched his throat work, watched a drop of rain run from his jaw down to his collarbone and disappear beneath his shirt. "That's half the job. Knowing what's broken."
"And the other half?"
"Fixing it."
Simple, she thought. Everything is simple to him.
She watched him drink. Watched grease-black hands hold the glass steady, scarred knuckles wrapping around it like they'd held a thousand tools and a hundred problems. He fixed things. That was what he did. Engines, boats, situations that had gone sideways.
Her.
The thought hit her like a punch. He was trying to fix her situation. Not because she was a job or a mission, but because something was broken and he couldn't leave it alone.
"What?" Wake asked.
She realized she'd been staring.
"Nothing." She grabbed a rag and started wiping down the bar, needing something to do with her hands. "Just thinking."
"About?"
About what those hands would feel like on me. About whether you work that hard at everything. About whether you're as focused in bed as you are in an engine compartment.
"About whether the Anchor's flooding right now," she lied.
Wake was quiet for a moment. Then: "We'll check on it. When this is over."
"When."
"When." He said it with absolute certainty. Like the Razorbacks were just another problem to diagnose and fix.
Marley set down the rag and let herself look at him. Really look. Rain-soaked and grease-stained and utterly certain that he could solve any problem if he just worked hard enough.
She thought about a man who'd lost his job to nepotism and found a family that judged him by what he earned. A man who'd spent all day in the rain fixing a boat because someone had to. A man who looked at her like she was something worth protecting, worth keeping, worth the work.
A man who fixed things because that's all he knew how to do.
"Drink your beer," she said softly. "You've earned it."
Wake held her gaze for a long moment. Something passed between them—recognition, maybe. Understanding.
Then he raised his glass and drank, and Marley watched grease-black hands wrap around the glass and thought about a man who fixed things because that's all he knew how to do.