Chapter 16
Wake woke before dawn and watched Marley sleep.
They'd eventually made it back to his cabin, somewhere around four in the morning when the cold finally drove them off the dock. She'd fallen asleep almost immediately, curled against his side with her hand resting on his chest like she needed proof he was still there.
He hadn't slept. Couldn't. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard gunfire and saw the flash of a Razorback coming through the window and felt his heart stop in his chest.
So instead he watched her breathe.
The cabin was quiet. Gray morning light crept through the window, softening everything, making her look younger than she was. Her face was relaxed in a way he'd never seen while she was awake—no set jaw, no sharp watchfulness, no armor.
Just Marley. The woman underneath all the fight.
Her hand was still on his chest. Wake lifted it gently, careful not to wake her, and traced the calluses on her palm.
They told a story, those calluses. Thick ridges across her fingers from years of gripping bottles. Rough spots on her thumb from prying off caps. A faded scar along her index finger that looked like a knife slip—bar injury, probably, from cutting limes or lemons.
Working hands. Survivor's hands. Hands that had held a shotgun and defended his home without hesitation.
He pressed a kiss to her palm and felt her stir.
"What time is it?" she mumbled, not opening her eyes.
"Early. Go back to sleep."
"Can't." She blinked awake, focusing on his face. "You're staring at me."
"I like looking at you."
A smile tugged at her lips. "Creep."
"Your creep."
She laughed—that real laugh he'd learned to coax out of her—and shifted closer, draping her arm across his stomach. "What were you doing with my hand?"
"Looking at your calluses."
"Romantic."
"They're from the bar." He traced one of the ridges with his thumb. "Bottle caps, right? And this one—" He touched the scar on her finger. "Knife?"
"Lime. Uncle Carl was teaching me to cut garnishes and I wasn't paying attention." She flexed her fingers against his palm. "I was twelve. Should've been in school, but he needed help that day, and my mom was—" She stopped. Shrugged. "Gone, as usual."
Wake filed that away. Gone mother. Uncle who raised her in a bar. A childhood that had left calluses on her hands before she was old enough to drive.
"You grew up in that bar," he said.
"I grew up behind it." Marley shifted onto her back, staring at the ceiling.
"The Anchor was the only stable thing I had.
Mom would disappear for weeks, months sometimes.
Always chasing some man or some scheme or some version of herself that didn't include a daughter.
But Uncle Carl—" Her voice softened. "He was always there.
Drunk half the time, sure. Mean when the bills piled up. But he stayed."
"And when he died?"
"He left me the bar." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "His last gift. A building I couldn't afford to fix and a business I didn't know how to run. I was twenty-four, drowning in debt, and everyone—everyone—told me to sell."
"But you didn't."
"No." Her jaw tightened, and there was the fighter he knew—the woman who'd stood in her doorway with a bottle and a gun. "I didn't."
Wake understood that kind of stubborn. The refusal to let go of something even when letting go would be easier. He'd held onto hopes and jobs and people long past the point of reason, just because giving up felt like admitting defeat.
"I worked at a marina for eight years," he said.
Marley turned her head to look at him. "You mentioned that. Before."
"I didn't tell you all of it." He kept his eyes on the ceiling, because it was easier to talk when he wasn't looking at her.
"Started when I was twenty. The owner—old man Harmon—he gave me a chance when nobody else would.
I was a lake kid with no education and no prospects, and he saw something in me anyway. "
"What did he see?"
"Someone who'd work." Wake's mouth twisted. "That's what he told me, the first day. 'You look like you'd work until you dropped.' And I did. Eight years of boats and engines and twelve-hour days. I learned everything he could teach me. Became the best mechanic on the lake."
"And then?"
"Then he died." The old bitterness crept into Wake's voice, familiar and sharp. "Heart attack, right in the shop. I found him. Called the ambulance. Held his hand while we waited."
Marley's hand found his and squeezed.
"His son Kyle inherited everything," Wake continued.
"The marina, the business, the life insurance.
Kyle, who couldn't tell a prop from a pump.
Who'd never worked a day at that shop, never changed oil or replaced a seal, never learned the first thing about the boats his father spent forty years fixing. "
"He fired you."
"Gave my job to his buddy." Wake finally looked at her. "I walked out with eight years of experience, a handshake, and a 'good luck' that didn't mean shit. Blood beat work. That's how it goes in the real world."
Marley was quiet for a moment. "And the club?"
"Found them six months later." Wake turned his hand over, interlacing his fingers with hers. "Still heard I was good with boats. The Ridgerunners have watercraft, use the lake for runs. They needed someone who could keep the motors running and knew the coves."
"So you prospected."
"Two years now." He exhaled slowly. "Two years of proving I belong.
Two years of working harder than anyone else, never complaining, never asking for more than I've earned.
Because here—" His voice roughened. "Here, blood doesn't beat work.
You earn your patch or you don't get it. No shortcuts. No inheritance."
"That matters to you."
"It's everything to me." He met her eyes, letting her see the truth of it. "I work myself raw because I have to know I earned my place. Not because someone handed it to me. Not because I was born into it. Because I proved it."
Marley was silent for a long moment. Then she shifted closer, pressing herself against his side, her head on his shoulder.
"The Anchor," she said quietly. "You want to know why I kept it open?"
"Tell me."
"Not because I loved my uncle. I did, but—" She paused, searching for words.
"He was a drunk, Wake. A mean drunk, sometimes.
He'd yell at the customers and forget to order supplies and disappear for days when the drinking got bad.
The bar almost closed a dozen times while he was alive. Should have closed."
"But it didn't."
"No. Because every time it almost failed, he'd pull himself together just enough to save it.
One more week, one more month, one more year of barely surviving.
" She laughed bitterly. "He died owing money to everyone in town.
The building was mortgaged twice. The equipment was falling apart.
And everyone said—everyone—that the kindest thing I could do was let it go. "
Wake waited, sensing there was more.
"But I couldn't." Her voice hardened. "Because my whole family—my mother, my grandmother, my uncle—they all let things go. They all gave up when it got hard. Walked away from jobs and relationships and responsibilities because fighting wasn't worth the trouble."
"You're not like them."
"No." She tilted her head to look at him.
"I'm not. I kept the Anchor open because I needed to prove I could hold something.
Hold it through the debt and the bad months and the repairs I couldn't afford.
Hold it when it would've been easier to let go.
" Her eyes glittered. "I keep that bar open to prove I can hold something my family couldn't."
Wake's chest ached. He'd never put words to it—the desperate need to prove himself, the fear that he was worth nothing without work to show for it—but she'd just handed him a mirror and shown him his own reflection.
They were the same. Both of them fighting to hold onto things that other people would have abandoned. Both of them working themselves raw to prove they were worth more than the lives they'd been given.
"We're a matched pair," he said quietly.
"I was thinking the same thing."
He kissed her forehead. Her cheek. The corner of her mouth. She turned into him and they kissed for real, slow and soft, nothing like the desperate fire on the dock. This was something else. Something that felt like understanding.
"When this is over," he said against her lips, "we'll rebuild the Anchor. Together."
"You don't have to—"
"I want to." He pulled back enough to meet her eyes. "Whatever you're holding onto, Marley—you don't have to hold it alone anymore."
Something broke open in her expression. The armor she always wore cracked, just for a moment, and he saw the exhaustion underneath. The years of fighting alone. The weight of being the only one who refused to give up.
"I don't know how to do that," she whispered. "I've never—"
"Neither have I." He brushed a strand of hair from her face. "We'll figure it out."
She studied him for a long moment. Then she smiled—that real smile, the one that transformed her whole face—and pulled him down to kiss her again.
"Okay," she said. "We'll figure it out."
They lay there in the gray morning light, tangled together, and Wake felt something settle in his chest. Not peace, exactly—there was still a war to fight, still a threat to end—but something close.
He'd spent two years proving his worth to the club. Working himself raw to earn a patch that would mean he belonged.
But lying here with Marley—with a woman who understood the desperate need to hold onto something, who fought as hard as he did, who saw him for exactly what he was and wanted him anyway—
Maybe he'd already found where he belonged.