Chapter 24
The bike rumbled beneath Marley as they wound along the lake road, her arms wrapped around Wake's waist, her cheek pressed against his back.
This was different from the other times she'd been on his bike—the desperate midnight escapes, the tense rides between compound and danger. Today there was no urgency. No threat. Just the two of them and the open road and a warm afternoon sun painting the lake gold.
"Where are we going?" she'd asked when he handed her the helmet.
"Somewhere I need to show you."
He hadn't said anything else, and she hadn't pushed. She was learning that Wake revealed things in his own time, and pushing only made him retreat further into that quiet patience she'd come to love.
The marina appeared around a bend in the road.
Marley recognized it from his descriptions—the long dock stretching into the water, the workshop built into the hillside, the rows of boats waiting for repairs that would never come from hands as skilled as his. A sign out front read HARMON'S MARINA in faded letters, the paint peeling at the edges.
Wake pulled into the lot and killed the engine.
"This is it," he said. "Where I spent eight years."
Marley climbed off the bike and looked around. The place was quieter than she'd expected—a few customers milling near the fuel dock, someone working on a boat in the far slip, but nothing like the busy operation Wake had described.
"It looks..."
"Different." His voice was flat. "Kyle let it go. Stopped doing the maintenance, stopped caring about the customers. Half the regulars take their boats to Osage Beach now."
She watched him scan the marina, his eyes tracking over docks he'd walked a thousand times, equipment he'd maintained, a life he'd built and lost. There was pain there, buried deep, but also something else.
Distance. He'd moved on.
"Come on." He took her hand. "I want you to see the shop."
They walked down the dock together, past boats that needed work and slips that sat empty. A young guy in a Harmon's Marina shirt looked up as they passed, his eyes going to Wake's cut, widening slightly.
"Hey," the kid said. "You're—you used to work here, right? Before?"
"Yeah." Wake didn't slow down. "Before."
The shop was exactly how Marley had pictured it—organized chaos, tools hanging on pegboards, engine parts scattered across workbenches. But there was dust on surfaces that should have been clean, and half-finished projects that looked like they'd been sitting for months.
"He doesn't know what he's doing," Wake said quietly, looking around at the neglect. "You can see it in the way things are stored, the way the equipment's maintained. Kyle's buddy handles the front desk and collects the checks. Nobody actually fixes anything anymore."
"Does it make you angry?"
Wake was quiet for a moment. Then he shook his head.
"It used to. When I first left, I couldn't drive past this place without my blood pressure spiking." He turned to face her, and something had softened in his expression. "Now I just feel... done. This isn't my life anymore. It stopped being my life the day I prospected."
"And you're okay with that?"
"I'm better than okay." He pulled her closer, his hands settling on her hips.
"I've got a club that judges me by what I earn.
I've got brothers who'll fight beside me.
And I've got you." His forehead touched hers.
"This place gave me skills. The Ridgerunners gave me a family. I know which one matters more."
Marley kissed him—soft, sweet, a promise without words.
"Show me the engine bay," she said when they broke apart. "I want to see where you learned everything."
He showed her. The bay where he'd rebuilt his first outboard, the lift where he'd learned to drop transmissions, the corner where old man Harmon had taught him that patience was the most important tool in any mechanic's kit.
He talked about it like someone describing a former home—fondly, but without longing.
Then they left without looking back.
The ride to the Anchor took twenty minutes. Marley's heart started beating faster as they turned onto the back road, as the familiar trees and curves appeared around them. She hadn't been here since the night she'd walked through the wreckage with Wake at her side.
But when the bar came into view, she gasped.
The parking lot was full of trucks—contractors' vehicles, supply vans, a dumpster overflowing with debris. The front door was propped open, and she could hear the sound of power tools from inside.
"What—" She was off the bike before Wake killed the engine. "What is this?"
"Surprise." He was smiling—that rare, devastating smile that transformed his whole face. "Limestone knows some guys. They've been working all week."
Marley walked toward the bar in a daze. The exterior had been cleaned up—broken windows replaced, the door rehung, the parking lot cleared of glass and debris. It still looked rough, still showed the scars of what had happened, but it was alive again.
She stepped inside and stopped breathing.
The bar top was new. Fresh oak, still unvarnished, stretching the length of the room where her uncle's bar had been split in half.
The back shelves were rebuilt, empty but waiting for bottles.
The floor had been stripped and cleaned, the walls repainted, the ceiling patched where bullets had torn through.
And in the corner, upright again, sat the jukebox.
"It was destroyed," she said, her voice cracking. "They smashed it to pieces."
"The case was destroyed." Wake appeared beside her, a tool bag in his hand. "The guts were mostly okay. I had some parts shipped in from a guy who restores vintage machines."
"You fixed it?"
"Almost." He crossed to the jukebox and knelt beside it, opening the tool bag with practiced efficiency. "Needs a few more adjustments. Should be working in about ten minutes."
Marley stood in the middle of her rebuilt bar and watched the man she loved bring her uncle's jukebox back to life.
He worked the way he always worked—focused, methodical, completely absorbed in the task. His hands moved over the machinery with the same confidence she'd seen when he fixed boat motors at the compound, when he disabled engines in the dark, when he touched her in the quiet of his cabin.
This is who he is, she thought. Someone who fixes things. Someone who sees what's broken and makes it whole.
Including her.
"There." Wake stood up and brushed off his knees. "Try it now."
Marley walked over to the jukebox on legs that weren't quite steady. The machine hummed softly, lights glowing behind the curved glass. The song selection was still loaded—her uncle's collection, decades of country and heartbreak and highway songs.
She found the one she was looking for and pressed the button.
The first notes filled the bar.
It was an old song—something her uncle had played a hundred times, something about coming home and finding peace after years of running. Marley had heard it so many times it had become background noise, part of the Anchor's atmosphere like the sticky floors and the smell of stale beer.
But now, standing in the rebuilt bar with Wake beside her and her uncle's jukebox singing again, the words hit different.
She started laughing.
She didn't mean to. It just bubbled up from somewhere deep—relief and joy and grief all tangled together, spilling out of her in a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. She laughed until tears streamed down her face, until her stomach hurt, until Wake's arms came around her and held her up.
"Hey." His voice was soft, concerned. "You okay?"
"I'm okay." She wiped her eyes, still laughing. "I'm so okay. I just—" She gestured helplessly at the bar, the jukebox, everything. "He's here. My uncle. He's still here. They tried to destroy him and he's still here."
Wake pulled her closer, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "Of course he is. This place was his life. You don't erase that with a pool cue and some spray paint."
"No." She tilted her head to look at him. "You don't."
They stood there while the song played, swaying slightly to the music. The contractors had cleared out, leaving them alone in the half-finished bar with sawdust on the floor and the smell of fresh wood in the air.
When the song ended, Marley pulled away and crossed to the new bar top. She ran her hands over the oak—smooth, solid, ready for the varnish that would protect it for decades to come.
"I bought something," she said. "While you were working on the jukebox."
She reached under the bar—the same spot where she'd always kept the good stuff—and pulled out a bottle. New label, fresh seal. Bourbon she'd ordered with her own money, from her own account, for her own bar.
Wake's eyes warmed as he watched her open it.
She poured two glasses, the amber liquid catching the light from the jukebox. Then she slid one across the new bar top to the man sitting in his usual spot—end of the bar, back to the wall, exactly where he belonged.
"To the Anchor," she said, raising her glass.
"To us," he countered.
They drank together, and Marley felt the last of the weight lift from her shoulders.
The bar was coming back. The jukebox was singing. And the man who'd fought beside her through everything was sitting right where she could see him, drinking bourbon she'd bought with her own money, in a place they were rebuilding together.
"You know what I realized?" she said, setting down her glass.
"What?"
"This is the first time I've poured a drink in this bar without being scared.
" She looked around at the raw wood and the empty shelves and all the work still to be done.
"For three years, I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
For the bills I couldn't pay, for the customers who didn't come, for whatever crisis was going to finally break me.
" She met his eyes. "I'm not waiting anymore. "
Wake reached across the bar and took her hand, his calloused fingers wrapping around hers.
"Good," he said. "Because I'm not going anywhere."
Marley smiled and poured them both another drink.
Outside, the sun was setting over the lake, painting the sky orange and gold.
Inside, the jukebox cycled to another song—something hopeful, something about better days ahead.
And at the new bar top, a bartender and a biker sat together and watched the light fade, planning a future that neither of them had dared to imagine.
They had time now. Time to rebuild. Time to heal. Time to be just them, without the shadow of violence hanging over everything.
Marley intended to enjoy every minute of it.