He bit the shell of my ear, then growled, “Mine.”
I shuddered, the word setting something off in me. I came, white-hot, striping both our stomachs. He kept fucking me through it, hips jerking as he chased his own release.
When he finished, he collapsed on top of me, careful not to crush my ribs. He rolled us onto our sides, one arm still wrapped around my waist, the other buried in my hair. We lay there, sticky and shaking, until the sweat cooled and the world came back into focus.
He kissed my temple, then the corner of my mouth, lips lingering on the raw skin. “You okay?” he asked again.
I turned into his embrace, breathing him in. “I’ve never been better.”
He huffed, but didn’t argue.
I traced the lines of ink on his chest, following the protective sigils, letting my finger rest on the heart he’d hidden in the wolf’s mouth. “I like these marks,” I said, voice low. “We should make some more.”
He squeezed me, the pressure safe and perfect. “We have time.”
We lay there until the sun moved across the sky and the dust motes drifted away. I could feel the ache in my body, the old hurts and the new ones. But they didn’t own me, not anymore.
I had the box, I had the scars, and I had the man who’d walk through hell just to bring me home. Whatever came next, we’d face it together. McKenzies, after all, never quit, especially not on each other.
Chapter Nineteen
~ Quiad ~
The last light crawled up the flanks of the barn, turning the tin roof to molten silver and the sawdust to gold. I stood outside the shop, arms folded and lungs full of the honest ache of a day’s labor, watching as the sky bled out above the hills.
My shirt was glued to my back, sweat-cool but sun-warmed, and the taste of varnish still lingered in the creases of my fingers. Next to me, Quiad killed the power to the table saw, the abrupt silence landing like a verdict.
We didn’t say much at the end of a workday. Our language was in the clatter of tools racked on the pegboard, the wordless hand-off of sandpaper or mallet. I liked that about us—how the quiet didn’t threaten to swallow me whole anymore. Some days, the only sound was the river, a mile away, and the constant chorus of crickets in the ryegrass.
That night, though, something else was coming up the drive.
I felt it before I saw it—a mechanical snarl that didn’t belong to any McKenzie engine, the wrong pitch and a gut-rumble that hinted at loose bolts and desperate repairs. Quiad’s jaw ticked once; he heard it, too. We both squinted into the dying light as the truck rolled over the washboard, sending plumes of dust up into the pale air.
Gloria.
She pulled in fast, throwing the gearshift into park with a lurch that rocked the entire chassis. The two men that climbed out behind her were new—big, both of them, one in a battered leather jacket and the other in a work shirt with the sleeves cut off to show a tattoo sleeve of some grinning death’s head. They walked behind her with a borrowed confidence, like she’d promised them something shiny at the end of the night.
Gloria wore her bitterness like a new coat, something she thought made her look respectable. Up close, her face looked like a highway map, lines going every which way, but her eyes were the real story: sharp, angry blue, so much like my own that it made my guts twist.
She planted herself between us and the shop door, arms crossed, feet wide. For a second, she just stared, letting the silence fill up with all the things she could never say when a judge was in the room.
Then she spat on the ground, missing my boot by an inch. “Well,” she said, “isn’t this a pretty picture.”
Quiad didn’t move, didn’t even blink. I could feel the tension radiating off him, a wall of heat. I just wiped my hands on a rag and tried to look bored.
“Last I heard,” I said, “you didn’t have business here.”
Her mouth twisted up in a smile that wasn’t. “That so? Thought maybe you’d like to settle a little debt. Seeing as you’re practically royalty now.” She jerked her head at the shop, at the house beyond, at the fields rolling down to the treeline. “Bet this place is worth a fortune.”
I snorted. “You want to check the books? Be my guest.”
The guy in the jacket stepped forward, shoulders hunched and fists already balled. The tattoo guy didn’t move, just watched Quiad the way a dog stares down a wolf. I kept my focus on Gloria, but every cell in my body was tracking them.
She sniffed, rubbed at her nose, then hitched up her purse strap like she was adjusting a gun belt. “I raised you, Levi. Nobody else would have, nobody else could have. You think you can just walk away from that?”
“I think,” I said, “that’s exactly what I did. And you didn’t raise me, remember? You split when I was six, bailed because being a responsible human being was too hard for you.”
The words landed like rocks. Gloria’s jaw flexed, but she covered it with a tight, practiced smile. “I’m asking nicely this time,” she said. “Give me some money. I won’t ask again.”
