"Good enough."
She was in the lodge.Not my room. The common area, sitting on the couch with her knees pulled up, wearing one of my shirts. She looked like she hadn't slept. Her eyes were red, her face bare, no makeup, no mask, nothing between her skin and the world. She looked up when I walked in and the fear on her face nearly took me out at the knees.
She was waiting to be told to leave.
I sat down next to her. Close, but not touching. My knuckles were raw, swollen, the skin split across three of them. She looked at my hands. Looked back at my face. I could see her putting it together, the violence written on my body, and I watched her flinch and then force herself not to look away.
"The prospect and the hang-around have been dealt with," I said. "Rook's man wiped every copy of the tape he could find. The Jackals president knows that if that footage ever surfaces, it's war. He's pragmatic enough to make it disappear himself, because keeping it is a liability now."
She didn't move. Didn't breathe.
"Nobody is ever going to use your body against you again."
Her face crumpled. Not slowly, not gracefully. When the grip finally breaks, there's nothing controlled about the fall. Herhand came up to her mouth and a sound came out of her that I felt in every part of my chest.
I pulled her into me. Wrapped my arms around her, both of them, tight, her face against my neck and her body shaking so hard I could feel it in my bones. I held her the way I'd always held her. All action. All body. The only language I'd ever been fluent in.
But this time the words came too.
"You lied to me," I said, my mouth against her hair. "You used Lena to get in. You fed them information that could have gotten my brothers killed. That's going to take time. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't."
She was crying. Silent, shaking, her fists balled in my shirt.
"But you told me the truth when the cost was everything. You chose honesty when it meant losing me. You chose me over your own safety." I pulled her closer. Tighter. "You're mine, Bree. You've been mine since before either of us knew it. And I'm not letting go."
She broke apart in my arms. Completely, totally, crying that didn't make a sound. I held her through it. Held her until the shaking stopped, until her breathing evened out, until she went quiet against my chest.
I pressed my mouth to the top of her head. Breathed her in.
I held her. I didn't let go.
It wasa Friday night at the Angel’s Rest.
Bree was behind the bar, pulling pints, wiping counters, laughing at something someone said. The brightness was back but it was different now. Steadier. Realer. The light of a woman who's stopped performing and started living.
I was in my booth. Watching her the way I always did. Duke was at the pool table, chalking a cue, talking shit. Doc and Rook were at the bar. Angel and Callie were at a table near the window, her hand in his, his eyes on the room. Razor and Priest in and out of the bar area. The club, present, settled, men living their lives.
She caught my eye across the room. Smiled. The real one. The one she used to hide behind and now just wore because she could.
I held her gaze. Lifted my glass an inch off the bar. Just for her.
She smiled wider. Turned back to pouring drinks.
I sat there in my booth with my whiskey and my brothers and the quiet inside me that had nothing to do with control and everything to do with peace, and I watched the woman I loved do the thing she was born to do in the place where she belonged.
The slow fuse had burned down. What it lit wasn't destruction.
It was something else entirely.
EPILOGUE
BREE
Six weeks later, Lena walked into Angel's Rest on a Friday night.
I didn't know she was coming. No warning, no call, just the front door swinging open and my best friend standing there in a leather jacket and boots, scanning the room with that warm, sharp gaze that had never missed a thing in fifteen years of friendship.
I was behind the bar. Mid-pour, Hank's usual bourbon, the Friday rush humming around me. I looked up and saw her and my face lit up.
