Page 21 of Stitch & Steel

Twenty-One

BELLA

Summer faded like a slow-burning candle.

The air was crisper now, the sun setting earlier behind the mountains, casting long golden streaks through the trees. I pulled my sleeves down more often. Wore socks around the cabin. Lit candles at dusk that smelled like cinnamon and home.

The storm that had swallowed our lives—the danger, the tension, the long nights of fear—had finally passed. The MC rooted out the threat. Whatever had stirred up the rival club died with the last ride they took out of town.

Now, everything felt quieter.

Too quiet sometimes.

I didn’t talk much about resigning my job in Charlotte. Just filled out the paperwork one morning and never looked back. I didn’t even cry. It felt like stepping out of one life and into another—one that fit me better, like I’d finally stopped pretending to wear someone else’s shoes.

Kasey showed up the following weekend, her little SUV packed to the brim with everything I’d left behind. She didn’t judge. Just hugged me hard, looked around the mountain cabin with tears in her eyes, and said, “God, you really are happy here.”

I was.

Even if part of that happiness came with a layer of ache I hadn’t expected.

Gran went to bed earlier now. Woke up later.

The pill bottles on her nightstand had multiplied like rabbits.

Sometimes she repeated stories. Other times she just sat in the sun with Scout curled against her legs, silent, peaceful, as if trying to memorize the trees and sky before they vanished from memory.

Scout wouldn’t leave her side.

He used to sleep at the foot of my bed. Now he guarded Gran like she was his only purpose on earth. I think he knew. I think animals sense what we pretend not to.

We hired help. Quiet, competent aides who came during the day and made sure Gran was never alone when Logan and I needed to leave.

I started teaching at a small school farther down the mountain.

The pay wasn’t great, but the benefits were solid, and the view from my classroom window was better than any skyline I’d ever known.

Logan still took me on motorcycle rides, sometimes to the lake, sometimes to nowhere in particular.

He held my hand in public. Made me laugh when the nights grew long.

We went to the movies, real ones, with popcorn and sticky floors and whispering in the dark.

Other times, we stayed home, playing cards with Gran or slow-dancing barefoot in the kitchen while a pot of chili simmered on the stove.

Our life wasn’t glamorous. But it was full.

The nights were still high with passion—Logan had a way of making every slow kiss feel like a promise and every touch feel like the start of something we’d never finish.

We weren’t pregnant, and maybe that was for the best. We needed this time, these quiet months, to figure out what it meant to really build something—not just fall into it.

But time kept moving.

The leaves began to turn.

I tried not to notice the way Gran’s hands sometimes trembled more than usual or how she paused mid-thought like her brain had lost its grip on the next word. I kissed her cheek and made her tea. I tucked her in and whispered goodnight like I was the grandmother and she was the child.

I wanted to stop time. Trap it in amber and hold it up to the light.

I wanted to stay here, in the space between late summer and early fall, where the world was still warm and golden and Logan smiled like he already knew our future.

But the days were getting shorter.

And I could feel winter coming.

There’s something about the mountains at night. The way the stars blanket the sky like diamonds tossed over black velvet. The way the pine trees whisper secrets to the wind. It wraps around you, slow and warm, like falling in love with your whole life.

The fire crackled in the pit. Bear strummed his guitar with a lazy rhythm that matched the crackle and pop of the logs.

Scout lay curled at Gran’s feet—she’d been wheeled out earlier in her blanket-lined chair, eyes bright as she sang softly along to an old song only she seemed to remember.

The air smelled like roasted marshmallows, woodsmoke, and happiness.

I never thought this would be enough.

No champagne bars, no skyline views, no fancy brunches with overpriced mimosas.

And yet…

I sank further into Logan’s lap, his arms wrapped around me like bands of steel, warm and grounding. He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, his stubble brushing against my scalp.

“You cold?” he murmured.

“No,” I whispered. “Not even a little.”

He was my heat source, my safe place, the man who’d fought for me without hesitation.

I looked up at him, firelight dancing across the sharp cut of his jaw, those stormy eyes watching the flames like they could tell the future.

“I love you,” I said.

His gaze snapped down to mine, and everything stilled.

The guitar stopped. Scout thumped his tail once in the grass. Even the wind held its breath.

“I didn’t mean to blurt it,” I said quickly, nerves flaring. “It’s just true.”

He stared at me for a second longer—then stood in one smooth motion, lifting me with him. I squeaked, arms around his neck, heart racing.

“Logan?”

He didn’t answer.

He just walked—through the trees and across the yard, into the old barn behind the cabin. The scent of hay and earth and summer heat hit me like a memory. He set me down on a thick blanket beside a stack of bales and cupped my face like I was something precious.

“I love you too,” he said, voice low, rough. “You think I don’t? I’ve been loving you since you first glared at me over your grandma’s picket fence.”

He kissed me hard, no hesitation now. Just fire and truth.

My hands tangled in his shirt, pulling him closer, until he laid me back on the blanket, his body pressed to mine.

The heat between us built fast—his mouth trailing kisses down my neck, across my collarbone, every touch reverent but hungry.

I sighed his name when his hand found the hem of my shirt and slipped underneath.

He whispered things I’ll never forget—how I felt like home, how nothing in this world could compare. And when he finally sank into me, slow and deep, everything else faded away. There were no rival clubs. No health scares. No cities or exes or what-ifs.

Just Logan and me, tangled up in moonlight and hay and love so real it nearly undid me.

When we lay there afterward, his chest against my back, our legs tangled like roots, I whispered, “This is all I’ve ever wanted. You. This. Us.”

He pressed a kiss to my shoulder. “Then let’s make sure we never lose it.”

And in the dark, with the scent of earth and pine wrapping around us, I believed him.