Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
He reaches up with gentle fingers and swipes the hair away from my eyes. "I want to. I really do. But I don't know what's happenin'. The FBI never came. I really thought they'd take us down by now. The only reason I was able to get away was because everyone back at the clubhouse is so fuckin' wound up, there's no way to hold it together until somethin' gives."
I smile despite not gettin' what I want. "I'm the somethin' that gives?"
His return smile is big and real. "You break everything in me. In the best way possible. And I swear it, Savannah, hundred percent I would go home with you right now if I thought it was safe. I just don't think it is."
"Do you think they're coming?"
He nods, slowly. "There's no way they're not. I don't know why they're takin' so long. I want it to be a good sign. Like… maybe we got away with it. But it's not. There's somethin' wrong here."
"You make it sound inevitable."
He strokes my cheek with the back of his knuckle. "What's that?"
"The end."
"Well…" He huffs a laugh. "Darlin', I hate to break it to ya, but the end is most certainly inevitable." His thumb traces the line of my cheekbone like he's memorizing it, like he's already composin' the memory. "But I'll make ya a promise right now, Savannah Rose Ashby." The full name. All three parts. Never a good sign. "I will get through this. And when I do, I'll come back."
Hmm. I don't like that.
I don't like it even a little bit, and the smile I give him is the kind I've worn in photographs since I was four years old—composed, radiant, and entirely hollow.
Because what he wants me to think he's sayin' and what he's actually sayin' are two profoundly different things. And I have spent enough years studyin' the distance between a man's words and his meaning to know exactly where Legion Kane is standin' right now.
He wants me to believe he can fix this. He wants me to hear I'll come back like it's a guarantee, like it's a deed to somethin' real. And I want that too.
But the other side of I'll come back isn't a prison sentence this time, and it isn't happily-ever-after either. It isn't even the gray uncertain middle where hope still has a foothold.
That is what he means.
He's goin' down, and he knows it, and he's not even tryin' hard to pretend otherwise.
His thumb is still on my cheekbone and his eyes are soft and careful and that is how I know.
Legion Kane does not do careful unless something is already breakin'.
But I want him to think I believe him. I want to give him that much, at least—the grace of a woman who takes a man at his word even when her whole body knows better.
It's a small mercy, and I am capable of small mercies.
Especially for him.
He needs it.
So I place my hand over his, my palm covering his knuckles where they rest against my face, and I let the warmth of that be enough. The words come out easy, the way only the truest things do, the ones you've been holdin' so long they've worn smooth. "I'll be here when it's over."
I don't know if that's a promise or a prayer. I say it anyway.
Then I do what I always do when I'm disappointed—when the ground gives just slightly under one boot and I am expected to keep walkin'. I straighten my back. I pull myself together the way my mother taught me, the way years of ridin' in front of judges taught me, the way four-point-two million strangers and a lifetime of bein' watched has perfected into something that barely even costs me anything anymore.
This time it involves findin' my pants and stepping back into them one leg at a time on a silo floor, which is a new variation on the ritual.
But the ritual itself? Nope. That part's familiar. That part I could do in the dark.
I already am.
And that's the signal. That's always been the signal. When the sex is over and the clothes are back on straight, we kiss goodbye with nothin' more between us than a look.
I watch him leave from Cassia's back.
The red taillight disappears over a ridge. Reappears five seconds later to climb another one.
And then, that's it.
I can still hear him—a low rumble in the distance.
But he's gone.
The next morning I wake to the sound of voices outside my window, low and clipped, and even before I'm fully conscious I know who it is.
Marcus.
I lie still for a moment, starin' up at the ceiling, listenin' to the cadence of him. And I think about how strange it is that a voice can be so familiar and feel so foreign at the same time.