Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
I step down the crumbling bank, boots sliding in loose dirt. The cottonwoods stand like sentinels on both sides, their leaves whispering secrets above me. They've been here longer than any Ashby, longer than any Kane. Their roots drink deep from water that's still there, hidden under the baked clay and stones.
This place was everything once. Territory line. Playground. Baptism pool—figuratively, of course.
I kick at a smooth river stone, watch it skitter across the cracked earth. Used to skip these across rushing water, teaching Mercy how to count the bounces. Five was our record. Five perfect skips before the current took it.
Cash's words crawl through my head like wasps looking for somewhere soft to sting. "She's changed. You're just a phase she outgrew." His face when he said it—half-smirk, half-warning. Like he was doin’ me a favor by cutting me loose before I embarrassed myself.
The staged photograph burns behind my eyes. Savannah with her perfect smile, leaning into that man with his politician's jawline and manicured hands.
I wonder if he knows how she tastes after swimming in this riverbed. If he's ever seen her with mud up to her knees and her hair wild in the wind. If he knows she can sing "Ave Maria" so sweet it makes your chest ache.
I doubt it. Men like him don't love women—they acquire them.
The engagement party is nothing but a moment to be curated.
But I get it. When Eleanor died, she left everything to Savannah. Out of guilt, maybe. For takin’ all those pictures and erasing any hope of Savannah ever having a private life. But it came with conditions.
“It says I have to marry respectable.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I understood what it meant, I just wanted to hear her say it.
“It means I can’t marry you, Legion. Not if I want the Estate to exist.”
I can’t marry you, Legion.
As if this was something we had discussed.
It wasn’t. We never dated. We fucked. A lot, some years. A lot less, some others.
Never, not for a single fuckin’ second, did I ever think I would marry Savannah Ashby.
So… I guess that’s where Marcus Jr whatever comes in.
Respectable.
Engagement party.
Everyone in Drybone will be there, dressed in their Sunday best, drinking champagne they can't afford, watching the Ashby princess fulfill the requirements in Eleanor's will. Marry rich. Marry respectable. Marry anyone but the trash from across the dry riverbed.
Savannah Ashby’s life has been choreographed from start to finish, courtesy of Eleanor. And Eleanor knew what I meant to Savannah. How much Savannah meant to me.
And still, she spelled it out.
She spelled it out.
What the actual fuck.
I’m not even sure I can explain what it feels like when a woman you kinda, sorta, liked and trusted, threatens her daughter with generational poverty if she so much as thinks about marrying my biker ass.
Engagement party.
What a fuckin’ joke.
I reach the middle of the riverbed and stop, looking up at the blue slice of sky between cottonwood branches. On my right, twenty acres of Kane scrubland with a rusted trailer sinking into dust. On my left, the endless green pastures of the Ashby Ranch, where sprinklers run even in drought years, courtesy of artesian wells.
Water rights are like magic around here.
So. I guess Savannah made her choice. Got the ring to prove it.
Never mind that I know her better than I know the ink on my skin. That I've tasted the salt on her cheeks when she cries. That I've heard confessions she'd never tell a priest. That I've held her while she shook with rage at her mother's cameras, and fucked her softly under the starlight.
Never mind all that, Legion.
She’s moved on…
Cash can warn me all he wants. That Marcus guy can buy her diamonds big as her knuckles.
But I'm willing to bet my last twenty-seven dollars that if I show up at that engagement party, Savannah won't turn me away. The girl who met me in an abandoned grain silo for six years is still in there somewhere, behind the perfect smile and designer dress.
And I'm not quite ready to give her up.
Because if there's one thing I've learned while inside, it’s this: You get one shot in this life.
And that one shot translates to one precious, fleeting fucking moment when everything hangs in the balance—when the scales could tip either way and your whole future stretches out before you like a highway with two very different destinations.
One shot.
Don’t miss.
Because if you miss it, if you hesitate for even a heartbeat too long, that road disappears forever, leaving nothing but dust and regret where the possibility once lived.
One shot.
I don't miss.
CHAPTER 3
The Kane Family Legacy is twenty acres of shitty scrubland and a trailer that's more rust than metal.
Home sweet fucking home.
And when I crest the hill and it comes in to view, it doesn’t welcome me back, just reminds me of why I left. The aluminum siding's peelin’ off in strips, like it’s a snake instead of a trailer. Shedding its own skin. The front steps sag worse than before, wooden boards warped from decades of weather. Weeds as tall as my knees crowd the walkway, and a tumbleweed has wedged itself between the propane tank and what’s left of the skirting. The mailbox tilts sideways, mouth hanging open like it gave up years ago. Nothing but spiders living there now.