Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 38333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 192(@200wpm)___ 153(@250wpm)___ 128(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 192(@200wpm)___ 153(@250wpm)___ 128(@300wpm)
I can't blame him for escaping. I just wish he'd taken me with him.
But the silence he left behind is deafening. There's no one to catch my eye when Cash says something particularly pompous. No one to kick me under the table. No one watching my back.
I feel his absence like a phantom limb. An ache where something vital used to be.
And then, the new emptiness—the absence that Mercy left behind. I never expected to miss a nine-year-old girl I barely knew three months ago. But I do. I miss her questions about everything—why the chandelier has exactly twelve crystals, why we have three different kinds of forks, why the horses get turned out twice a day.
She brought something to the house that hasn't been here in decades.
Innocence.
And sisterhood, in a way. Growing up with three brothers never gave me that softness. The boys were all competition, and protection, and testosterone. But Mercy was different. She made the ranch feel less like a museum exhibit and more like a home.
Less like a cage.
Now she's at Rimrock, and the house echoes with her absence. I find myself listening for her footsteps on the stairs, expecting to see her burst into a room asking about dinosaur bones, or horse anatomy, or whatever new obsession she'd developed that day.
And not even Puddles can make up for it. Though the puppy misses her dearly, too.
Surprisingly, it’s Cash that Puddles looks to for attention now. Not me. And he allows it. Hell, he’s embraced it. Says the dog has the breeding to be a proper retriever and is planning on taking him duck hunting this fall.
So… again. As always… it’s just me and my horse against the world. Even more so now. No Mama, no Colt.
No Legion.
Just empty spaces where people used to be.
My phone lights up with a notification.
I tap it open immediately, grateful for the distraction. Rimrock Academy is trying out a new AI system this year that sends thirty-second "magic moment" clips each morning—snapshots from the previous day. They call it "parent portal glimpses."
I'm not her parent, but I'm on the approved list.
Small miracles in a time of self-destruction.
I watch as Mercy walks between classes, her uniform crisp, her backpack bouncing slightly. The camera catches her in the library, bent over a book with intense concentration. Then talking with Eliza, her assigned "sister"—a fifth-grader who started as a school requirement but has become something real. They're laughing about something, heads bent together over a shared secret.
I see the changes in her already, subtle but unmistakable. Her shoulders aren't as tense. She smiles easier now. There's a confidence in her stride that wasn't there before. She's becoming a different child from the one I knew at the old trailer—the one who was taught to shoot and 'check sixes' by a gang of outlaw bikers.
A Cinderella story, if Cinderella had a tattooed brother and a messed-up family history.
I watch the video twice more, happiness and longing tangling in my chest. Would Mercy hate it if I stopped by to say hi? It's not like I have a job or anything important to do. I manage the Ashby social accounts. I post pictures and videos of perfect moments that never actually happened. That's my sole purpose in life when the Kanes aren't in it.
I don't want to bug her or make her feel 'watched'. That would be the worst. But I miss her. And not just because of the way she brightened the ranch up, but because she's my connection to Legion.
Mercy and I talk every night—we catch up every evening, at least until she replaces me with a gang of giggling schoolgirls. It should be enough, but it's not. Last night I asked her to tell Legion I said "Hi."
Just that. Just "Hi."
But between Legion and me, it's code. It means: I'll be there tonight. I'll wait thirty minutes at the silo. If you show up, we can fuck.
This is how it's always been between us. Little messages that appear out of nowhere. Subtle signals that mean I'm thinking of you. I want to see you. Come see me tonight.
I wonder if he'll show. I wonder if he's still angry.
Not gonna lie, the hate fucking is amazing.
The first time, anyway.
But I don’t want to hate-fuck him forever.
I want to love that man so hard. I want to be his everything.
Thirty minutes at midnight will never be enough time to say everything I need to say with my body, since words always fail us.
"You're quiet this morning," Cash says suddenly, watching me too carefully over the rim of his coffee cup.
I don't answer him. Just sip my own coffee and stare at the window, where Montana stretches out forever, vast and empty and full of places to hide.
Cash sets down his cup with that practiced precision he does everything with. The gesture itself is a performance—the way his pinky lifts slightly, the way he places it exactly in the center of the saucer. Everything Cash does is calculated, even when no one's watching.