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)
A place where damnation and light begin.
I don't pull out right away. Just collapse on top of her, careful to keep most of my weight on my forearms. Her skin is slick with sweat, her heart hammering against her ribs. I press my lips to the back of her neck, tasting salt.
"I'm gonna ruin you," I whisper, and it's not a threat.
It's a warning. A promise. A confession.
She reaches back, fingers finding mine, squeezing tight. "I've been waiting three years to be ruined."
I roll onto my back, pulling Savannah against me. Her skin sticks to mine, sweat cooling between us. The silo creaks and groans—metal shifting in the restless prairie wind.
Or maybe it's ghosts. Same damn thing in Montana. The dead don't rest here; they just find different ways to haunt you.
"You're quiet," she whispers, fingers tracing the new scars on my chest. Prison souvenirs. Her touch is feather-light, as if she's reading braille, trying to decipher the story written in my skin.
I don't answer. Nothing to say that doesn't taste like regrets. My words turn to dust before they reach my tongue.
This was never gonna work.
Not then. Not now. Not ever.
Has nothing to do with how my heart pounds like a war drum when she's near or how my hands still remember every curve of her body.
Has everything to do with blood, and dirt, and concrete. The walls between our worlds built higher than any prison fence I could ever climb.
She's Savannah fucking Ashby. Instagram royalty. Montana aristocracy. Woman with a future bright enough to blind.
I'm the man whose name means "many."
Many demons.
Many sins.
Many scars.
Many reasons this ends bloody.
Just another Kane marked for destruction, carrying curses instead of promises.
The fairy lights I hung earlier flicker against the metal walls, casting honey-gold shadows across her bare shoulders. Three hours of work for this moment. This beautiful lie. This last time.
Climbing rickety ladders, stringing delicate bulbs with calloused hands that have broken men's jaws. Playing at tenderness when we both know what I am.
"What are you thinking about?" she asks, voice heavy with sleep, eyelids fluttering. Always could fall asleep anywhere. In this rusted silo. In my beat-up truck. Against my shoulder while I drove her home before dawn, back when we were kids playing at rebellion, stealing moments between sunset and sunrise, thinking we were invincible.
I never sleep when she's with me. Too busy memorizing. Cataloging. Storing up for the winter that's always coming. The curve of her hip. The freckle behind her ear. The way her breath catches when I touch her just right.
It’s all ammunition against loneliness.
"You're allowed to marry him," I say, the words scraping my throat raw, tasting of surrender.
She laughs, soft and sleepy against my chest. Doesn't even open her eyes, just nuzzles closer like a cat seeking warmth. "Since when do I need your permission, Legion?"
Since always. She knows it. I know it. The dirt knows it. The ghosts in this silo know it. The scars on my knuckles spelling my sister's name know it.
We all know it.
"I mean it," I say, voice harder now. "You should marry him. White House Marcus with his clean hands and Georgetown degree."
Now she looks up, those blue eyes narrowing, sleep vanishing like mist under a harsh sun. "What are you talking about?"
I sit up, dislodging her from my chest, reaching for my jeans crumpled on the floor. My shirt. My boots. All the armor I dropped when she rode in on her hundred-thousand-dollar horse, hair wild, eyes wilder. "You need to get back before they miss you. Before someone comes looking."
"Legion—" My name on her lips still sounds like prayer, even after everything.
"They're gonna notice." I pull my shirt over my head, covering the ink, the scars, the places her fingers just touched. "The Little Ashby Princess can't disappear at her own engagement party. Not with half the state's political machine watching."
She sits up, blanket clutched to her chest like virtue she abandoned hours ago. "Don't call me that."
I don't answer. Just finish lacing my boots with quick, efficient movements. Stand up. Offer her my hand. "You need to go."
For a second, she doesn't move. Just stares at me, something breaking behind those eyes—oceans freezing over in real time. Then she takes my hand, lets me pull her to her feet, our bodies close enough that I can feel her heart hammering against mine.
She dresses silently, efficiently. No more words between us. Just the sound of fabric against skin. The rustle of her fixing her hair, erasing the evidence of my fingers tangled in golden strands.
The heartbreak isn't that she's leaving. It's that she believes me when I push her away - as if there was ever a universe where I didn't want her to stay, as if I could ever mean the words that cut between us like barbed wire.