Page 27 of Iron and Ivory

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.

Like a song you used to love that now just makes you tired.

What the hell is he doing here?

I want to resist the urge to go downstairs and confront him—I want to stay up here in the quiet of my sanctuary and let Cash deal with it, let the ranch deal with it, let the whole enormous and implacable machinery of Ashby land absorb Marcus White Jr. the way it absorbs everything else that doesn't belong here—but there is really no chance of that happening and I know it.

I'm up and out of bed before the thought finishes itself, draggin' last night's jeans up my legs and still pullin' the hoodie down over my head when I step out into the hallway that overlooks the foyer, one hand catching the railing and the other still fighting with a sleeve.

Marcus is not inside the house. He's on the porch, like he means to force his way in here, arguing with Cash, and to my surprise—Wyatt too.

He's here to intimidate me. That's what he does when the world stops arranging itself around him—he coerces it back into order.

He's left several messages over the last week. Threats dressed up in the careful language of a man who majored in legalese and knows exactly which words leave no fingerprints.

My Instagram confession sent him into a spiral that reached low orbit. Not even his father's handlers can talk him down from this rage now.

But there's nothing he can do about it.

What's done is done, and we are over.