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I literally guffaw. The sound comes out of me before I can stop it, loud and real and embarrassin', and I look Colt in the eye for maybe the first time today. "Are you tellin' me that Wyatt plays the banjo?"

Colt finds this just as funny as I do. He nods, and there's somethin' almost warm in it, which sits wrong on him, like a clean shirt on a man who works in the mud. "As ridiculous as it sounds, he's very fuckin' good at it. Went to all kinds of regional contests and fairs as a kid. Won some, too."

I'm tryin' to square that image with the Wyatt Ashby I know. The one with the flask, and the permanent sunburn, and the two broken noses. "What happened to him? I have never once seen that moron do anything but drugs."

Colt points at me. "Answered your own question."

"I can't imagine Eleanor wasn't pissed off about that."

For a moment, Colt just stares at me. Not the kinda stare that's lookin' for a fight. The kinda stare that's sortin' through a box of old receipts, tryin' to figure out what's worth keepin'.

Unlike Cash, who flat-out asked me that one time if I was sleepin' with his mother, Colt doesn't get defensive.

He says, "She liked you." Simple and plain like that. No spin on it.

"I liked her too." And I mean it, which is the strange part. "I can't say I understood her. I mean, I do get the photographs and stuff. I get that part of it. She wanted to take pictures of me."

I stop there, because there's a whole room inside that sentence I'm not openin' the door to—a locked room, underground, built into bedrock. I'm not walkin' in there with Colt Ashby.

"It's just… I don't get why she was so against me and Savannah bein' together."

"Did she hate the idea?" Colt asks.

"What do you mean? Of course she did. She hated the idea so much she put it in the fuckin' will."

Colt squints at me. Not a suspicious squint. More like a man starin' into the sun, tryin' to read something written too small. "Hmmm."

"Hmm, what?"

"She didn't put Don't marry Legion Kane in that will. She simply insisted Savannah marry respectable. I don't think that's unreasonable."

And there it is. That word. "And I'm not respectable. So there you go."

"But there's nothin' stopping you from bein' respectable."

I nearly laugh. Not the kind that means something's funny—the kind that means the world is doin' that thing it does where it stacks absurdity on top of absurdity and calls it logic.

This is the second genuinely ridiculous thing I've heard inside three minutes. "Well, I don't know what your definition of respectable is, Colt, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't come with a blacked-out Harley, a brand burned over your heart for a club that betrayed you, and a file cabinet at the sheriff's office with your name on it."

"Is that what you are, then? Just an outlaw biker?"

"Yeah, Colt. That's what I am."

He looks at me like that's the saddest thing he's ever heard. Like he's got a solution he's just waitin' to hand over. I don't want his solution. I don't want his pity dressed up as reason. I don't want a damn thing from Colt Ashby except his silence.

"Well, that sounds like a choice, Legion."

And it is. It's every choice I ever made, stackin' up one on top of the other—three years in Whitefall, the brand burned over my heart, the cut on my back, the file at the sheriff's office. Every single one of 'em a choice. Mine. I own 'em the same way the ground owns what's buried in it.

But if Colt Ashby thinks any piece of this conversation is his to own, he is sadly, tragically, catastrophically mistaken.

"I think you should probably stop talkin' now."

He huffs out a breath. Half a laugh, maybe. The kind of sound a man makes when he thinks he's bein' patient and wants you to fuckin' notice.

I notice. And I don't care. I've heard that sound in church rooms and prison blocks and I know exactly what it means—it means he thinks he's winnin' something.

He's not.