I believe her. Even though she wears another man's ring—it's missing now, but the shadow of it remains, burned into her skin like a brand on a bull.
Even though she built a life without me. In this moment, with my cock buried inside her and her body trembling beneath mine, she'smine.
This wasteland keeps their secret, dark and grim.
When I feel her tightening around me again, I let go. Let the heat and pressure build until there's nothing left but release. I come inside her with a groan that starts somewhere in my chest, emptying myself into the only woman who's ever seen past the ink, and the scars, and the rage.
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.
