Page 39 of Chains and Vows

"You do live here," she declares. "It's settled."

I smile at my angel. "Is it?"

"Yes."

I kiss her, takin' her face in my hands, thumbs pressed against her jaw, and I whisper it into her mouth like a prayer I don't deserve to speak. "Then that's that, I guess. Settled."

And I mean it. Every word of it. I mean it the way you mean the things you only say once, in the dark, when nobody's keepin' score.

But the cold don't care about any of that. Cold don't care about settled or unsettled, doesn't care what you just promised or what you just found. It just comes. Creeps in under the covers, wraps itself around your ankles, reminds you that you're still a body in Montana in October and the ground don't give a damn about your feelings.

I pull back from the kiss and I feel the air hit my face. Sharp. Real. "We should go inside," I tell her. "It's gonna get down near freezin' tonight, and I will not have my woman sleepin' in the freezin' cold."

She doesn't argue. Smart girl.

When I throw the covers off us it hits all at once—the kind of cold that shivers you from the outside in—and we both make the kind of noise you make when you weren't prepared for it, which you never are, no matter how many times Montana winters remind you of their cruelty.

We hustle. We're laughin' a little, cursin' a little, grabbin' at clothes in the dark, and it feels like somethin'. Feels like somethin' good. Feels like the kind of ordinary that people like me aren't supposed to get.

Then we hold hands back to the house.

We shower. And I don't think about what it means, her house, and her water, and her soap that smells like nothin' I've ever owned. I just stand there, hot water runnin' down the ink on my back, and let it be what it is.

And we fuck again, because of course we do, because that's who we are, and it is what it is, and I'm not gonna pretend I'm sorry about it.

And then we slip between a new set of sheets—clean ones, cool ones, the kind of sheets that have no history, no weight, no blood or grief or three years of absence stitched into them.

And this time, we sleep.

I wake to a now familiar sound.

Horses outside wakin' before dawn, nickerin' soft at first—then with more urgency—to be fed. That sound is ancient. Older than this ranch, older than the Ashby name stamped on every fence post and water gate within forty-seven thousand acres of Montana.

Engines turn over after that. Trucks first, then the UTVs, then the low diesel groan of skid steers and tractors comin' alive out in the yard. One after another, like a congregation findin' its voice. The kind of sound that means something is already in motion and you're either part of it or you're in the way.

Then the voices. Hands, mostly. Some of 'em quiet—workin' men don't waste words before sunup—and some of 'em loud enough to cut right through the mansion walls like those walls aren't made of log and stone and old money. Barkin' things in a business way. The language of people who've got a job and know exactly what it is.

A day on the Ashby ranch begins.

I slip out of bed.

Savannah reaches for me—her hand findin' my wrist in the dark, warm and barely awake, like even her sleep knows when I'm movin' away from her.

"No," she says. But it comes out lazy. Half-swallowed. More breath than word.

I stand there a second, her fingers still wrapped around my wrist, and I feel that. I let myself feel it.

"Club business," I whisper back. I set her hand down on the sheet—gentle, like puttin' somethin' down you don't wanna break. "I'll be back for dinner. Don't worry."

She moans a little as I dress—not a real sound, just the sound of someone bein' pulled back under—and before I've even got my boots on she's gone again.

I stand there in the dark for a second, watchin' her breathe, one boot in my hand. Just watchin'.

I put my boot on and go.

The grandfather clock in the foyer says five-thirty when I walk past it, and I stop just long enough to shrug my cut on over my shoulders, feel the weight of it settle, and then I open the front door of the mansion and step out into what's already a workin' world.

The cold hits me clean in the face and I let it.