Page 26 of Rust and Bloom

She sees through all of it—that loyalty and money aren't the same thing, that there's a difference between doin' what you have to do and sellin' your soul for profit.

Her fingers are still against my lips, soft, and warm, and she's starin' into my eyes. "I trust you," Savannah whispers. "I've always trusted you. So tonight, we are gonna have burgers with our siblings and our new niece. And we're not gonna think about it. I won't mention comin' home at all. I promise."

I slide my fingers around her wrist, gentle but deliberate, and draw her hand away from my mouth. Holdin' it suspended between us for just a heartbeat, her pulse flutterin' under my thumb.

Then I lean in and kiss her. Long and slow and deep, like I'm tryin' to memorize the taste of her trust, the way her breath catches when our mouths meet.

Her lips are soft and familiar, and when she kisses me back, there's somethin' desperate in it—like she's pourin' all the words we can't say into this one moment.

The world narrows down to just this… the warmth of her mouth against mine, the way she melts into me, the promise that tonight we get to pretend we're just two people who love each other instead of two souls caught in the crossfire of everybody else's war.

When we pull apart I stare at her for a moment. Letting this whole place surround me like a cloak. The river, the grass, the aspens all golden, shudderin' in the light wind. The mountains, so close. All tall and imposin'.

I suddenly realize everything has turned a corner.

I'm not the biker anymore.

In fact, I'm not sure that guy was ever me. That version of Legion—the one who lived for the roar of engines and the weight of a cut on his shoulders—feels like someone I was pretendin' to be. Like I was wearin' somebody else's skin, tryin' to fit into a story that was never mine to begin with.

And it occurs to me now that I was wrong. Back down in the vault when Savannah showed me the book, when I saw all those photographs Eleanor had taken of me over the years, I thought… If Eleanor were here, she'd have kept me out of prison. Like maybe she could've pulled strings, made calls, used that Ashby influence to make my problems disappear.

But I don't think that's true anymore.

I think three years in prison—away from Badlands and everything it was caught up in, away from the noise and the violence and the constant need to prove I belonged—was exactly what I needed.

You can't ever tell a man he shouldn't be somethin'.

Not when it's been a dream his whole grown-up life. Not when he's built his entire identity around becomin' that thing, earnin' his place in that world.

Ya just gotta let him do it.

Let him chase it down every dark road until he finds out for himself whether it's salvation or destruction waitin' at the end.

I needed to figure this all out myself.

Eleanor, prison, Savannah—it gave me the time to do that. To sit with the quiet and really look at the man I'd become, the man I was becomin'. To understand that maybe the war I'd been fightin' wasn't the one I thought it was.

I didn't take thirteen years to patch in to Badlands for no reason.

It took that long because this whole time, somewhere deep down, the angels were winnin'.

The part of me that knew better, that wanted somethin' different, somethin' clean—it never stopped fightin'.

Even when I couldn't hear it, the call was there.

Like a frequency only part of me could pick up, a signal from some distant station that never went off the air.

The angels were always winnin’, I think.

I just got real good at pretendin' the demons had more claim.

But now, the trumpets are loud, the seals have been broken, and the plagues have been released.

The end always begins with Revelation.

And I am here for it.

CHAPTER 8