Page 42 of Iron and Ivory

Because right now, they're not.

All I care about is her.

"I hope you’re hungry."

"Are you gonna cook for me?" she sasses. "Because that would be beautiful."

I just laugh and open the door, wavin' her in with my hand.

No, I'm not cookin' for her. That would not be beautiful, it would be a disaster. But I dropped food off here earlier. Because Savannah Ashby and I are gonna have ourselves a fuckin' date.

For the first time in our lives we are not gonna make love in an old silo or in a dirty, smelly room above an outlaw biker clubhouse, or in a dilapidated hunting blind, or on the floor of a sandstone canyon.

Not that I would take back any of those experiences, but we gotta get past that stage.

And this is how I'm gonna do it.

This trailer is now ours and even if we don't live here, I want her to feel at home.

Savannah steps inside and I watch her take it in—the way her eyes move slow and deliberate across the room, the way she does that thing where she doesn't react right away, just catalogs everything.

Her gaze lands on the counter and stays there.

Seven bags of Chinese food, lined up like they're waitin' for inspection. I don't know what she likes so I got one of everything.

On the coffee table is a movie. I set it out deliberate, leanin' against the edge so she can't miss it. Big Trouble in Little China. It felt like it went with the food—felt like the kinda thing you pair together without overthinking it.

Chinese food and Kurt Russell bein' confidently wrong about everything for two hours. Man spends the whole film thinkin' he's the hero when he's actually the sidekick, and the thing is, he never figures it out. Just keeps on goin', loud and certain, like certainty is the same thing as bein' right.

I respect that in a fictional man.

Real life version of that guy gets somebody killed, but on screen? Fuckin' perfect.

Then there's the tub of popcorn sittin' on the counter next to the bags, and that one was a mission all its own. Had to pick it up from the dollar theater in Terry before I ever got to the food, which means I was haulin' that thing back on the bike inside a garbage bag, and I'm not gonna pretend that looked anything other than what it was—a man on a motorcycle with a trash bag full of popcorn flappin' in the wind at sixty miles an hour, butter smell soakin' into the plastic, which is now soakin' into the popcorn, which is now smellin' like somethin' you'd find at the bottom of a gas station dumpster.

Not ideal. It's the thought that counts, I tell myself, which is somethin' people say when the execution went sideways but the intention held.

It counts. It's gotta count.

I also got Milk Duds. M&M's. Mike and Ike's—the whole box, not one of those sad little movie packs. I got 'em at the checkout because I didn't know which one she'd want, and I still don't know, and that's fine. She can have all of 'em. She can have whatever the hell she wants tonight.

There are not one, not two, but three candles lit on the coffee table, all of 'em smellin' like lavender, which is somethin' I had to ask the woman at the dollar store about because I didn't know what I was lookin' for, just knew it was supposed to smell soft and not like me.

I even put a fuckin' blanket on the couch.

Savannah looks at all of it—the candles burning low, the blanket folded over the couch arm, the trash bag of popcorn still sweating butter grease on the kitchen counter—and lets out this long, slow, theatrical sigh that comes all the way up from her chest. The kind of sigh that's hiding a smile underneath it.

"Legion Kane," she says, dragging my full name out like she's reading it off a tombstone. "You really know how to treat a girl."

I laugh and kick the door shut behind me with the heel of my boot. "I do, don't I."

"Is this movie night? Is that what this is?"

I check the scene real quick, not sure if I got it wrong and this is a real question, or if it's just rhetorical banter. "Does it look like movie night?"

She snickers. "I'm not sure. I've never had a movie night."

"What?" My disbelief is real. "Is there no movie theater hidden in that fuckin' log mansion of yours? I figured you'd have the popcorn machine and everything. Maybe a legit Slurpee station like they got at 7-Eleven."