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Legion lets out a deflated breath, then this man actually pouts. "But I wanna be there for the test."

"You will be."

"I wanna buy it, Savannah. I wanna fucking read the back of those things and pick the best one. Then get that, plus five more for good measure."

I lean up on my tiptoes and kiss his mouth. "I'll buy one of everything they have, I promise."

Colt, Destiny, and Marigold arrive right on time. On the dot, as a matter of fact, which is a habit Eleanor drilled into Colt the same way she drilled everything into all of us—with repetition and the quiet threat of her disappointment, which was somehow louder than any raised voice.

I smile when I open the door, because it is the right thing to do, and because Destiny is holdin' Marigold against her chest like something precious she isn't quite sure she deserves, and that image does something to me I don't have adequate words for just yet.

Colt shows Legion his fishing gear almost immediately, laying it out with the enthusiasm of a man who genuinely loves an audience, explaining each piece with the kind of detail that only matters to people who already care.

Legion nods along agreeably enough, standing there in that stillness of his, the one that looks like patience but is actually something closer to strategy. Every thirty seconds or so he glances back over his shoulder at me with a look that is absolutely unambiguous, a look that says, I will make you pay for this later, and I hold his gaze just long enough to let him know I consider that a promise, not a threat.

And then, as Colt steers him outside toward the storage barn to find him waders and a pole, Legion pauses at the door, turns back just far enough, and points at me. Mouths the words so slowly I couldn't possibly misread them. You owe me.

I press my lips together. Because he's right. And because I'm already lookin' forward to it.

Even Destiny catches it, and she's been pacing in front of the massive windows this whole time, rockin' Marigold in that slow, unconscious rhythm new mothers develop like a second heartbeat, her eyes tracking the glass the way a person tracks weather. She watches Legion disappear around the corner of the storage barn after Colt, and a small smile pulls at the edge of her mouth. "He don't look much like a man who wants to learn how to fly fish."

I chuckle, and it comes out softer than I mean it to, which is maybe honest. "No. Legion Kane gives not a single fuck about fly fishin'."

I don't even bother softening that, because anyone with eyes could see it, and Destiny has eyes that catch everything. "But this is how men bond, isn't it. They golf, they fish, they hunt. They stand in cold water together holdin' poles they don't care about and they say things sideways that they cannot seem to say straight, and it's got nothin' to do with the scores, or the catch, or the kill. It's just the medium. The thing their hands are busy with so their mouths can get honest."

I watch the barn door until it's clear there's nothin' left to watch. "Same way women shop, or gossip, or—" and here I pause, because I genuinely don't have the rest of that sentence.

I have never had a reason to gather with women. Not really.

I've had handlers, and photographers, and publicists.

I've had followers.

I've had an audience.

But I have not had what Destiny seems to be becoming for me right now, standin' at this window with someone else's heartbeat pressed against her chest, and I'm not entirely sure what to do with that.

Destiny lets out a little chuckle. "Well. I guess we have that in common then." And her voice is soft when she says it—softer than I expected, honestly, softer than anything I've associated with the name Kane up until very recently.

I've noticed this about her. The softness. It keeps surprising me.

"I didn't know you well before the baby, Destiny. I won't pretend otherwise, and I won't insult you by actin' like I did." I pause, because I want to be precise about this, and precision matters when you're offerin' something real to someone who's spent her whole life bein' handed things that weren't. "But even you have to admit that I was there. Right? In some form. On the edges of your life."

She shrugs, and it's a careful shrug, the kind that doesn't cost her anything. "OK. Sure. You were around."

"Well. I've noticed somethin' about you."

"Yeah?" She squints a little, just enough to let me know I might be walkin' toward a line. "What have you noticed?"

I consider how to say it. "You're… soft."

"Soft?" She laughs the word right out of her mouth like it doesn't belong there. "What does that even mean?"

"You know what it means." And I think she does. I think she knew before I said it. "It means motherhood suits you."

"Oh." A smile breaks out on her face as she gazes down at Marigold, and it's not a performed smile, not the kind you aim at a camera—it's small and private and it belongs entirely to that baby.

When she looks back up, her eyes are bright and a little watery, and I feel something shift in the room, something that doesn't have a name but has a weight to it. "I love this baby so much, Savannah, I don't even have words for it." She shakes her head, like the feeling embarrasses her, like she didn't budget for it. "I didn't expect it, to be honest. My only role model for motherhood was a depressed trailer-trash woman on welfare who took pills just so she could pretend we didn't exist."