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Abso-fucking-lutely gone.

It hits. I know it hits 'cause I feel it too.

"Listen," I say. Quieter now. "I'm not interested in bein' your enemy, Colt. I'm not standin' here lookin' for a war with you. I'm not gonna spend whatever time I got left on this earth as a threat hangin' over my sister's happiness or whatever the fuck the two of you are buildin' out here."

I let that land too. Let him hear that I mean it.

"But you deserve this, OK? You deserve to stand here and feel the weight of what you did. Feel the shame of it, all the way down. Because it belongs to you. You earned it, same as I've earned every hard thing that's ever been handed to me."

I shake my head, just once.

"You don't get to turn it back on me. It doesn't work like that. Not with me. I don't sparkle. I know I don't sparkle. I got my demons, and they aren't quiet, or clean. But I know exactly what I am."

I look him straight in the eye, and I keep my voice level, 'cause the level voice is the one that sticks.

"My problem with you, Colt—my only problem, when you strip it all the way down—is that you think you're one of the good guys. You believe it. That's the part that makes you dangerous. 'Cause a man who knows he's rotten at least knows where the rot is. You don't. You're still lookin' at me like I’m the problem here. Be honest, at least. That's all I'm askin'. Be fuckin' honest."

"Fine," he says.

And it comes out quicker than I expected.

"Fine. It was dirty." He swallows. "I admit it. It's kept me up at night. I feel the shame, I do."

I don't say anything. But a tiny bit of satisfaction finally—finally—fuckin' burbles up from the pits of the hell I've been in.

"But I'm mad too," he says. "Because I do love her. And my daughter—I love that baby. I would kill for that baby. Her and Destiny both. So. If you really are takin' care of shit like you say you are, then… count me in. I'll do whatever I can. Not to make it up to you. I want to make that clear. To make it up to me."

We lock eyes. Hold the moment. I let it stretch longer than it needs to, not because I'm enjoyin' it but because it needs weight behind it. It needs to mean somethin' that neither one of us can walk back from.

Then I nod. "OK."

"OK?" He blinks. "That's all you're gonna say?"

"That's it, Colt. It's over."

And I mean it. Not forgiven, not forgotten, and not buried clean—just over the way a debt gets written off. Doesn't mean it never happened. Means it stops costin' you somethin' every single day just to hold onto it.

I pull myself up out of the cold river and start walkin' back toward the house.

Because hatin' someone like Colt Ashby is work. It takes real effort. It takes a piece of you every mornin' when you wake up, and it takes a piece of you every night when you lay down, and after a while it starts to cost more than the man is worth.

And he just isn't worth it.

CHAPTER 12

Colt is dumping a bag of ice into a cooler in front of the shop building when Destiny pulls up to the house. There's a whole economy of information available to a woman who has spent her life bein' photographed. You learn to read a scene the way other people read text, every gesture a caption, every posture a paragraph.

Two things tell me all I need to know about how fishing went.

First, Legion is nowhere to be found. That absence alone is its own kind of presence.

And second, I read Colt's lips as he looks up from his work—ice bag braced against his chest, cooler lid propped open with one boot—and they say, Thank God. Fuckin' finally.

Destiny reads them too, because she lets out a slow breath and says, "That right there is a man who wanted to leave an hour ago."

"Oh, I recognize that look," I say. "Trust me." I've been seein' that look on Colt's face since we were children. "At least he doesn't have a black eye."

Destiny snorts. "On the bright side," she says, “we should count that as a win."