4. Chapter 4 - Savannah #2
I wandered and wandered, and I wasn't afraid of getting lost because every horse girl worth her boots knows that when a pony leaves the herd, they carry a constant, bone-deep itch to go home.
The barn is always north on their compass.
You cannot lose yourself on a pony's back, not really—they will always take you home, whether you ask them to or not, and so I was entirely, purely, catastrophically carefree that day.
Carefree in a way I don't think I've been since. Not once. Not in all the years that followed with their cameras and their follower counts and their carefully curated proof-of-living—none of it has ever touched what that afternoon felt like.
Just me and Bucky and 47,000 acres of nobody watchin'.
I'd found the silo by accident the way you find all the things that matter most, which is to say I wasn't lookin' for it.
I'd ended up in the loft somehow, the way a child does, climbin' because the ladder was there and I was twelve years old and the view from the top of anything is always worth the effort.
I was sittin' up in the dust and the gold light, feet hangin' over the edge, and I was singin'.
Ave Maria. The whole thing, slow and sure, the way Sister Catalina had taught us at chapel, because the acoustics in here do something holy to a voice—they hold it, round it out, give it back to you a little better than you offered it.
And then this beautiful blond boy walked through the door like something the song had summoned. Like Ave Maria was a kind of prayer and the silo had answered it.
I didn't stop singin'. Just kept goin'. Because it felt like the music had called him here, and to stop would be to break whatever spell had opened that door.
A rumble of a motorcycle cuts through the silence. Low, but thundering, and unmistakably sexy.
My heart stops. Just skips a whole beat.
He came.
Doesn't he always, Savannah?
Yes. He does.
But I will never take it for granted.
The rumble gets louder, closer. And my whole body breaks out in chills.
He still does this to me.
He still lights me up like the sun.
I don't know what special thing I did in some past life to deserve a love like this, but I've got it. And it's such a precious thing.
The engine stops, he knows I'm here. Cassia is nickering at him like Legion's her long lost friend.
He says something to her, and this touches me in such an honest way, tears well up in my eyes.
And then, there he is. Standing in the cut-out doorway. A shadow and nothin' else. I'm sitting in the dark like a creep.
He says, "You look pretty."
I laugh a little and stand up. "It's darker than midnight in here, Legion. You can barely even see me."
He approaches, then his hands are on my face. His mouth pressing against my mouth, and he's whisperin' to me, "I don't need to see you. You're always pretty."
And then we're kissing.
His mouth is warm and tastes like cigarettes and something else underneath—something that's just him, something I have never been able to name and have stopped trying to.
His hands are still on my face. Both of them. Big and rough and holding me like I'm something he's been thinking about all day, which I know he has because he always has, the same way I've been thinking about him.
The kiss goes slow at first. Almost careful.
And then it doesn't.
His fingers slide into my hair and takes the kiss deeper, and I make a sound I'm not embarrassed about because there's nobody here but him and the silo and the stars and this has always been the one place where the sounds I make are entirely my own.
I get my hands inside his jacket. His leather jacket, the Badlands cut, worn and heavy and warm from the ride.
I curl my fingers into the front of it and pull him closer like I'm afraid he'll change his mind, which is a fear I cannot seem to reason myself out of no matter how many times he shows up.
He makes a low sound against my mouth.
"You're cold," he says.
"I'm not."
"Your hands are cold."
"Then warm them up."
He does. He pulls back just enough to take both my hands in his and press them flat against his chest, through his t-shirt, and I can feel his heartbeat. Fast. Not slow and steady like he always pretends he is. Fast, like mine.
That, right there, is worth everything.
He drops his forehead against mine and we just breathe for a second. His thumbs are moving in slow circles on the backs of my hands.
"You came," I say. I didn't mean to say it out loud.
"I always come."
"I know." My voice comes out quieter than I intended. "I know you do."
He tilts my chin up and kisses me again, softer this time but no less certain, and his hands move from mine to my waist, sliding under the hem of my hoodie to find the thin cotton of my t-shirt underneath, and the warmth of his palms against my ribs makes me exhale like I've been holding my breath since he rode away.
Maybe I have been.
He walks me back two steps until my back finds the silo wall. The metal is cold even through my jacket, even through every layer I'm wearing, but his body against mine is not cold and that's the only temperature that matters.
He ducks his head and drags his mouth down my jaw, to my throat, and I tip my head back and let him.
"Legion—"
"Mm."
That's all he says. Just that. And it lands in my chest like a whole sentence.
His hands are moving slow, deliberate, like he's taking inventory. Like he has all the time in the world and intends to use it. Up my sides, over the hoodie, back down to my hips. He grips them. Pulls me in.
I feel him, hard against me through both our jeans, and I press into it because I have no shame about this and never have and never will.
He groans quietly against my neck.
"I missed you," I tell him. My hands are fisted in the front of his jacket again. "I missed you every single day."
He lifts his head. Looks at me. In the low string-light dark of this place I can just barely make out his face—jaw tight, eyes searching mine with that particular intensity that he aims at no one else, that I would recognize in complete darkness, that I think I would recognize from another life.
He doesn't say it back.
But he kisses me like he means it. Like the words are in there somewhere and he's trying to push them out through his mouth and into mine, and I receive them, every single one.
His hands slide up under my jacket, up my back, hauling me against him, and I go.
I always go.
There is no version of this where I don't go.