Chapter 8
I ride home slow.
Cassia knows something's wrong. She keeps turning her head like she's checking on me, ears flicking backward to catch my mood.
I'm not crying.
Should be, maybe. But I'm too busy replaying every second of what just happened at the silo.
The way Legion touched me. Rough, yes. Desperate, absolutely.
But underneath all of it—underneath the commands and the dirty talk and the way he used my body like he was trying to prove something—there was goodbye threaded through every thrust.
I liked it.
That's not the problem.
I liked how rough he was. Liked being degraded, and claimed, and fucked like I was the only thing keeping him tethered to earth.
The problem is I don't know why.
Why tonight felt different.
Why he needed me that way right now.
Why he apologized after—called himself filthy and me clean when we both know better.
Something happened.
Something he decided not to tell me about.
And I let him fuck me instead of demanding answers.
Cassia's hooves hit the dirt in steady rhythm. Four-beat walk. Slow and unhurried because I'm in no rush to get back.
I lean forward slightly, stroking her neck.
"I'm a coward," I tell her.
She snorts. Doesn't disagree.
Because I am.
Legion was spiraling right in front of me and I chose to let him deflect with nostalgia and sex instead of pushing him to tell me the truth.
Why should he tell me anything?
What have I actually done to earn that kind of trust?
The thought settles heavy in my chest. Makes it hard to breathe.
I saved his life—but that was selfish. Pure fucking selfishness.
He was dying and I threw money at doctors because I couldn't bear to lose him. Couldn't imagine waking up in a world where Legion Kane wasn't breathing.
That wasn't generosity.
That was survival instinct.
I needed him alive the same way I need air.
And Mercy…
God, I can't even take credit there.
Cash did everything.
Cash got her away from the clubhouse when social services came knocking.
Cash brought her to the ranch and gave her a bedroom bigger than the entire trailer she grew up in.
Cash bought her the puppy.
Cash paid for the new clothes, the riding lessons with Madeline, the private tutors to catch her up before school started.
It was Cash's idea to enroll her at Rimrock.
Not mine.
I just... went along with it. Smiled and played nice aunt while my brother actually changed that little girl's entire life.
Mercy's thriving because of him.
Not me.
So what have I actually done?
What have I given Legion besides my body and my certainty that I want him?
Cassia's ears flick back again.
I straighten in the saddle, loosening my grip on the reins.
"Sorry, girl."
She huffs. Keeps walking.
The night air smells like sage and dust. Storm's still building somewhere to the east but it hasn't reached us yet.
I think about Eleanor.
Can't help it.
Think about the safe room deep underground. The old bank vault surrounded by cinderblocks. The red leather album inside.
The Book of Legion.
I should tell him it exists. Not ask about it. Not demand explanations or confessions. Just... let him know.
Hey, by the way, my dead mother kept a private archive of thousands of photographs she took of you from the time you were a toddler until six months before she died.
Some of them are you as a child. Some are you and me as teenagers kissing.
And some are professional studio portraits of you half-naked looking sad, and beautiful, and broken.
Also there's a selfie of the two of you together looking comfortable and happy, dated six months before her death, when you were twenty-four and I was at college and you definitely never mentioned knowing her that well.
Just thought you should know.
My stomach twists.
Finding that book destroyed something in me.
I remember standing in the safe room with the album open in my hands, flipping through page after page of Legion's face.
My heart hurt.
Physically hurt.
Like someone reached into my chest and squeezed until I couldn't breathe.
Because I knew what it meant.
Eleanor was obsessed with him.
The same way she was obsessed with creating the perfect Savannah Ashby brand. The same way she controlled every aspect of my childhood and turned me into content.
She did something to Legion too.
I don't know what. Don't know if I want to know.
But whatever happened between them—
God, maybe that's why I never fully committed to the idea of us.
Maybe some part of me felt like I could never measure up to her.
Eleanor with her talent, and vision, and terrifying certainty about everything she touched.
How could I compete with that?
How could I be enough for Legion when my own mother saw something in him worth documenting obsessively for twenty-five years?
Cassia stumbles slightly on loose rock.
I automatically adjust my seat, keeping her balanced.
"Easy, girl." She recovers. Keeps walking.
The stables come into view ahead. Dark shapes against darker landscape.
I take a breath. Let it out slow.
Whatever happened between Eleanor and Legion—it's none of my business. I've come to terms with that now.
Or I'm trying to.
Because the truth is… Legion Kane is the only man I want. Not Marcus with his political ambitions and cold calculation. Not some fantasy of who Legion could be if he wasn't who he is.
Just him.
The real him.
Rough, and damaged, and dangerous, and mine.
But he's not going to trust me with his secrets if I keep taking without giving.
If I keep letting him deflect and dodge and carry everything alone.
I need to change.
Need to be more present in his life.
Need to show him I'm with him—not because he's my rebellion, or my project, or my way of escaping the Ashby cage.
But because I choose him. Every day. Even when it's hard.
Especially, when it's hard.
Cassia and I reach the stable yard. I slide off her back, my legs shaky from the ride and everything else, then lead her inside. The barn smells like hay, and leather, and horse. It's familiar and grounding.
I unsaddle her, brush her down, check her hooves. She leans into the grooming, content.
"You're a good girl," I murmur. Better than me, probably.
When she's settled in her stall with fresh water and hay, I close the door and head toward the house. The mansion looms ahead. Every window dark except the kitchen where we leave a light on all night.
I slip inside and walk barefoot through halls I've known my entire life. Up the back staircase to the second floor, down the hallway to my room.
Inside, I close the door and lean against it.
What can I change right now?
What can I do tonight to show Legion I'm serious?
That I'm here. That I'm not going anywhere. That he can trust me with whatever's breaking him apart.
I cross to the bathroom. Strip out of the white dress that still smells like him—smoke, and leather, and sex—and then pull on a pair of sleep shorts and an old t-shirt. I wash my face and brush my teeth.
Then… I stare at myself in the mirror.
I look like exactly what I am.
A woman who got thoroughly fucked outside an abandoned grain silo by a man she'd burn the world for.
I turn away from my reflection, walk back into the bedroom, grab my phone from the nightstand, and open Instagram without letting myself think about it too much.
My account stares back at me. Four point two million followers. Hundreds of unread messages. Thousands of comments I haven't looked at in weeks.
I haven't posted since I was kidnapped by my fiancée and everything I thought I knew about this world turned out to be a lie.
I create a post. Don't bother adding a photo, it's not that kind of post. And then… I start typing.
I know there are rumors. So let's address them.
Delete that. Too defensive.
Some of you have questions about my engagement.
Delete. Too vague.
I close my eyes.
Think about Legion in the silo. The way he held me after. The way he thanked me for things I didn't deserve credit for.
The way he looked at me like I was something precious, even while calling himself filthy.
Open my eyes.
Type.
I know there are questions. Rumors. Speculation about what those videos mean, and who I am, and what happens next.
So let me try to answer them—not because I owe explanations, but because for once in my life, I want to tell the truth without a filter between my heart and my words.
Marcus and I are no longer together. He ended our engagement after those videos surfaced, and I don't blame him. Not even a little.
It’s a lie, but it needs to be this way.
He deserves someone who can love him wholly, completely, without reservation. And I can’t. Because my heart has belonged to someone else since I was twelve years old, since before I understood what it meant to give your heart away and never ask for it back.
I pause.
Stare at the words.
Legion would hate being named. Hate being dragged into my Instagram drama.
But I need to explain thoroughly, so there is no misunderstanding. So I keep typing.
I've been in love with the same man for eighteen years. Through day school, boarding school, college. All of it. Through the death of my mother and all the many, many years we spent apart.
There is no time, no distance, no consequence that could make me stop loving him.
It was him I was thinking about during every carefully staged photo and through a staged engagement that looked perfect on camera but felt like death waiting to happen.
I've loved this man in secret, in silence, in the spaces between the life I was performing and the life I was actually living.
Another pause.
This feels right.
Feels honest in a way nothing else I've posted has been in years.
If you've been here a while, you know my mother built something extraordinary.
A brand. An empire. A vision of ranch life that was equal parts authentic and aspirational—heritage, and beauty, and the mythology of the American West wrapped in golden hour light and perfect composition.
And when she died, I inherited all of it.
The land, the legacy, the responsibility of maintaining the image she spent decades building.
I learned to perform it well. Maybe too well. Turned my whole life into content, into aesthetic, into something pretty enough to sell. Ranch princess living. Heritage homesteading. The girl in the white dress on horseback with wildflowers in her hair.
But here's the truth I should have said years ago: you don't need me to live the life you want.
The ranch aesthetic, the homesteading movement, the whole #WildRanchLife community—you've taken it so much further than I ever could.
You're out there actually living it. Raising your chickens, and baking your bread, and learning to ride, and building something real with your hands, and your hearts, and your stubborn, beautiful determination.
I was just showing you a prettier, more polished version of what you're already doing.
And I think... I think maybe it's time I stopped performing and started living too.
The man I love doesn't fit the narrative people expected for my life. He's rough where I'm polished. He's complicated, and messy, and nothing like the safe, respectable choice.
But he's mine.
He's been mine since we were teenagers hiding in an old abandoned grain silo, talking until sunrise about dreams we didn't have words for yet. And I'm choosing him. I'm choosing us. I'm choosing the kind of love that doesn't need to be staged, or curated, or filtered through a lens.
The kind that just… is.
So this account is going quiet for now. Not gone—I'm not disappearing. But I'm not performing anymore either. If something happens worth sharing, something real, and joyful, and true, I'll let you know.
But I'm done turning my life into content. Done editing my feelings into captions. Done being Savannah Ashby, the brand.
I just want to be Savannah. The girl who fell in love at twelve years old and never quite fell back out.
Thank you for being part of this journey. For letting me into your homes and hearts. For building something so much more beautiful and authentic than anything I showed you.
Keep going. Keep building. Keep living.
You're already doing everything right.
With all my love,
Savannah
I hit post before I can second-guess it. Then I wait, watching it go live.
The engagement starts immediately. Likes flooding in. Comments loading.
I don't read them.
Just set the phone face-down on the nightstand, turn off the light, snuggle into my bed, pull the covers up, and stare at the ceiling.
My heart's pounding like I just did something terrifying.
Maybe I did.
Just blew up my entire carefully curated image.
Confirmed the worst rumors.
Admitted to being in love with someone who isn't my politically connected ex-fiancé.
Told four million strangers I'm choosing messy over perfect.
Real over pretty.
Legion over everything.
The room's quiet except for the ceiling fan and my breathing.
Tomorrow, Cash will probably have opinions.
Wyatt will make drunk comments.
Marcus will rage, and stomp his feet, and make threats.
My followers will either support me or unfollow in droves.
Tomorrow, there will be consequences.
But tonight—
Tonight I chose something for myself.
Chose to be honest about wanting Legion even if it costs me everything else.
That's a start. Not trust earned, maybe. But a step toward earning it. Toward being someone he can actually lean on instead of someone he has to protect from the truth.
I close my eyes and let exhaustion pull me under.
Sleep finds me thinking about Legion's hands on my body.
About the way he said he loved me.
About tomorrow, and the next day, and all the days after that.
About becoming someone who deserves the words he won't say out loud but shows me every time he touches me like I'm the only real thing in his world.
About being present.
Being there.
Being enough.
It's… enough.