Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
I say nothing, but I notice what he doesn't point out—the diamond already gleaming on Savannah’s finger in the photo. Engagement this weekend, but she's already wearing the ring.
The photo's staged. The moment has been manufactured.
I shouldn't be surprised. She is Eleanor's daughter, after all. The woman who turned life into content before anyone knew what to call it.
"Look," Cash continues, emboldened by my silence, "Savannah's moved on. She's someone else's now." His voice takes on that big-brother authority that probably works on ranch hands. "She's done with all that running around you two used to do."
I stare at the highway, counting fence posts to keep from counting the ways I could make him stop talking.
"It was never gonna work out," he says, like he's explaining gravity to a child. "You know that. Hell, she knew that. Why do you think she never visited? Never wrote?"
He keeps going, laying out the particulars of a relationship he knows nothing about. The stolen nights in the grain silo. The promises whispered against skin. The way her breath caught when I put my fingers inside her.
"Marcus is good for her. Good for the family. Good for the ranch." Cash's sermon picks up steam. "He's the kind of man who builds legacies, not the kind who burns them down."
I keep my face blank. Prison teaches you that—how to wear nothing when you feel everything.
"Don't make this harder than it needs to be," Cash says finally, like he's offering wisdom instead of a threat.
And then he yanks the steering wheel hard to the right, pulling his pristine Ford F-350 onto the gravel shoulder with a spray of dust and small stones that ping against the undercarriage. The truck rocks to a stop, suspension groaning in protest, as if even the vehicle itself knows we're about to cross a line that can't be uncrossed. The engine idles with a low, threatening rumble that matches the tension thickening the air between us.
Cash shifts in his seat, adjusts his grip on the wheel. The anger that tightened his jaw a minute ago dissolves into something worse—pity. His mouth stretches into what he probably thinks is a friendly smile. Just two men having a roadside chat.
"Let's part as friends," he says, nodding toward the dusty shoulder we're parked on. "Been a long time coming, this conversation."
Again, I stay quiet. The silence burns between us.
He takes my stillness as an invitation. "You know, I've been thinking about where things went wrong with you. Why you never really learned your place." He taps his fingers against the wheel, thoughtful, like he's solving a puzzle. "I blame myself, really. Should've set you straight about my baby sister when it first got out of hand."
My jaw locks tight enough to crack teeth. The rage comes fast—a familiar burn that starts in my gut and climbs my spine.
“I found some pictures,” he says.
Well, fuck.
“Yeah,” Cash says. Gauging my reaction. “And do you know what those pictures were of?”
Well, of course, I do. Because I was there. But I don’t say that because… well, some things are just better left unsaid. Also, I’ve got no idea which pictures he’s specifically talking about.
Eleanor Ashby, Cash and Savannah’s mother—probably the most famous photographer on the fuckin’ planet at one point—literally took hundreds, hell, maybe even thousands, of pictures of me.
“Well, I’ll tell you then, just in case you think I’m bluffing. Those pics were of you and Savannah.”
“Ohhh… kaaaay.”
“OK?” Cash is pissed now. “She was fourteen fucking years old.”
Ah. There’s the clue I needed. “What were we doin’ in those pics, Cash?” I only ask because I know. When Savannah was fourteen, I was sixteen. And we’d only been hanging out two years at that point.
That’s how long it took me to kiss her.
Two years.
“You were kissing her,” he says. But it comes out almost a whisper. Like he’s saying something dirty.
“Kissin’ her. That’s what you’re pissed about? Because we kissed when we were kids?”
"I wanted to kill you," Cash sneers. Malice now. He can't control it anymore. "But Eleanor wouldn't let me handle it."
Of course, she wouldn't. His mother loved me far more than she ever loved him.
She never told him that—I’m sure of it. Hell, she never told me either.
But you know. You know when someone loves you just like you know when they don’t.
"She said it was just a phase,” Cash says. “Said Savannah needed to learn some lessons the hard way."
This is interesting and actually explains quite a lot about why Cash Ashby has always hated me, even though our paths never connected in any meaningful way. We didn’t go to school together, we didn’t hang out together, we didn’t do shit together.
The only thing we had in common was Savannah. And what Savannah and I had was a secret.
Well, not so secret, I guess. I knew Eleanor was taking pictures of us. She told me. Well, showed me, actually.