Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
I hardly rebelled at all, actually.
I guess the sneakin' around with Legion counts. In some ways.
But in some ways it doesn't.
Eleanor did, after all, love him.
She didn't really disapprove. Not the way she disapproved of my posture when I was slouchin'. Not even the way she disapproved of a make-up style, or an outfit selection, or my punctuation choices in a social post.
So I would hardly call Legion a rebellion.
A rebellious Savannah would've been a girl who refused to wear the dresses. Who looked at the rack of pressed cotton and hand-stitched lace Eleanor laid out every single morning like a liturgy and said, No. Not today. Not ever.
Who refused to sit still for the make-up at dawn, and the touch-ups at ten, and the touch-ups again at noon, and the careful, almost surgical removal of it all at night. Cotton rounds lined up on the vanity like communion wafers, each one stained with a version of a girl she never asked to become.
A rebellious Savannah would've worn jeans every day.
Not the kind with the embroidered pockets and the two-hundred-dollar wash that's meant to look like work but has never seen a fence post.
Real jeans. Stiff ones. The kind that get soft only because you lived in them.
She would've put her hair in braids—two, nothin' fancy, no ribbons, no pins, just braids that stayed out of her face while she did somethin' that actually mattered with her hands.
She would have owned one pair of boots and exactly one hat and she'd have worn both of them until the leather cracked and the felt gave up its shape, and then she would've driven into town and bought the exact same brand and style to replace them.
Not because she lacked imagination, but because she knew what worked and didn't need to perform the act of choosin' for an audience.
She would've smelled like horse sweat, and pine sap, and dust. She would've known the name of every pasture gate and every irrigation valve on this property. She would've been a real ranch kid—not an accessory ranch kid. Not a prop positioned against the barn door in golden light so Eleanor could get the shot.
I was never a ranch kid. Not really.
And it's an odd thing to wake up in your early thirties in a log mansion built on forty-seven thousand acres of prime grazing land, in a bedroom finished in pale pine and flooded with morning light, with a horse worth more than most people's homes waiting in the barn, and realize… that you were dealt a full house in this life and you never once bothered to play it.
Not a single card laid down on the table with any kind of intention.
Just held them close to your chest and smiled pretty for the camera while the game went on around you.
"Good Lord," I whisper, starin' at my own reflection in the window. "Get a grip, Savannah. You're rich beyond belief, you have no actual obligations at the moment, and no one is dyin'. A pity party is not in order. For fuck's sake. Stop acting like a sulking teenager and find a new purpose in life."
Here's my problem with that.
I don't actually have any skills.
Not real ones. Not the kind that translate into anything resembling purpose or productivity in a town like Drybone, where usefulness is measured in what you can do with your hands before the sun clears the ridge. What do I do? What have I ever done?
Nothing. I do nothing.
I went to college to read literature and ride horses. That was Emory & Henry in its entirety—four years of beautiful, expensive, completely impractical education wrapped in hunter green and tradition.
I rode for their IHSA team, their IDA team, their ANRC team. Hunters, jumpers, equitation, dressage. I could execute a perfect half-pass at the sitting trot and write a twelve-page paper on Faulkner's use of time as a narrative weapon and I could do both of those things in the same afternoon while wearin' custom tall boots that cost more than a semester's tuition at the public university down the road.
College was a hobby for me. A four-year finishing school disguised as higher education, and I treated it exactly that way, and nobody—not a single professor or advisor or teammate—ever suggested I should treat it differently.
Because I was Savannah Ashby.
Because my tuition cleared before orientation.
Because the horse I trailered in was the envy of riders on the Olympic team.
So. Skills. Let me take inventory.
I could give lessons, maybe?
I could teach kids to ride. I could possibly—if I'm being generous with myself, and Lord knows I'm tryin' to be—teach kids to ride well.
I know the mechanics of a correct position. I know the geometry of a dressage arena, the distances between fences, the feel of a horse's mouth through the rein when the connection is right and soft and the whole thing hums like a conversation only the two of you can hear.