And now they were asking him to name it, to make it official, to stop pretending it was temporary. Cole closed his eyes and tried to sleep, knowing it wouldn't come. Dawn arrived gray and cold, the sun hidden behind a bank of clouds that stretched across the horizon like a dirty blanket. Cole dressed, splashed water on his face, and stepped out into the street. The women were waiting outside the boarding house, standing in a line like soldiers ready for inspection.
They'd dressed in their cleanest clothes, though nothing out there ever stayed clean for long. Kaya stood in the center, flanked by Lyra and Sani. Their faces were calm, expectant, but Cole could see the tension in their shoulders. He stopped a few feet away, hat in his hands. "Well?" Kaya asked.
Cole took a slow breath. "I need to ask you something first." "Go ahead." "What happens if I say no? Really."
"Not the version where you follow me forever. The truth." Kaya exchanged glances with the others, then looked back at him. "The truth is, we don't know. We've never been refused before."
"Because no one's ever been stupid enough to refuse?" "Because it's never come up." Cole shook his head. "That's not good enough. I need to know what happens to you."
"If I walk away, do you go home, start over somewhere, or do you really spend the rest of your lives chasing me?" Lyra spoke up. "We meant what we said, Cole. The debt doesn't end until it's repaid, and this is the only way we know how to repay it." "So you'd waste your lives on this?"
"It wouldn't be a waste," Sani said quietly. "It would be honoring the vow we made." "To who? Your people? Your traditions?"
"To ourselves." Cole looked at each of them, searching for doubt, for hesitation, for any sign that they didn't fully believe what they were saying. He found nothing. "This is insane," he said, not for the first time. "We know," Kaya replied.
"But it's our insanity, and we're asking you to share it." Cole put his hat back on, tilted it against the faint light. "You said marriage. All three of you." "Yes."
"How's that even supposed to work?" "However we make it work." "That's not an answer." "It's the only one we have." Kaya stepped forward.
"We're not asking for perfection, Cole. We're not asking you to love us or pretend this makes sense. We're asking you to stop running, to let us stand beside you, not just behind you, to build something that lasts." "And if it doesn't last?" "Then at least we tried."
Cole looked past them, toward the desert stretching out beyond the town. He could leave right now, saddle his horse, ride out, and never look back. They'd follow, probably. But eventually, maybe they'd give up. Maybe they'd find someone else to attach themselves to.