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.
Maybe they'd finally realize the debt they thought they owed was just a story they'd told themselves. Or maybe they'd follow him until one of them died, and the weight of that would destroy him long before the frontier did. "I don't know how to be a husband," Cole said finally. "Neither do we," Lyra said. "We'll figure it out together."
"I'm not good at staying in one place." "Then we'll move," Kaya said. "As long as we move together." "I'm going to mess this up." "Probably," Lyra smiled. "So will we."
Cole closed his eyes, and for a moment he let himself imagine it. Not the impossible parts, the marriage or the vows or the traditions he didn't understand, but the simple parts. Waking up and knowing they'd be there. Working jobs and splitting the pay four ways. Building something, even if it was just a campfire and a shared meal, and knowing it was theirs.
He opened his eyes. "If I say yes," he said slowly, "we do this my way. Not your traditions, not some vow I don't understand. We figure out what works for us, and we don't apologize to anyone for it." Kaya's expression didn't change, but something in her eyes softened.
"Agreed." "And if it doesn't work, if this falls apart, you let me go. No following, no debt. It's done." "Agreed," Sani said.
"And you never..." Cole stopped, searching for the right words. "You never make me feel like I'm trapped, like I don't have a choice." "You'll always have a choice," Kaya said. "This isn't a cage, Cole. It's a partnership."
Cole looked at each of them one more time. Kaya, who'd spent ten years refusing to give up. Lyra, who'd turned stubbornness into an art form. Sani, who'd seen through every defense he'd ever built and hadn't blinked. Three women who should have been strangers, who should have ridden away that day in the canyon and never looked back.
But they hadn't, and neither had he. "All right," he said quietly. "I'm in." For a moment, nobody moved. Then Lyra let out a whoop that echoed down the empty street, and Sani smiled, a rare, genuine smile that transformed her entire face.
Kaya stepped forward, close enough that Cole could see the relief in her eyes, and extended her hand. Cole shook it. "Welcome to the family," she said. "Don't make me regret this." "Too late."
They spent the rest of the morning figuring out logistics, which turned out to be both easier and harder than Cole expected. Easier because Stillwater Crossing had a magistrate who didn't ask too many questions and was willing to officiate a ceremony for $20. Harder because the magistrate had never married one man to three women before and wasn't entirely sure it was legal. "It's not illegal," Kaya pointed out. "That's not the same as legal," the magistrate replied, a thin man with wire-rimmed glasses and a nervous habit of adjusting his collar.