Chapter 9 #2
I sit on the couch in his cabin in his shirt with a coffee I'm not drinking, listening to his Ford fire up and pull out onto the gravel.
I sit there for another five minutes after the engine fades, and then I get up.
I'm not waiting in this cabin.
Pops is my father. Spur has known him for years, sure, and he's right that the conversation is theirs first, but my father has known me my whole life, and the woman in question doesn't sit in a cabin while two men decide things about her.
My mother taught me that, even if she taught me by example I'm not supposed to imitate.
I pull on my boots from his front porch.
Don't put a bra on because mine is still in his living room and I don't care.
His shirt is long enough on me to hide what needs hiding.
I shake my hair out of the wet rope it dried into, finger-comb it back behind my ears, and walk across the compound.
The mustang at the round pen rail watches me cross.
He doesn't move from the rail—he just watches, ears soft, eyes following the way he watches everything now.
Two prospects on the bunkhouse porch see me coming, both of them quiet ones I don't know by name, and they clock the shirt, the wet hair, and the boots, then look down at the porch boards.
I don't slow down.
I walk to the main house. I don't knock. I open the damn door.
Spur is across the kitchen table from Pops with his hat in his hand, and Marlena is at the counter with Cal on her hip while the baby gnaws on a teething biscuit.
All three of them look up when I come in.
Pops takes in the shirt and the wet hair and my bare-faced morning. His face does nothing. "Baby girl."
"Pops."
"I told Spur this was between him and me."
"He told me. I came anyway."
"I can see that."
A long quiet.
Marlena speaks up lowly, "Cal needs a nap."
She walks out of the kitchen with the baby on her hip and doesn't look back.
She knows when to leave a room. It's just the three of us now.
Pops looks at Spur. "You know, all those years ago you gave me your word."
"Yes, Prez. I broke it. But to be fair, you did remind me she was a grown woman not too long ago."
Pops looks between me and Spur. "Ah. So, when did all this happen?"
"Last night."
"Where?"
Personally, I don’t see how it matters, but I know Spur will answer him.
"My cabin."
Pops doesn't move. I have seen this kind of stillness twice in my life—once when Mom came home with a black eye she wouldn't explain, and once when a brother whose name I'm not allowed to say got drunk at the bonfire and put his hand on my hip when I was seventeen.
Both times my father went quieter than the room he was in, and both times the man he went quiet at didn't make it through the next month standing up.
Spur is across the table from that quiet now, and he's holding it.
"Pops," I say.
"Sit down, Dakota."
"Pops —"
"Sit. Down."
I sit.
He looks at Spur for a long time.
"So, you’ve been around for years now."
"Yes, Prez."
"Years you sat at my table and didn't touch her."
"Yes, Prez."
"And then a stalker shows up and you sleep with my daughter?"
"I'd have slept with your daughter if there was no stalker, Phantom. The stalker just made me stop pretending I wouldn't."
Spur doesn't look away from him.
Pops goes still in a different way than he was still before, and I hold my breath.
He looks at me. "Time for you to talk, baby girl."
I talk. "I have love for him, Pops."
I didn't plan to say it.
It comes out the way most of the things I say to my father come out—direct, without a filter, in the voice my mother gave me.
I have love for him, not I love him, yet.
Not the words that say everything, but more than I have said about a man at this table since I was a teenager, and Pops knows it.
Beside me, Spur goes still.
I don't look at him.
Pops looks between us. A long time passes. "How long have you had feelings for my patch?"
"Honestly? Since the night he patched in. I knew the second I saw him."
"So, eight goddamn years?"
"Yeah."
"And you, Spur?"
"Same answer comes from me, Prez."
Pops closes his eyes for a second. When he opens them he looks at me. "Your mother used to tell me you'd marry a Saint."
I don't move.
"I told her she was batshit crazy." He’s quiet for a moment then laughs. "Turns out, she’s right."
Neither of us said anything about marriage, but I know in my bones I don’t want to be away from Spur.
I don’t want to lose this man when I just got him.
Pops stands up, walks around the table, and puts his hand on the top of my head the way he's done since I was three years old.
He kisses my hair. "If you make her cry, Spur, I'll bury you on this property and nobody will find you."
"Yes, Prez."
"We still have a stalker situation. So, this conversation isn't over. It's paused."
He looks at Spur. "Office. One hour. We're going to talk about how you're going to do your job for my daughter without doing it for the woman you're sleeping with."
"Yes, Prez."
Pops walks out of the kitchen.
Spur and I sit at the table in the silence Pops leaves behind him.
I'm shaking. Not the way I shook last night in the tack room.
A different kind of shaking—the kind a body does after it's been through a fire and walked out the other side.
He reaches across the table and takes my hand. "Dakota."
"Don't."
"Look at me."
"Spur —"
"Look at me."
I look at him.
"I have love for you too, baby."
I close my eyes.
I have wanted to hear this man say something close to those four words for so long, and he just said them in the house I grew up in.
"Took you long enough."
"Yeah."
"I'm hungry."
"Let's go eat."
He pulls me up out of the chair and tucks a piece of my still-damp hair behind my ear.
He looks at me the way he's been looking at me since the tack room yesterday— that same slow, steady look that makes me feel like I've been seen for the first time in my entire life.
We walk out of the main house onto the porch, hand in hand.
The ranch is in late-morning sun.
The same two prospects on the bunkhouse porch see us come out, and word will be all over the property by lunch.
I don't care. I'm walking across the gravel of the main house yard with my hand in his, his shirt down to my thighs, warm rocks under my boots, and a sun overhead that I haven't felt in months without a knot in my chest.
For the first time since my mother left, I’m happy.
Then my phone buzzes.
I pull it out of my back pocket without thinking.
Unknown number. A photo loads.
Me. Spur. From above.
From an angle that's somewhere up—the hayloft of the main barn, maybe, or a tree line near the round pen—both of us walking off the main house porch hand in hand.
Taken maybe thirty seconds ago.
The text under the photo:
I told you he can't watch you every second.
The phone goes cold in my hand. I stop walking.
Spur sees my face and stops too. "What’s wrong?"
I hand him the phone and the second he looks at it, his face changes. "He's on the property."
He doesn't say anything else.
His hand is at the small of my back and he's walking me fast—faster than I can keep up with—back across the gravel toward the main house porch.
His free hand pulls his piece from the back of his waistband first, then his phone.
The door of the main house is opening before we get to it because Pops heard us coming.
Pops is in the doorway.
Spur into his phone, low and flat. "Banshee. Get to the main house. Now."
He hangs up and looks at Pops. "Prez. He's here."