Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dakota
I wake up in the back bedroom of my father's house with Spur's arm under my head.
The sun’s already coming through the gauze curtains.
For a second I don't remember why I'm here.
Then my wrist registers the dull throb of fresh ink under the gauze, and the memories from yesterday come rushing in.
Abilene. The cinch. The crowd on its feet. Uncle Holt in the parking lot of the Hampton. Pops on the porch when we pulled through the gate.
Spur is asleep beside me in his jeans and a t-shirt with his Glock on the dresser.
I remember him coming back to bed at some point in the early morning hours.
I don't move for a long second. I let myself look at him.
He doesn't sleep often, and when he does, he sleeps like he's been holding his breath for years and finally got to take a breath.
His mouth is open a little. His lashes are dark against his cheekbones.
The gray in his beard catches the morning light. The ink on his arms shifts when he breathes.
This is the man I love, even if I’m too chicken shit to admit it right now.
I said I have love for him, but the truth is, I’m in love with him.
I lean over and kiss the corner of his mouth.
He wakes the way he wakes—all at once, eyes open, hand reaching for the dresser before he places where he is.
Then he sees me and his hand stops. "Hey, baby," he says.
"Hey."
"What time is it?"
"Late enough that Pops is on his second pot of coffee."
He pulls me against his chest and holds me there for a long beat. “We were drinking coffee all damn night. Guarantee he’s somewhere around his seventh pot of coffee.”
I breathe him in—coffee from last night, the soap from his shower at the cabin yesterday morning that already feels like it was a hundred years ago, the warm smell of his skin.
His arm tightens around my shoulders. "How's the wrist?"
"Sore."
"Show me."
I sit up and unwrap a corner of the gauze for him.
The ink looks angry in the morning light—red around the edges where the needle worked the skin, the black letters of his name still sharp.
Spur on the inside of my left wrist where my pulse runs.
He looks at it for a long moment, then leans down and kisses the unmarked skin above the gauze. "Good. It's healing right."
"Yeah," I say.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed and reaches for his boots. "Pops is in the kitchen with Holt. Marlena's making breakfast."
"You been up already?"
"I was up with them till about six. Came back to bed when you were still out."
"You sleep at all?"
"A couple hours."
"Spur."
"I know, baby. I'll sleep when this is done."
I sit up the rest of the way and reach for the pajamas Grace left me—soft sleep pants and a t-shirt that probably belongs to Shadow because it's too big to be hers.
I pull a hoodie of Spur's over the t-shirt because the main house always runs cold in the morning, even in May.
Spur watches me dress with his hand still on the boot he hasn't laced yet.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing. Just looking."
"Spur."
"What?"
"Lace your damn boot."
He laughs—small, real, the laugh he saves for me—and laces his boot.
The kitchen is full when we come downstairs.
Pops is at the head of the table with a coffee in his hand and the morning newspaper open in front of him, but he's not reading it. He's watching the back door.
Marlena is at the stove making eggs and bacon for what looks like a small army.
Grace is at the counter slicing oranges. Cal is on the floor in his playpen working on a teething ring.
Waylon is at the kitchen table in a highchair next to Pops and eating a plate of scrambled eggs with both hands.
And Uncle Holt is leaning against the counter with a coffee in his hand and the morning paper open in front of him too, only he is reading his.
"Baby girl," Pops says when I come in.
"Pops."
He pulls me down to kiss the top of my head and his hand stays there for a second. "How did you sleep?"
"Better than I should have."
"Good."
Marlena turns from the stove and looks at me—soft around the eyes, careful around the mouth.
She comes over with a plate and sets it on the table for me.
Eggs, bacon, two slices of toast already buttered. "Eat some food, kiddo."
"Yes, ma'am."
I sit and Spur sits beside me.
Holt brings his coffee over and takes the chair across from us, and Marlena slides a plate to him too without asking if he wants one.
"How's your wrist?" Holt asks me.
I unwrap the cuff of Spur's hoodie and show him the gauze. Don't unwrap the gauze. He doesn't need the ink yet.
He nods slowly. "It hurt much?"
"Some."
"Good. Good ink should hurt. Means it's gonna stay."
Spur snorts into his coffee.
Pops, behind his paper: "Holt."
"What?"
"Don't lecture my daughter about ink at the breakfast table."
"I'm not lecturing. I'm philosophizing."
"That's worse."
Marlena, Grace, and I all laugh.
This is exactly what I needed—my family, but there’s just one person missing.
Still, I focus on the cicadas through the open back window. The bacon hissing on the stove. Pops's paper. Holt's smart mouth.
My family, doing what my family does on a Saturday morning, the way they always have, even with a stalker out there in the state of Texas with my name in his mouth.
I eat half the plate before I can taste anything, then I eat the rest.
Around ten, Pops stands up and stretches. "I'm putting the qualifier on."
"What qualifier?" I ask.
"Sweetwater. Bull and bronc. Started yesterday, finals are today."
"You don't watch bronc riding, Pops."
"I watch when there's nothing else good on."
He's lying. He's putting the TV on because the property is on lockdown and the brothers are restless and he wants something on the screen that's not the morning news with its weather and politics.
Bronc riding is family-safe noise.
He goes into the living room and turns on the big TV mounted above the stone fireplace.
The PRCA broadcast comes up—wide shot of the arena at Sweetwater, the announcer's voice over the crowd, a cowboy in chaps walking back to the chutes after a ride.
Holt brings his coffee into the living room and takes the leather armchair to the right of the couch.
Pops takes the recliner. Marlena sits at the kitchen table with Grace, finishing her own coffee. Cal in the playpen.
Waylon climbs onto Holt's lap with a piece of bacon in each hand and Holt lets him.
Spur and I take the couch. He pulls me into his side. My head goes against his shoulder. His arm comes around me.
We watch the bronc riding the way you watch something on TV when you're not really watching—half-attention, the announcer's voice as background, the room half-full of family and food smells.
A cowboy named Hayes Beaumont rides eighty-six on a horse called Black Diamond. Pops grunts approval.
Another rider gets bucked off in the chute before his ride starts.
Holt makes a comment about young men who don't know how to seat their horses. Waylon laughs because his uncle laughed.
Spur is quiet beside me. I feel his chest rise and fall under my cheek.
Then the camera cuts to the back of the chutes between rides—a wide shot of the chute crew working a fresh horse into position.
Stock contractors moving around the gate. The chute boss leaning over the rail signaling the announcer.
A man in a faded tan cowboy hat lighting a cigarette in the corner of the frame.
The announcer's voice comes over the broadcast: "And we'll have a six-minute delay while the crew reseats.
That's Asher Addison's stock today out of Big Spring—the Hellfire string that's given riders trouble all weekend.
Asher's been in the contracting business for the better part of two decades and his stock's been a fixture of West Texas rodeo since I was calling for the junior circuit. Always good to see him at our events."
I don't react.
I've heard that name on a broadcast a hundred times. Asher Addison is the stock contractor I’ve known my whole career.
He fixed my chute when I was sixteen at junior nationals and I never forgot it—he was kind to me when I was scared and the gate was stuck and Pops was in the stands losing his mind.
I was a kid. He was a man who helped me. He has been background to my life for almost ten years.
Spur goes still under me.
I feel him stop breathing.
Then his hand comes up to my arm and his grip tightens. "Dakota."
"What?"
"Look at the screen."
I look.
The camera is still on the chute crew.
The man in the tan hat with the cigarette is mid-conversation with the chute boss, gesturing with the cigarette in his hand.
The same hand. Two long drags, hold—I can see him do it on screen—and a third drag down to the filter.
"What is it?" I ask.
"That's him."
"That's who?"
Spur doesn't answer right away.
He's looking at the screen with the face that I have seen him use exactly once before in my life—the face he wore at the hand-off pen at Abilene when he saw the cut on the cinch.
The face of a man who has just placed the man he is going to kill. "Spur."
"That's the man from the bar."
"What bar?"
"The man Roan brought to Sharp to prospect. The one your father voted no patch on. The man who has been texting you photos and cutting your saddle. That's him on the screen."
The room goes still.
Pops sits up in the recliner. "Spur."
"Prez. Look at the TV."
Pops looks.
The camera is still holding on the chutes.
The man in the tan hat takes a final drag of the Camel Wide, drops it in the dirt, grinds it under his boot.
Then he looks up at the camera for half a second.
A face. Brown eyes. Gray in his beard. Lined skin from a life outdoors. Lean.
"That's Kane," Pops says.
"Yes, Prez."
"On a televised broadcast."
"Yes, Prez."
"Hiding in plain sight."
The announcer's voice keeps going over the broadcast as the camera cuts back to the arena. "Asher's stock has been a fixture..."
I sit up off Spur's chest. "Pops."
"Baby girl."
"Asher Addison."
"That's what they just said on TV."