PROLOGUE
Spur
Eight years ago.
There is a version of my life that ends tonight.
I don't know that yet. I'm twenty-seven years old. I'm three Crowns deep into the best night of my adult life.
My back aches where the new patch sits between my shoulder blades, hot and itching through the leather of my cut, and I keep reaching back to scratch it like a dog that can't quite get to the spot.
Phantom watches me do it with the expression of a man who's just given somebody a life they didn't know how to ask for.
"It gets lighter," he says. "Not the leather. The weight."
I believe him.
Tonight, I believe everything.
Tonight, I turned twenty-seven, got patched in, and I’m a little drunk.
The swelling in my leg has gone down for the first time in six months, and I'm going to believe whatever this man tells me, because this man is the reason I'm not, at present, a line in a newspaper and a hole in the ground outside San Angelo.
He doesn't know that. The brothers don't know that. I know it. I'll carry it in my chest until they put me in my own hole, in whatever part of Texas will have me when the time comes.
He pours me another Crown and toasts the patch.
"Welcome home, son."
Something in my chest breaks open, and I can't tell if it's grief or the opposite.
Shadow slaps my back and laughs like a drain. "Don't scratch it, you'll look like you've got fleas."
"I've got fleas."
"You had fleas. We've deloused you. Read the patch, brother."
I laugh. Phantom laughs. Every man in the room laughs because every man in this room has been where I have been, or close enough to it to understand.
Where I have been is nowhere you'd want to go.
Where I am is the best room I have ever stood in.
The clubhouse is mostly men. A couple of ol’ ladies and clubwhores hang around.
In the corner, I notice a woman before I know who she is.
Blonde, closer to Phantom’s age. Not drinking with anyone. Red Solo cup.
Phantom follows my eyes.
"Jolene," he says. "Come meet the new patch."
She comes over, kisses Phantom's cheek, and shakes my hand.
Her grip is strong, and I don't mean strong for a woman. I meanstrong.
"You're the bull rider."
