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."
"Pops, no. Listen to me. Asher Addison is the stock contractor. I have known that man as Asher Addison since I was a teenager. He runs the Hellfire string. He’s supplied stock at half the qualifiers I’ve ever ridden. He fixed my chute at junior nationals when I was sixteen. He has been at every venue I’ve ridden in West Texas for almost ten years."
The room goes quieter than I have ever heard it.
Holt’s holding Waylon on his lap and his arm has tightened around the boy without him noticing.
Pops is looking at me the way he looks at me when he is processing a thing he doesn’t want to say out loud. "Pops."
"Yeah, baby."
"He’s been close to me my whole career."
"Yes."
"He fixed my chute when I was sixteen. He was kind to me."
Spur's hand finds the back of my neck.
Pops stands up from the recliner, walks up to the TV, and turns it off.
He comes back and sits down on the coffee table directly in front of me, our knees almost touching. "Listen to me, Dakota."
"Yeah."
"Asher Addison is the name that man has been running under for ten years. He buried Kane and built a life as a stock contractor. He has been near you on a circuit because that is his livelihood. He didn't pick you when you were sixteen, baby. He picked you six months ago, when you signed the Wrangler deal and won at the Cody on his stock, and your face went on the cover of Western Horseman in his hometown."
"Pops."
"He carried the grudge against me for years andwaiteduntil you became somebody. Until your name on a sponsorship was bigger than my name on a club. That's when it turned."
I close my eyes.
I think about the man who fixed my chute when I was a teenager.
The way he handed me a bottle of water afterward and told me I had a good seat on a horse.
I had thanked him by his name. Thank you, Mr. Addison. He had told me to call him Asher.
