"Yeah."
He puts his arm around my shoulders. We watch the burn pit until the cigarette is gone.
Then he turns me to face him, both hands on my upper arms. The light from the burn pit catches the gray in his beard. "Dakota."
"Yeah?"
"I'm going to talk to your father tonight. About something."
"Okay."
"You know what about."
I look at him. The sun is most of the way down. The light is going gold and pink across his face. His eyes are steady. "Yeah, Spur. I can put two and two together."
"You're not going to ask me what."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I want it to come from you, the way you want to give it. Not because I asked."
He almost smiles. "I love you, baby."
"I love you too."
He kisses me—slow, long, the kind of kiss that isn't asking for anything because everything has already been asked.
He's holding the back of my head with one hand and my hip with the other and his beard is rough against my mouth and I feel the eight years of our slow burn finally, finally finished.
When he pulls back I lean my forehead against his chest and close my eyes. "Go talk to my father, Spur."
"I'm going."
"And Spur."
"Yeah?"
"He's going to say yes."
"I know he is, baby."
He kisses my forehead and lets me go.
I watch him walk across the gravel toward the main house where Pops is on the back porch, with his evening coffee and a Bible open on the rail.
Two men. The man who raised me and the man who's going to marry me.
I sit down on the porch swing and I let myself cry the way I've been trying not to cry for a week.
Bex finds me a few minutes later and she doesn't say anything. She just sits down next to me on the swing and lets me cry, and the two of us watch the sun finish its slide behind the western fence of Sharp Shooter Ranch.
The threat is over.
The man I love is asking my father for my hand.
And tomorrow comes whatever tomorrow is going to be.
