Actually, I haven’t let myself think about him for eight years.
I took one look at him and I knew.
I knew the way a horse knows who they can trust and who they can’t.
I knew the way my mother knew about my father, which is a sentence I don't get to say out loud ever because look how that one ended.
I didn't go for him. I don't go for them.
I have never once touched a patched Shotgun Saint.
Not a kiss.
Not a hand on a thigh.
Not a dance at a barbecue where a drunk brother got friendly and had to be politely declined.
They are my family. You don't sleep with your family.
My mother taught me that, too.
But Spur isn’t my family.
Spur is a man who looked at me like I was gravity, and my father saw it and shut it down with a look.
Spur has spent years walking past me at holidays, club functions, and more.
Hat down, boots moving, his body reporting nothing on the outside, but screaming on the inside.
I see him. I doubt he knows I see him.
Three weeks ago I got drunk with Brynn and Cassidy at a motel bar in Amarillo after a qualifier, and I was three Crowns in.
Brynn was teasing me about a bull rider named Rusty who'd been flirting with me at the concession stand, and Brynn said, “Lyle, when are you going to pick one and settle down?”, and I laughed and I said, “If I was ever going to break my rule, it'd be Spur.”
The look on both of their faces. Hell, the whole booth went quiet.
Brynn set her drink down slow. "Oh, honey. That's who you want?"
"That's who I want."
Cassidy tilted her head like the answer was obvious. "Does he know?"
"I think he knows."
Brynn leaned in, eyes sharp over the rim of her glass. "Then what's the hold-up, baby?"
"I'm done waiting for him to make the move."
Brynn lifted her Crown and grinned. "Then don't."
I didn't do anything about it that night.
But the words have been in my mouth for three weeks.
I cross the gate at the top of the hill at seven-fifty-nine.
I lay on the horn.
