"And neither was she," Grace says.
That one knocks the air out of me. I haven't seen her either.
I’ve spent eight fucking years telling myself she is theonewoman I can’t have.
I’ve walked past her at holidays and countless times in the clubhouse.
I’ve just done it with my hat down and my eyes on the dirt half the time.
I know I could never have her.
But… what if I could?
Phantom said she was a grown woman. Is that his way of giving a green light?
Fuck.
Even if he isn’t, I’m not sure if I care anymore.
A man wants what he wants.
Grace pats my shoulder with her free hand. "Drink your coffee, Spur."
She walks away, across the yard, toward the main house.
Waylon's small head bobbing against her chest as she walks.
I stand at the rail, sipping on my coffee.
The sun is full up now. The compound is awake.
I hear Thunder shouting at a prospect about a fence post, and a hammer slams somewhere on the south barn.
* * *
I see her again at ten.
She's at the practice pen with Jaeger.
I'm not at the round pen anymore. I came up to the main barn to grab a halter and a lead rope, and on the way back, I'm walking past the practice pen and she's there.
Working second-barrel drills.
I should keep walking, but I don't.
I stop at the rail of the pen with a halter in one hand and a lead rope in the other, and I watch her ride.
I’ve watched Dakota ride at rodeos, in the stands where she didn’t even know I was. On the closed-circuit screen at the clubhouse when the whole crew gathers to see her qualify.
On a phone screen Banshee held out to me at the round pen one Saturday in April when she won her first WPRA-sanctioned event.
On a TV at a sports bar in Marble Falls when I drove over alone on a Friday night two years ago because Iknewshe was riding and I wanted to be in a room with strangers when I watched.
I haven’t, in eight years, stood at a fence and watched her ride from forty feet away with no one between us.
She's good. She's better than good.
She's the kind of barrel racer you watch and forget that the horse is doing anything because the horse is just an extension of her body.
