"Last night."
"Where?"
Personally, I don’t see how it matters, but I know Spur will answer him.
"My cabin."
Pops doesn't move. I have seen this kind of stillness twice in my life—once when Mom came home with a black eye she wouldn't explain, and once when a brother whose name I'm not allowed to say got drunk at the bonfire and put his hand on my hip when I was seventeen.
Both times my father went quieter than the room he was in, and both times the man he went quiet at didn't make it through the next month standing up.
Spur is across the table from that quiet now, and he's holding it.
"Pops," I say.
"Sit down, Dakota."
"Pops —"
"Sit. Down."
I sit.
He looks at Spur for a long time.
"So, you’ve been around for years now."
"Yes, Prez."
"Years you sat at my table and didn't touch her."
"Yes, Prez."
"And then a stalker shows up and you sleep with my daughter?"
"I'd have slept with your daughter if there was no stalker, Phantom. The stalker just made me stop pretending I wouldn't."
Spur doesn't look away from him.
Pops goes still in a different way than he was still before, and I hold my breath.
He looks at me. "Time for you to talk, baby girl."
I talk. "I have love for him, Pops."
I didn't plan to say it.
It comes out the way most of the things I say to my father come out—direct, without a filter, in the voice my mother gave me.
I have love for him, not I love him, yet.
Not the words that say everything, but more than I have said about a man at this table since I was a teenager, and Pops knows it.
Beside me, Spur goes still.
I don't look at him.
Pops looks between us. A long time passes. "How long have you had feelings for my patch?"
