Phantom's office is small. Smaller than the office in the main house.
A desk he built himself out of cypress from the back pasture.
Two leather chairs older than I am.
A window that looks out at the back of the clubhouse and the stand of oak that separates the clubhouse from the main barn.
A bottle of bourbon on the corner of the desk that he hasn't drunk from in years, but keeps because brothers come in here with bad news sometimes and a man with bad news drinks better than a man without one.
Phantom pours two fingers in a glass and slides it across the desk to me. "Sit down, Spur."
I sit. Phantom sits across from me. He doesn't pour himself a glass yet.
"You know what scares me, Spur?"
"Tell me."
"It's not you. Not the relationship. I should have seen it years ago. What scares me is that I'm asking my Road Captain to protect my daughter from a man who wants to hurt her, and now my Road Captain is also a man with skin in the game. And a man with skin in the game makes different decisions than a man doing a job. Do you understand what I mean?"
I think before I say anything back to him. Take my time.
The afternoon light through the window catches the side of his face and he looks older than he did this morning—like a man who has been a father for over thirty years and just realized one of his daughters is past needing him to fight her battles.
"Yeah," I tell him. "I do."
"I need to know which one you are when it matters."
"I'll be both, Prez. I'll do my job for the club because that's who I am. And I'll do whatever it takes for Dakota because that's who she made me. If those two ever pull in opposite directions, I'll make a call, and I'll live with it."
He looks at me a long time.
Pours himself a finger of bourbon. The first time he's drunk in front of me in five years.
He raises the glass. "To new beginnings."
"To new beginnings, Prez."
We drink.
"Spur."
"Yes, Prez?"
"If you hurt her, you know what I'll do."
"I know."
He sets the glass down. "Get out of my office. Go find your woman."
* * *
Marlena is in the kitchen of the main house when I come in.
Cal is asleep on a quilt on the living room floor with a pacifier on his cheek and one fist closed around a stuffed cow.
Dakota is on the back porch—Marlena tilts her head that way without speaking, then she stops me. "Spur."
"Ma'am?"
