"She loves you."
"I know."
"She loves you the way Phantom loves me. Don't waste it."
"No, ma'am."
She turns back to the sink, and I walk through to the back porch.
Dakota is on the top step with her elbows on her knees and her hair drying in a long, loose braid down her back.
Her own jeans now. Her own boots. A tank top of hers I haven't seen.
She doesn't turn around when the screen door opens.
"Did he kill you?" she says.
I keep my voice flat so she doesn’t sense the sarcasm in it. "Close enough."
"What’s that supposed to mean?"
"He poured me a drink instead."
She turns to look at me. "You drank with him."
"I did."
"What did he say?"
"What I needed to hear."
"Spur."
I sit down on the step beside her. Not touching her yet. Letting her have the next move because Dakota always knows which move comes next when I stop guessing.
She leans into my shoulder, and I put my arm around her.
She closes her eyes for a second.
"What about Friday? Are we good to go to Abilene?"
"Yeah, you’re cleared to ride."
"He let me?"
"I told him pulling you tells the man with the camera that he won. He agreed."
"Good."
We sit on her father's back porch in the afternoon sun, watch the mustang at the round pen rail in the distance, and don't talk for a while.
The cicadas. The far sound of a brother's bike starting up at the clubhouse. Cal making a small noise inside the house that Marlena answers without saying a word.
"Dakota?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm not going to lose you."
