Page 47 of Quiver

Kylie glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner by the bookcases. “It’s barely nine o’clock. You know, you don’t have to run away every time a conversation gets a little personal.”

“I’m not running. I’m going to bed. There’s plenty of work to do tomorrow, and I don’t need a therapist, thank you.”

Kylie smiled. “Everyone needs a therapist, but I’m not nearly neutral enough to play that part for you. I just thought since you listened to me earlier, I could return the favor.”

Fletcher’s jaw tightened as if she might be straining against an impulse she didn’t want to have, or maybe that was merely wishful thinking, because she shook her dark mop of curls and started toward the stairs. “If you want to do me a favor, go to sleep. You can have my old room. I’m sure you remember how to get there.”

This time Kylie didn’t even get to watch her leave. She merely heard footsteps fall heavy on the staircase and then across the hallway upstairs. While Fletcher’s hostess skills may’ve left something to be desired, she would indeed be able to find her way up to the warmest bed she’d ever known, and when she did, she suspected she wouldn’t be the only one sleeping with old ghosts.

Chapter Ten

Fletcher rolled over and peeked out of her barely open eyelid to confirm what she suspected. Her room was still dark with barely a hint of gray coming from the window that normally offered a magical mountain view. She groaned slightly and flopped onto her back. Despite living her whole life on the horse farm, she’d never been an up-with-the-sun person. She worked hard and trained to the point of exhaustion, so a full night’s sleep wasn’t just fun, it equaled fuel, and she’d likely need more than usual to face the day ahead.

She lay still and listened for signs of a continuing storm, but the wind had ceased to howl despite raging for a good part of the night. She could probably blame that and the sound of cracking branches for her restless sleep pattern, but here in the cool dark of not quite day, she could admit Kylie’s presence was also partly to blame. She’d heard her turn in only a few minutes after coming up the stairs, and while she’d tried not to keep track of her movements, creaking floorboards and soft footsteps sank into her sanctuary like a heavy sigh. Nothing felt safe with her this close, and something about the sight of her in this home, so much the same and yet so different, sparked an internal warning long before they’d broached the subject of parents.

Fletcher had worked hard over the last decade to close the doors to the parts of her past she couldn’t reconcile, but it hadn’t taken Kylie Manchester even five minutes in her personal space to blow them all open again. The subtle assault wiggled its way under her defenses much deeper than the direct press of their bodies in the barn, which was saying a lot, seeing as how that one had left her dizzy with desire.

She hadn’t intended to play with fire when she’d brought her back here last night, but when Kylie was around, Fletcher seemed incapable of intentionality, instead simply settling for reacting to things she hadn’t welcomed and couldn’t control. She ended up strung tightly between fight or flight, surrender or withdrawal, her only options to either lean into chaos or jerk away from it violently. Her dreams had been filled with sensations of swaying and slipping and sinking as she watched Kylie wander through the home and life she’d built, pulling open doors and emptying bins she’d worked hard to pack away.

The pressure on her chest became too much and she sat up, causing Bear to lift his head in his own bed on the floor. She didn’t relish the idea of starting this day any sooner than she had to but didn’t possess the emotional fortitude to lie here and relive the expression on Kylie’s face as she’d turned away from the one picture she hadn’t recognized right back to a past neither of them ever lived up to.

Swinging her legs off the bed, Fletcher slipped her feet into warm slippers and padded to the bathroom. Bear huffed his disapproval but did what he clearly saw as his primary job and followed at her heels.

She worked through her morning routine, grateful for the small mercies of a solid set of habits, even if they only entailed the banality of brushing her teeth and washing her face. She wandered over to her closet, only intending to grab a Henley and perhaps a well-worn flannel, but her arm acted as if it had a mind of its own and rose higher than the hangers to pull an old shoebox from an upper shelf.

She bit her lip until it hurt but still couldn’t stop herself from the subtle sense of emotional self-harm as she lifted the lid. A jumble of memories hit her like a slap as a few photographs fluttered to the floor. An old snapshot of Kylie on stage in high school, one of her standing next to Tally when they’d both been young and vibrant, a picture of her submerged in a lake up to her chest, her grin making it clear she wasn’t wearing anything under the water.

Fletcher smiled in spite of the ache and sank to the floor. She stayed there sifting through mementos of a life that had belonged to someone else, or at least a purer version of herself, one filled with more hope than hurt. There were ticket stubs to movies they’d seen together, and plays Kylie had starred in. She found a frayed friendship bracelet Kylie had made for her one summer at camp, and a pressed clover from the field where they’d shared their first kiss on a sweet spring day. There were letters, notes really, things left in pockets and lockers, little professions of love and affection in hurried handwriting, as if the words carried too much weight to hold in and had to be rushed out.

She’d kept them all because she’d believed them all, right up until the point when she no longer could. And even then, she’d held them almost like a sort of punishment, or at least a stark reminder of how far she could fall. In those early years after Kylie had left, she’d pulled them out often as a warning to never allow herself to fly so close to the sun again. Kylie could sell her Hollywood visions of romance on the silver screen, but if these things hadn’t been real, nothing ever could be.

Still, somewhere along the way, the sharp edge of that knife had dulled, and nostalgia crept in like mold or rust, unwelcomed and yet unstoppable. It slipped deeper into her senses as she stacked items neatly one by one back into the box. They’d been different people when they’d built those memories. The girl who’d folded her affections into an origami heart wasn’t sleeping down the hall, but for the first time since she’d packed the mementos away, Fletcher allowed herself a fleeting second to wish she were.

Kylie rose more rested than she had in ages. The thick mattress and feather down comforter felt more luxurious than any hotel she’d ever visited in New York or Paris, and while she did have memories of sharing them with Fletcher, those too left her warm and cozy. She almost hadn’t wanted to get up at all, but as the sun shone brightly on fresh snow outside, a sort of excitement built in her. The stiff aches in her muscles barely managed to dampen her exuberance, and she ran through a quick series of stretches to break up the lactic acid serving as a reminder of how long it had been since she’d used so many parts of her core, but even that felt like progress. She’d ridden last night, hard enough to leave a mark on her body. The thought propelled her forward once more, and as she wandered downstairs, she was not surprised to find the place empty. Of course Fletcher would already be working, but having the house to herself for a few minutes felt like another little luxury.

This had been her home away from home. As sought-after athletes and trainers in their respective sports, Fletcher’s parents traveled often, and her brother, Ryder, never played chaperone convincingly, which left Kylie and Fletcher playing house more often than not. It was fitting, she supposed, the way they’d cook meals and eat at the dining room table, then do homework or read by the fire like an old, married couple. They’d always pushed beyond their age, and perhaps their emotional capabilities, but as they crashed into bed and into each other, the way she’d ached for Fletcher had been too powerful for the teenagers they’d been. Even into college when she’d begun to experience a bigger world and brighter successes, she’d never wanted to roam from the relationship that reminded her of who she was when she shed the parts she’d been cast to play.

She walked slowly down the hallway, examining pictures she’d seen a hundred times of a family she’d often felt a part of. Fletcher’s dad in full fancy equestrian mode wearing a top hat with one of his show horses in an open arena. A black-and-white image of Fletcher’s mom with a bow throwing half her face into shadow, which made the brightness of her other eye even more intense. She smiled as she came to one she’d always loved of Fletcher astride Tally in midleap over a low hedge, a bow dangling from one arm.

The image spurred her forward once more, and she headed toward the side door, bundling up as best she could quickly before tromping through snow up to her knees. She did her best to stick to the path Fletcher had cut, but her strides were longer, and she staggered a time or two into the wider wells that Bear had probably made as he’d bounded his way toward the barn.

She gave Winston a little pat on his muzzle before passing Gabrielle’s empty stall, and her excitement piqued as the sound of hoofbeats picked up speed like the thump of her own heart. Quickening her pace, she reached the doorway of the arena in time to see Fletcher loop around into her approach. She’d dropped the reins and raised the bow as her body worked to balance in the stirrups. Her own obliques tightened in sympathy for the work it would take to stay upright in that position, but Fletcher appeared to do so effortlessly as she loosed the first arrow. Without even watching to see where it landed, she nocked the next arrow and drew, her body perfectly aligned in front of the target for the release.

Everything happened so quickly, only a few strides of a speeding horse, and yet Kylie got the sense she was watching her in slow motion. Her heightened senses memorized every detail from the clench of her jaw to the bounce of her curls to the flex in the muscle where her shoulder met her neck as she drew and twisted for her third shot. She was facing almost backward and still moving at peak speed, a master class in skill and grace as she sent her last shot directly into the heart of the target.

The entire thing took less than fifteen seconds, and yet the raw prowess of Fletcher’s run left Kylie breathless, her heart racing and libido surging. She would say she’d never seen anything quite so impressive in her life, but she had a hundred times, and none of the repetition did anything to dull her sense of awe or arousal.

Even in her heightened state, it wasn’t lost on her that Fletcher’s performance sparked all the emotions she needed to inspire in Sophia LeBlanc or her movie viewers, nor was it easy to pretend she’d ever be able to do so, even if she trained her entire life. Fletcher possessed an intangible type of command, and for once, Kylie didn’t feel even a prick of resentment when comparing herself to someone better.

She opened her mouth, desperate despite all the other conflicts between them, to tell Fletcher she’d witnessed her magnificence, that she saw her and admired her, and yet when she stepped forward, she never got to voice a single adulation before Gabrielle tossed her head and turned with a wildness in her wide eyes.

The horse gave a short kick and stomped herself in a full circle in the second it took Fletcher to snatch up the reins and tighten them.

“Shit.” Kylie shook her head. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Fletcher’s eyes flashed with anger and maybe something more as she wheeled. “What did I tell you about sneaking in here?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak. You weren’t in the house when I woke up. I thought if you got started early, I should, too. I swear I made the normal amount of noise when I came in, but then I got swept up in watching you work.”