Page 85 of Quiver

Bex glanced at Fletcher, who only shook her head before saying, “Any chance either of you want to let us in on what’s happening?”

Kylie forced a little laugh. “If you don’t know, you don’t need to.”

Bex leaned closer to Fletcher and stage-whispered, “I think your little confession in the hospital led to a sort of clearing the air between the two of them.”

Fletcher frowned. “What confession?”

Bex pressed down the last side of the bandage and sat back. “You’re kidding, right? Or are we not talking about the elephant in the room?”

Fletcher’s voice grew deep and serious. “What confession?”

Bex looked to Ava and Kylie as if they might help. “She doesn’t remember?”

Fletcher grimaced as she stood up and pulled on her overshirt, then turned from one of them to the other until her eyes locked with Kylie’s. “Is someone going to tell me?”

Kylie did want to have this conversation at some point. A part of her ached for it, but not with an audience, and not before she’d had time to process what Fletcher had actually said, or to consider the charges Ava had laid at her feet about her own inability to say it back.

Only now, with Fletcher’s dark eyes on hers, it didn’t actually feel as if there were anyone else in the world, much less the room, and while there were still a million mines lurking below the surface, she didn’t have to uncover them all to find a single shred of truth, so she simply leaned into the one she held closest. “You said you loved me, but that was for Ava and me to hash out, because Fletch, you and I, we’ve always known what we felt for each other.”

Fletcher’s jaw tightened, and the muscles there strained as if she were chewing on the new information, or maybe the old feelings. The silence stretched into awkward territory, but still she never broke eye contact with Kylie. The two of them stared as the words and everything behind them settled into the space between. Then she finally gave one curt nod. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Bex asked.

“Anything else I should know, doc?” Fletcher sounded more tired than tense.

Bex shook her head. “Keep it clean and dry. Don’t do too much.”

“Got it.” Fletcher turned back to Kylie. “I suppose we need to get back to work.”

Kylie smiled slightly, grateful for once to have a common drive the two of them could count on together. “I’m ready when you are.”

Fletcher sat at the kitchen table while Kylie cleaned the dinner dishes. Her limbs hung heavy, but her mind wouldn’t stop swirling like the snow falling outside.

The two of them had survived another lesson with her in the lawn chair. No, that wasn’t right. She’d survived. Kylie had thrived. Once Fletcher had been forced to sit still and actually focus on her, there was no denying her progress, and not just in the saddle. Her balance, her poise, her positioning, they’d all improved drastically, and the results followed. Kylie hit more targets than she missed even at a canter, and while she rarely struck the bull’s-eye, she also rarely missed in dramatic fashion either, which could also be said of Kylie in any number of other situations.

She might not have everything she ever aimed for, but she never seemed too far off from getting what she sought, and not for the first time, that led Fletcher back to the realization Kylie would likely secure the movie role she’d wanted bad enough to start them both down this path again.

Still, Fletcher’s brain and body refused to process the fact with the same painful point it had at the beginning. Something about her resistance had dulled, especially here in the quiet with the woman she’d grown used to again, standing barefoot in blue jeans and wearing one of Fletcher’s hoodies as she hummed softly while she rinsed dishes.

You said you loved me, but that was for Ava and me to hash out, because Fletch, you and I, we’ve always known what we felt for each other.

The comment floated though her mind anytime she allowed it to do so. She’d turned it around, inspected it, put it away, and pulled it back out again, but she still couldn’t summon much in the way of a conclusion. Kylie had delivered the words evenly enough, as if they made sense, almost as if they didn’t need saying aloud at all, and perhaps Fletcher internalized her attitude without meaning to.

Certainly, there were moments when the basic facts seemed evident enough. She and Kylie had grown up with each other. They’d figured out so much of who they were with each other, learned to love by loving each other. And they’d already talked openly about how they still stepped up for each other in moments of need. Kylie had been good for her during a seriously traumatic experience. She didn’t think it was wildly unreasonable for her to express strong emotions in the immediate aftermath. She remembered feeling deeply connected and experiencing gratitude for her strength, clinging to her hand, relying on her presence.

From a logical standpoint, she couldn’t find any reason to rebel, and yet the word love still produced a visceral reaction every time she played it. Her chest tightened, her teeth clenched, her face warmed. Nothing felt as casual as Kylie had made it seem. She probably could’ve come up with a million different descriptors to label her feelings for Kylie before she got to the word love, and she would’ve come up with a million more before she used the same word to describe how Kylie felt about her.

Her heart ached as Kylie moved around the kitchen with ease and a familiarity that hadn’t faded along with everything else when she’d left. Or maybe the rest of it hadn’t faded either. Maybe she’d only buried it under the same stones she’d stacked up around her heart.

Kylie put the last of the dried dishes in their place and pulled a towel from a nearby laundry basket. Laying it out on the countertop, she grabbed a smaller one from a drawer and rolled it neatly before setting it near the sink. Then she turned to Fletcher and smiled in a way that nearly cracked her open with its sweetness. “Ready to play beauty school?”

She shook her head, unable to process the question or the expression.

“Come on. It’ll be fun.”

“What will?”

“Me washing your hair.” Kylie patted the towels. “You can lay right here with your head by the sink, and you’ll be completely supported while I use the spray hose to treat those luxurious curls.”