Page 96 of Quiver

“And you did, without offering me any space in your new life, no picture or prospect outside me living in your shadow, sitting in trailers, or boxed up in a city apartment, or what? What else? You never could tell me what role you thought I’d play in your big Hollywood adventure.”

“Because I didn’t know!” Kylie exploded. “I was asking for us to figure things out together, and no, I didn’t know how it would work because I didn’t know how anything worked. Why’s that so hard to believe? I was in over my head and begging for your help. I needed your calm, your steadiness, your faith in me, and you refused.”

The words didn’t align with the story Fletcher had told herself over and over, but she couldn’t deny Kylie’s raw vulnerability, so she swerved around it. “Then I guess we were both wrong because you did fine without me.”

“I didn’t. I was lost, anchorless, in a sea of predators and phonies.” Kylie’s mouth twisted as if something hurt. “I drowned in toxic pools of men who wanted to put their hands on me, and women who wanted to get close enough only to stab me in the back.”

Fletcher’s stomach revolted at the idea, but even when she looked away, Kylie didn’t release her.

“Do you know how many nights I spent teetering on the brink of a breakdown? It wasn’t weeks or months. It was years, Fletch. Do you know how bad it hurt to know that the only thing I ever needed in my bones wanted me back only if I surrendered to her every term?”

“Not true.” She finally pushed back. “I wanted you on any terms that didn’t require me to relinquish everything else.”

“I never asked that of you.”

“Didn’t you?” Fletcher tried to spit out the question, but her memory faltered. Surely she wouldn’t have clung to something for so long if it wasn’t true. Hadn’t Kylie asked her to give up her life here? She couldn’t remember the words now, which was odd because she remembered so many others. “You asked me to move to LA with you.”

“Yes, initially I did. I wanted you by my side, always, because I loved you that much, but in the end, I would’ve settled for much less. I said so on our last night together, but you’d already shut me out. You didn’t even listen when I begged you.”

Fletcher scoffed at the idea. “You’ve never begged anyone for anything.”

“Yes, I have. I’ve begged you. That last night we both set the bar as low as we could go.”

Fletcher shook her head again, trying to remember, or maybe trying not to, but she couldn’t stop the images she’d held at bay for years from flooding her brain. Kylie’s tear-streaked face as she stood in the driveway, her suitcase packed in the still-running car behind her, the way she’d clutched at Fletcher’s shirt while she cried.

“Do you honestly not remember the last salvo?” Kylie pushed, her voice raked raw almost the way it had been then. “In the end, I only asked you to wait for me … and you—”

“I asked you to stay,” Fletcher said flatly.

Kylie had already made her choice. Fletcher had known it then. She’d seen it in the suitcase, in the headlights, in the glint of her eyes. Kylie had made up her mind to go, but it was Fletcher who’d made the ultimatum that had closed the door on them as a couple. She swayed at the realization she’d refused to see until this moment, and she might have fallen if not for Kylie’s strong hands on her arms.

“What?” Kylie’s fingers moved to the spot where the arrow had pierced Fletcher’s skin, but it wasn’t the wound that burned now.

“But you were so mad at me,” she mumbled.

“Yeah.” Kylie laughed bitterly. “Fucking enraged, and also hurt and scared and betrayed, just like you. I lived with all those emotions you unloaded on me earlier this week, too, and I picked up many of the same skills to cope. I resented you and worked against your memory and fueled my career with spite to prove I could rise above that kind of rejection. And I lied. I lied to myself, and I lied to you.”

Fletcher lifted her eyes. “To me? After you left?”

“No, last week when I said I never wanted to hurt you. I did, once. But I couldn’t sustain it. I tried to needle or twist the knife, or that’s what I told myself, but it was stupid and delusional.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When the crew of my first movie asked me how I wanted to be billed in the credits, I told them … I told them—”

“You told them”—Fletcher’s stomach sank, all the fire burning there turning cold—”to list you as Kye instead of Kylie.”

She nodded, a grimace distorting her beautiful features. “You were the only person who’d ever called me that, and for one moment I told myself I wanted you to see it, and I wanted it to hurt, but I don’t think it worked.”

“It worked,” she said flatly. “Every time I heard someone say it or saw it on a poster, it felt like you’d robbed me of something deep and personal, and then shared it with strangers.”

“I never wanted that. I told myself I did, but over the years I’ve had to live with the choice, and I’ve realized that, even in my rage, the thought of never hearing you say it again drove me mad. So, I asked everyone else to, desperately hoping someday it might sound as right on one of their lips as it did on yours.”

“Did it?” Fletcher asked, unable to steel herself for the answer before Kylie ran her hand up from arm to shoulder, to the back of her neck.

“Not until you called out to me in the hayloft.”

Fletcher’s knees buckled at the relief, and this time when Kylie caught her, it was in the form of a fiery kiss.