Page 26 of Quiver

“You need to do whatever I say, and I say your fundamentals are shit. We’ll start there and build brick by brick.”

“What does that mean?”

“Classroom sessions, terminology, repetition of basic movement, raising and lowering the bow, pull and release, nocking arrows with your eyes closed. You’ll be lucky if you get a single shot off by the end of the week. We build an almost robotic sort of muscle memory on the ground before you get a leg up on anything again.”

“Wow, okay. But, are you going to make me paint your fence or wax your truck while I’m at it?”

“If I tell you to, then you will,” Fletcher snapped back, her voice deep and resonant. “This is my domain. You’re here because you need me, not the other way around. If you can’t take direction, maybe you shouldn’t audition for any more movies, but you can’t stay here, either.”

Kylie smiled. “Okay then, but before we get started, could you please answer one more genuine question for me?”

“What?”

“When did you become such a top?”

“Kylie,” Fletcher warned.

“I’m serious. You always rocked the whole butch bottom vibe so well, but now you’re using your daddy voice, and—”

“Bye.” Fletcher turned and strode out of the arena with Kylie laughing all the way.

Chapter Six

She’d made a mistake. Fletcher had known it as soon as she’d agreed to train Kylie, but the woman had kept relentlessly driving home the point virtually every minute of every day since then.

It wasn’t always a full-frontal assault like the first morning, but Kylie’s naturally quick wit had only grown sharper over their years apart, and while Fletcher wanted to hate that, she didn’t always. She didn’t hate several things she probably should have. Like the way Kylie’s auburn hair shone more red in the early light streaking through dusty windows, or the way she moved with confidence through the barn and arena, as if she’d never left. Or the fact that her arms were lean and toned enough she had little problem repeatedly pulling back the string of the bow, even set at a thirty-five-pound draw weight.

“Nice,” she murmured as Kylie drew the string again. “One more. Try to make sure your fingers brush up near the corner of your mouth.”

Kylie released, then reset and pulled the string once more, only this time she lifted a little higher until it pressed firmly against the tip of her nose.

“Too much,” Fletcher said. “You’ll put your eye out.”

The corners of Kylie’s mouth twitched up, but she didn’t break her position. “Do you remember when we used to watch your mom shoot, and she would smoosh her nose all the way into her cheek until she looked like she was made of Silly Putty?”

“My mom does a wildly different kind of archery.”

“Yeah, the Olympic kind.”

She rolled her eyes. “Someday mounted archery will be an Olympic sport, and I still won’t squish my face. I’ll keep using that bow, too. Give it here.”

Kylie relinquished the bow.

“This one is a lot simpler than the one my mom or any other Olympian uses. There are no weights or wheels or counterbalances.” She ran her hand down the full length of both wooden bends. “This one is a traditional recurve, with a short flat in the middle. My mom’s bows also have scopes and a small ledge to rest the arrow on, whereas the ones mounted archers use have to be smooth.”

“Sounds like her bow is Space Age and yours is Middle Ages.”

“You’re not completely wrong. Olympic style archery employs cutting-edge technology, whereas horse archery is trying to recapture a lost art. They want cold, hard science. We inject artistry.”

“You get that from your dad,” Kylie said as if relaying a simple fact.

Fletcher supposed there was plenty of truth to the statement, but it had been a long time since anyone had spoken so simply and easily about her inherited attributes.

“They’ve been in France for four years.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Ryder’s visiting them now, with his family.”