Page 24 of Stick Around,
“Every damn day.” I secured the gate and scanned the property. “Where’d the old fool get to this time?”
The sound of indignant squawking from the direction of the chicken coop answered my question. I jogged toward the noise, Debra picking up her pace behind me.
The scene at the chicken coop stopped me in my tracks. Butters stood in the middle of scattered feed, looking enormously pleased with himself as a flurry of feathers and chicken panic erupted around him. And in the center of it all, standing atop the small feed shed with her wings extended like she was about to take flight, was Eggatha, the world’s most delusional chicken.
She fixed me with one beady eye, chest puffed out, making a noise that sounded kind of like a whinny.
I watching as she pawed at the shed roof with one foot. “You are not a horse.”
Eggatha disagreed, apparently, as she let out another imitation whinny and flapped her wings dramatically.
Walter barked encouragingly, which only seemed to bolster Eggatha’s confidence. She strutted along the edge of the roof like it was a stage, while Butters bleated excitedly from below.
“All right, that’s enough.” I moved forward to retrieve the wayward goat, but Debra surged past me, ears flat against her head as she charged toward Eggatha.
The chicken, spotting her nemesis, let out what could only be described as a battle cry and launched herself from the roof. But it wasn’t in retreat, it was directly at Debra in a kamikaze attack of feathers and misplaced equine identity.
“For fuck’s sake.” I sprinted forward, managing to intercept Butters before he decided to join the barnyard drama.
The chaos took almost twenty minutes to sort out. By the time I had Butters back in his pen, Eggatha safely contained, and the rest of the chickens calmed, my shirt was sticking to my back with sweat, and Walter had fallen asleep in his carrier, somehow managing to snore through the entire disaster.
I made my way toward the feed storage to replenish what Butters had scattered, but my mind wasn’t on my tasks. It kept circling back to last night and the view from my bedroom window that I hadn’t meant to see but couldn’t bring myself to turn away from.
Quinn, bathed in the golden glow of string lights, her head thrown back against Kellan as he feasted between her thighs. The graceful arch of her neck, the trembling of her thighs, the soft, broken sounds that had drifted up through the still night air.
I wasn’t proud of watching. But I wasn’t exactly sorry either.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen both Kellan and Enzo with women before and vice versa. Living in close quarters for years had eliminated most boundaries between us and made us more open sexually.
But this was different.
The raw, gut-level pull I’d felt watching Quinn had nothing to do with voyeuristic thrill and everything to do with how she looked wild and free in that moment. She was beautiful in a way that went beyond the physical act itself.
She had lookedseen. And something in me had recognized and responded to that with an intensity that still lingered beneath my skin nearly twelve hours later.
I was so lost in thought that I almost didn’t notice her until I was at the stable entrance. Quinn stood inside, struggling with a half-full muck bucket, clearly trying to drag it toward the compost cart. She wore black leggings that hugged her curves, her new boots, and a loose shirt that had slipped off one shoulder, revealing something strappy underneath. Her hair was pulled up in a high ponytail, her face flushed from exertion.
Something pulled in me at the sight.
She startled when she saw me, nearly dropping the bucket. A too-bright smile flashed across her face, not reaching her eyes.
“Morning!” Her voice practically chirped with forced cheerfulness. “Enzo has me cleaning out the stalls of the horses already out to pasture. I think he called it character building when I complained it was hard manual labor.”
Her eyes darted everywhere but directly at me.
Without a word, I crossed to her and took the bucket from her hands, my fingers brushing against hers briefly. The contact sent a jolt up my arm that I tried to ignore as I dumped the contents into the compost cart.
“Thanks. Next time I won’t fill it up so full.” She tucked an invisible loose strand of hair behind her ear.
Walter stirred in his carrier, drawing her attention. Her smile softened as she looked at him. “How’s the world’s tiniest bodyguard today?”
“Sleeping through his shift. Didn’t even help me when Eggatha and Debra tried to kill each other.”
A small laugh escaped her, then faded as quickly as it came. The unspoken acknowledgment of the night before hung between us.
I didn’t have a damned clue what to say to fill the silence. I could read the subtle shifts in a horse’s stance from across a corral, could interpret Walter’s tiniest head tilt, but standing here with Quinn, her eyes skittering away from mine like a spooked colt’s, I felt completely out of my depth.
She pointed over her shoulder. “I’m going to get back to work.”
