He heard her swift intake of breath, but she murmured almost calmly a second later, “We’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen. Or that we’ll be there for her.” Her hand squeezed his arm. “But she’s talking to someone, Matt. That’s good.”

It was.

It wasn’t.

It was the wrong person she was talking to.

“Yeah.” A knife was in his belly, protruding out, but he didn’t know whose hand was attached to it. Asher’s or Morgan’s. He said to Abby, “It’s a good thing.”

Morgan

I didn’t know what I was doing.

Shiloh was behind me, eating leaves from the underside of trees, but we were off on our own. I was standing in the woods, watching. That was what I was doing.

Watching.

Being curious.

Not understanding why.

I didn’t think about others. I cared for my siblings, but they had left. When Karen died, they had left. All of them. I had staff, who acted as my guardians, and teachers for my homeschooling, but the people I’d come to consider family were gone. Peter Kellerman went back to his businesses. Matthew, Finn, and Abby returned to their private schools.

I hadn’t been given a choice to go with them or not.

I got a new sister when Shiloh was born.

She and Shoal were my family.

Then they came back that day. Car after car. All of them were there, even Peter. My mother used to melt and get a glazed look in her eyes whenever he was around. She had loved him so much, but he had only ever been gruff and distant to me. Still, when he had come back four years ago, he brought memories of my mother with him, and it’d been hard to look at him.

They told me about the movie script, that it would be a commemoration to my mother’s life. Even then, I wanted to say no. They said I was giving them permission to shoot the movie on my lands, but my mother was in the room that day. I felt her. I felt how much she wanted this movie done, so I signed.

I had regretted it ever since, until this moment.

I didn’t like having strangers around. They upset the horses too. Everyone was on edge, but he came, and I talked to him at the river, and I hadn’t been able to stop wondering about him.

I wondered what his full name was. Where he came from. What his parents were like. Why did he become an actor? Did he know horses? They shot a scene where he had to ride one, and he seemed a natural at it. He held the reins like it was second nature to him.

There was so much I wanted to know, and then things changed at the house.

All the strangers went away again.

I saw them leave in the cars, but I watched his cabin that night. He remained. So did my siblings. They were the only four there, until the rest came back the next morning. That was the routine. They came at odd hours, sometimes leaving during the day and returning at night. They weren’t sleeping at the main house anymore. Matthew must’ve had them stay at a hotel in the city, but why?

That started a week ago, and every night, I wanted to go and ask why. I wanted to find out so many answers, more answers than I ever cared to wonder before.

I didn’t, though.

I always stood at the end of the last fence. It was as if the wild was behind me. The domestic was before me.

If I went in there, I couldn’t be myself.

There were expectations. A role. An obligation. Matthew likes those types of relationships.

He was the older brother.

He embraced that role and thought it was his job to care for all of us, to overlook, to watch, and he would try to fix things for us. I could tell he was the same, and Finn and Abby? They had the same spark from when we were kids. Finn always felt he had to prove himself to his father, to Matthew.

Abby was always the peacemaker. If there was a fight, she smoothed it out.

Half the time, I was waiting to see if they would muster the courage to look for me, instead of expecting me to go to them because that was what they felt. I could feel it from them. It came to me in waves.

I was supposed to go to them.

I was supposed to find them.

But there would be more.

I would have to fit into some role that each had for me. It was how they were before, that hadn’t left them. I didn’t feel that with Brody.

He wanted my body. I knew that. I felt that. I wanted his too. It was more than that, though.

Expectations.

It was the invisible weight crushing them and myself, and they didn’t realize it was what kept me away.

Shiloh wanted me to love her, but she didn’t expect that of me. Same thing with Shoal.

A twig cracked behind me. I didn’t look, but I knew it was Shiloh moving alongside of me. As the cameras rolled beneath us on the hill and the lady yelled, “Action,” I reached up, grabbed a fistful of Shiloh’s mane, and lifted myself up to her.

She was turning before I sat, and we left again, my back to their world.

Brody

The floor creaked.

I was in the dark, a bottle of bourbon half drank on the floor beside me, and I was staring out toward the field. I was on the second-floor patio, the door open behind me. A nice breeze came off the mountain, but it was just me. All me.

And Kyle’s ghost.

He was never far away.

But the floor creaked, and I knew it was her.

I felt her in my blood, in the way my skin washed in goose bumps and chills. The recognition slammed full force into me at the same time the need for her rose, threatening to overtake me. When she stepped out through the open door, I didn’t dare move.