Chapter 7
Amanda
“Yes, doctor,” Calvin said, wincing. “It was a total accident.”
Bless Calvin for insisting on my innocence! The examining room at the local urgent-care barely fit the table where Calvin sat, and it was closing in on me as my nerves ratcheted up.
“Amanda lost her footing. We were having an archery contest, using field-tip arrows.”
The doctor looked up from her clipboard. “You’ll be pressing charges?”
Press charges! My knees bumped together, buckling—again. I grabbed at the wall, but it wasn’t near enough, and I toppled, landing on my backside in this leatherette costume. Humiliating. I must’ve yanked a tube attached to Calvin’s arm as an IV because his arm rose up and he winced.
“No, of course not. And see, doctor?” Calvin was mocking me. “I make her very unsteady. I think it’s my good looks and charm.”
The doctor, a woman, was obviously charmed as well. While I righted myself, she was busy grinning and fawning over her hunky patient.
A burning sensation started in my cheeks and flowed down over my whole head and neck.
That’s my arrow-shot victim. Back off, lady.
Totally irrational! Calvin wasn’t mine, and it was all an act. Now that his buddies were out of sight, he was back to his lady-killer ways.
“There. Three stitches.” The doctor replaced his hospital gown. “You got off easy, considering it could’ve been much worse if it had been with a real arrow point and not a practice tip. No more horsing around with arrows, okay?”
Horsing! My gut sank. “And”—I croaked, speaking for the first time since bringing him in—“no horseback riding, I assume?”
The doctor laughed, a merry bloom in her cheek. “Hardly. At least not for a week.”
No horseback riding? I flopped into a chair when the doctor left.
Calvin must have seen my face. “You really wanted to wear that Rohan costume, eh?”
Uh, no. “I wanted to ride. It’s been years. As a kid, I’d go with my parents to Massey Falls to some stables. A dappled roan there was my favorite.”
“What was her name?”
My head popped up at the question I hadn’t expected from the likes of Calvin Turner. “Pocket. But I also liked Molly, a bay, and One Sock.” I was gushing now, like someone who trusted him with my heart’s dearest nostalgia.
Very dangerous move.
“I’m guessing One Sock had a single white foot.”
“Exactly.” We talked horses for a minute. He liked them, too. His parents had kept a stallion who’d raced in the Torrey Stakes one year when he was a kid.
“Navron.” He inhaled sharply. “Quite the racer.”
Huh. Never would’ve expected to share that common love. “What happened to Navron?”
Calvin’s countenance dimmed. “Same thing as everything else in my life. He went away when my parents split up.”
Ooh. The pain coming off him was palpable. I didn’t say anything, just watched the faraway look in his eye—the one that offered a hint of the real Calvin.
“Dad wasn’t around too much after that. Too busy keeping up with his revolving door of girlfriends, to use your terminology.” He didn’t flinch or move when I set my hand on his. “I kept wishing he’d pick one of them, settle down, but he couldn’t. Just like with Mom, he couldn’t stick to anything even when it was the best he could ever dream of.”
My heart squeezed for young Calvin. And for nowadays Calvin. That was the kind of pain that didn’t ever fully subside.
Before I could say anything more, a nurse came in and took his vitals—and acted like she wanted to give him her phone number, if only a woman in skintight costume hadn’t been sitting at his bedside. I lost count of the number of dirty looks she shot my direction.