Page 5 of It Must Be Fate

“It’s notthatcrazy and it’s not like we planned it, it just happened.”

“Where?” Nera nudges.

“I just,” she says, pausing, before whispering the rest of her sentence so softly, I almost miss it. “I just…well, I finally convinced Phoenix to come horseback riding with me.”

There’s two seconds of heavy, thick silence.

“What?” I shriek.

“Did you just say…” Bellamy rolls back onto the ground in peals of laughter.

“I’m sorry, you two fucked on top of ahorse?” Nera asks, incredulously.

Six slaps a hand over her mouth to muffle the laughter bursting from her lips at our shocked expressions.

Meanwhile, I feel like I’m doing math trying to figure out how that would even work.

Bellamy echoes my thoughts, grabbing her stomach and grimacing from the pain of laughing so hard.

“What are the mechanics of that, Six? How do you…get on?” she scrunches her nose. “Is it even hot or like, really fumbly?”

“It was back home, right before the wedding–”

“I can’t wait to see how thehorsecomes into play here,” Nera cuts in.

“—and I was at the stables, brushing one of the stallions when Phoenix came up behind me and started kissing my neck.”

“I love when they do that,” Bellamy says with a lovestruck sigh.

“Right? Well anyway, I told him I was going for a ride and again I asked him to come along,” she continues. “You don’t understand how many times I’ve asked him to come horseback riding with me. He’sneversaid yes, so when he said he’d come but only if we rode the same horse,bien surI said yes.”

“Naturally,” Nera quips, nodding encouragingly.

“So he took me on a walk—”

“‘He took you on a walk’,” Bellamy deadpans.

“It started out totally innocent!” Six promises. “At first we were both sitting facing the same direction and I was showing him the path I like to take in the forest and then,” she pauses. “Well, and then…”

She trails off, seemingly unable to finish her sentence.

“Then you traumatized a horse,” I cut in helpfully.

Bellamy and Nera burst out laughing again while Six’s face pales.

“Oh putain, do you really think he’s traumatized?”

“Who are you?” I ask, in wonder.

“An icon, that’s who,” Nera answers.

“Did the horse stay in place or did it move?” Bellamy asks.

I whip around and point at her. “Excellentquestion.”

Six grimaces. “Not at first,” she says. “But, you know, the rhythm of us…doing it…made him think we were telling him to walk, so he did.”

“You have to stop,” I beg. “I think I’m going to pee my pants.” I have sharp pains stabbing at my stomach from how hard I’m laughing.

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