Page 23 of What I Should Have Known

I nodded slowly. “Don’t make a sound,” I replied quietly.

A tender smile caressed his lips, wrinkling the edges of his eyes. “Even you won’t know I’ve left.”

Goosebumps prickled upon my skin, rippling under the raise of his gaze back to mine. My heart trilled in my chest like an orchestra rising to its triumphant ending. “Go on,” I urged softly.

He winked and, as silently as he promised, he swept out of my room. I stood there, unable to move, unable to break my feet from the hardened cement they were lodged into, simply staring.

There’d been none like him before, and I knew there’d be none like him after.

Blinking rapidly, I swallowed down the lump rising as my heart continued to race erratically. Adrenaline seeped along my veins, heat pooling low in my core. Incomprehensible emotions raced through my body.

One day with him and I wanted more.

Even if logically I knew I couldn’t have more.

Despite the confusion, despite his rather impulsive actions and words, I wanted more of it.

Gasping, each inhale of oxygen strained as if through the thin opening of a straw, I clutched at my chest. Like the undertow, I was stranded at sea, needing to hear him speak again. To say those odd things that had me perplexed.

Why did I crave them so much?

Why did it make my heart flutter like the monarchs that rippled through the fields during the summer?

Like a drug crashing through my veins, a spell settled over me.

His face, his smile, his calloused fingers beneath my chin caught me in whatever trap locked my mind with nothing but thoughts of him. In a daze, I shuffled out of my room. What an idiot I’d been to move away so quickly when he’d touched me.

I paused at the base of the steps as my gaze caught my mom’s. Her eyes darted up the staircase and then back to me. “Where is he?” she asked.

“Where’s who?” I replied, still caught in a haze of thoughts and reality.

“The man who’d been in your room?” she whispered, glancing back over her shoulder.

“Dad’s not there, and there’s no other man here. You can go look if you want.” I offered.

Her brows stitched together for a moment and then she sighed. “I could have sworn I saw…”

I sucked in my bottom lip for a moment, Bernie’s words briefly graced my mind like a train just passing through town. “If there was, how upset would you actually be? I am an adult,” I asked.

She glanced over her shoulder once more and then stepped closer to me. “Don’t you dare tell your father I said this, but honestly, it would be nice.”

My eyes widened as my phone buzzed in my back pocket. “You’d be okay with it?”

She gently smiled. “Like you said, you’re an adult. You don’t need my approval. Though, if you do, then yes, I would.”

The vibrating in my back pocket continued, but I ignored it with a scoff. “That would require male attention. You know, flirting.”

“Oh, honey.” She pushed some hair behind my ear, her eyes filling with sympathy. “Men flirt with you. Like Wyatt.”

“He doesn’t flirt, Mom. He makes fun of me like he does with one of my brothers. For example, like how he talks with Sawyer.” My phone buzzed again, alerting me to another notification, and I whacked my butt, stopping the vibration.

“Maybe that’s his way of flirting with you.”

“To talk about me behind my back like he does with a bro? Yeah, that’s a real good way of flirting.”

She inhaled deeply. “That’s fair. I don’t know, baby.”

“Small towns,” I muttered.

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