Page 57 of What I Should Have Known

His Adam’s apple bobbed with a stiff swallow. “Just me.”

Shuffling sounded beside me as I stared at Sawyer. The logical answer, an easy lie, would’ve been Kat’s mom or Emma seeing as they’re the two girls who had shared a tent with Kat. But he hadn’t even bothered to try and use them as an excuse. A drop of sweat beaded on his temple as a vein in his forehead deepened.

Stuffing my hands in my pockets, I slowly pulled my eyes away from Sawyer and connected with Kat who stood beside me. She pinched her brows together, confusion sweeping across a figure of a woman who had saved me from the depths of a hole I wasn’t sure who was digging.

Warmth and a knowing I’d do anything for her swept across my skin. I slid my eyes back to Sawyer. His brows raised, the sweat pooling upon his forehead, and he inhaled shakily.

“I won’t tell anyone,” Sawyer suddenly said, lifting a shaky hand to his head, and he raised his cowboy hat, sweeping some fingers through his hair.

I nodded once.

Sawyer replaced the hat and glanced at the woman beside me. “Just… Just don’t go anywhere alone, okay? I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I can handle myself; you know that. So, what’s with this sudden extra worry?” Kat snapped.

His eyes darted around us in a frenzy once more and then he shook his head. “Nothing.” And he spun around, racing back toward camp.

I tracked him with my gaze, the hairs on the back of my neck raised like the hackles of a dog. Something was off, and I wanted to know what. Every tingling sense was on high alert, my mind battling between whether the signs I was picking up actually existed or were something I simply wanted to see to quench the crazy clawing through me.

“That was strange. I’ve never seen Sawyer quite like that,” Kat muttered beside me.

There it was.

All the doubt that it was my mind going crazy crept away. “What was?” I asked, hoping for her to expound on what she thought was weird even if I already had an idea.

“We come here every year. I mean, we’ll be back here later this summer around the end of July to push this herd up to another pasture higher in the mountains, then eventually again to bring them back down before winter. He’s never been worried about me being alone. Or without Wyatt. I go tons of places without Wyatt all the time. Especially this close to camp,” she replied and stepped closer to me.

I ran a hand through my hair and stooped down, snatching my ball cap from the ground. Muffin chattered loudly, vying for my attention,but as the wheels spun in my head, I barely registered her sound. Her body pressed against my ankles, but it remained muted as I searched back through the conversation.

Sawyer had mentioned another name. I understood why, but I think there was something else there that had Wyatt on the forefront of his mind. And why had he come looking for Kat this early? How had he known she wasn’t in the tent with her mom and Emma?

“Bernie, you’re scaring me a little,” Kat muttered.

Everything in my mind screeched to a halt. “What?” I looked down at her.

After all the other shit I hazily remembered doing last night while drunk, a memory that was quickly fading in and out of view, I scared her right now?

“You have this look on your face that…that I don’t get. You haven’t said some stupid cheeky, flirty shit. You haven’t even cracked a wise-ass joke. Yet whatever’s on your mind has you…occupied.”

I sniffed as she quietly shifted to face me. Placing my hands on her waist, I pulled her into my body, the steam engines resuming in my mind as I tugged her against me. “What’s something your brother likes to do that would allow me to get him away from everyone for a bit?”

She raised her head away from my chest, and I could feel her eyes searing up at me, but I remained gazing at the forest above her. “What are you talking about?”

“Kat, what’s something—”

“Fishing. Take him fishing. But what’s going on?” she quickly inserted, returning to her question.

“Don’t know. But I’m about to find out,” I replied and let go of her. Quickly pecking her forehead with a kiss, I turned and trudged after where Sawyer had disappeared. “Oh, will you feed Muffin for me?” I called out over my shoulder.

“Bernie!” Kat shouted.

But I didn’t stop.

The thought in my head, the questions and assumptions I was drawing to a conclusion with I sincerely hoped I was wrong. I truly hoped that this didn’t weave as tangled a web as I feared. Because that meant, if I was right, Kat was involved and not by her own choice. No, it started because of my choice.

And no matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, in the end, I’d lose her, but not by the way I’d thought this entire time.

Chapter 19

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