Page 34 of What I Should Have Known

Pain flitted briefly across his expression before he winked and walked around me. I turned as his mom snatched his ear lobe and jerked him sideways, dragging him into the shadows away from the crowd.

“Go easy on him,” I whispered after the ghost of their figures. “He did it for me.”

Closing my eyes, I shook my head. How immature it had been for me to be upset at him. Though I was still going to give him a very short-lived tongue-lashing for jumping into a fight he wasn’t needed in, I couldn’t help but see the sweet nature of it.

“Soooooo,” Emma said, snapping me out of the haze I floated in. “Someone’s got a crush.” She flung her arm around my shoulders.

I rolled my eyes. “He’s just…” A friend? An acquaintance? I wasn’t even sure what he was, and I hated to admit that I knew what I wanted him to be.

“He’s just someone I know,” I quickly finished.

“Someone who gave you googly eyes and totally has the hots for you,” Emma explained, letting her arm fall from my shoulders.

“Those googly eyes were made at you, obviously,” I replied, facing my best friend.

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “I’m very accustomed to when men give me that look. He’s not into me.”

“I barely know him.”

“And? Get to know him. Fuck him. Do something. He’s hot and clearly very confident in himself.”

“And in the military.” I raised my shoulders up to my ears.

“Oh,” Emma muttered. She crossed her arms and hung her head. “That complicates things.”

“Yeah,” I quietly replied and ripped my gaze away from Emma. I hadn’t expected how hard it would hit me when I finally spoke that out loud to someone else. Biting back tears, my bottom lip trembled, but I refused to let some guy get to me. “It doesn’t matter anyway. One, Wyatt. But more so, it’s not like he actually likes me. He’s not flirting with me. He hasn’t flirted with me.”

The lies cut like a guillotine, slicing across my tongue, but denying the fact that I knew better was easier than admitting there would never be anything between us.

“He’s given you a nickname, Kat. I can guarantee he’s flirted. How’d he come up with that anyway?” Emma asked, her voice softening with sympathy.

Wiping the back of my hand across my nose, I bit the inside of my cheek. “He helped castrate. His first time around cattle ever apparently.Poor guy slipped on shit.” I giggled lightly and looked back at my friend with a strained smile. “I offered to pay him with a candy bar and a clean shirt after. He said his favorite is a Kit Kat.”

Her brows tightened and she tipped her head. “That’s it?”

I nodded and then paused. “Actually, explain this to me. Later when he reminded me I owed him a Kit Kat I told him I didn’t actually have one and he goes—” I cleared my throat, lowering my voice to mimic Bernie the best I could, and continued, “I wasn’t talking about the candy bar.”

A smirk rose on Emma’s face and she bit down on her bottom lip. “By this point, had he been calling you Kit Kat?” she asked.

“Yes? But that doesn’t matter.” I waved a hand at her, dismissing her comment so I could finish my story. “Anyway, I reminded him that a Kit Kat is a candy bar, and he says, and I quote, ‘I can’t fuck an actual candy bar.’ Please tell me what he meant, because I’m so lost and haven’t been able to let it go since he said that.”

Emma’s mouth flew open, her eyes widening as a sharp squeal escaped her lips.

I stumbled backward.

“Kat, you are the most stubborn and wonderful and clueless girl I have ever met,” she gushed, her cheeks turning red.

My heart raced, pounding against my ribcage as she shrieked again and danced in a little circle. “Oh my goodness!” she squealed and then immediately paused. Her hazel eyes narrowed, and she shot a steely glare at me. “Hold on, does he know?”

Raising my brows, I shrugged my shoulders. “Does he know what? Emma, I don’t know why you’re freaking out like you are because I still don’t understand what he meant.”

“Does he know you’re a virgin? Because he, in not-so-subtle terms, told you he wants to fuck you,” she bluntly stated, and I slapped a hand over my mouth as every muscle in my body went as rigid as concrete.

He wanted towhat?

Chapter 12

BERNIE

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