Page 58 of What I Should Have Known

BERNIE

The river rushed around my ankles. Borrowed waders from Sawyer kept the water and cold at bay. We had yet to speak, and the only sound piercing through the crackling current was the hissing of a fishing line through the air. With one hand, I tugged at the line as I dried off the fly with the rod in my other.

Swishing back and forth a few more times, I set the fly down into the river further upstream and slowly began the steady drum of reeling it back in.

He would speak first, I had no doubt in my mind, as his shoulders inched higher and higher up to his ears. Each drop of the fly into the water on his part was less coordinated, less majestic.

All I had to do was bide my time, and that man would crack like an RPG against cinder blocks.

“Aren’t you from Chicago? Like your family?” Sawyer finally asked, his voice shaking.

“Yes,” Ireplied, spinning the reel as the fly rose from the water.

“Then how do you know how to do…this?” he continued, dropping his rod in front of him. “Shit,” he cursed and quickly snatched it up before it was swept away in the current.

“I’ve picked up a lot of different things,” I answered curtly, smoothly whisking the fly and fishing line through the air again. “Like how to tell when someone is hiding something. I’m really good at that.”

“I—I’m not hiding anything,” he stammered.

“No? Nothing to do with why you were out looking for Kat before anyone else was awake. Has nothing to do with the fact that you’re involved with the shit Wyatt’s messed up in?” I stated, laying the fly down gently onto the river.

“What?!” he gasped, a little too loudly.

Spinning sideways, I quickly reeled in my line and glared at him. “So, I’m right.”

“No, there’s—there’s nothing—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered, placing the fishing rod to his chest, ignoring the fly flapping in the breeze at the top he hadn’t secured to the rod.

“Yeah, you do. You know exactly what I’m talking about, and you’re gonna fucking tell me everything,” I hissed, wading toward him as I slipped the hook on a ring.

He fervently shook his head. “I don’t know anything. Wyatt’s not involved in anything.”

“Then why do you care so much about Kat being with Wyatt? What’s in it for you?”

“I don’tcare that much.”

“Then it wouldn’t have mattered if we cuddled, fucked, or just talked last night. But you came looking. You asked. You even snapped at her for being there with me, not Wyatt.”

“Did you two fuck?” he asked, his eyes widening.

“See? You do care,” I answered, stopping directly in front of him.

My shadow fell over his body as he knotted his jaw. “I care who fucks my sister, yes. Any good brother would.”

Slowly, I shook my head. “But that’s not why you truly care. Why’d you come looking for her?”

His lashes fluttered rapidly over his eyes, and his bottom lip trembled. “I can’t—I can’t say anything. If my parents find out, or if… if Wyatt finds out, I’ll be screwed,” he whispered, almost as if there was a wave of relief flooding his figure that I’d continued to ask. As if he wanted someone else to finally know.

“It’s just you and me out here, buddy.”

“I don’t want Kat to marry Wyatt. Shecan’tmarry Wyatt,” he blurted out.

“Why? Because Wyatt’s dealing drugs and uses?”

He froze, every muscle in his body stiffening. “You know about that?”

I stepped away from him a little bit. “I wasn’t one hundred percent sure, but you just confirmed it. And you’re involved, otherwise you wouldn’t have been so nervous earlier,” I replied.

Sawyer closed his eyes, his shoulders sagging. “I’m clean now. I have been for a month. I promise.”

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