18. Chapter 18
Chapter 18
BERNIE
A gentle caress of her lips was all she offered me. One I greedily accepted through the haze.
And as quickly as it came, she pulled away, sliding her hands down to my stomach. “How’s the scratches?” she quietly asked.
I frowned, upset that she had ended the kiss so quickly. “Fine,” I grumbled.
“Bernie.” She tsked her tongue and shook her head. “Let me see.”
I squinted my eyes as her fingers brushed at the hem of my shirt. “Cooties! You’re gonna give me cooties!” I teased and wrapped my hands around her wrists. “A girl is touching me!”
She rolled her eyes. A smile sneaking onto her lips.
Her smile was something so tender and gentle. I slowly relaxed my fingers, and her arms fell back into her lap. She reached forward and slipped my shirt upwards, exposing the bandaged scratches on my abdomen.
“Oh, you already took care of them,” she whispered .
Tipping my head back, I bumped it against the tree trunk I leaned on. “I wasn’t drunk then.”
“At least you’re aware you are now,” she quipped.
A wave of exhaustion slipped through the blissful daze of alcohol. “Hmmmm,” I breathed out. Kat shifted backward and then turned her entire body so she rested sideways in my lap and cradled against me.
Without a word, her cheek plunked onto my chest, and she closed her eyes. Not another sound escaped her lips. Wrapping her up into my arms, I raised my gaze to the stars stretching high above the pine trees and listened to the silence of the night.
I’d changed. I knew that, but I struggled to see what it was doing to my soul. No matter how much I longed for a reset in life, for things to go back to the way they were before Duncan died, I knew that wasn’t possible. And maybe I’d fought it for too long.
Acceptance. Wasn’t that one step in the grieving process? Was I finally making it there? But then why wasn’t the pain and anger less? Everything that once weighed heavy on my mind rushed back in like an uncontrollable whirlwind, and I craved to feel as alive as I had just moments before death took someone he should’ve never touched.
Eventually, there was no strength left to keep my eyes open, and I slipped away into a world of nightmares.
Splitting my sleep like an axe through wood, a crack snapped through the air.
Shooting up, I ripped the revolver from the back of my waistband and shoved an arm protectively in front of the slumbering body beside me. “The fuck you want?” I snarled at the shrouded figure swirling in black.
Trees clawed at it, scraping at whatever demon hovered in front of me. Hazy, it swam in a pool of sludge.
“Bernie?” A woman’s quiet voice slipped through the muck as the creature slowly lifted two limbs. My heart raced in my chest. Someone had followed me home. Reyes was here. Back to haunt me from the grave. The enemy was going to take everything from me. Every good piece of my world, of my life, was about to be whisked away by the monster that I was responsible for controlling inside my head.
Pulling the pin back, it clicked, a bullet ready to dislodge from the silver gun.
“Bernie,” the woman whispered again.
A gentle hand plunked down on my arm, and I snapped my gaze from the floating thing but kept the gun aimed at it. Searing, deep blue eyes watched me. Disheveled, frizzy hair waved in the morning breeze around a face of tenderness. A face I knew.
In a world that existed.
“Hey,” Kat gently said.
I pulled my eyelids down and inhaled deeply, dropping the gun to my side as I released the lever, uncocking the revolver .
“Hi,” Kat’s warm, tender voice sifted through the dark mud licking at my thoughts again, and her hand slithered down my arm, brushing across my fingers.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“It’s fine. But where’d you get that gun?” she asked.
Without opening my eyes, I dipped my chin against my chest. “I’ve had it the whole time.” The weapon that no longer collected dust in my glove box had found a permanent spot in my waistband since the rodeo.
Fingers quickly whispered across my cheek, and I finally pried my eyelids open, latching onto her gaze again. Like the spring breeze giving way to summer, there was nothing but empathy flickering behind her longing.
“There’s nothing actually there, is there?” I questioned, and her brows pulled tightly together. She merely gave me a tight smile.
Turning hesitantly back to where the creature had once been, my stomach dropped to the sleeping bag curled up beneath Kat and me.
Someone was there.
A man who looked eerily like Kat. Someone I’d met yesterday. “Sawyer,” I muttered and pushed away from Kat’s body. “Shit man, I’m sorry…”
His hands, still raised beside his shoulders, twitched in sync with his gaze darting between Kat and me. He remained absolutely still otherwise. The morning sun just peeking over the mountaintops glinted off of the large buckle holding his jeans around his waist. A black vest adorned over his striped button-up shirt, and the cowboy hat resting on his head struggled to hide his curly hair .
“How long have you been there?” Kat asked, sitting up beside me as her cheeks bloomed a little pink.
Sawyer’s eyes darted back to mine briefly, then returned to Kat’s. “Long enough to have seen you two spooning before he pulled a fucking gun on me.” He lowered his voice, finally dropping his hands to his side, and stepped a little closer to Kat. “What the hell are you doing out here with him?”
Kat pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her baggy sweatshirt. “We were just talking and kinda fell asleep.”
Sawyer ran a hand over his face, a dusting of stubble along his thin jawline. “And if Wyatt had seen this instead of me? Or Dad? What then?”
“I’m a grown-ass adult.”
“Who’s out here being cuddled by someone who isn’t Wyatt.” Sawyer closed his eyes and paced away.
“Why does everyone else get a choice but me?” Kat grumbled, brushing some dust from her pants.
“Do you not realize how dangerous it would be if someone else, like Dad, had caught you out here with him not Wyatt? Or even more so alone?” Sawyer suddenly stopped pacing and rushed back to Kat.
“But she’s not alone?” I questioned, a strange shiver alerting me to something I wasn’t sure of ran up my spine.
“Neither of us knew that,” Sawyer answered, his eyes darting back and forth.
“Who’s ‘us’?” I tipped my head, pushing myself upright and scanning the ground. A brief sensation of relief rippled through me as my eyes caught sight of Muffin, stretching with a yawn, but still on her blanket .
Sawyer snapped his lips together and blinked rapidly.
“I won’t ask again,” I hissed, rising to my feet, and the dull headache that had been building rushed away as adrenaline and focus drilled into the opening left by a fleeting hangover.
Sawyer took a single step backward.
“Who’s ‘us’? It doesn’t sound like anyone else is awake, yet. We’re close enough to camp I’d hear feet shuffling or people talking, maybe the crackle of a fire if others were awake. So, who’s ‘us’?” I asked.
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.