Home > My Cone and Only(4)

My Cone and Only(4)
Author: Susannah Nix

Straight to another woman, no doubt.

I didn’t know what I’d expected him to say. It wasn’t like he was going to suddenly profess his undying love for me because we danced well together.

If anything was ever going to happen between us, it would have happened long before now. Maybe there’d been a window once and I’d missed it. More likely, he’d never seen me as anything other than a surrogate sister.

I turned my back so I wouldn’t have to see which direction Wyatt headed and which girl he went to after me. There was a simple enough solution to my problem, at least temporarily.

I needed to find my own company.

Someone who could make me forget Wyatt King, at least for one night.

 

 

2

 

 

Wyatt

 

 

It took all my effort to walk away from Andie Lockhart.

I always had to force myself to walk away from her, and each time I did, it got a little harder. You’d think it would get easier after all these years. You’d think I’d have so much practice it would be a fucking piece of cake. Except it was the opposite of that. I was like that Sisyphus guy pushing the rock up the hill. Instead of me getting stronger, my rock kept getting heavier each time.

So I distracted myself the only way I knew how. I headed straight to the bar and ordered two shots of whiskey, downing them both in quick succession. Once I was good and drunk, I’d find myself a woman to take my mind off my best friend’s little sister.

The bartender gave me a knowing smile when I ordered another shot with a beer chaser. Her name was Mariana and I’d taken her home once, a few years back. Or maybe she’d taken me home. My memories of that night were fuzzy.

I considered the possibility of a repeat engagement, but she probably wouldn’t get off work until three. I wasn’t in the mood to wait that long tonight.

My dilemma solved itself when Brianna Thorne sidled up to the bar next to me and ordered herself a beer. She’d made her interest pretty clear earlier when she’d stuck her tongue in my ear. It wouldn’t take much effort to close the deal, which was exactly what I needed tonight.

I leaned over, letting my hand skim the small of Brianna’s back, and told Mariana to put her beer on my tab. We took our drinks over to one of the nearby two-tops, and I pretended to listen as Brianna chattered about her cosmetology classes.

While she talked about barbering and beard trimming techniques, my gaze wandered away in search of Andie. I found her almost immediately, my eyes seeming to know exactly which direction to look, like she’d been implanted with a tracking device wired directly into my brain. She was talking to two dudes I didn’t recognize. City boys down from Austin, by the look of them. Tourists checking out the local wildlife. Andie laughed, her dimpled cheeks pinking beneath her freckles, and one of them touched her arm.

I grabbed Brianna’s hand. “Let’s dance.”

She wasn’t as good a dancer as Andie, but then no one was. Brianna didn’t have Andie’s athletic physique or self-assurance. She was slimmer and more delicate, despite being taller, and too busy playing coy to match Andie’s quickness.

Brianna wasn’t as funny as Andie either. Or as smart. Andie was way too fucking smart for me. Smart enough to skip a year of elementary school when I’d almost been held back a year. After graduating close to the top of her class, she’d gone off to college in Huntsville and come back an ecosystems biologist. Then she’d earned herself a master’s degree while working at the state park nearby, and now she taught a class at Bowman—the same local college I’d dropped out of.

Brianna was much more my speed than Andie. She kept up with me fine on the dance floor, but I didn’t try any fancy moves with her. I moved on autopilot, my gaze locking onto Andie and her new city friends with every revolution around the floor.

She wasn’t wrong that I hadn’t been around much. I’d been avoiding her intentionally, and I hated that she’d noticed. But then she always noticed everything. That girl saw through me like no one else alive ever had. She saw me so well, I had to be careful around her, or she’d figure out my secret. And I definitely couldn’t have that.

I couldn’t let her know that I’d been half in love with her since I was seventeen years old.

Me and Andie’s brother Josh, we’d been best friends since first grade, when we were assigned seats next to each other in homeroom. King and Lockhart—lucky for me, K and L came next to each other in the alphabet, or my life might have taken a whole different path.

Josh and I were inseparable growing up. I’d spent almost as much time at his parents’ goat farm as I did at my own house. More, after my mom died. Josh’s family accepted me as one of their own and made me feel more wanted than my own father ever had. Josh’s little sister Andie had been tagging along with us for as long as I could remember, but Andie was cool, so I’d never minded. Even as a kid she was tough as nails and game for anything, with a nose for mischief almost as finely honed as mine. As far as I’d been concerned, she was just one of the guys.

Until I hit puberty and discovered girls—or more accurately, girls started to discover me. I guess I went a little girl crazy after that. What could I say? I loved the attention.

I loved the way their eyes followed me when I walked through a room. I loved the way they couldn’t keep their hands off me. I loved how smooth their skin was and how sweet they smelled. I loved kissing them and discovering they tasted even sweeter. I loved their soft parts and their hard parts and all their parts in between.

I just really loved girls, okay?

I was so busy loving girls, I might have been a little slow to notice Andie was one too. She was two years younger, so the girls in my class had a head start on her. But damn, when she caught up, she caught up with a vengeance.

I don’t even remember when I first started to notice. It must have happened gradually. But at some point, my awareness of her changed. The way I thought about her changed. The things I wanted to do with her changed.

Fortunately, as much of a dumbass as I was back then, I was smart enough to keep my hands off her. I knew instinctively it wouldn’t be cool. You didn’t hit on your best friend’s baby sister.

Josh had always been hella protective of Andie. Because she’d skipped first grade, she was only a year behind us in school and younger than all her classmates. In fifth grade, Josh got in trouble for getting in a fight with some dickhead fourth-grade boy who’d pushed Andie down on the playground. In eighth grade I helped him fill Caroline Tingle’s locker with dead cockroaches after she shit-talked Andie to a bunch of her seventh-grade friends. Then there was that time, senior year of high school, when Bradley Squires ditched Andie at the homecoming dance to stick his tongue down Sienna McElwee’s throat. It was the closest I’d ever seen Andie come to crying, and the first time I’d ever seen murder in Josh’s eyes. The two of us cornered Bradley before school the next Monday, and without even laying a finger on him, Josh scared him so bad he nearly pissed himself.

By that point, I’d been deputized as Josh’s second when it came to looking out for Andie. That was what you were supposed to do for family. You stuck up for them and watched their backs. You made sure everyone else knew there’d be hell to pay if anyone came for your people. And the Lockharts were as much my people as anyone.

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