Chapter 92 KNOX

Chapter 92 KNOX
Katy looped her arm through Juniper’s and started steering her away before I could figure out what was happening.

“Hey. Where are you going?”

“Girl talk,” Katy announced without slowing. “Emergency.”

“What emergency?” Juniper asked, glancing back at me with an apologetic little look.

“The kind that requires a bathroom and absolutely no men,” Piper said, falling into step on Juniper’s other side.

Before I could ask what the hell qualified as an emergency, the three of them disappeared toward the bathrooms, heads already bent together.

“Well,” Hunter said beside me, watching them disappear with far too much interest, “that definitely wasn't a bathroom trip.”

I glanced at him. “No?”

“Nope.” His grin widened. “That was an intervention.”

“An intervention?”

"I've seen that walk before." He nodded solemnly. "It's the 'we need to discuss what just happened with better acoustics for whispering' walk."

I rolled my eyes and reached for my drink. Hunter wasn't finished.

"Speaking of which—" He turned toward me, his grin sliding into something downright obnoxious. "What the fuck is going on with you, bro?"

"What the fuck does that mean?"

He just stared at me, letting the silence do the work. I stared back, refusing to give him the satisfaction of flinching first.

"The dancing." He held up a finger. "The staring." Another finger. "The kiss that had zero business looking that real." A third finger, and now he was grinning like a man building a case in court. "Should I keep going, or are you already starting to sweat?"

“It was a performance.”

“No.” He shook his head. “That was supposed to be a performance. What you two were doing looked suspiciously like you forgot the audience existed.”

“I didn't forget anything.”

“Sure.”

“I knew exactly what I was doing.”

“That's somehow worse.”

Slate took a slow sip of his drink. “Much worse.”

I shot him a look.

Hunter pointed at him immediately. “See? Even Slate agrees. And Like, if I didn’t know better, I’d have assumed you two had been together for months. The hand-holding. The fucking kiss just now. The way you kept looking at her like she was the only interesting thing in a two-hundred-person club. Tracy’s not the only one who noticed, by the way—half this floor thinks you’re actually whipped.”

“I’m not whipped.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Hunter’s grin widened. “And the way you danced? The sexual tension rolling off you two? I’m honestly surprised you didn’t just fuck her on the floor right then and there.”

“There was no sexual tension,” I said flatly. “It was just plain and simple dancing. Dancing. It’s a thing people do at clubs.”

“Right,” Slaye said mildly. “And I’m the Pope. Because most people grind that close, dip their fake girlfriend like they’re in a movie, and then kiss her like they’re trying to erase every other person in the room. Totally standard club behavior. Very platonic."
"I was trying to be convincing."

"Convincing?" Hunter repeated, looking genuinely offended by the understatement.

"Reyes, I've genuinely never seen a fake relationship before — but I can say with total confidence that whatever you two were doing back there doesn't get filed under 'fake.' Not even close. That was a trailer for a ten-season romance series."

I snorted. He leaned closer.

“And that kiss?”

“What about it?”

“That kiss had absolutely no business being that convincing.”

I took a drink. “You're overanalysing it.”

“Am I?” He raised an eyebrow. “Because from where I was standing, Tracy wasn't the only person watching. Half the fucking club was watching.”

“Tracy needed to get the message.”

“Oh, she got the message.” Hunter nodded. “Pretty sure the entire postcode got the message.”

I shook my head. “You two are exhausting...it was just a fucking performance!”

“You know what the funniest part is?” Hunter pointed at me. “You keep saying it was fake, but you didn't look like a guy selling a story.”

He paused. “You looked like a guy who forgot there was a story to sell.”

That shut me up for half a second.
Hunter caught it immediately.

“Oh, shit.” His eyes widened theatrically. “Was that a pause?”

“There was no pause.”

“There absolutely was.”

Slate nodded. “Tiny one.”

“Traitor.”

“I’m observant.”

Hunter slapped a hand against my shoulder. “Relax, Romeo. I'm not judging.”

“Good.”

“I'm studying.”

I frowned. “Studying what?”

“You.”

“Why?”

“Because I've known you for years, and I've never seen you look at a girl like that.”

I scoffed. “Like what?”

Hunter’s grin softened into something almost annoyingly knowing.“Like you actually fucking like her.”

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
Hunter's eyebrows shot up.
“Oh, my God.”

“Don't.”

“I didn't even say anything.”

“You're about to.”

“I absolutely am.”

Slate took another drink.

“This should be entertaining.”

Hunter looked between us, delighted.
“I knew tonight was going to be good.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Hunter laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Keep telling yourself it was just acting.”

He finally let it go, launching into some story about a mutual friend’s disastrous attempt to hit on a bartender. I let the sound wash past me without really absorbing it.

My eyes kept drifting toward the bathroom hallway, waiting for Juniper to reappear. Some low-grade restlessness sat in my chest that I didn’t love examining too closely.

She came back about twenty-five minutes later. And I knew immediately something was off.

It wasn’t anything obvious. If I hadn’t been watching for her, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. But Juniper wasn’t walking the way she normally did.

“What the fuck…”

Katy and Piper flanked her on either side like an honor guard, both wearing the kind of smiles that told me whatever had happened in that bathroom was more than actually using the fucking loo.

Then I noticed the three guys at the end of the bar.

I’d never seen them before. I didn’t care. They were watching the girls approach with the kind of blatant interest that made my jaw tighten before my brain had even caught up.

One of them said something to the other two.

They laughed. Their eyes stayed on Juniper.

I was moving before I’d fully decided to.
Slate’s hand caught my arm before I made it two steps.

“Nope.”

“Did you see that?”

“I saw three guys looking at a girl in a nightclub, which is, historically speaking, something that happens in nightclubs, Knox.”

“They were—”

“They were looking. That’s the entire crime.” He tightened his grip when I tried to pull away.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Let the girl breathe with her friends for five minutes without you committing a felony over some guy’s eyeballs.”

“I wasn’t going to commit a felony.”

“You were absolutely going to commit a felony. I know that face. That’s your felony face.”

Hunter leaned in, because of course he did. “Also—and I say this with love—Stop being a fucking caveman. I’m sure the three of them can handle those morons without you charging in like you’ve been personally summoned by the Department of Male Idiocy.”

I exhaled slowly, forcing my shoulders back down.

“Fine.”

“Good.”

Slate released my arm with the cautious optimism of a man who had just successfully defused a bomb.

I turned back toward the bar. What the fuck was wrong with me?

I still wasn’t sure what I even wanted from her. Fine—I wanted sex. She was fucking hot. I wanted it very, very badly. But if by some miracle she ever decided to give it to me… what then?

What happened after? Did I stick a flag in the ground and claim her as my real girlfriend? Or did I do what I always did—take what was offered, keep it light, and move on before it got complicated?

The second option should have been easy. It always had been. It didn’t feel easy with her.

For approximately two minutes, I managed to behave like a normal human being. Then my eyes found Juniper again.

There was something different about her — not obviously wrong, exactly, but off in a way that made me track her more closely than I probably needed to.

She was weaving slightly through the crowd, greeting total strangers with the enthusiasm of someone reuniting with old friends.

"I love your shirt," she informed a guy who very much had not asked for her opinion, patting his sleeve once before continuing on her path toward us. He looked baffled but pleased.

Katy whispered something in her ear. Juniper's lips twitched, then split into a full grin, and she nodded so emphatically she nearly overbalanced. Piper immediately covered her mouth, shoulders already shaking.

Then her expression lit up the second she spotted me—bright, unfiltered, like someone had flipped a switch. Without skipping a beat she closed the remaining distance and dove straight into my arms, colliding with my chest hard enough that I had to steady us both.

“Oh my God, Knoxy,” she exclaimed, voice warm and a little too loud, face tipped up toward mine. “This is so much fun! We need to come here all the time!”

Fuck. She was drunk.

I couldn’t fight the grin that stretched across my face even as the realization settled in. Soft, flushed, completely unfiltered—and currently clinging to me like I was the best idea she’d had all night.

Man, oh man. I had a feeling Speckles was going to be a very… interesting drunk.