Page 16 of I Knew You
“Old?”
“Yes, old. Did you misplace your hearing aid again?”
“Lost it when I tripped and broke a hip.” I could feel him smiling through the phone. “But I probably shouldn’t joke about that. That’s the last thing I need, a career-ending injury.” My back throbbed, and I thought about the irony of it as he continued, “How are you?”
It was the moment of truth. I closed my eyes. “I’ve got some news. I have to have surgery…again, on my back. I found out this morning. It’s nothing major?—”
“Back surgery is always major,” Whit interrupted. “What happened?”
“Disc herniation. Happens all the time. In a strange turn ofevents, though, my doctor is retiring and wants to refer me to someone in Roanoke so that I can have the surgery in the next couple of months.”
“That’s so far. Are you sure you have to do that?” he asked, but then he gasped. “Wait, this couldn’t be better timing. I need someone to move into Gram’s house for a while. Bram moved out a couple of months ago.”
My world stopped.
“Grams’ house? You bought?—”
“Yeah, sorry. I meant to tell you. It just never seemed like a good time. I bought Grams’ house about fifteen months ago when it went back on the market. I wouldn’t have known it was available, but Bram clued me in, so I snatched it up.”
I could barely breathe.
Why didn’t he tell me?
I called him to talk about my surgery, and he hadn’t bothered to tell me he owned our childhood home. And he’d owned it forfifteen months.I tried to tamp down the sting of betrayal and focused on the second part of his statement.
“Bram Winchester was living in Gram’s house?”
I closed my eyes. I could hear my heart beating in my ears as my blood pressure shot through the roof. Bram and Whit were still friends. I talked to Whit at least once every few months, and he’d never mentioned him to me. I never heard Bram’s name. I could count on one hand the times I’d said it aloud. Yet I thought of him almost every day.
“Well, yeah. He moved in after I bought it. But he bought some land with a house out in the county, and he’s moved out there now. It’ll be good to have you in it for a couple of months until I find a renter or something.”
Hundreds of questions swarmed through my mind, and maybe some should have been about the house and the logistics of Whit’s omission of info, but instead, they were all related to Bram Winchester. Fleeting teenage memories of Bram’s bodypressing into mine that night of the Christmas party flooded my mind.
Was he married? He was thirty-four, so odds were that he was. But I was thirty-three and unmarried, unattached even, so maybe he was as well?
Oh my God, Julianna. It doesn’t matter!
I’d searched for Bram on social media over the years, but I had never found him. Unlike Whit, I’d lost touch with the people and the news from Mill Creek years ago, and anything I’d gleaned was from context clues from Facebook friends who weren’t friends. I had no way of knowing what Bram looked like, much less if he was attached. He had been intelligent and drop-dead gorgeous fifteen years ago. I doubted that had changed much. I was sure he was thriving.
I was about to bring it all up when Whit spoke again. “I want you to get the surgery in Roanoke. I want you to have the best of the best. I’ll take care of everything. Who do I need to call? What do I need to pay for?”
“There’s nothing for you to do.” The lie felt sour on my tongue, but I pushed forward. “I just wanted you to know. If I decide to do the surgery in Roanoke, and I probably will, I would appreciate the use of the house. And I’ll pay rent while I’m there.”
“No, you won’t.”
I took a deep breath, overwhelmed.
“I can’t live with myself otherwise, Whit.”
He chuckled. “You always were the goody-two-shoes of this duo.”
My cheeks heated as words from the past haunted me.
“Good girls like you don’t belong with assholes like me.”Why did those words, spoken by none other than Bram Winchester, still sting to the core?
“You have no idea what I’ve done,” I replied, attempting to sound mysterious.
He made a derisive snort. “Like what? What’s the last ‘bad’ thing you did?”
