Page 5 of I Knew You
“You okay?”
I was broken, but my fight wasn’t physical. It was mental.
Julianna begged me to leave her. Threatened me, even. But I knew as sure as I was alive that no excuse would ever justify me abandoning her. I had left her alone. I chose myself over her. Nothing would ever change that.
I closed my eyes.
“I’m fine,” I whispered. “Drive.”
Billy turned on some hard rock I couldn’t be bothered to identify and whipped the small car around multiple curves in the forest. He was moving so fast that it was making me sick.
“Dude, slow down,” I demanded, knowing I was taking my anger and worry out on Billy unfairly. Yet, the last thing I needed was another impaired wreck.
“Geez, fine.” Billy put on the brakes, and I lurched forward. He resumed at a more leisurely speed. “Grandma poke slow enough for you?”
“Perfect,” I muttered and looked out the passenger window.
With every heartbeat, her name ran through my head, followed by definitive thoughts:Why are you doing this? Why did you leave her?
I could go back.
My father could disinherit me. Whit might hate me, at least for a while, and I would lose my scholarship. Yet all of it would be bearable if Julianna knew, truly knew, that I cared more about her than myself.
“Stop the car.”
Billy slammed on the brakes, and the car halted in the middle of the road. He looked at me with bloodshot eyes.
“Listen, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you’re totally killing my buzz.”
“Take me back to where we came from. There’s something I have to do. I’ll make it worth your while.” Cash, weed, booze—whatever Billy wanted, I’d find it for him.
He gave me a weird look, but he turned the car around and headed back from where we’d come. I held my breath as new fears assaulted my mind. Had Julianna been keeping the full extent of her pain from me? She had been limping while we argued, and she had let me bear her weight up the hill. How bad was the damage?
Soon enough, we came to the scene.
“Whoa, what’s this?”
Billy slowed to a crawl as we approached the flashing lights on the road.
“Let me out here and then get out of here unless you want to be caught with all this smoke,” I told him, and he stopped right in the road, some thousand feet or so from the nearest cop car. “And thanks for answering when I called. I owe you.”
I didn’t have time for a handshake or further words. I unraveled myself from the tiny vehicle and willed my feet to walk toward the lights. I felt the chill of the night in my bones.
There were four cop cars and a wrecker on the scene. A man was making his way down the hill toward the truck. There was no ambulance. No sign of Julianna.
I put my head in my hands, unable to stem the rising tide of emotions overwhelming me. I wanted her to be there still, so she would know I came back for her, but I was too late for all that.
I walked up to the first officer I found, a man in his mid-fifties with a thin mustache and even thinner, gray hair on his head.
“Sir? Where’s the girl?” I asked in a rushed inquiry, tapping him on the shoulder.
He turned and looked me up and down, a grimace visible on his sagging face. “Who are you?”
Anger at myself rose inside me, and I tried to get it under control. I didn’t want to appear rattled. I wanted to be calm. Resolute. But all I could think of was that they’d sped off with Julianna to who knows where, and I wasn’t there with her. She was alone.
My faraway stare must have been alarming because the police officer grabbed my arm, stirring me out of shock. “You okay? Were you in this?” His head tilted toward the accident scene.
I felt exhausted, and my shoulders slumped. I hadn’t answered him. His eyes narrowed on me. “Where were you?”
