Page 56 of I Knew You
“Take my bed again, for your back. Please.”
Her feet shuffled, the hardwood creaking. “Bram, the guest room is fine.”
“Take my bed, or I’ll come up there and throw you into it.”
My pulse beat in my ears, and I realized what I’d said and how it sounded. Yet I let the innuendo hang in the air between us.
“Okay, okay. No need for violence,” she replied sarcastically, although her usual banter tone was subdued.
Satisfied, I went to wash my dishes and let Lakey out in the yard for a minute before deciding it was best for me to go to sleep as well. I turned off all the lights and made sure the doors were locked.
At the top of the stairs, my bedroom door was wide open. Julianna was sitting cross-legged on the bed, looking through some papers with an open laptop next to her.
“Hey,” I said, opening the door wider.
Her surprised face looked up, and then her eyes narrowed.
I saw what she was holding—her little black box.
“Why do you have these?” she whispered, trembling.
My stomach churned, embarrassment washing over me. I knew why she was angry. I had no right to own what she held. Heat crept up my neck for the first time in a long time.
“Julianna, I can explain?—”
“These were my private thoughts,” she interrupted, her voice cracking. “Things I wrote in my bedroom, alone.” She waved the papers in the air. “Why do you have these? How?”
Part of me wanted to ask why she was going through my bedroom drawers, but I refrained. I didn’t care if she went through every drawer I owned or how many mementos she found of hers in my space.
“I found that box when I was remodeling Grams’ house. I had to take up the old flooring, and it was under the floorboards in the closet. The pages were in the box.”
“I don’t even remember putting the box in the closet. I thought I’d destroyed all of it at some point. I’m sure you read them,” she snipped, her face flushed.
“Yes, I did,” I replied honestly, keeping my tone somber.
She closed her eyes.
I sat on the edge of the bed. I reached over and removed the papers from her hands. Folding them over, I put them in the box and shut the lid. She put her head in her hands.
“This is way worse than me watching you change in high school,” she said from behind her fingers. “These were my most private thoughts about you. I even talked about?— ”
“How we were perfect soulmates?” I interrupted, smiling, trying to catch her eye between her trembling fingers. “How you watched my ass as I played ball out in the driveway with Whit? You did write about wearing my football jersey while I took your virginity and how you wanted me to?—”
“Oh my God! Please stop!” She scrambled over and jerked the box out of my hands.
I tried hard not to chuckle. “Julianna. That’s from fifteen years ago. We were kids. We’re adults now. It doesn’t bother me that you felt those things about me then, not at all.” I didn’t take my eyes off her face, even though she wouldn’t look at me. She clenched the black box to her chest.
“But it was wrong for me to keep them and not destroy them or send them to you, so I’m sorry for that,” I continued.“Forgive me, please.” I placed my hand on her bent knee. She looked down at it. My heart skipped a beat as her eyes lifted to meet mine.
“I was fanciful back then,” she whispered. “I’m still in love with the idea of love, but I’m not as naïve now.”
You’re perfect now.The thought ran through my head unbidden. And not saying it to her was one of the hardest things I’d ever done.
“No one is,” I said. “I am sorry, sweets.” I gestured toward the box with my head. “I thought about giving them to Whit. That was the alternative I was working with here.”
“Oh my Godddd!” She fell over onto the bed. “If that was the alternative, then thank you a million times over. You should have destroyed them.”
I would have lit myself on fire before I destroyed those words, but I kept that thought to myself, as well.
