Page 71 of I Knew You
“You were a child!” Her booming voice echoed through the trees. “How can you say that?”
I let out a long breath. She had her demons as I did, and I knew in this situation, those demons outweighed the empathy she usually so easily employed. She would never understand my perspective.
I ached to tell her the rest of the story —what had happened after I left her, how I had come back.
But it wasn’t time, not yet.One confession at a time.
I needed to wait. I’d tell her when it felt right.
“I don’t want to argue with you about this, especially not today.” I said the words calmly and stepped back from Julianna. Lakey watched us and whimpered when we went silent. Julianna’s attention went to the pup, and she walked over and began to soothe her.
“Julianna.”
She would not look up at me.
“I just want everyone to get along,” she whispered, scratching Lakey’s head. “I want to move on.”
“I do, too,” I said. “That’s why I want everyone to be on an even playing field. I want everyone to have all the facts so that we can move on.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t want to move on. You want someone to affirm your belief that you’re the piece of shit you think you are.”
It was my turn to freeze. Was that true?
It didn’t matter if it was. I would win this argument.
“I don’t need anyone to tell me what I already know,” I scoffed. “I might be a man worth knowing now, but when it comes to you, I’ll never be good enough. I don’t need Whit to tell me that. I don’t need you to tell me that.”
“I’m not a fucking saint, Bram.”
“I’ll only hurt you in the end. It’s who I am. It’s what I do.”
She looked up at me, her lip wobbling, tears pooling in her dark eyes. But as if the night switched directly to daylight, I watched her demeanor morph before my eyes. She steeled her spine and swallowed her emotion.
The tears stopped. So did the trembling.
She was stoic. Determined. Unaffected.
“We’re mutually benefiting from this arrangement,” she said. “Let’s not forget that. We can agree to disagree.” Lakey stood beside her, tail wagging. “I think I’m ready to go back to the house.”
Chapter Fifteen
Bram |October 10, 2024
Julianna was still in the bedroom when I left for work the next morning. The door was fully shut. It was the first time that had happened in days, and my heart sank when I noticed it. The invitation was most definitely closed for me. I left her a note on the kitchen table telling her she should use the Jeep to go anywhere she wanted.
I thought she might text me during the day.
She didn’t.
When she’d retreated to her room with her laptop last night, I’d stayed outside alone on the porch most of the late afternoon and evening with Lakey. I’d casually drank beer on an empty stomach until I was pretty drunk, which left me disgruntled at work with a pounding headache. I kept playing through my mind the past, my failures, and how much I wished more than anything we had spent our wedding night together.
And not as friends. I was so tired of being merely her friend.
I caughtMelanie in the parking lot after work and asked her to go out for dinner in downtown Roanoke. Her brow furrowed, then she turned away, dismissing me with her hand and her long ponytail swinging in my face.
“No way! Take your wife out, not me,” she replied, checking something on her phone.
I looked down at my feet and took a deep breath. “We…we fought yesterday, and…we aren’t speaking.”
