Page 72 of I Knew You
Melanie turned around. Her blue eyes were wide when I looked her in the face. “Are you kidding? You’ve barely been married twenty-four hours!”
I shrugged. Her hand went to her hips.
“What did you do, you idiot?”
I frowned. “Hey, I’m still your boss.”
“Not outside those doors.” She pointed toward the forest ranger office building. “Out here, you’re an idiot. That girl has always meant so much to you. Why did you fight with her?”
“I love how you assume I’m the idiot,” I grumbled.
“Are you?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Probably.”
She rolled her eyes and paused. She seemed to be debating something internal. She let out a large sigh.
“Fine. We’ll go eat and talk about it.”
We met up at The Red Plate Diner. If there were two things Melanie and I had in common, it was the love of the outdoors and breakfast food for supper.
“Lordy. These eggs are perfect,” she praised before taking a huge bite. She was the tiniest woman I knew, and she always ate like a burly man. “Okay. Let’s talk about it.”
I knew she was asking about Julianna, and I huffed.
“Nothing to talk about.”
“I swear, if you make me roll my eyes again, I will pluck off your fingernails.” She leaned over the table. “What happened?”
I took a deep breath. “The day was going great. I took her for a walk in the hollow. But then we started discussing the past, and things went wrong. I need to tell Whit something Julianna doesn’t want him to know.”
“Something recent?”
I shook my head.
Melanie’s brow furrowed. “Does it involve you?”
“Heavily,” I replied, taking another bite of my remaining food. “I don’t want to talk specifics. It doesn’t affect anything right now, but it was something Whit should have known a long time ago.”
“Did you sleep with her in high school?” Mel was on a fact-finding mission, but I wasn’t ready.
“No, I haven’t slept with her,” I replied. “Anyway, we disagreed, we argued, and then she just sort of went…silent.”
“Oh,” Melanie said, sitting back in her seat again. “Oh, that’s bad.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t have agreed more. “She went to the bedroom last night, and I heard her come downstairs once, but I didn’t see her. We haven’t talked since.”
“Do you think she was waiting for you to come to her?”
It was a fair question and one I’d asked myself all day. “I don’t know,” I answered. “I don’t know if she wanted to talk or not. I should have done it, but I didn’t know how. I did something in the past that I regret toward her, and I don’t want to hurt her again.”
“I’m gonna need more context.”
“Not right now. Listen, I know I’ll have to approach her and make this okay again, and I need to know how to do it. How can I tell her I’m sorry without showing my full hand? I keep trying to create distance between what’s happening and what I want.”
“Do you really want to know what I think? Good, because I’m going to tell you,” she said without pause. “This whole thing is ridiculous. You should just fuck each other already and?—”
“Don’t you dare say another word.” I closed my eyes briefly.
