Page 74 of I Knew You
“He’s like a brother to me. The things he says about me, to me, they matter.”
She snorted. “Yeah, if you were like a brother to him, he’d be thinking about you a little more and about himself a lot less.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that.
“Just don’t push away the opportunity that’s right in front of your face,” she begged. “It might never come back around.Shemight not come back around. Be open. That’s all I ask.”
She eyed the Styrofoam container on the tabletop and giggled. “That’s for her, right?”
“Quit it,” I said, and threw a ball of straw paper at her.
It was nearlynine pm before I returned to the farm. I was so nervous on the drive home that I had to keep both hands on the wheel to steady my shaking. I had no idea what to say to her. What was too much? What was too little? I hadn’t decided by the time I pulled into the driveway.
It was pitch black outside, and the air was cool and crisp. The familiar night sounds were few and far between. The seasons were changing, much like my life was, like Julianna’s life was.
I’d pulled up to a dark house. Only the TV illuminated the living room through the window. I opened the back door gingerly, thinking she might be asleep. Lakey didn’t rush to greet me as usual. I found them both in the living room, Lakey asleep on her dog bed on the floor, and Julianna curled up on the couch, eyes closed.
I looked down at her form. She was serene and achingly beautiful.
“Hey.” Her eyes opened, and she peered up at me.
I froze.
She wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t frowning either.
“Hey,” I said back.
She moved to sit up a little, and I didn’t miss the wince she gave as she scooted. I wanted to take all that pain away from her.
“I…I waited for you for a while and was going to text, but I didn’t want to disturb you,” she said. Her eyes flashed toward the TV and the wall, anything to keep from looking me in the face.
“I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“Who were you out with?”
I stared at her, puzzled. I tried hard to read her expression in the dim lighting, but I only saw what I didn’t want to.
Sadness.
Apprehension.
Part of me should have been elated that she cared who I was and wasn’t with. Instead, it reminded me how much I’d kept from her and how badly I’d failed her. She wasn’t confident in what she meant to me. She didn’t know the extent of my desire for her, the secrets I kept inside about her for an absurd amount of time.
She didn’t understand that I lived to drown in her over and over.
I took a step forward. I was tired of fearing what wrongs I might do to her. Even if the most dreadful circumstances had brought her back into my sphere, I couldn’t run away from how happy and peaceful I felt when she was near me, so close I could touch her.
And she was my wife.
Mywife.
Fuck it.
I leaned over her and brought my face down until I could smell the sweetness of her breath and feel the heat radiating off her soft body. Her eyes widened, but she wiped the shock away and let her gaze concentrate on me fully in the dimness—a perfect, unaffected mask.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she whispered.
“Melanie,” I whispered back.
