Page 25 of I Knew You
The only man I’d ever loved, who never loved me back.
“I can’t stay here,” I heard myself whisper aloud. My hands shook. The dam of panic I’d been holding back broke. “This house…” I looked around. “I keep looking for her, and I can’t…I can’t find her.” My voice cracked as grief overwhelmed me, and the tears began to flow.
He inched toward the end of the island, and his fingers twitched at his sides. But he never stepped into my space. Like with most situations with Bram, I wasn’t sure whether to be grateful that he didn’t make a move or regretful that I let myself believe, even for a moment, that he wanted to.
I shouldn’t want him to. I couldn’t look at him directly, afraid he’d see everything I was too scared to admit to myself.
“Then you’re coming with me.”
My heart stopped.
“What?” I asked. I used the back of my hand to catch the tears falling down my cheeks. “W-what do you mean?”
He moved to grab the box of snacks on the island. “You’ll stay with me. No one lives with me, and I have plenty of room. At least for the night.”
“No,” I replied. The shock of what he’d said made the worst of the anxiety attack dissipate into thin air. “I can’t do that.” I grabbed his formidable arm and tried to stop his strides toward the front door with my snacks. “Stop. No. I can’t stay with you.”
“Why not? I’ve got two empty bedrooms.” He dragged me along as I clung to him, only stopping when he got to the front door. “Can you get this for me?”
A headache was forming alongside my panic. “No, I can’t ‘get that for you’ because I’m not going anywhere with you!”
“Give me one legitimate, good reason why you can’t stay with me.”
I shook my head, the whiplash of my motions and emotions making me dizzy. “Because…I can’t!”
“That’s not a reason. You don’t want to stay here. You can’t go back to Charlotte?—”
“I can go back,” I interrupted.
“Oh, so you still have a place there?” His eyebrow cocked, which of course affected me in all the wrong ways, but I continued, undeterred.
“My best friend will let me stay with her and her fiancé. She owns a bakery.” I pointed at my shirt. “Brandon is nice, and they’ll snatch me up in a second, no questions asked.”
“Okay, well, at least the shirt makes sense now.” He gestured with his head toward what I was wearing. I looked down at the words plastered over my breasts: “Nice Buns.” I had forgotten. I gasped, crossing my arms across my chest to hide the graphic.
His eyes slowly paused on my covered breasts that were propped up for his viewing pleasure. I pretended not to notice that he was checking me out. But I did know, and I didn’t appreciate how it made me feel a deeper flush of warmth.
“I’ll stay here in this weird, haunted house. I will be fine.Look, I’ll even give you the keys to the U-Haul, and you can start unloading. That’s what you came for, right?”
Bram wouldn’t be swayed. “I just watched you burst out crying. I can’t leave you like this. You’re not ready to accept what happened here. I understand that. Remove yourself from the situation and come with me. You’ll come back when you’re ready to face it.”
His irises were so warm. It was as if he were peering into my very being and could see all my thoughts, and perhaps even my desires.
That was a dangerous place for him to be.
“When did you grow up?” I asked, my tone sarcastic, but my question was asked in earnest.
“Therapy, about six years ago.” He shrugged, and I marveled at how he didn’t miss a beat. “You’re not the only one with ghosts and regrets, Julianna.” He swallowed hard and looked away from me toward the door, still holding that damn box. “Open the door. Let me load this stuff. Stay with me for a while, then come back here when you feel less fragile.”
My mind grasped for words to hurl at him. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to say something so scathing that he would break. I wanted to watch the pain work in his face and spread into the marrow of his bones.
But I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t. I was ‘the good girl’.
“I don’t even know you anymore,” I said instead, but my words sounded hollow.
“That’s fair. But I’m the same guy I was fifteen years ago in many ways. Different in other ways. Better, I think,” he admitted. “I’m still your brother’s best friend. I’m still me.”
“Not a serial killer?”
