Chapter 4 #2
“I tried to get Whit not to do so much to it. It felt like erasing her,” he said, his eyes wandering. “But I think he wanted you to have the best. ”
“Huh?” My head whipped up, and my eyes locked with his fully for the first time.
“The house. I remodeled it for Whit. Well, for you. It took me a couple of years because I could only work on it here and there, but I got it done.”
I gasped. That was twice in less than two minutes that my mouth had dropped in shock.
“Since when have you known how to remodel anything?” I argued, feeling affronted by the shock. “Doesn’t matter. I’m only staying here for a little while. I’m here for?—”
“I know why you’re here,” he said, interrupting. “Listen, I think I’m stepping into things and making assumptions?—”
“No. Let’s circle back,” I demanded. I stepped toward him, forcing him to look me in the eye.
I would not let him charm his way out of explaining.
“Whit bought this house for me ? I thought he bought it for himself, so he’d have a place to stay when he was in town, or maybe because he couldn’t forget our childhood. But for me? No way.”
Bram shook his head. “I thought you knew. I shouldn’t have said it.”
I could tell he was shaken by the change in his eyes, but I wasn’t worried about Bram or his loose lips. I couldn’t believe my brother. For him to plan to give me a whole house, Grams’ house, and in Mill Creek, no less? Why? What was he thinking?
“Ridiculous.” I turned around and walked away from the door. “Why would he do it? He knows how I feel about him and his money.”
Bram let himself inside since I had lost all sense of hospitality and hadn’t invited him in. “I’m sure Whit has your best interests at heart. He thought if you ever wanted to come back to Mill Creek —”
I scoffed. “Come back to Mill Creek? For what? Why would I come back here?”
His brow furrowed. We hadn’t been together for more than five minutes after fifteen years, and I’d already made it awkward.
Our eyes met again. I could swim in their depths as he studied me underneath the brim of his cap.
He wasn’t what I imagined. He was rugged and outdoorsy, and I didn’t expect him to look like he’d been working outside with his hands.
I’d expected him to look like he’d come from wealth.
I expected him to dress like the last time I’d seen him, when he wore blue slacks and a white button-up, the day of Grams’ funeral.
He’d looked so grown up as he’d entered my hospital room. The memories sobered me.
“I’ve never had anything to return here for,” I said, keeping my tone as even as possible.
Whit would never return to Mill Creek permanently, and Grams couldn’t. Bram was here, but he was an enigma. Sometimes, as much as he was a part of my childhood, I thought maybe I’d made him up in my head.
Seconds that felt like minutes passed by.
“Everyone always comes home, eventually,” he shrugged, as if what I had said held no weight. “Besides, you know the best dating pools exist in small towns. That’s what I think, anyway.”
He winked and took a few steps toward me. I took a few steps back, creating distance. I couldn’t be too close to him.
Yet it was the closest to home I’d felt since driving into Mill Creek. I loathed it and loved it at the same time.
“Presumptuous much? How do you know I’m not taken or married?” I asked, a little breathless. How much did he know about me? How much could he know? Had he asked Whit?
“Honestly, I don’t know, but my guess is you aren’t.” His eyes held a certain irresistible twinkle. Was he goading me? My face turned hard as steel with all trace of wonder gone.
“Why? Because I’m not relationship material, like you said before? Am I just a sister to every man I meet?” The ice in my tone could’ve frozen an ocean. From the narrowing of his eyes, I knew I’d struck something within him.
He remembered what he’d said that day at the hospital.
I hadn’t meant to show my hand so readily, but I was feeling so much. Anger, resentment, disappointment, to name a few emotions. Remembering how he’d rejected me after declaring he cared for me was a wound that still bled.
“That was a low blow,” he grumbled, his deep voice resonating. “That’s not what I meant. You don’t have a ring on. And Whit never said you were married or in a relationship. He and I still talk often. I have a feeling he might have told me something if it was significant.”
“You think you’re so smart,” I muttered, but I knew he still heard me.
“Are you married?” he asked, point-blank.
I could lie to him. It’s not like he or Whit knew me enough anymore to be sure.
“Maybe.” I shrugged, and he frowned.
“Don’t toy with me, Julianna East.”
“If that’s still my name…”
He rolled his eyes.
I rested a hand on my hip. “I’m assuming you’re not married. I venture to say you’re probably single.” It was a wild shot in the dark, but he didn’t need to know that.
He shrugged. “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not.”
It was my turn to roll my eyes.
“Listen, Jules.” I cringed at the ease with which he said my old nickname.
“I didn’t come here to disturb your peace.
I didn’t come to make you hate Whit, either.
I’m making a mess of everything.” His brow furrowed.
“I came to help you unload your stuff. You don’t need to carry anything with your back like it is now. ”
I tried to rein in my frustration and remain like stone, but it proved impossible .
I reached inwardly for resentment toward Bram and tried pulling it over me like a blanket to protect myself from the feelings of vulnerability he was pulling out of me.
I didn’t blame Bram for the wreck or my subsequent back surgery, but I needed to believe he was to blame so I could harden myself against him.
My complicated feelings weren’t only about him, either.
I was in a town I no longer identified with, far from Kallie and the familiarity of everyday life.
This house, which was once filled with love and laughter I’d cherished, was not what I envisioned and had been wiped of the memories that held me together for many lonely days and nights in my adulthood.
My brother had once again planned to buy my affection by gifting me our grandmother’s house.
My chest tightened up, and I was unable to breathe easily. This was too difficult.
“I won’t be carrying anything in here because I’m not staying here.”
I walked over and grabbed all the snacks I’d unloaded and threw them into the box I’d moved them with.
“Whoa, what?” He marched over, grabbed the box of mini chocolate chip cookies from my hands, and put them on the counter with an audible thwack .
“Whit may have changed his mind about the house. Hell, maybe he’s looking to sell it after you go back to Charlotte.
I don’t know. But it’s yours, for now at least, and you have to stay here until you get the surgery you need. ”
“No, I don’t have to do anything!”
Bram jumped back slightly at my outburst. I know my attitude wasn’t how he’d pictured me in his mind. I saw it in the way his eyes widened, startled.
“I won’t let Whit gift me a house.”
“He’s your brother, Julianna. He has plenty of money to do whatever he wants. ”
“Exactly! He has his own life. He shouldn’t be thinking about me at all!”
Bram huffed. His hands landed on his hips, and his stance became domineering. “Did you ever stop and think that Whit wants to be a part of your life?”
“If he wanted to be a part of my life, he would have returned my calls and texts.”
Bram’s eyes darted away, his shoulders rounded, and his hands went to his pockets. His annoyance moved to regret.
No, no, no.
I chanted the word over and over in my head as tears formed behind my eyelids. I would not cry in front of the only man I’d ever truly wanted. The man who’d crushed my will to be close to any partner into tiny fragments on a hospital floor.
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?”
And he laughed. A spark lit in his eyes.
“Not a serial killer. Come on, show me what you need for a short stay.”