Chapter 19 #2
I was rooted in my spot by the window, unable to decide what to do or how to react.
He’d confessed to the police about driving the night of the wreck at some point and hadn’t told me.
His father rigged his football scholarship.
And his father had warned him off me. And he’d listened and broken my heart.
Like bones breaking, my feelings were morphing into something I hated with each realization.
All I held were small pieces of the truth. I wanted the entire story.
Bram stopped in the large doorway to the living area .
“Are you okay?” I asked, ashamed of how shaky my voice sounded.
“Yeah,” he murmured, flexing his hands again. His eyes met mine. “How much of that did you hear?”
“All of it,” I whispered, staring back at him. “I have questions.”
He exhaled long.
“I know you do, and I’ll answer them all. But I want you to know, before you ask them, I wasn’t trying to keep anything from you on purpose. I just?—”
“You just never thought it was important that I know? Because if you chose me, you’d have lost your football scholarship, right?”
That was as far as my mind had gotten in solving the highly complex puzzle. Saying the words out loud made my heart drop into my stomach. Sadness and truth flashed across Bram’s features.
“It’s not as simple as it sounds, sweets.”
My eyes filled with tears. “Do not call me that.”
His expression fell. “I went back that night.”
I froze, my heart racing. He stayed rooted in his spot in the doorway.
“I came back for you. I was a coward to leave you. No matter what you threatened, I never should have done it. But when I got back to the scene, the ambulance had come and gone. I was turning myself in to the cops when my father showed up. He paid them not to arrest me, and then he dropped the bomb that I only had a football scholarship to lose because he bought one for me.”
I mulled that over for a minute before responding, the air thick with tension.
“You came back for me. Knowing you’d get in trouble...”
He nodded. “Yeah. I did. But I’m not proud of what I did. I never should have left.”
“You earned that scholarship; it was all you. Vince is lying. ”
He sighed. “He told me?—”
“I watched you play,” I interrupted. “You were magnificent. Even Whit knew that.”
“Yeah, well…” Bram replied, shrugging, “I heard that unprompted from my old high school coach, too, not long ago. But I don’t know the truth. And I’ve had to live with the fact that the future I thought I created by myself was a lie bought by my sperm donor.”
The gravity of his words weighed on me like a thick blanket.
“And he warned you off me? Why? What was I to him?”
Bram’s eyes again met mine, and extreme sadness swarmed in his dark irises.
“He did tell me to stay away from you,” he replied, unflinching.
“He hated the link I had to Grams, and to you and Whit. Hated that I had another family and a parent who was so much better than he could ever be. He told me you couldn’t be a part of my future, or he’d revoke the scholarship. ” His eyes fell to the floor.
Of course, I understood, but I’d suffered so much.
If only you had told me.
I had no idea what to say or think. My heart was wholly conflicted, my thoughts erratically organized. He walked toward me.
“No,” I said and held my hand up. He stopped in his tracks, his face paling. “I don’t want you near me right now. I’m absorbing.”
“But I can’t be apart from you, not like this. I love you. I always have, and I think you know that.”
Something that should have been shrouded in joy and celebration felt lackluster under the circumstances. I’d waited so long to hear those words from Bram, and I had to listen to them right after realizing he hadn’t chosen me. Anger flared deep inside me.
“I can’t believe you’d say that right now. ”
“Why? It’s true." He was genuinely confused, but I was livid.
“When will you get it through your thick skull that you could have been with me this whole time, but chose not to? You chose that. It’s been fifteen years, Bram.
” I let my emotions flow out. “Why are you acting like you saved me from some terrible demise by not telling me all this? Like you were helping me by lying and leaving me to think you didn’t care at all? ”
“You want to know why? Look at this, Julianna,” he shouted passionately, his hands gesturing between us. “This is what I do. I hurt. I ruin. I am defective. My dad knows it. My mom knows it. Whit knows it. Even Grams knew it, and she tried to fix me.”
“She wasn’t trying to fix you, dumbass. She loved you! She was trying to give you a family and show you what that meant. My only solace is that she died not knowing she failed so miserably.”
I regretted the words as soon as they left my lips, but there was no taking them back.
Bram put his head in his hands, but it didn’t deter me from continuing, “You were all I wanted for so long. Despite the good and bad, I knew what you kept out of sight.” I pointed at myself forcefully.
“You think it’s easier to hate yourself now than to accept that you’re not perfect, that you can still be loved and forgiven.
We could have fixed it together if you’d explained it to me.
But you didn’t, so now all that’s left is forgiveness.
We can’t go back in time and change our choices.
Am I hurt that you didn’t choose me? Yes, obviously, how can I not be? But I want to forgive you.”
“I’ll never forgive myself for what I did to you that night,” he said firmly, his gaze coming back up to meet mine. My heart twisted. “I’ve tried, but I can’t. And right here, you crying like this, again, because of me…it’s too much.”
“Quit thinking about yourself for five seconds. ”
“I’ve never thought about myself. I’ve only ever thought about you.”
I could see confusion burning in his gaze. He couldn’t figure out why I was becoming so upset. Maybe I didn’t either. But I was determined to try to explain it in a way he could understand.
“Have you loved anyone else?” I asked him. “You say you loved me all this time and only thought of me. Has there been anyone else?”
My heart was beating so hard that it was hard to breathe.
“Not anyone I’ve loved,” he said, his response definite and immediate. “I slept around, started a few relationships, but everything always fizzled.”
“Then why didn’t you come for me?” I was breaking my own heart, and I didn’t care.
“I told you why.” His voice boomed. “What are you looking for? What do you want to hear? That I wasn’t man enough?
That I didn’t really want you? I always wanted you.
It was the guilt and the shame that overtook me, that held me back.
That holds me back now.” He took a step towards me.
“Something else you don’t know. All those women I was with, I never saw them.
I only ever saw you. It was you I heard, you I pictured. Every single time.”
“But you could have had me, Bram. Not just someone you liked and could pretend was me. I would have taken you, flaws and all. After the football dreams had to end, I was still out there. And you’re telling me you were giving someone else what you wanted me to have.
You chose yourself.” I spat the last few words, unable to hold back my vitriol.
“Julianna, please?—”
“Your reasoning is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard.
I don’t know how to feel right now.” I took off the thin band on my finger and calmly set it on the arm of the chair beside me.
“I want to forgive you and tell you how much I’ve always loved you, too.
But I can’t do that. Not when you won’t accept what I’m saying. ”
He gritted his teeth and set his jaw as he watched my movements.
“Taking off the ring doesn’t make us unmarried, Julianna.”
“And me putting it on never made us married, Bram. It was a contract—a business transaction. Kallie was right. I should have left my stupid, fucking romantic heart locked away. This was my mistake.” Before he could speak, I walked past him and up the stairs as quickly as my back would allow me.
I collapsed on Bram’s bed with Lakey and shut the door.
If I could have locked it, I would have.
Yet I knew he wouldn’t confront me again right away, anyway.
It wasn’t his style. My body was stressed, and thankfully, Bram’s mattress allowed things to settle.
I cried intermittently in the darkness and the quiet until the daylight disappeared. At some point, Lakey and I fell asleep.
When I woke, the clock on Bram’s nightstand read seven pm. I had a text from Kallie:
Kallie: Running late. Should I meet you at your Grams’ house in town, or do I need to pick you up in the country?
I wasn’t sure. I texted her back that I would find out.
Lakey was whining at the door, so I stood carefully, opened it, and moved toward the top of the staircase.
The only light on was in the front hall downstairs.
Slowly but surely, I made my way to the living room, where I realized all the other house lights were off.
A sweep of the rooms showed no signs of Bram.
Maybe he was upstairs in the other bedroom?
I was hurting too badly to go back to check, so I went to the kitchen for a drink, taking a pain-reliever.
I walked over to the kitchen window, expecting to see Bram’s truck in the driveway outside the single-car garage, illuminated by the outside pole light. But it wasn’t there.
Maybe he had left the truck where it was when Vince had come. I moved to the living room, clutching my cup of water. I went out the front door onto the porch. Bram’s truck was gone. He’d left me.
Fresh tears tracked down my face as I wrapped my arms around myself and retreated into the house. I grabbed my phone and carefully climbed the stairs to pack my bags.