“Same to you.” I don’t know if he heard my comment or not. He disappeared into the darkness long before my eyes strayed to the side mirror.
17
MELODY
“Y ou can call him, you know?” I stop peering down at the two-word text Brandon sent me a week ago to stray my eyes to Julian. He’s supposed to be making beef stir-fry for dinner. All he’s doing is making a mess. This is one of those times I hate his I-cook-you-clean rules.
After dumping my cell phone onto the coffee table, I join him in my compact kitchen. “And say what? I’m sorry your association with me when we were kids has you being accused of murder twice? Or that I’m not the cheating scumbag you think I am?”
His orange-tinged blond brow pops up high on his face. “You could say both, although I wouldn’t recommend those exact words.”
I bump him with my hip, steal an almond from the packet he’s sprinkling into the almost-cooked mix, then spin around to sign, “Smart-ass.”
The almond gets stuck halfway down my throat when Julian says, “I saw that.” He whacks my butt with a grubby wooden spoon. “Now I’ll add even more nuts to the mix.” After lowering my bottom lip into a pout, I pivot back around to face him. “Nu-huh.” He silently tsks me. “This is what happens when you lie. Your stir-fry gets extra nutty.”
Ignoring the flutter of my heart as it recalls the last time I ate a nut-riddled dish, I say, “I wasn’t lying. You are a smart-ass.”
Since he can’t deny the truth, he remains quiet.
After a few minutes of watching him in my kitchen like it’s as natural as breathing to him, I ask, “Do you think he knows?”
Julian’s eyes lift from the stir-fry with way too many nuts. “That they changed the ruling on your parents’ accident?” When I jerk up my chin, he adds, “I’d say so. His name was mentioned a few times in the new reports.” He places down his wooden spoon, lowers the gas flame from high to low, then props his hip onto the counter next to mine. “Have you decided what you want to do yet? You’re well within your rights to sue.”
“Sue who, exactly? The man who falsified the documents is dead.” He was the police chief of my hometown. He died during a routine traffic stop a few months after my parents’ accident.
“You could sue the state.”
I sigh. “Then I would have to prove they were purposely negligent. It isn’t as clear-cut as it seems.” My teeth grit when my tone comes out harsher than I intended. Usually, we have these conversations about the incident that saw me moving across the country. Julian believes I should sue Joey’s estate. It isn’t about money, Julian has plenty of that. It’s about giving a voice to a victim even if the accused is dead. Sometimes I agree with him, but it’s only on very rare occasions.
Even now, years later, I still can’t wrap my head around what happened with Joey. He was the equivalent of a big brother to me. I loved him—I still do in a sadistic, twisted way—so it’s a struggle to understand what caused a massive change in his personality. It wasn’t drugs. That was the first thing the coroner tested for. His blood-alcohol level was elevated, but it wasn’t high enough to excuse a drastic shift in his persona. It truly seems as if it wasn’t him in the room with me that night, and that my mind just made it all up.
If only I could forget about the evidence I hid in my room years ago. It abundantly proves something happened that night. I just can’t prove it was Joey who hurt me without exposing my secret. My lunch date with Mrs. McGee weeks ago revealed she’s doing better than she was seven years ago, but I don’t think she’ll ever be strong enough to warp her views on her son all because I want a dead man prosecuted. It makes me ill just thinking about what we’d be put through to see those charges transpire. And for what? To have my name on the victim’s side of another report? It’s not worth the heartache it could cause, and neither is suing the state for the belief they may have known my parents’ death wasn’t an accident.
I swallow to relieve my dry throat before returning my eyes to Julian. I kind of zone out when my mind shifts to the past. “In all honesty, I’d rather everything just go back to the way it was before we found out their accident wasn’t an accident. The man who killed my parents is dead. His crew is debunked, and although I have my doubts, perhaps Crombie did end things the way he did as he felt guilty. It isn’t the first time a convict has taken matters into his own hands, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.”
Julian looks prepared to enter a debate, but the wariness on my face must stop him. It’s been an exhaustive few weeks. “I’ll support your decision no matter what, Mel.” He returns to stirring the stir-fry before nudging his head to my cell phone. “But I still think you should reply to Brandon’s text. I’m not a lawyer—”
“You just wish you were,” I interrupt, smiling to show him there’s no malice in my tone. Julian is in the wrong profession. He loves political debates, conspiracy theories, and he devours murder mystery books like his life couldn’t exist without them. He just happens to be an audiologist because that’s what his father and grandfather were. I really wish he’d step outside the realm occasionally. He’d be a great politician or perhaps even a law enforcement officer.
When he spots my smile, Julian bumps me with his hip, his grin as playful as mine. “He put a lot of effort into the reports he submitted even with the likelihood of them ever seeing the light of day being low. That deserves a response.”
“It does,” I agree, nodding. If it weren’t for Brandon, my parents’ death would still be classified as an accident. He fought to have their deaths legally acknowledged, knowing it was what I wanted without needing to ask. “But aren’t you worried, Julian?”
A sprinkling of orange hair falls in front of his eyes when he slants his head to eye me dubiously. “About?”
“One text could turn into a dozen. A dozen could turn into a hundred. A hundred could—” I yelp when he whips my thigh with the tea towel he had thrown over his shoulder, but I continue with my tease. “… turn into a thousand. Then, before you know it, we’ll be best friends again.”
He whips me another two times while muttering, “I can handle best friends.” My heart turns a gooey mess when he bands his arm around my back to tug me in close to his fit body. “These, however, they will always be mine.” He nips at my lower lip before giving it a friendly tug. After soothing the sting of his bite with a quick swipe of his tongue, he lifts his eyes to mine. “Won’t they, Mel?”
For the quickest second, hesitation stirs my gut. Mercifully, I shut it down before Julian knows of its existence. It’s a pity I can’t wipe my guilt just as quickly. I hinted that we’d be together for eternity only months ago, so what’s caused my sudden change of heart?
I can only think of one thing.
Brandon.
Up until a few weeks ago, he wasn’t part of the equation. Although a two-worded text saying ‘thank you’ shouldn’t cause such a massive upheaval to my life, it kind of did. We were inseparable for almost fourteen years. That’s a big chunk of my life to pretend never happened, so not only did his two-worded text twist my stomach, it produced a foreign sound from my heart as well.
18
