Page 70 of What He Always Knew

I cleared my throat. “Uh, yeah. It was for the end-of-the-year gala thing. We’re both up for awards.”

“Nice,” Graham said, but I still felt him watching me. “It ran late.”

“That’s Westchester,” I said, trying to laugh. “You remember how intense they are about school functions, don’t you?”

At that, Graham seemed to lighten up a bit. “God, do I. I wanted so badly to go to a normal school like you and Mallory.”

He chuckled, but all the color drained from me at the sound of my sister’s name.

“Shit, I’m sorry, Reese.”

“No, no, don’t be,” I assured him as we stepped off the elevator. “It’s not like I can’t talk about her.”

That should have been a true statement, but it was a bold-face lie — one I was too ashamed to admit to anyone out loud.

“Has your game gotten any better since you left Pennsylvania or am I about to run circles around you like usual?” I teased when we pushed through the doors to the parking lot, trying to change the subject.

“Please,” he said with a scoff. “We both know you were better with the girls and your stupid piano, I was better with everything else.”

We continued talking shit the rest of the way to the car, and it seemed all questions about Charlie and my family had been left behind us — at least, for now.

For the next few hours, we played basketball and caught up, and just like I’d felt with Charlie, a little piece of home clicked back into place having Graham back in Mount Lebanon.

But in the back of my mind, his sister was all I could think about.

I knew that across town she was stewing over me showing up at the hospital with Blake. I had to explain what happened, and I couldn’t talk to her until I saw her back at school — and that was a full weekend away.

Ever since I moved to Pennsylvania, weekends were my worst enemy. They were days away from Charlie — days she spent withhim. And right now, I knew she felt betrayed. She was pissed, and she had every right to be.

But I’d make it right when I saw her. I had to.

All I could do was tick down the minutes until Monday.

Charlie

Late that night, I sat in the aviary with Scarlett and Rhett, feeling as numb as a hand without circulation.

I sipped on hot chamomile tea, watching the birds sleep, hoping the combination would somehow lull me into a sleep that night, too. My thoughts were loud, and none of them made any sense. It was a constant cycle of absolute nonsense, twirling and twirling, taking me down in a heartbreaking wind tunnel of truth.

Somewhere on the ride home, with the windows down, the warm May air whipping through my hair, I realized that it wasn’t that I was mad at Reese.

It was that I was jealous of Blake.

That realization had sucker punched me, the truth of it stealing my breath away. I was jealous of a woman I barely knew, because she got to go home to Reese every night. He swore to me they weren’t doing anything, that he was being strictly a friend to her now, but the fact was that she was still in his bed every night.

And I wasn’t stupid enough to think they didn’t touch.

That made my stomach roll, the thought of it, and I imagined it was only a muted form of what Reese must have felt every night I left school to go home to Cameron.

Cameron. My husband. The man who had shown me more than ever this past week that he loved me truly, whole-heartedly, in a way far different than Reese. It was different in the sense that it was comfortable and dependent, steadfast like a river with a never-ending source.

I was with him all week, and yet I’d also thought of Reese that entire time.

When did I become this person?

Even when I was quiet and reserved, when I didn’t have many true friends, I was always proud of who I was. I was a daughter, a friend, a teacher, a wife. I was honest and true, sweet and kind, always thinking of others before myself.

But this year had changed me.