Bitter Kisses (It's Just High School #3) - Thandiwe Mpofu Page 0,128

Which is strange. Could it be that the wealthy can get out of anything? Or maybe the matter is being handled privately in the dark of their offices with cigar smoke and archaic family traditions?

Either way, there is one question we all want to know for sure. What happens now?

Who takes responsibility for the fire, the fake charges tainting Julian Fitzgerald’s name—that we can now confirm with validity were, in fact, falsified?

What of the remains of a three-month-old innocent baby, found in the ruins of the Matthews’ mansion. It’s clearly a murder, the police have admitted to it and yet, this story has no developments.

This writer has decided to rest this tumultuous story and wish all those that were affected—especially the only true victims recognized, Mia Montague and Julian Fitzgerald who will carry the scars and public criticism of this trauma for the rest of their lives—to them I say, Godspeed and good luck. You’ll both need it.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Mia

There’s something hypnotic and cruel about the passing of time that bothers me.

There are times when I really want time to slow down so I can savor the bright, beautiful moments where everything makes sense. The moments where I feel like I belong, where I feel like I might just make it to the other side.

But then there are these… taxing, unbearable slow passages of time so excruciating, you’d rather tear your own heart out than to endure a second longer of that hell.

That’s where I’m at now.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s been almost a month since the night Julian ripped apart my hospital gown and made me cum with his magical tongue and fingers right and I rejected him like the empty vessel made up of trauma and flimsy substance that I am, and in that time, I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve been… waiting.

I have no idea what I was waiting for or why, but I did know for whom I was a bundle of nerves and anxiety for, but the radio silence has been shocking.

I don’t know why I was expecting to hear something from Julian or why I was expecting something random from him or something dramatic and exaggerated like the carts he sent, but there’s just been nothing.

I haven’t heard about Nathan at all. Nicky says she isn’t sure as well what’s going on. The media hasn’t talked about me or Julian, but there is still an ongoing investigation on the Matthews.

It’s in the waiting that I finally saw how pathetic I really am, how I say one thing but feel the other.

I was a mess and I needed to change. I needed change. Period.

So, it’s with that reckoning, come to Jesus moment that has led me here today, with some decisions made after all this time.

I stare at my face in the mirror, studying my face. While most bruises, the black eye and everything else is almost healed, I still sometimes feel like I have blood on my face, blood in my mouth and my hair cold and matted with blood.

I don’t have any visible scars, and my head aches here and there. The gunshot wound is healing up nicely and Nicky bought me a cream for the scars on my body from where Sean beat me with the pipe.

All things considered, I’m physically getting better.

When I was discharged from the hospital the same day as the cryptic text that had both Cole and Liam transform into fucking black ops agents who personally escorted Nicky and from the hospital as if they were expecting us to be attacked like this is fucking movie, the doctor who signed my release forms with pity in his eyes as he looked at me, ordered me to stay in bed for at least two weeks.

At first, I’d thought he knew I was faking amnesia, so I had to quickly snap into character. I put on the best act of my life by crying, claiming to be overwhelmed by everything I’ve lost and things I’ll never really know about what happened to me.

In a way, I was moaning that loss while but now, I’m no longer in room 498, my sobs are for something else.

I’ve had two check-ups since then. I’ve been recommended and shrink who I only saw twice and then bailed.

I was told I can resume my usual activities, but even then, those said activities were limited to slow, easy movements which is laughable because no one gave me that memo when Julian made me come in that hospital