in Mallorca, with water so blue, it matches Mia’s eyes.
In three days, we have to go home. I need to go for my early football practice at school and Mia needs to face her father—something I hate already. I have no idea why she wants to do it but I take comfort in the fact that I’ll be there with Cole, Liam, dad if he’s needed.
“Didn’t you say she was all right when you last talked to her over two weeks ago?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I just feel like I should call her or something,” she murmurs, looking up to the sky.
“Then why don’t you call her?” I question. “What’s stopping you?”
“I don’t have a phone remember, Einstein?”
Hmm, about that…
“What happened to your burner phone, the one you used to call her?”
I don’t know if it’s because I’ve had too much sun or if my eyes are deceiving me for nothing at all, but from the corner of my eye, I notice her tense up, her lips pursing. But then she shrugs it off.
“Remember I told you that I dropped it and it broke.”
I don’t remember her saying that at all.
“How the hell did you manage to break a phone like that?” I question, stunned. I saw the damn thing when she bought it at the airport. It was one of those sturdy, old type of phones with the kind of battery life that made Steve Jobs a fucking liar to this day.
“Uh, I think I got in the shower with it and it fell and got soaked,” she says hurriedly. “You know how those old phones are. Once in the water, there’s no going back.”
Huh? Mia has never been a good liar, especially when she was nervous. Why is she lying and why the fuck is she nervous?
“Come here,” I murmur, and she looks at me, her body now tense. “Don’t let me come get you, Little Minx. Come here.”
She fixes her shades, discreetly looking around like she’s looking for something, then she stands up and comes over, her steps timid, tense and wooden. I grab her hand and have her straddle me on my lounger.
I cup her ass with one hand, making sure she settles over my erection. I remove her shades, then remove mine so we’re face to face, no barrier between us as I start to dry hump her slowly. Her jaw goes slack as she looks at me.
“We’re out in public,” she whispers, her cheeks growing red. Hmm, that blush, Mia isn’t prone to blushing all the time so when she did, it was a novelty. And now I’m wondering where it goes.
“I’m aware,” I murmur, then bring my fingers to her chin so she doesn’t look away from me. “Talk to me.”
“Julian…”
“Don’t do that, Little Minx,” I whisper.
“I’m not doing anything!” she protests. “You’re the one practically fucking me on the beach when people are close by.”
“I don’t give a damn.” And I meant that shit. She made me lose control like nothing else in this world.
“I do!” she shrieks, but still moves when I make her move over my dick. “In case you haven’t noticed, my face has been on the news lately. I’m not trying to make it on cheap, amateur porn sites either.”
“Amateur porn?” I scoff. “You call me God when I make you come. Actually, you scream it.”
She bursts out laughing, her hands planted on my chest, her neck exposed with her long hair blowing lightly with the breeze. God, she’s beautiful when she laughs. She’s fucking gorgeous, period.
“My goodness, look at the size of that!” she laughs and I nuzzle her neck.
“That’s what you said too,” I groan in her ear, and she peels out laughing again.
“Ah! I meant the size of your ego, Jesus!” she laughs, wrapping her arms around my neck. I love it when she’s like this, all sweet and carefree, her eyes sparkling with joy. She’s so much better from the day I got to her on the plane. The shadows are almost gone, the blank look in her eyes, also almost gone.
The guilt and self-loathing she sometimes harbors for herself will take a bit more work, but it’s almost all right.
But there are other times when she’s asleep, I grab both her hands and just stare down at the ugly scars there. The fact that she did that to herself has been messing with me since that day on the plane.
“I know you want to come,” I groan, knowing damn well