Cruel Kisses (It's Just High School #2) - Thandiwe Mpofu Page 0,33

only thing that stopped me was the horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach of losing him.

“Yes.”

“Well, out with it,” I demand. “What exactly is complicated about publicizing the fact that you are a free and divorced man to the world, getting engaged to the sister of the woman you were in bed with and going through that farce all these months?”

It’s so absurd that if he weren’t my father, I would have cracked a smile.

Hell, Mia would have loved this story, her beautiful laugh would have rung out, making my heart clench with the need to kiss her. She didn’t laugh often—almost like she didn’t know how to—but when she did, it was magical.

Dad leans back in his chair, then he rubs a hand down his face like he doesn’t know where to start, that alone tells me that whatever he has to say is bad… and there’s no doubt it’s going to affect me or Liam or both of us.

“Remember when you turned thirteen and I took you to that club in Westbrook Blues?” he starts. Mutely, I nod, my mind racing, thinking back to the small, wealthy looking town a few hours from here. “Remember that legacy talk we had?”

“When you basically dictated that I am to take after you one day, that my dreams of playing professional football were just that, a dream?” I grit out, remembering how quickly I was disappointed in him for not supporting me. “Yeah, I fucking remember.”

“I meant what I said.”

I’m pretty sure he did, yes. “I don’t fucking care if you meant it or not.”

“I think you do,” he counters.

“Why? Because you threatened Liam’s future?” The nerve of this man…

“I didn’t threaten Liam’s future, I’d never do that no matter what you think of me, he’s my son. It’s just the order of things, Julian. The sooner you realize and accept that, the sooner you see the bigger picture at play here.”

“Are you trying to say that you’re part of an underground cult or something?” I scoff. “Or some kind of cartel?”

“I’m trying to say that you can’t escape legacy,” he says. “Neither could I when I was your age. My father basically told me I had to marry a woman I didn’t love, Courtney Mason.”

The fuck?

“Your marriage was some kind of archaic, shit contract thing?”

“Yes,” he says, looking disgusted. “Guess that might explain most of the resentment and war in this house.”

My mind is racing as I process everything he’s just said.

“See the thing about these marriage prisons is that there is no possibility of breaking out of them,” he says, holding my gaze as if there’s something else he’s trying to tell me. “There’s no out. There’s no way to break out of the contract. It’s binding ‘til death.”

“So why…?”

“Why did I parade women around like a sleazy asshole and made you and your brother’s lives hell with all that press coverage throughout the years?” he says, finishing my question. “I had to try, Julian. I thought if I brought attention to the infidelity in my marriage, that I’d be able to get out of it.”

It’s like I’m stuck in a twilight zone, looking around with eyes wide, my head spinning around on my shoulders like the Exorcist.

“It didn’t work?”

“Like I said, there’s no getting out of it,” Dad sighs. “Not when I was eighteen. Not when she tried going after Nancy. Not when Courtney was pregnant with you and hurting Aiden to hurt me. It didn’t work then; it certainly hasn’t worked years later. Your mother and I are still married.”

Nancy. He’s been having an affair with Nancy all these years.

“Yes. I loved her. I’ll always love her,” Dad confesses, and I realize I spoke out loud. The raw emotion in his voice as he says that makes another question pop in my head, making dread sink in deeper in the pit of my stomach.

“Wait, so is Nancy, Aiden’s mother?”

“That would be a huge clusterfuck for you, wouldn’t it?” he mutters, shaking his head as he glances back at the TV.

I look too and see Nancy dancing, the serene, beautiful look on her face right in that moment so similar to Mia when she dances alone in her old studio, my knees weaken. Nancy might not have been my baby’s biological mother but all her mannerisms, all her quirks and love for dance comes from my father’s late lover.

“Is she Aiden’s mother?” I growl.

“No,” Dad says, with a sigh. “Nancy never wanted kids. She never wanted