Bitter Kisses (It's Just High School #3) - Thandiwe Mpofu Page 0,135

the panic and stress in her breathless voice.

“Mia.”

Her name falls from my lips like a desperate prayer as the thing in my chest goes haywire.

“Are you all right, baby? What’s wrong?”

I hear her sniffle and I realize she’s crying. Without even thinking about, I reach for the desk phone, about to dial for the pilot to get the plane ready so I can get to Palos Verdes… so I can get to her.

It’s almost five in the morning. I’ve been up all night like all the other endless, cold nights without her, but I don’t give a damn. If Mia needs me, I’m fucking there.

“Talk to me, baby, what’s happening?” I demand.

“Julian,” she whispers. The thing in my chest starts fucking working overtime. Is she in danger? Did something happen? On instinct, I reach for the bottom drawer of my desk and unlock it. I grab the case in there that contains the ‘gift’ my father gave me to go with this new role I’ve assumed in life. A gun.

“Talk to me, baby,” I whisper, trying not to frighten her with the anxiety in my voice. “Why are you crying?”

“I… where are you?” she demands instead.

I smile at the attitude of those three words. She’s pissed. Good, that means she’s not in any immediate danger.

I drop back down in my chair, releasing a heavy sigh as I cling to her voice.

“Why do you ask, Little Minx?” I mutter, dropping the gun back in the case. “Are you crying for me?”

“I just had a nightmare, you jerk!” she hisses. I can’t help but laugh. Some of the tension in my body starts seeping away bit by agonizing bit. Nightmares, I guess we have that in common too. “Stop laughing! This isn’t funny.”

“You’re right, baby,” I chuckle, looking around at the dark shelves around me and the lone light on the desk, shining over the large tomes of books I’ve been studying for the past weeks. “I’m not laughing at you.”

Silence.

“Then why?” she whispers after a few seconds.

“Why what, Mia?”

“Why are you laughing like that?” she asks almost breathlessly.

The things this girl does to me… Fuck, I’ve missed her voice like no man’s business.

“You love my laugh, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t know, you never really did that often,” she fires at me.

That’s true, but I can’t wipe the smile off my face.

“No one’s given me a reason to laugh but you, Mia,” I confess and then fall silent when I hear her little gasp.

“Then that only means you were actually laughing at my distress,” she mutters softly.

“It’s not that.”

“So what then, Julian?”

Because the thing in my chest that you broke is beating so hard and the frozen blood in veins is starting to thaw at the sound of your voice.

“You’re funny when you’re pissed. But when you’re sad and calling me at this time, crying… you have me losing my mind, Little Minx,” I confess. “Tell me why you’re crying, baby?”

She’s silent for a beat but I wait, listening to her breathe over the line. I’m still on alert, waiting for anything.

Time loses its meaning as I clutch my phone to my ear like a desperado.

I’m busy. I have a ton of things I need to go through and get done just so I can uphold my side of the deal I made with my father, a side that he’s shown he has already fulfilled, but for the life of me, there’s nothing else I’d rather do in life than this right here; listening to Mia breathe on the phone.

I can just about picture her, her button of a nose scrunched up in a frown, her aquamarine eyes sparkling with a quirky but scathing retort. I’ve imagined Mia like I’ve done over the past weeks, lying in her bed, hopefully clutching her phone to her ear like I am as she talks to me. Just me.

“Talk to me, Little Minx,” I repeat.

I know she said she had a nightmare. The last time she wasn’t able to sleep well, we were under the same roof. I was with her and she came willingly into my arms and now, she needs me, needs that comfort she somehow finds in my arms and I’m all the way on the East Coast. Fuck!

“I had a nightmare,” she whispers finally, her breath heavy.

“Okay.”

“It was about Nathan.”

There goes my composure and the false sense of security I had started dragging to pull around us just for this call alone.

In my head, I start counting backwards from a thousand, until