Bitter Kisses (It's Just High School #3) - Thandiwe Mpofu Page 0,158
up a stunning driveway that leads to a house that’s so beautiful, so sensational that I can’t help but gasp.
It’s illuminated with soft lights, casting a warm ambience that tugs at my heart.
“What is this?” I whisper.
“Our new home,” he answers simply.
“Ours?”
“Yes, baby,” Julian says softly as he watches my reaction carefully. As soon as the car comes to a stop, I quickly unsnap myself and I’m out the car door.
I stand in front of the house, looking up at this splendor. I’m pretty sure I’ve fallen in love with the house that I don’t even understand how it’s here.
“So, what do you think?” Julia says. I feel him coming up behind me, his chest touches my back as his arms snake around my waist to hold me. “It hard a large yard for when you’re feeling like you’re suffocating or claustrophobic, you can come out here and breathe. If I become too much, Mia, you can curse my name to the hell and back. All this space because I want to be the one who gives you everything you might ever need, including safety, but I want it to be with me.”
My poor heart just collapses to the ground and there’s nothing anyone can do to revive it, I’m sure.
“What do you mean this is ours?”
“I started building this the week after I left Palos Verdes,” Julian says in my ear. “It was always you on my mind, Mia and I knew that after I did my part to make sure that contract would never fall in the wrong hands, you and I would need to at least start from somewhere.”
My God.
I turn around in his arms and look up at him.
“Okay, this is beyond crazy, this is wild,” I say, looking up into his beautiful, beautiful eyes. “But there are things I need to understand Julian.”
“I know,” he says holding me as a cool, soft breeze wafts over us.
“Tell me about the contract. I mean, before I even left the hospital, there was a text from Nathan…”
“Yes, well night you told me to kick rocks, you also told me about the contract. I thought it was going to be a simple search and destroy. We would go the Matthews and demand they hand over the contract, but things got complicated.”
“What do you mean?” I whisper.
“To make sure you were safe, I had to… change in way.”
I can see that. It’s all over him. He really did change and yet, he’s still the same.
“Please tell me, because I can’t wrap my head around this change…”
“I took over my family’s part of a very secretive, very complex network of power, influence and wealth. It’s called the Phoenix Corps.”
My heart stops beating
“You joined a cult?”
“Well, it’s not exactly a cult. It’s not some mafia shit either. It’s more than I can explain to you. It took me four years to go through it all, and fuck, baby, you were the only one keeping me going, The thought of these lips… it’s the reason why we’re here today.”
I watch him, his gaze piercing through me, searching me, wondering if I can handle this or not.
“So, this house, the four-year isolation sentence you gave us, was the price to pay for all this?” I whisper.
“Not the house, that was to keep me sane,” he admits. “Bit the four years, that was the price I had to pay to keep you safe Mia. And fuck, I’d do it all over again. The bad can’t last forever, can it? At some point things have to change and I was willing to take that chance just to have you in my arms again like this.”
I stare at my handsome man, the mystery of him suddenly making sense. He stayed away to keep my safe, but he won’t explain exactly what he’s been doing these past four years.
Looking around the property, I think I see shadows of people. Julian notices where I’m looking of course.
“It’s just security.” I nod, having gathered that. “Seriously, Mia, what are you thinking right now?”
I step back, suddenly wanting some of the space he offered before. He lets me, but he watches each step I take as if he’ll pounce at me if I get too far.
“You told me to wait for you,” I whisper, ringing my fingers.
“Yes.”
“Were you doing the same? These past four years?”
“Baby, is that what’s ticking you off? That I was out here getting my dick sucked by someone who isn’t you?”