Bitter Kisses (It's Just High School #3) - Thandiwe Mpofu Page 0,5

what, this is about to be a banging senior year! Bet!

Chapter One

Julian

Present time

Matthews: You sold her off just so you could avoid paying for your sins in jail? But she’s delicious though! Thanks Fitz!

“What kind of sick joke is this?” Liam demands, but his voice is drowned out by the ringing in my ears as I re-read the text.

I can’t fucking breathe. It feels like I’m drowning in a fucking sea of blood. Chocking on it, strangled by the dead look I see in my little Minx’s pale bloody face.

I can feel my lungs shrinking with each second that passes and all I can do is read and re-read the text, punishing myself some more as the anger festers into fury.

“Liam… this is not a joke.” Cole mutters silently. I can feel his worried gaze on me, but I ignore him.

“No man, this is fucked up!” I hear Liam shout. “Tell me you both see how twisted up this is?”

No one says a word.

I’m damn sure the world is still in motion, but for me, my world just came to a screeching, painful, unbearable stop. The one person who ruled it, made me fall at her feet is now in worship, in lust and in love, that was person has been…

You sold her off.

I can hear the incessant ringing in my ears, like someone whacked me upside the head.

It’s like I’m being torn apart from within, the broken skin over fractured and shattered bones being slashed and pulled every which way as if I’m about to be gutted, my insides spilling out on the cold, dirty floor for the fucking world to see.

You sold her off…

I read the text over and over again as tragedy falls over me, hazing my vision until it’s tinted in red.

I try to keep my eyes on the text, holding on to the anger because right now, anger is better than guilt. Anger is better than pain. Anger is better than the fucking gaping whole that’s widening in the middle of my fucking chest.

“Julian, tell him this is some fucking prank. This is not real but we’re going to make the Matthews assholes answer for this,” Cole says.

I don’t say a fucking word.

“Right? We’re going to shut them up once and for all, yes?” Liam presses. “J?”

The uncertainty in his voice, mixed with the furious pounding of my heart and the way the blood in my veins is boiling like molten lava, makes it all too real. Why isn’t he feeling the treat that’s fallen over us like a fucking poisonous mist?

“Liam bro, this is real,” Cole is saying. “This… image is real.”

I can’t help but look at the attached image again.

My knees weaken as the horror slams into me, punching me in the fucking gut but all it does is spur on the drum of rage. The thing in my chest feels tight, like it’s being twisted up, wrung like a fucking dirty rag, and then ripped into shreds. I can hardly breathe or move or speak, my focus zeroed in on the words on the screen as my mind races.

“No fucking way!”

“Liam—”

“There’s no fucking way this is real because if it is…”

The alarms at the back of my head blare over and over again like a plane about to crash in school full of kids. It’s the sound of catastrophe, devastation and a fucking horrific end that I didn’t see coming.

And in all that, all I can think, all I feel, all I fucking know is… Mia. Has. Been. Taken. From. Me!

“J?” I hear someone call but I don’t respond.

It’s like an endless, chilly darkness has seeped into my soul, taking me hostage as I read the words.

You sold her off…

I grip the phone tighter. I can feel the blood in my veins rushing violently with the promise of war hanging over me.

I can almost taste the violence on my tongue. I don’t even flinch because this time, I’m not denying the deadly side of me. Not with this.

“Julian, bro, speak to me.”

“And say what exactly?” I growl.

I can feel them watching me, assessing, waiting for a reaction. Meanwhile, every shred of humanity in me—the humanity she saw in me, the humanity my brothers brought out in me, cultivated by my solid friendship of my best friend—all that falls apart as agony rips through me, falling away like a fucking piece of paper towel in a storm.

You sold her off…

The text is now engraved on my eyelids, but the dead look in Mia’s