Cruel Kisses: It’s Just High School #2

by Mpofu, Thandiwe

  “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 that she’s wet.

  “Julian, I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can,” I press. I know I should take her back to our room, but I need her to loosen up first so we can talk. With Mia, you have to go about it the right way. Directly attacking her will only make her raise her defenses. I’m fully aware that I use orgasms to get to her heart, but show me a red-blooded male, so deeply in love with his woman, that wouldn’t do the same.

  I dry hump her faster, working her. She clings to me, her moans growing louder, so I bring her closer and silence her with a kiss. I fucking love kissing her. It’s like our own langue, like this is another way we communicate. We’ve moved past the cruel kisses at this point to this.

  “Oh! Oh God,” she cries, her lips pressed to mine. I feel her clench, her eyes dilating until they’re black, the blue long gone and I know she’s right there.

  “Yes, baby, come,” I whisper in her ear and watch as she goes over with a soft, elongated moan that makes my balls clench. Fucking blue balls, I want to sink into her and fuck her until I come with a roar, but this isn’t about me. This is about my girl.

  I hold her to me as she calms down, running a finger down her spine because she loves that shit and for some insane reason, it calms me down too. She calms me down, period.

  “You’re insane,” she pants in my ear, making me smirk.

  “Are you only now catching up to that?” I smirk against her hair. She pushes back and cups my jaw, then she starts kissing me earnestly. This one is sweet, grateful and so damn breathtaking, I want more.

  “Thank you,” she whispers against my lips, our gazes connected. Blue to green. Her softness to my hardness. So right. “Thank you for taking care of me, Julian.”

  “Baby, I meant that shit about your pleasure.”

  “I know,” she murmurs. “But I also know that you only allowed this silly trip to indulge me, not because you actually enjoy it. I know you spend hours in the gym before I wake up so that you make up for the lost time you should be training with Cole.”

  “Mia…”

  “Please let me say this, Julian,” she says, cupping my jaw. “I love that you care about me. I love that you see me and that you’ve sacrificed so much to be here with me, especially when I didn’t know I needed you.”

  Fuck. This girl undoes me.

  “I’m there whenever you need me, in a heartbeat, Mia,” I say seriously. I know she’s anxious about me going away to college, and honestly, I’m screwed over that shit too. I have no idea how this is going to work without her. “Send me your fucking location when you need me. You don’t have to type anything. You don’t have to do anything else. Just send me your pin, baby and I’ll be right there.”

  Tears well up in her eyes and she presses her lips to mine.

  “You saved my life, Julian,” she whispers, the raw emotion in her voice gripping me by the throat. When I said I wanted her to get loose, this isn’t how I thought it would go.

  “Mia, you saved yourself,” I tell her. Fuck, I need her to get this deep down in her soul. “You fight for yourself. You wanted to stay.”

  “Only for you!” she cries. “I swear if it wasn’t for you, if you weren’t such a stalker, I doubt I would have made it through the summer with everything that was going in through my head.”

  I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to think of a world where she doesn’t exist. Whatever that shit is, assholes can have it. I refuse to exist without her.

  “Talk to me, baby,” I whisper, now growing serious. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

  She tries her best to look away from me, but I’m not having it. Not with us, this is too important, too serious to play games with. Mia and I both know what the power of sadness can do to a person.

  We’ve gone through it, suffered through it and barely survived. I’d be damned if I let that sadness creep back in disguised as worry or some shit.

  “I know our time here is running out and that we’ve gone through some shit,” she starts, her voice low and smoky. “But I’m scared.”

  “Scared?”

  “Of going back,” she admits quietly, looking into my eyes, pouring out her soul to me and suddenly I feel so damn unworthy. What did I do to be seen by this girl so fully, so directly that I feel her gaze so deep within my soul? “I’m scared of what might happen when we land back in Cali and drive back to Palos Verdes.”

  “Mia…”

  “I know you’ve told me that I’m fierce, but Julian, I’m not strong. I’m not some sweet, innocent girl. I’ve made enemies over the years, ones that I’m sure will use the attention on me to put me on blast.”

  “If you’re talking about snarky bitches at your school, come on, Little Minx, you alre
ady have a rep, you just need to remind them of it.”

  “My reputation as an ice-queen?” she deadpans.

  “Precisely,” I say seriously, and she shakes her head. “I don’t know, Julian, I feel different. I can’t place my finger on it.”

  “What are you really worried about, baby?” I press, then realization dawns on me. “If you’re concerned about those assholes, the Matthews, don’t waste your time. Steps are being taken to deal with them.”

  “Steps?” she says, looking skeptical.

  “Don’t ask me what they are because I don’t want to lie to you.”

  She watches me for a second, then shrugs. “Might as well. I want to be able to maintain plausible deniability.”

  “Good idea, Sherlock.”

  She lays her head on my chest and I hug her to me, lying down on the lounger, looking out at the beautiful water. I feel her sigh, her hold on me tightening.

  “I’m scared of what I’ll find with your mother, my mother, my father and all the shit about you belonging to someone else who isn’t me.”

  Oh shit.

  “Did you find out who your mother was talking to? Who she said you’re getting married to?”

  Shit, shit, fucking shit.

  “Uh, no. I haven’t asked and I fucking don’t want to know because it changes nothing.”

  And it doesn’t! This entire thing with one of the Bishop twins changes nothing between Mia and me. She’s it for me. She’s mine, forever. So why do I feel weird for not telling her about this in the first place?

  “God, I hope it’s not that bitch, Casey,” she says in disgust. “I would say something about your taste in women, but that would mean insulting myself so, I’ll settle for this. What the hell were you thinking with her?”

  I can’t say this question blindsided me because that would be a lie. I saw it coming.

  “She was nothing to me then and will always be nothing.”

  “So, are you saying you’ve never been in a relationship before?” she questions, peering up at me, her eyebrow raised. “Like a committed kind of thing?”

  I raise my eyebrow, watching her back. There she is, all nosy and fishing for questions she doesn’t really want answers to, scared that they might upset her.

  “Actually, I’ve had one of those,” I start, keeping my voice low and serious. “In fact, one would say I’m still in a situationship with her.”

  “What?” She goes to sit up, but I hold her tighter to me.

  “Yeah, I mean we’ve been in a relationship of sorts since we were too young to realize that our future was going to be tricky but that we would always end up together.”

  She’s tense in my arms, still fighting to be let go.

  “Oh really?” she scoffs. “Tell me more about your freaking girlfriend that you have had all this time. Is she the one you sneak out to talk to when you think I’m sleeping?”

  Well then, there goes that anger. I do get out of the room to make calls, but it’s not to some bitch.

  “Hmm, where do I begin with her?” I pretend to muse over it, but I already know what I want to say about her. “She’s incredibly hot, like I’m not even joking. She’s smart, funny, creative as fuck, and she has a huge heart of gold.”

  “Where did you meet this golden hearted bitch?” Mia says sarcastically and I want to burst out laughing.

  “We actually met in a strange way. I mean, it’s not every day that you meet a girl who insults you, then tends to your busted up hand, paying so much attention to you that you can’t help but kiss her, just to have a taste, to commit her to memory.”

  It’s then that she goes lax in my arms. She peers up at me, tears glistening in her eyes.

  “You’ve been in a relationship with her? That girl you met in a strange way?”

  “No, I’ve been in a committed relationship with her,” I mutter, my heart racing in my chest for some reason. “She had me wrapped around her little finger from the beginning. She saw me, she understood me, she challenged me to step back and look at the bigger picture.”

  “Julian…”

  “You had me fucked up right from the start, Mia. How could I think to give myself to someone else when you took almost everything I have to give and left a small, messed up part that made sure that I would barely function until I got to you.”

  “No, you took hostage of everything for me. You took all my firsts, and I resented you for that.”

  “I don’t give a fuck,” I deadpan. “When it comes to you, Mia, everything is mine. Your first kiss, mine. Your first fuck, mine. Your first fucking orgasm that made you see the stars, mine too.”

  “Well then, there’s one more,” she whispers, her face hovering above mine now. “You were my first hate.”

  “You were mine too,” I purr. “That’s part of our committed relationship thing, baby. The hate played a part for years. That kept me linked to you.”

  “I love you so fucking much,” she whispers. “I think I always knew.”

  “I told Aiden about you,” I start, my voice tight.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. It was days after our spectacular meet and die kiss. He could see that I was losing my damn mind over everything that was happening and so he asked me who I wanted to hurt.”

  “Of course you told him me.”

  “I’ve never lied to my big brother,” I say, my chest tight as I think of Aiden. “I told him that you took advantage of me and you kissed me then something happened and I never saw you again.”

  She’s silent for a while. “I really didn’t mean to hurt him,” she cries softly. “I hope he forgives me.”

  “He did,” I whisper. “He had no hate in his heart, even when he had all the reason in the world to despise it, each day was a blessing for him. Which is why he told me to find you, kiss you back and never let you go.”

  “Oh my God, what?”

  “I have no idea how you got to him, but my brother was a fan of yours,” I mutter. “And Liam seems to be of that persuasion as well.”

  Liam… I need to talk to him.

  “I wish I had known him.”

  “You have no idea how many times I had imagined you two meeting. I was pretty sure he was going to fall in love with you too.”

  “Fall in love with me, too?” she questions, her eyes dilating.

  “Come on, Little Minx. You already know I’ve been in some kind of something with you. In like. In hate. In hell. Now, in all that but also in love.”

  “I love you, Julian.”

  * * *

  When everything goes to hell, bursting the bubble I’d been in with Mia, it starts out slowly. After the beach we went back to our villa, where I made love to her for the first time in my life.

  It wasn’t fucking like we’ve done before, no this was different.

  This time, something was different. The way she looked at me. The way she gasped out my name, the way she felt, it was all different and fuck, I fell deeper for her.

  She fell asleep in my arms, but before I could enjoy the feel of her in my arms, there is a loud knock on the door.

  I ignore it, knowing that it’s probably Max checking in again, but then the knocking becomes persistent. Getting up, I wrap a damn sheet around my waist and go to the door where surprise, surprise, Max is standing, but as soon as I see the look on his face, I know something is wrong.

  “There’s a private plane waiting for you at a private airport five miles from here. You’re expected to be on it in twenty minutes.”

  “The fuck, Max?”

  “I’m sorry, monsieur, but this requires your immediate attention. Also, Monsieur Fitzgerald asked that you not do anything stupid.”

  Do anything stupid? What does dad think I am, five years old?

  “You can tell dad that he can go fuck himself and that me and my girl are going to stay out here for the rest of our short days as per our agreement.”

  I go to close the door, but before I can do that, Max takes his phone out of the bre
ast pocket of his suit jacket and gives it to me. And right there, on the bright screen I see my face and the love of my life’s face, but the headline makes my entire body cold as I read it over and over again.

  Star football player and Division 1 bound Stanford pick, Julian Fitzgerald—son of Julian Fitzgerald of the Fitzgerald House—has been named the main suspect in the disappearance of the still missing young girl, Mia Montague, the daughter of the late Nancy Montague, who went missing a little over a month ago.

  Evidence has turned up that suggests that Julian Fitzgerald is guilty of kidnapping, assaulting and raping the young girl.

  It is also said that Mia Montague herself is the one who managed to make contact with her father, who then told him who took her.

  A hunt is currently underway for this spoiled, privileged, wealthy criminal who should be brought to justice. The Fitzgerald House is also suspected of participating in shady business dealings, is human trafficking part of it as well?

  Well, we’ll soon find out.

  If anyone has any information, please contact your next police station. The rich cannot get away with this.

  27

  When everything comes crashing down, it happens so fast, you would have never seen it coming. That’s a lie, I saw it coming. I did.

  Julian woke me by banging drawers in the room and when I asked him what was going on, a strange French man who looked more like he was ex-military, stood in the room, and told me to get up calmly and get dressed.

  Julian couldn’t even look at me as he packed his shit, then he packed my stuff, shoving them into the bag. When he demanded that Max get out, he tossed a phone on the bed where I saw the headlines and my heart sank as my father’s words rang clear in my head.

  Oh God.

  Now, we’re back in Palos Verdes and Julian is so mad at me, his face is clouded with anger. It’s like he can barely breathe. I know because I can’t even breathe myself.

  “I was a fool for ever falling for you,” he whispers. “For think that you were different. That you were for me, when. you so clearly can’t see the truth, blinded by shit that doesn’t matter.”