We stare at each other.
“I can’t be a victim anymore,” I whisper, hoping he understands me.
There are things that happened to me in the hours I was in Sean and Shane’s custody that I won’t forget. Painful truths that I realized about my life and past, but even tracing it all back, there’s only one constant. My torment has been profound in every aspect where Julian’s involved.
I dealt with the knowledge that my father wanted to sell me when I thirteen and actually successfully forgot about it like it never happened until now.
I buried the horrors that took place in our house years ago as Nancy’s ALS got worse.
Looking back, every part of my life was muted, but it was manageable. I could carry on. I could live. I could still move on, even when everything was… static.
But with Julian… everything comes alive lightning fast, I can’t breathe, don’t even know where the blows are coming from until they’ve knocked me flat on my back.
“You hurt me, Julian, so much and… I just can’t let you hurt me anymore,” I whisper.
Especially after everything Roxy just said.
Silence.
“That first time we kissed?” he starts.
“Yeah?” I mutter.
“Clearly that was a mistake,” he grits out.
Filled with the need to lash out and hurting him back, I say the first words that just pop in mind, as if I’m under attack.
“No, laying my eyes on you, the bane of my existence, that was the biggest mistake.”
At that, he chuckles humorlessly. His eyes turn into hard glints, like icy emeralds. Enchanting and so damn dangerous, I don’t… no, I can’t look away. I don’t even try.
“Well, if you say that then what’s the difference between us now, Little Minx?” he says softly, almost tenderly. “Candles melt. Sweet kisses turn bitter just like this and hearts, well, they never heal. All that wooing and flowers bullshit, that’s not for you Mia. You’re above that silliness because fuck, if you wanted it, you’d fall for every fuckhead that’s tried to get in. your pants all these years and fuck, I’ve been watching.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Well, I can’t give you that and waste both our fucking time.”
That hurts, the fact that he won’t even try. But I can’t tell him that. All I can do is nod and mumble a simple a, “Okay.”
He chuckles again, shaking his head. “So, I fucking guess you and I… there isn’t even a chance, is there?”
He’s right. It’s all bitter kisses and regrets now. Because the truth is, we’re now at the bitter end, feeling too much and nothing, both losing in ways neither of us ever anticipated.
And I’ve been too hurt to handle it, especially when I can’t rely on him to shelter my already broken heart from the storm.
As if he’s reading my mind, he mutters the words that almost undo me. “You don’t trust me anymore, do you?”
Just like that, tears start streaming down my face silently, softly, confirming it for him.
“You burned something valuable and precious to me when you said you wouldn’t if I follow your instructions. I did but you burned it anyway, so no, let’s not throw around that word.”
“Liar.”
“What?”
“Even that night, you trusted me.” I stop breathing, the huskiness of his voice affecting me more than it should. “You trusted me with your secrets, your body, everything but that trust, I see it’s gone, isn’t it?”
I don’t know what to say, so I keep my mouth shut, fighting to breathe normally without him noticing how I’m breaking.
“It’s okay. The only person you should ever trust fully, Little Minx, is yourself,” he says seriously. “We failed you. Liam, even Cole, we failed you and I… I hurt you when you did nothing but love me and protect me. I really am sorry for all that. It wasn’t supposed to happen.”
And with that, he turns to leave.
My throat is tight, almost like I’m being strangled. I want to reach out to him and beg him not to go, to hold me close and let me hide my sorrow in his arms, but my voice… it’s gone. But there’s one thing I want him to know. I hope he understands.
“You once asked me before,” I call after him. He stops but doesn’t look back, so I just carry on, seeing the burns on his body. “You once asked me fights for me. I didn’t have the answer then.”
“Now you do, huh?” he says over his shoulder at me. Then slowly, seductively, cruelly, he drops his voice into this somber tone that makes a shiver race down my spine, mimicking the night he pinned me to a tree and basically claimed me. “Who fights for you, Little Minx?”
God.
“I do,” I whisper. Those two words echo between us but in my heart, they don’t sit right. They sound… incomplete. So, I repeat them again, hoping they fill in the strange missing parts. “I fight for myself.”
Nothing happens. If anything, I can feel the ragged gap in the middle of my chest widening a bit more.
Julian stands there for a moment, like the god he is, glaring at the door, then he turns around and stares at me with his penetrating gaze, it holds me in place.
“Really?” he mutters, walking back to me on the bed. Without a hint of what he’s thinking, he reaches for my face in heartbeat, then our he stares deep into my eyes in a way that’s different from anything we’ve ever been through. “You’re wrong.”
“What?” I whisper, hardly able to blink. Or breathe.
“Me, Mia,” he mutters so tenderly, I think we can both hear my soul shatter all over again. “I’ve always fought for you, Little Minx.”
My God.
“I—”
“I’ve always fought for you. I saw you. I hated you. I wanted you. I couldn’t stop myself from having a taste of you,” he murmurs. “And for the record, to fix whatever lie you’ve been told that has you this livid with me, no one was ever going to be mine, but you Mia. There’s never been anyone like you and quite frankly, there’ll never be anyone but you.” I gasp, his words snaking down into the pits of my soul where everything is burning. “There’s no Bishop girl or anyone else. It was always you, Mia. Right from the start. Or else why would they fight us this hard to scare you away from me?”
No, don’t…
“Julian, I—”
“Everyone has declared war over this, over you and me being together. Me kissing you like this.” He presses a kiss to the corner of my lips. “Or like this.” He presses another kiss at the other corner of my lips that has me gasping. “They’ve fought this right the start and now, you’ve joined the fray.” He pulls back and runs his thumb over my lips. “But I told you before, Mia, against me, you’ll lose, Little Minx.”
I blink a billion times, something in me kick starting into hyperventilation.
“I’ll be kissing these lips soon, baby,” he whispers against my lips, then he places a kiss on my forehead. “I’ll be kissing every inch of you, slowly, deliberately, until this fucking world full of haters hears you scream my name from just a kiss. You know why, Mia?”