“Julian.
“He fell and hit his head hard on the corner of the marble garden tub, where he had strategically chosen to kill himself, right in front of my eyes, and I… I did nothing.”
And thus, I killed him. Yes, he was my uncle, but I’ll always see him as my older brother. The only one I ever talked to about everything that bothered me, including every detail I could gather and obsess over about this girl, this Little Minx.
“You didn’t kill him,” she whispers. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Just like Nancy’s death and everything that happened in that house was never your fault, baby, but here we are regardless.”
Sometimes, our souls feel responsible for the mess around us. As the guilt churns, we think to ourselves, if only I had done things differently, if only I had not done that one thing or took that wrong turn, but the truth is there are some events in life we don’t have answers to. Events we couldn’t stop even if we tried but the trauma of it all… it still haunts us, even years later because the thing is, something in us broke.
“So Mia, I know what hell feels like,” I grit out. “I know guilt. I know what’s it’s like to fucking bury shit that steals your breath away in the middle of the night but Mia, I’ve been in hell since you refused to kiss me.”
“Julian…” she whispers as if she doesn’t know what to do with me.
“You almost died in my arms and then the fear of you forgetting me… I’ve been a fucking mess and tool, but you’ve always known where to find me, Mia. Just tell me you want me there with you and baby, I’ll be right there.”
Please, Mia. Tell me you need me. Tell me you love me. Tell me you want me to fucking kiss you, baby.
But she doesn’t.
“No, stay wherever you are,” she croaks.
“Baby…”
“I had one of the best days of my life yesterday but when I fell in bed tonight I… I could only think of you. You make everything hurt, Julian. You broke my heart.”
Fuck! I bang my head against the wall beside the window, my eyes closed shut, listening to her say the words I never wanted her to say, but they’re true.
“I know I hurt you because Ice Queen, the road to my hell was paved with splinters of your broken heart and I… I’m the fucking asshole who deserves to burn for that alone.”
I hear her gasp and then the sniffles art all over again.
“I guess nothing matters now, huh? Not even you.”
“Don’t say that,” I grit out, punching my fist through the wall. My arm still fucking hurts as it hasn’t healed yet but I don’t fucking mind the pain. Not anymore.
“It is what it is, Julian,” she whispers almost brokenly. “You know the thing about my mind is, I’ve forgotten almost everything about what life was before you, but I remember everything you’ve ever said to me.”
“Mia, listen, I can make this work. I can make this right…” I’m in no position to tell her that right now. I’d be in breach of my agreement with my father but fuck that, I’m desperate. I know that, but she doesn’t listen to me, she just goes on in that robotic voice.
“You said I’m corroding. That my kisses corrode and that my heart is already corroded and rotting.”
No, no, I didn’t mean it.
“Mia…”
“You said when I kissed you, I sentenced you to an unending sequence of agony. I remember that.”
“I don’t mean that!”
“But you did, or else why would you say that, Julian?” she asks softly. “You don’t strike me as a guy who wastes his words.”
“Stop fucking throwing my mistakes in my face, Mia! You love me and you miss me. That’s why I’m the first one you called when your dark soul kept you from sleeping in peace.”
“I admit, I do miss you Julian and I… I love you. And maybe it’s because of that love that I’m this fucked up.”
“Mia.”
“Don’t bother coming for me,” she snaps angrily. “I won’t be waiting for you anymore.”
And with that, she hangs up.
The hell she won’t be. I’m here in New York for her. Everything I’ve done since the night she refused to kiss me has been for her. And the fact that she’s angry enough to hang up on me tells me one thing. She says one thing, but she does the exact opposite.
I shoot her a text.
Me: I’m walking through flames, but you will wait for me, Little Minx. No one but me.
I mean, she has no choice. She’s mine.
After all, we have a binding contract.
And like Jacob in the Holy Book, I’m working like a fucking donkey, but I’d do anything, be anything, just to keep her. Including stepping over the red tape into a shadowy world where there are no rules for those that make the rules. The underbelly of unbridled power.
Chapter Forty-One
Julian
One and half years later.
There are a few things I have on my to-do list.
Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a long, sappy or even hard to do list. It’s a detailed, straight to the fucking point list I put together the day I left Palos Verdes eighteen months ago.
Yes, I’ve counted the months. I’ve even counted the weeks, the days, the fucking agonizingly slow seconds… all of it has been boiling and fucking working up like a pressure cooker to bring me here.
Eighteen fucking months.
Each day that passed was harder than the last, especially when John found out that I had talked to Mia when he specifically told me not to be in contact with her during this time… not because it was some sort of instruction, I’m above that now and he knows it, but because that was his advice.
“It’s easier on the soul when you stay in silence,” he had said.
But I didn’t quite stay in fucking silence. My need for Mia is a raging inferno that won’t be tamed.
I know exactly where Mia is, and I know exactly what she’s doing and who the fuck with. There were douchebags who thought they could get near her, I dealt with them in kind. I know she trying to move on and in a way, I love that but this to-do list has her name on it and now, after all this time… everything boils down to this.
Yes, part of the reason I stayed away from her is because of guilt. After everything went down in Palos Verdes and especially in that burning warehouse, I could see my part in the events that led Mia to jump in front of a fucking bullet for me.
I can’t have that happen ever again and for that to happen, I had to become this… whatever I am today.
I can’t allow myself to feel the guilt anymore. I can’t afford to have useless feelings that don’t help the cause of the future I’m trying to build—since the other one I had religiously worked toward all but faded away with a simple break of incompetent bones.
Okay, maybe I was being a tad bit dramatic but all I’ve ever known was football.
When Aiden was sick and spent days, hell, weeks in the hospital, I played football.
When Courtney was being an ass, I left the house with both Aiden and Liam to play football.
The times when Cole was a livid, pathetic mess over things he never talks about, we played football.