“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?”
“It’s a valid question.”
“Mia, there’s no one but you,” he says softly. “I haven’t touched anyone but you since the night Liam almost died in that car bomb years ago and no one’s touched me since you grabbed my ass in your little bedroom, begging me to fuck you on your twentieth birthday.”
“I thought that was a dream,” I snap. “I didn’t think you’d come…”
“I had to, baby,” Julian says as he steps closer to me, swallowing the distance I had put between us. “I had to see you. We missed your eighteenth. I couldn’t get to you on your nineteenth but fuck, baby, I had to get to you.”
“What happened that night?”
“You really don’t remember?” I shake my head. “Okay, then. When I got in your room, you whispered my name. Your eyes were open. When you saw me, you reached out for me in a way that brought me down to my knees. All I wanted to do in that moment was give you everything you wanted. I swear I thought you wanted me, you even begged me to fuck you. If I had known how sleepy you were, I would’ve stopped but I was already starved. I only wanted to see you, hold you in my arms if I could, but when you looked up at me…”
“I was awake,” I whisper, the admission falling from my lips. “I was awake, but somehow it was easier to compartmentalize your sudden experience that night as dream than to face the reality that you left me. But nothing hurt more than when I woke up and you were gone. You didn’t even kiss me on the lips!”
“Somehow, I thought it would be easier.”
What part of that would be easier for me, Julian?”
“Both, baby. You never asked me to kiss you and I know better than to just demand it, not your kisses. They mean more to me than you’ll ever know, and I wanted you to give that to me willingly,” Julian says, his voice husky. “As for the slipping way before you woke, I just thought you’d want that, so I left.”
“That’s just it, Julian,” I cry. “The ease you have to just walk out of my life, it terrifies me.”
“Baby—”
“I know I made it seem like I didn’t want you anymore, but Julian, I was a girl who had just gone through the worst thing anyone can experience. I was hurting. I wanted you to fight for me, but you sent me two fucking carts and then… nothing.” I turn around to look at the house. “And now, after all the misery of these past years, you bring me here, to this gorgeous house, and you look at me like that, telling me that you left to save me… what do I do with that?”
What do I do with that? And why do I feel like I’m hardly breathing as I look up at him. I turn back to look at him.
“You accept it, Mia. You accept me.”
That’s what I want, but I have questions. Difficult questions that I need answers to now because they’ll haunt me forever and I don’t want them to have any more power over me.
“What happened to Nathan?” I finally ask.
“Didn’t my father tell you?” he says, watching me with a. guarded look in his eyes.
“He did, but I want to hear it from you.”
We stare at each other in silence.
“My father had him killed.”
There it is.
“What happened to Shane?”
“He’s still in hiding, and I hope to God he stays underground because when I find him, and I’m fucking working on it, I will kill him.”
He means it. Every word holds a heaviness to it.
I struggle to breathe, but I keep going. “Kristine?”
“I never kept tabs on her, to be honest but she was spotted in Texas two years ago.”
I nod, looking at the house.
“What happens now?” I whisper. “Because I missed you more than more soul can bare and you… you saved me from a life that could’ve been horrifically worse and I’m so, so grateful.”
“Now, baby, now you have to give me what I’ve been dying for all these years. I’ve been a wreck. You were out of reach and your kisses… fuck, I can’t go a second longer without them,” he says stepping closer to me. “We’re going inside this house but first, I need you to tell me I can finally kiss you.”
“Julian—”
“But if I still can’t kiss you, I’ll understand.”
Is this man for real? Does he not know?
“God, Julian, it was always you,” I whisper brokenly, tears now steaming down my face like rushing streams. “I want you to kiss me. You have to kiss me. Please.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Mia
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
—Romeo & Juliet, William Shakespeare.
So what if I begged him?
I wanted Julian to kiss me, to press his lips against mine and erase the horror on my tongue, the fear on lips and the agony that had seeped into my bones for four long years.