“I thought we could make a future together. I didn’t make love to you because I was trying to comfort you. I did it because I loved you and I couldn’t not be with you.” Her eyes swelled up with tears.
“I thought we’d… I guess I just thought the fairy tale, I let myself believe that maybe they do come true. Maybe I could be one of the lucky ones… I grew up alone, and to go from there to you…” She wiped away her tears. “It was everything. You were everything.” She hesitated again, taking a deep, steadying breathas she protectively wrapped her arms around her stomach, trying to hold in the emotions that threatened to spill.
I closed my eyes, waiting for the unknown and the inevitable to be spoken. Her hesitancy to expose her truths seared into my skin with each passing second. We weren’t even touching, and I could still feel her all over.
“Mouse, I can give you the life we were meant to have, the one you dreamed of,” I wholeheartedly replied, hanging on by a very thin thread.
I instinctively stepped toward her, longing to hold her in my arms. It physically pained me to be standing there with her, hearing her tell me everything I thought I wanted to know.
“Please don’t,” she urged, halting me. “I’m not telling you this to look for your comfort. That night meant everything to me. I gave you what had always belonged to you, and I’m not talking about my virginity. I’m talking about my heart. You showed me what love is, Julius. Not Kraven. You.”
I bowed my head, inhaling a solid breath, trying to gather my thoughts.
She looked broken when she emphasized, “You. Left.Me. I didn’t know if you were going to come back. I’m not making excuses for my choices, but I’m simply trying to give you the truth because you deserve that. This wasn’t some seedy act of revenge for you leaving. Kraven and I stayed away from each other. The times we were together, we looked for you.”
She stepped toward me. “The morning of that night, I overheard Mrs. Bates in the bathroom of a restaurant, and I ran with Kraven chasing me. I ran so fast I fell, and he took care of me.”
It was then that I realized she was just as much a prisoner of my sins as I was.
“No number of apologies will change the fact that you left me. You didn’t even have the balls to tell me you were leaving.”Tears started streaming down her beautiful face, one right after the other.
She didn’t even try to hide it. She allowed them to flow loosely. I reached over to wipe them away.
Never expecting her to add, “It’s okay for you to hate me.”
ISLA
I hated that I was hurting him, but he needed to know the truth, and I could give him that. It was the least I could do.
“I could never hate you, Isla.” With the back of his fingers, he swept away my tears.
If I thought Julius couldn’t surprise me any more than he already had in the last few months, he totally ripped the rug out from under me with this one. In one quick fluid motion, he backed me up against a tree. I sucked in a breath at feeling the weight of him on me, making me weak in the knees.
“Mouse…” he rasped along my mouth. “You’re my forever.” He shifted his mouth to almost touch mine, lightly enough to where he was there in my space, but still leaving the desire of wanting his lips on mine.
“Today, Isla,” he stressed.
I wanted this moment to last. Especially with what he expressed next. “You’remygirl.”
With that, he grabbed my wrist, and we were out of there. I used the bathroom to clean myself up and to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked my reflection. “How can I keep them both?” Once I splashed some water on my face, I made my way back to the car.
Julius sat in the driver’s seat, completely lost in thought. The heaviness of our conversation still lingered in the air, and I wanted nothing more than to simmer the fire between us. Soon, everything would change again.
We drove in silence for a while until I broke it first. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
“No.”
“Oh, come on… you know I’m not a fan of surprises.”
“All the more reason to torture you.” Catching onto my lightheartedness, he tried to grip my thigh to tickle me, but I intercepted his hand at the last second.
“Did you see that, Julius Knightly?” I wiggled my eyebrows.
He wickedly grinned, gripping my thigh harder that time. This was our thing.
“No!” I pitifully thrashed around.
