Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home (The Magnolia Parks Universe, #3)

by Jessa Hastings

look over at her more tenderly than I should, feel an old kind of missing her in my chest that I wish would just die but it can’t seem to take its last breath. Every time it takes one it takes another and another, and it’s never a last breath. Loving her like this is a kind of breathing that feels like dying.

She’s crying for me in a way I’ve never done for myself and I love her for it.

The girls sit down in the foyer and Jo leans over the desk to the concierge and whispers, “I’ll give you a thousand pounds cash if you tell the girls that there are only two rooms available.”

“Nothing slimy, bro.” He nods his head in my direction. “Just trying to get the most annoying couple in the world back together.”

Magnolia goes still. Looks over at me. We’ve rounded a lot of corners. Her heart breaks in her eyes like a dropped egg and I don’t know what I’m doing anymore without her. I hate being without her. Rummage through the drawer in my mind as fast as I can to find the words to tell her that I’m coming for her, I’m on my way back, that this is just the long way home. But the drawers are a mess, the words are all jumbled—I love her and then what?—then she pushes back from the table.

Jordan leans back in her seat with the giggles and BJ looks so cross, if I could, I’d pour his expression into a Martini glass and take a big sip.

“That’s Julian Haites. I couldn’t break his heart if I hit it with a sledgehammer.” “Baby girl—” Gus gives me a look. “You are the sledgehammer.”

I don’t think I’ll ever stop looking for a time machine. Until I find one, here’s a time keeper instead. It’s the Vacheron Constantin’s ‘Historiques’ watch. On the back she’s engraved: On borrowed time without you. I press my hands into my face. Swallow the sound my body tries to make.

“In another life I reckon I could have loved you.” I tilt my head, looking up at him. “In another life I would have let you.”

Julian clears his throat and gives me a tight smile. “You know what? I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve fallen into the ranks of men who find that there’s very little that they wouldn’t do for you, Magnolia Parks.”

“You are a very dangerous man, Julian. I know that.” I give him a look. “But I hope you know that above that and before that, you actually really are quite a good man.” He gives me a small smile and nods once. “See ya, Tiges.”

She thinks we’re in the stars but I just think she’s the current of everything and I’m always just drifting. . . Floating home to her.