Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe, #1)

by Jessa Hastings

He’s the only man I’ve ever grieved the loss of, the only love I’ve ever loved.

Loving someone like I love her fucks you up a bit. Fucking up how I fucked up also fucks you up a bit.

“You didn’t think the other twenty-two were reckless.” “That’s because they’re about m—”

“That’s because the other twenty-two are pertaining to someone who cares about your body.”

The lights go off and she stares at me through the darkness a few seconds longer, and I love her in the dark. I mean, fuck it—I down and out love her in all spectrums of light, even the absence of it.

“How’s the weather over there, Parks?”

Painful things can still be beautiful things, in case you didn’t know.

He doesn’t like to call himself a model and I’m reluctant to call him an influencer, because that’s incredibly embarrassing and, dare I say, lacks any kind of professional longevity—but he’s not . . . not an influencer?

Normal for two broken hearts who can’t fit their pieces with anyone but each other.

I felt like I was on my way to finding the love of my life dead.

how many loves do you get in a lifetime?

How many people will look at me like he does, not just like I’m the sun but like I’m the whole goddamn universe.

I remember resentment pounding through my body and then I remember it, like a physical punch in the gut, how much I loved him. Really loved him. To the bone, loved him. Cut me and I’d bleed him. How much I needed him, still needed him, would forever, always, never couldn’t even if I tried, needed him. And I remember being deeply afraid of what my life would be like without him in it.

So, it doesn’t matter if I love him—which I don’t—but if I did, it doesn’t matter, even now. Because loving him is the same thing as tossing the keys to my heart to a valet without a driver’s licence. He’ll drive me off a cliff.