Daisy Haites (Magnolia Parks Universe, #2)

by Jessa Hastings

Romeo Bambrilla’s hands on my body feel to me like a towel coming straight out of the dryer after a hot shower on a cold day. It’s not necessary, I can survive without it, but it is one of the nicest things. We walk and he hovers closer to me than the friends I keep telling him we are, close to me how he has since we were kids—since before we were too little to know he needed to. He’s always just hovered around me. Just little kids who latched on to each other, who crawled under the tables during their father’s meetings, who hid in the cupboards so they didn’t have to say goodbye to each other, who found dead bodies in those cupboards and started to understand the nature of the family business. Every horrifying thing I think I’ve found out about the world, I found out with Romeo. It was his hand that covered my mouth when we found that body. It was my hand he squeezed when we were in his dad’s office when no one knew we were there and we heard his dad kill a man who had failed him. Romeo was the only person I spoke to besides Julian after what happened to my parents. In the end, who he was to me back then made who he became so much worse.

omg