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

by Jessa Hastings

Sleep off losing the only girls I’ve ever loved.

Can you love someone you’ve never met? I think about that sometimes.

The only plan I’d ever had for my future was Magnolia Parks, and I’d just let her drive away by herself after she told me she was pregnant with my baby.

“That was so shit of me. I’m sorry. I just needed to think.” “About what?” she asked defiantly, and I loved her for it. I deserved it. The balloons bobbed up on the ceiling. I gave her a casual shrug. “About what our life would look like.” “And what would it look like?” she asked, nose in the air. I looked for her eyes, found them pretty easily. “It’ll look like whatever you want it to, Parks.”

“What are you smiling at?” She shook her head. “We’re fucked.” I sniffed a laugh. “Yeah, but that’s kind of what I want — to be fucked. By you, with you, over you—” I shrugged. “Forever.”

He went along with it — whatever the fuck I needed, even before that was a thing, it was always our thing. I thought it always would be.

“We were just… for each other.”

I shrug. “Maybe he’s moving on.” “From you?” She blinks then shakes her head once. “In no world.”

Wonder how to unlove him.

I’ll wear it like a badge of honour forever that he loved me first, that he loved me at all.

“Pretty as you?” I pick something out of my eye and look at it. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

I just keep falling farther away from the daylight of our maybe-one-day.

“I could try.” He grimaces. “Or could I not just buy you a bag or something?” “A bag?” I stare at him, horrified. “A car,” he says quickly. “You used to buy me a bag every week on Baggy Tuesday — that’s why you called it that.”

“Hi.” I grin up at him. “Where’s Australia?” “Southern Hemisphere.”

“Are you sad, Parks?” I lean in close to his ear, so close my mouth is against it. “I’m always sad, Beej.”

“Were you drinking then too?” he asks. “No, just crying.” I shrug.

tilt my head. “How are you feeling?” She blinks a couple of times then musters a smile. “Like the prettiest girl in the room.” I nod once. “In every room, Parks,” I tell her but she won’t remember.

I catch her eye to soften the blow, try to make it sound like having too much history with Magnolia Parks isn’t the mounted deer I’ll hang in the hallway of who I am, like loving her isn’t the first thing you see when you walk through the door of me.

“Fine. Can you at least tell her that her dress is last season or something?” “Fuck no—” I snort a laugh. “I don’t have a death wish.”

I tilt my head at her. “How’s the weather, Parks?” She breathes out a nervous laugh. “A bit choppy.”

Henry catches my eye then holds up his glass. “To Billie.” Everyone says, raising theirs, “To Billie.”

“Oh, good! I love gold.” I nod. “Always chic.” “And gases.” “Less chic.” I adjust the Five Flowers Headband from Louis Vuitton. Aleksey shrugs. “Is worth almost £5 billion.” “Well,” I concede, shrugging my shoulders brightly, “a girl’s gotta eat, so…”

I nod at her. “We’re moving out. Henry and I found our new house this morning.” She shakes her head. “I don’t want to move out.” I roll my eyes at her. “Well not absolutely everything has to be about you, Bridget.”

“Mayfair.” Her eyes pinch. “Interesting.” “Not interesting,” I tell her, nose in the air. “Oh.” She nods. “You mean right around the corner from the man you love?” “Paul Walker is dead, Bridget.” I put my hands on my hips. “And I would appreciate it if you would let the memory of the man I love rest in peace.”

“And I don’t even know if Parks is like, you know — if she’d—” “Oh, fuck—” Jonah holds his forehead. “I forgot how annoying you two are.”

“I’m going to have to start taking Ashwagandha.” He nods to himself, moving towards the tea cupboard. “I mean, what’s in London for her anyway? It’s like she has this radar, and it’s like, I’m fine — for the first time in like, fuck, I don’t know, years? And she smells it on me and comes back to fuck me up.” He keeps nodding, riffling through the boxes. “So much Ashwagandha.”

“You do. I mean, you know me, man. I don’t believe in that true love bullshit, okay?” He shakes his head. “That fucking Brontë, Shakespearean soulmates shit, I think it’s a thing we say to girls to get laid… But whatever you and Parks have, it’s what those fuckwits were writing about.”

“Your great grandfather was born on the Mississippi River.” I cross my arms. “Says who?” Henry crosses his. “His New York Times best-selling biography.”

I blow out of my mouth to steady myself and wonder if my life in London will just be a series of moments where I numb myself to survive watching the person I love be with someone else.

“You have a girlfriend, remember?” I raise my eyebrows at him. “You made that abundantly clear to me the other evening. You also killed me—” I can barely say it without my voice choking up. His eyes go heavy with a sorry he won’t say out loud. “—on your chest. You killed me on your chest and it’s your girlfriend’s favourite tattoo.”

I put my chin in my hand and bat my eyes at him. “That is true.” He palms my face away from his. “Don’t you point those things at me. We’re not doing this.”

“Because the boy I love got a new tattoo on his chest. Of me — well — sort of. It’s of the thing he’s said I’ve always reminded him of, and I’m dead,” I offer. “I’m dead on his chest.” Rush grimaces. “That wouldn’t happen to be a deer, would it?” I frown at him. “How did you know that?” He shifts uncomfortably. “Tom got it too.”

Both of them? Both people I loved have gotten tattoos of me dead on them? What’s the matter with them? And perhaps more pressingly, what’s the matter with me? “Oh, fine—” Rush growls under his breath and I look up at him. “I’ll give you a quick peck in front of Ballentine and then I’m dropping you straight home.”

I bang my head down against the marble. “She looked so hurt.” “Yeah, well, mission accomplished then. Wasn’t that the point?” “No.” I stand up, square my shoulders. “Liberation was the point.” “Well, she’s not Cuba and you don’t seem liberated,” he tells me sarcastically and I flip him off.

Jo sighs, presses his fingertips into his eyeballs and cringes. “I can’t do this sober. Make me a Bloody Mary?”

“If I tell Henry I’m getting it removed, he’ll tell her—” He points over at me, interrupting. “Oi, put more vodka in that. Bit more—” He eyeballs me. “A bit more — I swear to god, BJ, if you want to keep talking about this, I’m going to need you to pour me a real fucking glass.”

“Like, if she wasn’t your mum I would be all up in that.” Henry pulls a face and I, simply horrified, smack Jonah 12,000 times from his head to his stomach. “Jonah! “What?” He frowns defensively, not flinching at my hits once. “Parks, come on. Her eyes, those come-hither, fuck-me eyes…” He gives me a look. “Dead sexy.” Henry’s faces scrunches up and my mouth falls open, aghast. “WE HAVE THE SAME EYES!” I yell. “What?” He frowns. “My mother and I have the same eyes.”

“Hey, so what’s Bridget up to these days?” Jonah calls after me, cheeky grin on his face. I pinch my fingers together right up in his face. “Paper thin ice, Jonah. Paper thin.”

“I don’t want to be your friend, Perry.” I shake my head. “I’m not quite sure you were ever mine.” And then I walk away.

Jonah takes his sleeve around his hand and wipes my nose, giving me a gentle look. “He’s canning it with her, remember?” Henry hooks his arm around me. “Home stretch, Parks.”

“Yes, well.” She rolls her eyes for a third time. “Instagram has ruined the modelling industry now, so—” (I’m pretty sure that was a dig at me.)

She gives him a playful look. “You can try.” “Oh, I’m going to try a lot.” He nods coolly. “Yeah?” She looks up at him batting her eyes. “How hard?” Jonah chokes on his wine. My mouth actually falls open. He licks his bottom lip, grins at her as he hooks his arm around her neck how I used to. “Hard as you want, London.”

“So.” Jonah blinks. “I guess someone’s discovered sex.”

When I walk in the Hemmes boys cheer.

He’s never seen a mark on my body he didn’t put there.

Because he told me he loves me and even then I knew I wouldn’t love anyone else ever again. It’s BJ or bust.

He was sad about Daisy, I was fucked up about Beej. Drunk.

“I still love her,” he told me. I nodded. “I still love him.” “This would kill her,” he told me. I nodded. “I’d quite like something to kill him,” I said quietly.

“You could have told me.” “Yeah—” He gives me a look. “Because historically you’ve always taken shit about me and Parks so well.”

“Not my biggest fan?” I give her a grim smile. “Well.” She peers up at me, gives me a curt smile. “Who is these days?”