Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing: Book 4 (Magnolia Parks Universe)

She’s standing there by herself. Where’d the boyfriend go? I glance around, looking for him. She stares over at me, holding my eyes. I nod my chin at her, because I’m not sure what else I can do.

She tips her head towards the bar.

I like communicating with her without words. I walk over to it. Makes me feel like we’re still connected in the ways I want us to be.

“Where’s Tiller?” I ask her as casually as I can, look over my shoulder like I’m hoping he’s around.

“He’s sleeping.”

I pull back a bit. “Wow.”

She reaches over the bar and grabs an olive, popping it in her mouth. “He has an early start…”

My face falters. I don’t mean for it to. It’s just — she has to know it’s an excuse. A piss poor one at that — and who’s making up excuses not to spend New Year’s with her?

“Don’t—” She shakes her head.

I give her a look and she rolls her eyes amused.

“Stop—” She shakes her head. “Don’t be shit.”

“Sorry.” I do my best to squash a smile so I look away from her.

Hard to keep your smile in check when you’re looking at the girl you — you know, you know?

“What?” she asks, turning in towards me more.

I peer over at her out of the corner of my eye. “Maybe this year won’t be so shit after all…”

She smacks me in the arm and turns to the person behind the bar.

“A Sazerac and a greyhound please,” she tells them before she turns back to me.

“You didn’t bring Vanna.”

I shake my head as I crouch down to pet the dog. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Why?” She smirks, amused. “I’d do it to you…”

“Yeah, but I deserve it more than you—” I tell her with a shrug. Mean it too.

“Yeah?” She frowns a little. “How do you figure?”

“It took me too long to figure out what you are to me…”

Her eyes pinch as she slides me my drink. “What am I to you?”

“Oh, I don’t know—” I give her a little shrug, stare straight ahead. Take a long sip before I look over at her. “Like, just — everything.”

She looks rattled, head pulled back and blinking a lot. “Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know—” I shrug as I shove my hands through my head. “I guess I just thought after all our shit before, and the ways our wires got crossed, that for you and me, honesty would be the best policy—”

Her eyes look wide and worried and I wonder if I’ve overstepped.

“There is no us,” she tells me with this voice that sounds kind of startled and sort of pleased at the same time so I decide to double down.

“For now,” I tell her with a smirk.

“No—” She shakes her head, cheeks going pink, looking flustered. “No! I’m with Tiller—”

I like riling her up so I do it some more.

“For now.”

She gives me a look. “Christian—”

“Daisy—” I reach over and push some hair behind her ears.

She blinks at me, frozen. “What are you doing?”

“Sorry. You’re just—” I shake my head and laugh once even though none of this is funny to me. “So beautiful it hurts.”

She blinks a couple of times.

“Are you drunk?”

“A bit.” I nod, sliding her drink over to her so we can be on the same page. She tosses it back easily and then gestures for the bartender to make another.

She swallows, cheeks on fire, shaking her head weakly. “You can’t say that to me.”

I like making her go weak. “I’ll say shit like that to you forever if you’ll let me—”

“Well I — no—” She blinks a lot, swallows more. “I don’t. I won’t—”

I take a step towards her, tilt my head, take another drink. “You want me to stop?”

She scoffs at least twice and I start laughing as she frowns, annoyed and rattled.

“Yes!” she says quickly.

“Yes?” I repeat, taking another step towards her, not giving a shit about anyone up here seeing us. I want them to see us, I want the world to. She’s not moving back, she’s staring up at me, toe-to-toe, a worried face I want to smooth out and kiss all over.

I give her a look, tempering the smile I’ve got. “Do you want to try that again, Dais? Maybe with a bit more gusto?”

“No!” she breathes out. Hands on her hips. “And there was plenty of gusto!”

I look over her face; I love all of it. I’ve missed not being able to stare at her how I am now, a bit like she’s mine, a bit like I can do things to her that no one else can.

“‘No’ you don’t want me to stop? Or…?”

“No—” she stutters. “No. Yes — I — stop it.” She stomps a foot.

I lick away a smile and nod once. “Okay.”

“Okay, you’ll stop?” she asks, eyebrows up as she straightens her dress that’s just fine as is.

“For now,” I tell her with a smirk and she squashes one back, and I love her. That’s it for me. That’s all there is. I love her.

I need to be with her, actually. I need to figure it out.

And I can’t tell if she loves me too right now— I think she might? — all those pink cheeks and being up here with me instead of down there with him, but I don’t know—?

Daisy looks over her shoulder and her face scrunches up as she looks at Julian with his hand up Magnolia’s dress.

This fucking party, man — so rife with drama.

Beej is pretty fucked up at this point. His eyes practically fell out of his head when he saw Parks trot down the stairs with Jules.

Hasn’t really spoken to me all night, avoided Henry too. Like it’s our fault that he fucked up so bad she’s run to the arms of the most dangerous man in England.

He’s pissed at Jo too. But he can’t leave, because everyone would know why he left, girlfriend included, and he’s too proud.

How proud he is could be the death of them one day.

So there’s that, and then there’s all the shit between my brother and Henry. Taura’s here, technically with neither, technically with both.

Seen her kiss them both at certain points throughout the night — which is fucked up and probably makes her sound worse than she is.

Watching Parks and Julian together —that’s still weird to say — it’s interesting. Because she’s doing what she’s always done… You know that part in Jurassic World where the Indominus Rex escapes its pen and it’s chasing Chris Pratt and he hides under a car and cuts the fuel line, covering himself in the smell to throw it off? We’ve seen this before, she’s done it a thousand times. Done it with me, did it with Tom and Rush and Jack-Jack… Julian is the petrol she’s covering herself in.

But Jules — I don’t know. We’ve been proper mates a few months now, more than that, probably. I’ve seen him with a lot of girls. I’ve never seen him with a girl how he’s being now.

All over her. Hands in her hair, her on his lap, chin on her shoulder.

I wonder if it’s for show?

Wouldn’t put it past her, honestly, to strike up a deal like that — tell him to act a certain way, to touch her a certain way — but if she hasn’t told him, if he’s doing it himself… Fuck, we’re all in trouble, then.

“God, they’re hateful,” she scowls over at her brother and Magnolia. The sight would have knocked the wind out of me a year ago — Parks leaning back against a wall, Julian hovering over her, nudging her face with his as he kisses her all over — but now? I couldn’t give less of a shit.

Actually, that’s not entirely true, I’m a bit sad about it, but for her because she’s my friend and she’s a fucking mess.

“Should we go somewhere else?” I nod my head towards nowhere.

She gives me a look, somewhere between suspicious and hopeful. “Maybe.”

“Where?”

She purses her mouth — I love that mouth — I think about that mouth all the time.

“I have a place,” she says before she takes my wrist in her hand and pulls me past the bar and through a cool room into what looks like a little dead end room. I give her a confused look, as does this dog of theirs who follows her everywhere. And then I notice the trick wall.

She slips between it and disappears and I follow her, my heart pounding — I don’t know why. Because she does this to me, I guess.

She pushes open a window you can’t see from the street and climbs out onto a landing on the roof and gestures to London’s skyline somewhat pathetically.

“Woah.” I blink at it. “I didn’t know this place was here.”

She stares at me for a few seconds. “No one knows that this place is here.”

“No one?”

She shakes her head. “Just me and my brother.” She gives me this quick smile that looks sort of sad, sort of tender. “If security’s breached, if I’m in danger, I’m meant to come here and he’ll find me. It’s not on the blueprints. You can’t see it from the street.”

I stare over at her and feel this weird guilty sadness, because her life is fucked and I can’t unfuck it, and even if I want to — which a bit of me does — most of me doesn’t because if it’s fucked, we can be together, I think.

“No one knows—” she tells me all earnest. “Don’t tell anyone.”

I shake my head, barely. “Mum’s the word.”

“So.” I sit down on the roof, knees propped up. “What will we do at midnight?”

She sniffs a laugh and sits down next to me, leaving about a foot between us. I’m pretty sure it’s on purpose though.

“Nothing.”

She gives me a look and I give her one back like she’s an idiot.

“We have to do something—” I shake my head at her. “Bad karma for the year otherwise…”

She pats the dog mindlessly. “That’s not what they say…”

I elbow her. “What do they say, then?”

She gives me an impatient look that I love because she used to look at me like this all the time when I’d guess the wrong era for a piece of art or call the type of mushroom she was cooking with a ‘white one’ instead of a ‘button’.

“They say that how you spend your New Year’s is how you’ll spend the rest of the year.”

“Is it?” I give her a look, eyebrows up. She nods once. “Right, so what’ll we do then?”

“Nothing,” she says again.

“So you want to do nothing all year?”

“With you?” She gives me a proud look. “Perhaps…”

“Liar,” I tell her, staring her down. Her cheeks go pink. Pink enough I can see them in the dark.

She breathes out her nose. It’s more like a huff.

“I will put my head on your shoulder,” she says, staring straight ahead. “At midnight.” She clarifies for no one but herself.

“I’ll take it.” I nod, staring straight at her.

And then midnight creeps up on us. We’re not checking the time, we’re losing it… it’s slipping through our fingers as we shoot the shit, talking about nothing and everything, and it’s the best night of my life and I realise for the billionth time since that day in her apartment that I should’ve just said yes, should’ve just kissed her like crazy, grabbed her hand and followed her wherever she wanted to go.

And maybe it’s too late now, or maybe it’s not, I can’t tell — because she’s here with me, not with him, right? That’s got to count for something — he gave her the life I said I couldn’t, but I think I’d give anything to take it all back and not say no, just say “Okay, where?”

The counting starts, the whole city yelling 10, 9, 8…

And what would I give to kiss her?

Anything. Literally anything. 7, 6, 5…

She closes the gap between us, still staring straight ahead.

4, 3, 2…

I shift so my arm behind her back, not around it; it’s not around her shoulder on a technicality, but I guess it is.

1.

There’s cheering and yelling all around us, muffled by the distance and the bell tower chiming in my mind as she drops her head on my shoulder and my head falls back and I stare at nothing in the sky, take a big breath, breathe in how much I love her.

“Happy New Year,” she says, not looking at me.

I don’t say anything for a few seconds. Drop my head on top of hers, let it rest there how it always wants to.

“This is the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me on a midnight.”

She sniffs a laugh. Doesn’t move a muscle. “I don’t believe that for a second.”

I shift a bit, press my mouth into the top of her head.

“Unsanctioned,” she says but she doesn’t move.

I sniff. “Sorry.”

“You didn’t say it back…” she tells me, head still where I want it.

I smile but she can’t see it, glad she can’t, too. I’m smiling like a fucking idiot.

“Happy New Year, Baby.”