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

The Lion’s Gate is this pub in Vauxhall, about two hundred years old — a lot of wood, a lot of stained glass — the kind of place where if you ask for anything but a beer they’ll mock you for the rest of the night.

I’ve never been before. It’s the kind of place people like me grow up hearing about — it’s legendary. Once when Romeo was sixteen, he came in here on a dare. He had to ask for a pint of Guinness. He did it. Skulled it, nearly got shot in the process.

It took a lot of convincing for Miguel to allow this plan to happen.

I told him to go home and he laughed in my face.

I begged him to wait in the car — that was an absolute no-fly zone.

I tried for him to be in the back corner watching over — still no.

So we agreed on him standing about two metres away, pretending to ignore me how he always does.

And now I’m waiting for Christian — the small mercy here is I really dressed to the fucking nines to drop Tiller his badge. In case I had to see that stupid fucking Michelle, I wanted her to feel bad about herself when she saw me so I wore the Virtus Animalier embroidered mini dress1 with a black cardigan2 and these chunky bronze-y heels.3 I didn’t buy a single thing I’m wearing other than my earrings and my bag,4 they just showed up in my wardrobe — so I guess thank you, Magnolia?5

He walks in at about 5:15 pm. Black baggy pants, cons and a black YSL hoodie.

He spots me straight away, over by the bar on a stool by myself.

Maybe his face lights up a bit, maybe it doesn’t.

“Hey,” he says, his eyes flicking over my face. “You good?”

I flash him a quick smile and nod. He doesn’t buy it.

“What are we doing here?”

“Here?” I look around like I don’t know what he means.

“Yeah — here.” He flicks his eyebrows up and doesn’t wait for an answer before he steps towards me, presses half of his body against mine as he orders himself a drink. “Can I have a pale ale, mate? Hoppy. Darker, if you can—” He flashes the bartender a half-smile then looks over at me, still leaning around me even though there’s space for him to just stand next to me like a normal person and I hate myself for being like this already — reading into anything I can.

“What do you want?” Christian asks.

“An imperial stout, please.”

He gives me a look. “Look at you, with your dark beer — full of surprises.”

He hands me my drink and our hands brush and our eyes catch.

“What are we doing here, Dais?” he asks, waiting.

I shrug innocently. “Just having a drink.”

He takes a measured sip.

“This is a cop bar.”

“Is it?” I blink about seven times.

“Yeah—” Christian presses his tongue into the inside of his cheek, amused. “Who knew?”

I bat my eyes, lift my shoulders up and down.

“Baby—” He tilts his head so I mirror him because I’m on full-flirting with him now.

“Yes, Christian?”

“I’m not an idiot — I knew what The Lion’s Gate was before I came. Came anyway—” He gives me a look. “I’m here, Dais — I just want to know what I’m in for.”

And right on cue, Tiller walks on in with all his work friends.

Tills doesn’t see us but Christian clocks him and frowns. He turns back to me and takes a step closer as he waits for an answer.

“Right. What’s going on, Dais?”

I give him a tight smile. “I’m a criminal. That’s all I am.”

“Bullshit.” Christian touches my arm as he shakes his head a bit. “He said that to you?”

“His ex-girlfriend said it—” I shake my head. “He said nothing.”

Christian’s jaw goes tight.

“Want me to sort him out?” My ex-boyfriend nods his head towards Tiller and I shake my head back.

“No, actually—” I take another step closer towards him. “I want you to kiss me.”

Then there’s a brief pause. For a half a second I feel stupid and embarrassed and then Christian cocks a smile and nods once. “Yeah, okay. Can do.”

He stares at me for a few seconds, gaze dancing between my eyes and mouth, and my heart is Seabiscuit in my throat, and I can’t believe I’m about to kiss him again. I’ve tried my best to be faithful to Tiller, even when it cost me. As much as I could, I didn’t think about Christian Hemmes. Thoughts creep in, comparisons happen, but I did my daily best not to meditate on the way the sun would hit his cheekbones and the colour his mouth goes after I’ve pressed mine against his.

“Ready?” he asks, brows very serious.

I nod once.

He pushes my hair behind my ear like he always has, then keeps his hand at the back of my neck and slips his other hand around my waist and pushes my body up against the bar behind me.

He’s slow to kiss me — careful almost? — and I wonder if he doesn’t want to do it? Then he swallows heavy, brushes his mouth over mine and my eyes close without a second thought, because even considering all the circumstances, I just want to swim in this for a second. Bask in the glory of his mouth against mine. And I remember in this split second the first time we did this — that night forever ago, when he kissed me, I felt like this. This stupid floaty feeling, like how those NASA pictures look of the galaxies with the space dust all pink and purple and stars and planets — that’s kissing Christian Hemmes. Even if none of it’s real.

And then I feel someone saddle up next to us.

Showtime.

I open one eye, my mouth still pressed up against Christian’s. Turn my head ever so slightly so Christian and I are still technically kissing.

“What the fuck, Dais?” Tiller asks, teeth clenched.

Christian pulls away, wiping his mouth with his hand and stands tall. Smirks over at him.

“Oh, hi.” I beam up at him.

“What are you doing?” he asks loudly.

“Me?” I touch my chest. “Oh, nothing, I’m just here with my fellow criminal—”

Our eyes catch and Tiller’s shoulders slump.

“Daisy—”

“Doing criminal things, because that’s all I am, actually, did you know—?”

His head rolls back a bit. “Dais—”

“Fuck you, Tills—” I yell loud enough for the people around us to stop talking and look over. “That’s all I am?”

He says nothing, just stares down at me with this pained look on his face.

“Yep,” says Michelle and Christian gives her a sharp look.

“What’s your deal?” I nod my chin at her. “Is your thing with me rooted in the fact that throughout your relationship with Tiller, he was obsessed with me? Or more because—” Michelle’s eyes go to slits and Tiller, once again, says nothing, so I keep talking.

“—he’d blow off actual dates with you to stand in my doorway for five minutes and pretend like he was looking for my brother?”

“Actually, my thing with you is just because you’re dirt.”

Christian squares up and stares her down.

And then what happens next happens quickly. My hand has been on my gun since the second Tiller walked in. I know where he keeps his too. Shoulder holster.6 So Hollywood… so American… so easy to reach into the lefthand side of his jacket, pull it out and point it at him.

Tiller’s eyes instantly go dark and jagged. Like it’s me who betrayed us, not him with his silence in that stairwell.

And here we are, both barely alive in that icy ocean water. Only room for one on this floating door, and fuck you, Tiller, I’m not going down with the ship.

The magic of this moment is that Christian knew. Somehow he knew. His gun is out and it’s pointed at Michelle whose eyes are wide and sparky, like someone who enjoys confrontation for confrontation’s sake.

“Oh—” I glance at it out of the corner of my eye. “You got a new one.”

“Yep.” Christian nods. “Just upgraded to the P220 Legion Full-Size.”

“Nine millimetre?” I ask.

“Ten.” He nods.

Tiller glances between us.

Christian shrugs. “I just wanted something weightier in the hand, you know?”

I nod. “What’s the finish on that?”

“Stainless steel.”

“Nice.” I nod as I stare Tiller down.

Miguel’s guns are drawn too, skimming the surface of everyone around us and I won’t lie — there are, in turn, about eighty guns pointed at us.

Tiller glances around, eyebrows up, like he thinks it’s funny in front of his friends but I know he loves me7 because I can still see it hiding under the fear in his eyes he’s trying not to let me see.

“You three are going to take on the whole of London PD?”

“Nope. Wouldn’t be a fair fight…” I jut my jaw out, shake my head. “We’d fucking cream you—”

Christian sniffs a laugh.

“Daisy—” Tiller starts, brows low like they always are around me and I shake my head at him, gun pointed square at his face.

“We’re done,” I tell him.

“Yeah.” He rolls his eyes. “No shit.”

I shrug like this is easy, holding a weapon at the head of a man I have loved the better half of a year, a man who’s protected me and fought for me, who I’ve killed for. I press the barrel against his forehead over my favourite scar he has, as though I’d ever blow a bullet through the part of his face I’ve touched every night like a lamp I rub to get to sleep. Like us ending what we were isn’t something I’ve wrestled with for the last two months, even when I knew it was the right thing to do, even when I knew I still loved someone else, letting Tiller go has felt impossible. I mightn’t have done it if he didn’t do it for me today in the stairwell. And now here we are. Fighting in a bar, me hurling my ex-boyfriend at him and a literal gun in his face just to hurt him, and Tiller’s there looking at me the way I’ve always been afraid he might. Like I am really nothing more than a criminal.

“Put the gun down, Dais—” he tells me.

I nod broadly towards the room. “Them first.”

Our eyes lock again, a stand off between us that’s the final nail in the coffin of what we were.

Tiller waves his hands downward. “Just a misunderstanding guys, lower your weapons.”

Slowly, they do, about a hundred eyes pinched and suspicious.

“I’m going to keep this—” I pocket Tills gun. Christian lowers his but doesn’t holster it.

“I’ll come pick up my things tomorrow,” Tiller tells me.

“Don’t bother—” I shake my head. “I’ll have one of the boys bring it to Dyson’s. Or—” I gesture towards his ex-girlfriend. “Would you rather they drop it at Michelle’s?”

He scoffs. “You’re one to talk.”

“Yeah, well — I figured you weren’t saying enough for the both of us.” I give him another dismissive shrug and his face falls. I wave my hand vaguely towards Michelle again. “Have fun in the… archives.” I give him a fake, unimpressed smile.

“Fuck you—”

“You already have—” I poke him in the chest and he looks down at my finger like it’s a foreign object. “On duty, what’s more… out of your jurisdiction and everything—” I cringe.

He breathes out his nose calmly. “Actually Dais, I never told you this but my boss told me to come that day—”

That actually does feels like the slap he wanted it to and Christian glances at me like he’s sorry for me but I’m a goddamn Haites, raised by my brother, I can’t back down from a fight, not even if someone hurts me.

“Yeah—” I shrug again with a grimace. “But did they mean it like that?”

Christian’s mouth purses into the shape of an O and it makes me feel clever.

Tiller drops my eyes and looks away.

“Hey, just so you know, Tills—” I duck down to meet him. “I know that the reason we’re actually done is less because I’m a criminal, and more because you’re intrigued by it all and you’re afraid of it.”

His face freezes. It’s just for a second but I see this quick-as-a-flash tumbleweed of fear and acknowledgment roll past his eyes.

“Piss off,” he tells me like he hates me.

“Gladly—” I nod once and salute him as I back away. “Inspector…”

Christian grabs my hand and pulls me to the street. We run a hundred or so metres down and into a crowd so they can’t come after us.

He checks over his shoulder and Miguel pushes me further into the crowd.

“That’s you not doing anything?” Miguel asks, eyebrows up. “Get your fucking head blown off to flip off your boyfriend?”

He’s angry, shaking his head, brows down.

I don’t really have an excuse so I give him a weak shrug.

“Ex.” I clarify unhelpfully, and Miguel just gives me a look.

“Don’t tell Jules—”

“Oh—” He gives me a different look, steeped in anger. “I’m going to send him a fucking singing telegram about this one, Daisy, you twat—”

Christian tilts his head, staring at me. “Are you okay?”

I nod, looking back over my shoulder.

“He’s a prick,” Christian tells me and I flash him a sad smile. “You were together a bit though…”

“Yeah.” I nod.

Christian notices my hand still in his, lets it go. My hand falls to my side and the moment feels clunky.

He clears his throat. “How long for?”

I purse my mouth thinking. “Ten… maybe nearly eleven months?”

“Oh, shit—” He sniffs, annoyed.

“What?” I frown and he shakes his head like he’s stupid.

“I kind of hate that he beat me out—”

I roll my eyes like I think he’s stupid too but the honest to God truth is that no one ever could.

I swallow and stare up at him. “Thanks for kissing me.”

He laughs, shaking his head. “Anytime.”

We smile at each other in a way I don’t know that I fully understand. I might hope to understand it but that’s not been my lot with Christian so far.

He takes a step back from me then pauses — brows go low and he takes two closer towards me.

“It was just a kiss, right?” he asks with a frown.

No. It never just an anything with you.

But I say “yes.”

“Cool.” He nods a bunch. “I’ll see you later, then—” He turns and walks away and I watch him go and then he stops. Turns around and squints over at me.

“Can I drive you home?”

I look over at Miguel who sighs and rolls his eyes. He points at Christian threateningly.

“No stops along the way.”

He nods.

“Get off Vauxhall Bridge as soon as you can. Take Lupus Street, through Pimlico, understood?”

“Yes, sir.” Christian nods obediently. “Do you think I’ll have a minute to drive her through Ebury Square Gardens and murder her quickly—” Miguel glares over at him, unimpressed, and Christian makes an uncomfortable noise. “Not in a joking mood today? Got it. Home in a jiff.”

Miguel exaggeratively rolls his eyes and walks away.

Christian turns and gives me a triumphant smile then nods his head down the street. “Car’s this way.”

We spend that drive home mostly just debriefing about the night, about all the guns that were pointed at us, how he knew to pull his gun out too, what we might have done if it escalated more than that, how much my brother will never let me out of his sight again.

The car ride is so easy and sweet and mindless and it goes so quick. It should take about fifteen but this time I think it might only take ten, and I feel like the universe is cheating me and so when he pulls into our courtyard I stay sitting in his car, in silent protest.

I clear my throat and don’t look over at him.

“Do you want to come in?” I ask my hands.

He opens his mouth to say something and then frowns a bit. Breathes out his nose. “I shouldn’t.”

I look over at him. “Why?”

He frowns more. “I just… shouldn’t.”

I cross my arms over my chest, sort of annoyed. “I just broke up with my boyfriend—”

“Exactly—” He gestures at me. “You just broke up with your boyfriend—”

“Are you joking?” I ask loudly, unclipping my seatbelt.

“What?”

“You’re fucking unbelievable—” I shake my head. “I couldn’t get rid of you a week ago, you turned up everywhere — and now I’m available and—”

He shakes his head at me. “What are you talking about?”

“You only want me when you can’t have me.” I shake my head at him.

His face falters. “That’s not true—”

My eyebrows shoot up. “Is it not?”

“No,” he tells me.

“Then what is it then?” I shrug. “Now that you’re my brother’s friend you won’t touch me?”

His head falls back like he’s tired and he pushes his hand through his hair how I wish he was pushing it through mine.

“Whatever—” I roll my eyes, kick open his car door and throw myself out of it.

I hear Christian growl under his breath and he jumps out of his car, jogging over and standing toe-to-toe with me.

“Can you stop?” He shakes his head. “What the fuck is the matter with you—?”

“Nothing.” I try to move past him but he blocks me.

He scowls down at me. “Why have you suddenly gone mental?”

“Get out of my way—” I shove him and his eyebrows shoot up, pissed off and a bit vindictive. He raises his hands in the air, takes a step back, like he’s rid of me.

I stare at him for a second or two, hate that we’re here again — one kiss? That’s what I get? One kiss to remember how good it was, how much I love him and want him and we’re back to fucking here? Where he wants me when he can’t have me and he’s done with me after one fight?

I move past him, hope he can’t tell how crushed I am as I do and our shoulders brush then he says, “Actually — no. Fuck it.”

He grabs me by the waist and bangs me backwards into his car, pressing his mouth up against mine in this perfect, rushy way.

He kisses me for what feels like ages — a new age — or an old one? If me and Tiller were the Titanic, Christian is New York City on the horizon. He’s the tea and blankets that wrap me up on the Carpathia. He’s the Statue of Liberty — I’ll give him my tired, my poor, my yearning to breathe free—

I love the feeling of his hands on me, one still in my hair, the other firmly on my lower back, pulling me into him.

I pull back a tiny bit, tracing my finger just under the band of his Calvins. “Will you come inside now?”

“After,” is all he says before he boosts me up onto his waist, his hands sliding up my dress and then — you know—

Every loud and perfect symphony, every immaculate clash of pastel colours in every sky that this stupid, beautiful world has ever given us — he is all of it. He is the drug. Every high I’ve ever chased, every good feeling, every momentarily filled void. His hands on my body, his mouth on my mouth, him inside of me — everyone else is Vicodin, morphine and fentanyl, but Christian — he’s the good stuff.8

He’s heroin.

And that sounds bad, I get it — but it’s not. It’s just — him. I think he’s rewired my brain. My dopamine reward system? I know nothing more rewarding than his hand pushing hair that isn’t out of place behind my ear. There’s not a thing on the planet I love more than that except for maybe him, and I don’t know if I can — if I’ll have that again, but I’m having this again at least.

I’ll take what I can get.

1 Versace.

2 The Scarlet cashmere cardigan; Khaite.

3 Aura 105mm patent-leather sandals; Gianvito Rossi.

4 My Heart box bag; Dolce & Gabanna. Chunky chain drop earrings; Federica Tosi.

5 And also, fuck you and fuck off.

6 Galco’s Miami Classic II in the brown leather.

7 It’s just not enough anymore.

8 To clarify, I am not a drug addict.