Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe Book 1)

I don’t even know what to do—I’m choked up. I could cry, I could throw up, I could kill myself—I’m glad he hit me. Needed it. Deserved it and he should have.

It’s what I would have done if I weren’t so fucked up but as it stands, I am. Fucked up, ready to fuck it all up, throw it all to the wind. Ready to lose her finally to someone who’s actually worth her time.

We’re on the street now—bad place for me and Parks to be because there’s always cameras somewhere, but I don’t give a shit anymore.

I just want him to hit me again. Take the sting off what I just did for another second. And then out she tumbles after us, Jo hot on her heels—he’s trying to grab her away, I think.

I actually think he’s probably trying to keep her away from me.

Because I pushed her. Holy fuck—I pushed her.

Her, who I love more than everything, who I’ve spent my whole life wanting, who I’ve hurt more than anyone.

The boys run out. Gus appears behind Tom. Magnolia’s still fighting with Jo, who’s practically wrestling her to keep her from me, and then Henry shoves Jo away from her.

There’s a look between them, Jonah and Henry, that fucked up as I am—I know has nothing to do with Magnolia. Easier to pretend that it does though.

“Get the fuck off her,” Henry snatches Parks from our best friend.

The wheels are falling off. Or I’m tearing them off? I can’t tell.

She sort of lets herself fall into my brother’s arms—glad she does, she’s safe in them—and I’m watching Henry hold her how I wish I was, how I wonder if I’ll get to ever again, and then I’m smacked in the face again.

The crowd that’s gathered around us gasps.

I lick my lip, taste blood. Look back up at England. He shakes his head. I want him to fuck me up and curse me out but there’s nothing left he could say to me now that I don’t already think about myself.

“I hate you,” Magnolia tells me from the safety of my brother’s arms.

“You know what, Parks—fucking same,” I spit. “I hate you back.”

She breaks out of Henry’s grip and rushes over to me, eyes all glass. “What’s the matter with you? What are you doing?”

I place my hand on her chest and put some distance between us. “Stay away from me,” I tell her. It sounds like it’s because that’s what I want but it’s really because now I’m afraid of myself.

Her chin is shaking when she asks in a tiny voice, “Why are you using again?”

“Because you’re killing me, Parks,” I yell. “You’re fucking killing me.”

I wipe my eyes. Don’t know when they got wet.

She shakes her head, frowning. “Are you really trying to blame me for this?” She takes a broken breath, looking at me like I’m an insect. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Losing you,” I tell her.

She reaches for me. “No, you’re not—”

I push her hands away from me. “Stop it—”

She blinks, confused. “—Well, maybe now you are.”

“Good,” I yell with a definitiveness I hate.

She blinks. “Good?”

If I had special goggles to see invisible things—which I don’t need with her, I can see her invisible things anyway—that was what I’d call a fatal blow.

I don’t know why it was, what about it was that delivered such a punch in the middle of her, but I see all these cracks appearing, rippling out from the centre of her.

I wipe my face again. Hands come back wet. “I—fuck! What do you want from me, Parks?”

She looks confused. “Nothing!”

“You want nothing from me?” I pull my head back. “Then why the fuck am I here? What have I been doing these last three years?”

“That’s not what I mean.” She shakes her head. “I don’t care, Beej. I don’t care that you don’t do anything with your life. I don’t care that you get too drunk on the weekends. I can even get past that you’re a raging slut—”

“I’m a slut?” I cut in, shaking my head and laughing meanly. “You’re a fucking joke, Parks—”

I stare at her, giving that sentence enough distance to reach her before I hit her with the next one.

“You love me. Everyone knows you love me.” I gesture around us. “I know you love me. Your boyfriend knows you love me. Even you know you love me. Except you’re fucking him,” I yell, and I sound savage. “So who’s the real slut?”

Tom shakes his head, pulling her behind him. “That’s enough,” he tells me.

Good lad, a part of me thinks. Grateful for him for being to her what I can’t be.

She peeks past him. “You promised me—”

She’s crying now. Really crying. She hasn’t cried like this since that night I came to her smelling like someone else.

“Yeah, well”—I shrug like I’m indifferent about it—“I promised you a lot of things.”

She stares at me, nodding barely. “Yes, you have.” Her eyes blink, begging for me to fix this before she has to say what she should have said to me all along.

I say nothing, do nothing. Watch her slip away. Watch me push her away.

She nods with a finality that scares the shit out of me. “I’m done waiting for you to be who I thought you were.”

“You’re done?” I repeat, taking a sharp breath.

“Yes,” she barely says.

I shake my head at her. “Don’t say shit you don’t mean—”

“Listen to me, okay?” She shakes hers back at me. “I’m done with you. We’re done.”

I press my mouth together, clap my hand over it and wipe away some snot I didn’t realise was there.

I nod.

“Finally,” I sniff.

And she starts crying, shoulders bobbing like a buoy in rough seas, and she’s never cried like that in front of anyone but me before and she’s crying here on Harrington Road for all the world to see, and even though I’m about as fucked up as I’ve been in years, high as a fucking satellite—I start to wonder how many people in your lifetime do you get to love how I love her? Can’t be that many. How many loves do you get? Tell me it’s two.

Fuck.

Please, tell me it’s two.

Jo pulls me backwards and away from her and I think the ties that bind us, I think I hear them snap. It’s not two.

Jo drags me away.

“Come on man, that’s enough—” and I fight him because it isn’t.

It won’t ever be. There’s no such thing as enough when it comes to her. No enough and I’ll never be done.