Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe Book 1)

You’re wondering—I know you are, everyone does—why we aren’t together?

Infidelity aside, you think he’s perfect. That we’re perfect, and that nothing in this world past, present or future could be big enough or bad enough to justify us not being together. I get it, I’ve been there. I’ve thought that too.

There were these couple of months after everything that had happened with Christian where Beej and I began to drift back towards what we used to be. It wasn’t intentional or conscious. It was just easier to be with him than not to be, and maybe that’s not a good thing—I don’t know anymore. I can’t objectively tell with us. With anything to do with him, my heart’s logic is as blurry as the lines we pretend we don’t cross. I was still broken, and I was still sad, and I still didn’t trust him how I used to trust him, but I think at one point, I loved him more than he hurt me, and it sort of began to feel stupid to me to love someone how I loved him and to throw it all away because he had sex with someone else one time.

I’m not belittling that, by the way. Or making excuses. It makes me feel sick to say it even now. It’s not that it didn’t matter. I think it’s just that how much I love him mattered more.

But Marsaili wouldn’t have a bar of it. I’d never seen her before with anyone the way she became with him. When he started showing up again around the house, she’d practically lurk in the corners with daggers for eyes, waiting for moments to make snide comments, to undercut him, pour a salt ring around him, toss him under a bus. He’d leave and she’d make me an extra sweet tea in the kitchen and tell me that what he did couldn’t be undone, and he couldn’t be trusted, and if he did it once, he’d do it again, and that actually, if he loved me how he said he did, he wouldn’t have done it anyway. And I’d cry, every time, and I’d tell her I think it was an accident, and she’d tell me people don’t accidentally have sex with people, that it doesn’t just happen, you have to want it to happen. Which was always hard to wrap my head around.

It was easier for me to default back to the idea that it accidentally happened, that he slipped over accidentally into having sex, that there was no thought to it, that it happened the way you fall, a trip and then you’re falling, falling without your permission, it’s not conscious, and then you hit the ground.

That’s how I needed it to be for us to get back together, but Marsaili helped me see that’s not how infidelity happens.

It happens because people are careless and callous and casual with hearts and emotions, and those people are dangerous to be involved with and so even if you love them, you shouldn’t love them because nothing is worth feeling how he made me feel, and there was no guaranteeing that what happened before wouldn’t happen again because the word of a cheater, she said, is void.

So BJ and I didn’t happen again either. It’s what put us on a funny path, I think. Those few months where we were obviously headed towards being together again before I 180°-ed the fuck out of there, started dating other boys to cover my heart’s tracks.

I think it killed him for a minute. Maybe even literally once.

We sort of were like we are now, I suppose. I had just begun dating someone—Reid Fairbairn, an Australian boy whose dad is in mining. He was new on the scene, pretty hot like most Australian boys are. It didn’t last long—I think we were together two months or thereabouts. I didn’t need it to last, he’d served his purpose. It stung BJ at first but all it took was a hot minute and a long weekend in Amsterdam and he was back to normal.

We’d all spent the previous night out with my friends at EGG, and Reid told a joke that was actually pretty funny, and I really laughed, and it was one of those rare occasions where I actually had fun with the person I was technically dating at the time.

Anyway, the next night, I don’t know where Reid was, but I went to dinner with Henry and Christian at Gauthier Soho, and Jonah came to meet us after for a drink.

“Not this again,” he said, as he waved his thumb between Christian and me, who were sitting next to one another.

“She has a boyfriend.” Christian rolled his eyes, giving me a tired look.

Jonah tossed me an unimpressed look. “She’s got a beard.”

“She does not!” I huffed. Henry threw me a look that told me they all knew anyway, and I reached across his plate to “sample” his dessert for the fifth time.

“Where’s Beej?” Henry asked Jonah.

Jonah shook his head. “I haven’t seen him since last night.”

They all glance at me nervously.

“Guys!” I rolled my eyes. “I know he’s fucking all of London! No need to tiptoe around me. Besides,” I plopped my shield up in front of me, “I have a boyfriend.”

“Are you okay?” Henry asked, cautiously.

“As okay as I’d be to hear that you were fucking all of London.” I blinked with faux indifference.

“Well,” he sighed, contently. “I am.”

“Then great.” I grinned at him, lying through my teeth. “That’s great, because I am great. With all of it. Because it’s great. Good for him. I’m happy for him, even.”

“Right,” Jonah said, smirking. I gave him a megawatt smile to shut him up, and he shook his head, suppressing a smile as he poured me some wine.

The magical ingredient in our social circle that enables us to still function after everything we’ve been through and done to one another: denial. (And alcohol.)

And then my phone started to ring. “Speak of the devil.” Christian nodded toward my phone.

“Hey.” I tried not to grin too big as I answered.

“Parks?” he called into the phone, and his voice sounded weird.

“Beej?” I pressed the phone into my ear and covered the other with my hand.

“Parks?” he yelled, then took a big, long sniff.

“Beej, where are you?” I asked quickly, and I felt the atmosphere amongst the boys shift. “You sound strange?”

“I think I’m—” I heard him taking deep breaths. “My heart’s going funny,” he said, but I could hear someone in the background. I don’t know which of us he was talking to. A girl.

“Give me the phone,” the girl said urgently.

I asked him again, clearly: “Where are you?”

“Give it to me!” she said. There was a scuffle at the other end.

“No!” he growled at her, didn’t sound like himself, and that’s when my heart sank, because I knew. I knew what’d happened. I could tell, even though it didn’t make sense. But I’d seen it enough in our circles, knew the signs. The way it can change you. I didn’t know he’d been using. There was more scuffling, more arguing for the phone. BJ was slurring. The girl was panicked.

“Beej?” Me, all urgent and nervous. All the boys’ eyes were on me, brows furrowed.

“BJ?” I called loudly.

“Hello?” the girl said, breathless into the phone.

“Where are you?” I demanded.

“Magnolia, it’s—” she started, but I jumped in.

“I don’t care who you are.” I was doing my best to keep my voice steady. I stood up. The boys mirrored me. “Just tell me where are you?”

Jonah snatched the phone from my hand. “Where the fuck are you?” he barked, heading for the restaurant door before he had an answer. “You don’t let him take another thing, okay?” Jonah commanded in his voice that frightened me. “I’m coming.” He threw a wad of cash at the maître d and walked up to his car that was parked right out front.

He opened the passenger door to his Escalade and shoved me in, closing the door behind me. “What the fuck is going on?” I asked, my voice so much smaller than I wanted it to be. Jonah threw Henry and Christian in the back seat a dark look.

“Fuck.” Christian shook his head, nervous. They were all so nervous. I’d never seen any of them nervous before and it was the most unsettling thing.

“Has this happened before?” I asked Jonah specifically.

He stared straight ahead. “Once.”

“When?” I looked back at Henry, who gave me a long look, his eyes brimming with nervousness. Obviously whenever it happened it was sworn amongst the four of them that I was never to know.

“When?” I asked, my tone sharp as I turned to Christian. He pressed his lips together, not wanting to betray his friend.

“In Amsterdam,” he said eventually.

“What the fuck, man!” Jonah glared in the rear view.

I still haven’t quite shaken the feeling from that day. It’s made me not trust blue skies, because the sky was so blue that morning, and as Jonah swerved through traffic down Piccadilly Circus I remember thinking that how the sky had looked that morning was a lie, like it had lulled me into a false sense of safety. It made me feel like that day was going to be a good day, but it was unfolding in front of me to be the worst.

I felt like I was driving to my doom. I felt like I was on my way to finding the love of my life dead. I remember gripping the chair of Jo’s car so tightly my nails tore the leather. I remember Henry reaching around to me from the backseat behind and holding my arm, steadying me. I remember at a stoplight Jonah turning to me and wiping tears from my face I didn’t know I was crying.

And I remember, viscerally, the feeling that my chest had been sawed wide open and the nerve endings of my heart were exposed.

The car jerked to a stop and Jonah barreled out, jogging up the stairs into the lobby of the Courthouse Hotel, us following after him. He smacked his hand down on the counter of the receptionist to get their attention. “Ballentine,” he barked. “The room number for Ballentine.”

“Sir—” The woman looked up, flustered. “We can’t just give—”

“He’s overdosed,” he told her without flinching.

She blinked rapidly a few times, then nodded quickly, typing something. “305,” she barely uttered before Jonah spun on his heel, running for the stairs not the elevator.

“Do we need to call an ambulance?” I asked no one in particular as we ran after him. Christian, who deeply distrusts all law enforcement like every member of the Hemmes family, shook his head. I flicked my eyes to Henry, who nodded subtly as he whipped out his phone.

Jonah tore down the hallway, hurling himself at door 305. On the second hurl, the door gave way and Jonah tumbled in and on to the floor. I pushed past him, ignoring the girl in black lacy lingerie, hovering over him looking distraught, and ran to the bed where Beej was flopped up against the headboard, looking pale, beads of sweat on his brow and bare chest.

I scrambled up onto his body. “Beej?”

“Magnolia?” he slurred, looking up at me, his pupils completely dilated and unable to focus on me. He smiled faintly at me.

“What have you done?” I whispered to him, stroking his cheek.

“I—” BJ said.

I could hear Henry on the phone in the background. “What did you take?” I was urgent in tone, but I pushed my hand through his hair like a compulsion. He just blinked at me. “What’d he take?” I blinked tearily at the girl, finally acknowledging her. Once our eyes locked I realised we were sort of friends. Lila Blane. A party girl from Cheltenham.

She looked at me, guilty, panicked and confused. “I—I don’t know.” Her hands were on her face. “I think just cocaine?”

“He’s burning up!” I called out to no one in particular, my hand on his forehead.

“But he’s been racking up since last night,” she said, panicked.

“And drinking?” Jonah held up one of the dozen bottles of champagne that was littering the floor of the hotel room. The girl nodded. Christian shoved me off of Beej and pulled him up off the bed, calling for his brother—Jonah ran over, helping drag Beej into the bathroom, me trailing uselessly behind. They pulled him into the shower and made the water tepid—his eyes jerked open landing on Christian and me.

“Are you together?” Beej roared, angrily and barely coherent.

“No.” I shook my head, heartbroken.

“Then why is he here!” BJ yelled.

I glanced between the Hemmes boys, hurt and unsure. Jonah shook his head at me. “He’s just paranoid. Makes him more aggressive.”

I clambered into the shower next to Beej, whose eyelids were heavy, his head kept rolling back.

“Beej!” I smacked him in the face. “BJ!”

“Parks,” he whispered, voice shaky. “I love you,”

I didn’t realise I was crying but I was. I nodded. “I know. I love you too.” He started shaking and I looked over at Jonah, jaw agape, completely panic-struck.

“Tremors,” Jonah told me.

“Is he dying?” I swallowed, nervous, not taking my eyes off of him.

“No.” Jonah shook his head quickly, pressing his hand into his mouth, nervously. “Henry?” he called. Henry jogged to the bathroom door, phone pressed against his ear.

“ETA?” Jonah asked without looking back.

“Any second.”

Beej started shaking more.

“Take her out of the room,” Jonah commanded, nodding in my direction as he turned off the shower, and I was moved out of the way just in time for BJ to vomit and then start convulsing.

Christian ran and grabbed a pillow, putting it under his head, and Henry was trying his best to block out the world for me as he pressed me into his chest and covered my eyes.

And then the paramedics arrived, yelling for us to move, wheeling in a stretcher. It’s funny how your brain copes with trauma. Everything fell silent at that point. Silent and slow. Billie Holiday playing in the background of my mind as they lifted his limp body onto the stretcher. I remember Lila Blane hugging her knees on the bed, crying, pointing as she tried to relay what happened to one of the paramedics. I remember seeing from afar Jonah step out of the shower, covered in vomit and water, both hands in his hair, looking down at BJ, frozen in some kind of sorrow. I remember Christian on his knees in the shower, heaving like he was about to be sick himself. I remember wondering if this was it, if that was the last time ever I’d see him. Him with the starry eyes and the hair I loved to knot my hands up in. The most beautiful boy in every room, the great love of my life—how many loves do you get in a lifetime? I remember wondering that. How many people will look at me like he does, not just like I’m the sun but like I’m the whole god damn universe. I remember hating him for doing this to us. I remember hating him for dying before we had a chance to be okay again, because I always thought we would be. I thought we’d be fine, I thought one day we’d sort our shit out and I’d forgive him for everything he’s done, and we’d grow old together and we’d finally get that house in Tobermory but then he was dying of a coke overdose because I looked happy the night before with another man I don’t give a fucking shit about. I remember resentment pounding through my body and then I remember it, like a physical punch in the gut, how much I loved him. Really loved him. To the bone, loved him. Cut me and I’d bleed him. How much I needed him, still needed him, would forever, always, never couldn’t even if I tried, needed him. And I remember being deeply afraid of what my life would be like without him in it.

From there, he was taken in the ambulance to the hospital. After about two hours, a doctor came and told us that he’d stabilised but was hypoglycaemic. Christian flopped his head on his brother’s shoulder, sighing relieved. One single tear slipped from Jonah’s eye, which he wiped away before anyone could see, but I saw it. Our eyes caught and we traded a heavy glance because even though the whole world would feel it if BJ wasn’t in it anymore, me and Jonah would feel it the most. The Hemmes boys sat in the waiting room for BJ’s parents, and Henry took my hand, leading me to the recovery room. “Come on.” He tried to smile, but he couldn’t really. We got to the door of the room, and I stopped, looking up at Henry.

“Jonah said that happened once before?”

Hen shook his head. “Not that.”

“What then?” I folded my arms over my chest, trying to feel in control of something, because it became raucously apparent then that I was in control of absolutely nought when it came to loving BJ.

“He just took a lot once.”

“When?”

“A few months ago.”

“How long has he been using?” I looked up at him with dark eyes.

Hen’s brows furrowed and he sighed. “We all use it sometimes.”

“I don’t.” He gave me a look. “How long?” I repeated, rubbing my eye as a ruse to cover up the fact that I was crying.

Hen scratched his throat, pursing his lips. “Since Amsterdam.”

I nodded once. “Regularly?”

He tilted his head, thinking. “Recreationally.”

“That”—I pointed to the room—“wasn’t recreational.”

“No,” he conceded quietly. “It wasn’t.”

We opened the door, and BJ was asleep on the bed. There was a seat in the corner that Henry collapsed on, exhausted. Beej was still a bit pale, his big puffy pillow lips parted in the centre, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm that was the soundtrack of my youth and I’d never been more grateful to hear it. I walked over to him, cautious, like he might break if I moved too quickly, and reached up to touch his hair. “Family only,” a young, pretty, brunette nurse appearing at the doorway told me. I looked over at her, feeling a bit like someone slapped me.

“I know who he is,” she told me. “You’re not his family.”

Henry stood, frowning. “If you know who he is, you know who she is. She is his family.” The nurse looked between us, then nodded once, and left. I climbed into BJ’s bed, snuggling up next to him like no time or boyfriends or overdoses were between us.

You think big things like that change a person on the spot, but the changes that happened were invisible. He felt the same to me, to hug and to hold. His whole body was a familiar mountain I’d climbed and conquered so many times in our lives that until that night had felt vast, but it suddenly felt so fleeting. My eyes kept catching on his wrists with the IV needles in his veins. I remember shifting into his neck, breathing him in—deliberately ignoring the hickeys all over it made by people who weren’t me. His nose was raw from how much blow he’d done, and my chest panged because I didn’t understand how I could know him how I knew him and not know he was doing this.

About ten hours later, he came to. His mum and dad were sitting next to his bed which I was still lying on. I hadn’t moved once. I felt him shift under me, his butterfly eyelashes twitching before they opened. I pulled back, looking up at him. Drearily, he blinked at me a few times. “Parks.” He slowly smiled. My heart surged at him waking. His voice, I remember it sounding like Christmas morning and my birthday and Valentine’s Day and home and I loved him.

“Is he going to be okay?” I asked his doctor.

He nodded. “He’s going to be fine—”

Relief flooded me as quickly as I found myself smacking him in the face. The whole room gasped, then froze. Both his parents, Henry, Jonah and a doctor. Beej looked wide-eyed, confused, still a bit dazed.

“If you ever,” I started, my voice shaking. “Do that to me, ever again—” I shook my head. “I will never forgive you.”

“Okay.” He blinked, kind of teary.

“Promise me.”

“I promise.” He barely nodded.

Then I climbed out of his bed and walked out of his room.

No one knows that, by the way. We never talked about it, we didn’t tell anyone, not even Paili or Perry. The only person who knows is my sister and that’s because I came home from the hospital that day crying, and she wouldn’t leave me alone—I’d been missing for going on two days. I didn’t even notice. I didn’t realise hours were passing, let alone days. I was at the precipice of losing the love of my life and time had suspended. Allie would have told her anyway.

Reid didn’t notice—or if he did, he didn’t say anything. He knew, I think—they all did. What they were to me. Or perhaps more aptly, they knew who they weren’t to me.

I didn’t talk to BJ for a week. He texted me constantly, called, IM-ed, DM-ed—everything. But I couldn’t.

I was undone. Ruptured from the inside and bleeding out.

That’s what him nearly dying did to me.

So, I ignored him for as long as I could.

It was Saturday a week and a half later, and our friends were going to see a rerun of It at Leicester Square—not exactly like us but with Beej secretly on substance lock down, it was slim pickings for social activities. I walked into the foyer—and all the boys’ eyes fell on me, like I had a bomb strapped to my chest. I remember BJ looking over at me, eyes big and round, him swallowing nervously as I walked to him. And then it happened, not even consciously—I took his face in my hands and pressed my lips against his. He tasted like popcorn. He’s never been able to wait for the movie to start to eat his snacks.

That kiss, it wasn’t sexy or full of lust, but it was laced with a desperate, thirsty, nameless love that we had and have still now and we can’t quite shake. I pulled back a little, our faces hovering only a few inches apart. We blinked at each other, our faces still like our hearts weren’t—all of our friends, utterly baffled. Then I stepped around him, linked my arm with Henry’s and marched into the cinema.

None of us ever talked about that kiss. Paili and Perry never asked. And thank goodness because how could I ever have explained it? I’d already banished that night into the same corner of my heart where our other terrible night lives.

There are three memories that live there, all ones I never look at. All ones that shape me still all the same. All of them involving BJ.

He’s a time bomb for me, do you see now? That he’ll hurt me. He’ll always hurt me. I’ll never be safe with him, even if I’m always safe next to him.

So, it doesn’t matter if I love him—which I don’t—but if I did, it doesn’t matter, even now. Because loving him is the same thing as tossing the keys to my heart to a valet without a driver’s license. He’ll drive me off a cliff.