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“Fuck that—” I frown at her. “Where’s that supply closet?”
She laughs and tugs me by the jacket into the lift. Some kind of brown suede shirt jacket. She picked it. Salvatore Santoro.
“How are Christian and Daisy?” She looks over at me.
“Good.” I nod. “Better. Fixed them, you did.”
“Yeah?” She beams over at me, chuffed.
“Yeah.” I nod. “You didn’t use my preferred method of deduction solving that case, but it got the job done, I suppose.”
“And she’s not sad anymore?”
I shake my head.
“And he’s not being a prick anymore?”
“No more than usual.” I grin and she rolls her eyes.
Mews of Mayfair, that’s where we go. Walk over to Chanel after. She’s browsing the store, I’m buying the store. Watch her with more focus than I would a film. We could call it making up for lost time because we’ve lost a lot of it but I’ve never stopped looking at her.
“How many of your friends take you shopping?” I eye the bags we’re both holding.
“Oh, mmm… just you.” She shrugs. “And Henry.”
(“And sometimes Christian, Jonah and Rush,” she says under her breath.)
“What?” I call after her with a laugh. “Gus doesn’t take you?”
“No,” she says. Grumpy about that too. “Unfortunately not.”
She rounds the corner on to Regent Street and then stops dead in her tracks.
Freezes.
“What’s wrong?” I bump into the back of her.
She’s completely still.
“Parks, what?” I peer past her and my hands ball to fists.
Paili Blythe is standing right there in front of us.
“Magnolia—” Paili smiles cautiously. Then she looks past her. Sees me.
“Fuck,” I say.
Parks is a statue. I hate it, hate how she’s gone. I can feel it on her, the fear. Hate myself for it. That standing here on a busy street corner in the middle of the day in London with me and her childhood best friend is her worst nightmare.
I did that to her.
She might live with the betrayal, and I’m not saying mine is worse, but I have to live with betraying her.
Paili looks between us, brows furrowed. “You’re back together?”
“Yes,” Magnolia says defensively, staring her dead in the eye and straightening up. She shifts in front of me like she’s guarding me and I get a surge of loving her.
Take a step closer, hook my arm around her body.
