Lost In Mr. Parks (Park #3)

by Lilly James

  I pushed past Tabby, kept my tea in my hands, and made my way to the front door. I closed it behind me and sagged against it, breathing in the air. I couldn’t say it was fresh, because I could smell someone smoking pot nearby, and the smell almost had my stomach curling. After drinking down the rest of my tea, I made my way back inside.

  Ten minutes later, Tabby closed her bedroom door behind her and saw me lying on the sofa, my hand against my forehead. I felt my eyelids closing on their own. My body felt extremely lax, and I felt I didn’t have the energy to pull myself up. Where the hell had my energy gone?

  “Tabby, I’m—” I fell to sleep.

  I was dreaming, I knew I was. Half-asleep, half-awake. Sleep paralysis happened to me a lot when I was younger. So much so, I knew when it was coming on. I lay on my back, unable to move. Immense panic overwhelmed me because I felt paralysed all over. Then I felt someone walking into the room, and I wanted to scream. I opened my mouth to let one out, but nothing came out. No words. No screams. No breaths. I tried and tried again, but the same thing happened. I watched, having no control over anything as the figure came to the bottom of my bed. My heart started hammering. My mouth opened again, but I was mute. The figure climbed onto the bed, and I started sweating. Soaking wet. I knew from past encounters that if I didn’t move, the figure would move onto my chest, and that feeling was utterly terrifying. I forced myself to move any part of my body. I was swamped with relief when my finger started to respond to what my brain was telling it to do. Then another finger, and then my leg. But it wasn’t enough. The figure climbed on top of me and put its hands around my neck. My voice started to come back as I willed it to scream. First it sounded croaky, then it became a loud scream, and I was able to move.

  My eyes pinged open, and I sat bolt upright on the sofa, drenched in sweat, gasping for air. It wasn’t like waking up slowly. Blinking open your eyes and wondering what day it was. It was the worst possible way to wake up. The tears came instantly as my whole body shook. I hated it. Hating being in that position. I ran my hands over my face as I tried to calm down, then looked around me. I was lying on the sofa. Still wearing my clothes. My head hurt from the amount of frowning and backtracking of what I remembered before that nightmare. I couldn’t. That was the problem. All I knew was that I only had sleep paralysis when I used to take sleeping tablets. I would feed off them at night. Anything to fight my brain and ask it to switch off. That wasn’t the reason, though, because I hadn’t taken any.

  After calming down and getting my breathing to an even pattern, I glanced out the windows and saw the morning sun creeping in. Then I glanced around and remembered where I was. In Tabby’s flat. I must have fallen to sleep, and Tabby must have gone to bed. Automatically, I glanced around for my phone, but my vision kept switching between blurred and focused. I went into my bag but couldn’t find it in there. The place where I always kept it.

  “Oh, you’re awake?”

  Tabby’s chirpy voice had my head turning, and I rubbed at my eyes to try and regain focus. “I fell asleep?”

  “Flat out.” She smiled, flipping on the kettle switch. “Oh.” She turned back again. “I made an appointment for you. Today at eleven a.m.”

  My heart thudded, but so did my head. “Really? Didn’t they want to talk to me?”

  She flapped her hand casually and washed two cups from the sink. “I pretended to be you.”

  My hand went to my head so I could try and rub the pain away. I felt dazed, like someone had filled my head with rocks and sewed my skull back up.

  “You’re doing the right thing,” Tabby reassured me, even though I didn’t mutter a word, undecided on whether Tabby’s reassurance was a good thing or not. She walked toward me and was about to hand over the cup of tea, but I refused to take it. “I know you may not want to eat right now, but at least I know you’re drinking. And I know how you Brits love your tea.”

  I frowned. “We Brits, you mean?”

  She flapped her hand, dismissing her error. “You know what I mean.”

  “Thank you, anyway,” I said warmly, taking the mug to my lips and drinking it just to be polite. It was too sweet, but I didn’t complain.

  Bringing her knees up to her chest just like I did, she tilted her head and examined me. “Stupid question, but how are you feeling?”

  “Dead inside.” I told her the truth, and the way I’d pushed back the image of a baby growing inside me since the moment I got there was ruined because it barrelled back to the forefront. “I miss Wade already. I know he will be going out of his mind when he can’t find me.” I sniffed, then drank a bit more of my tea. “So will Steph. They will think I’ve gone back on the booze.” A tightening in my chest collided with my thoughts. I knew the pain they would both be enduring just thinking about me falling off the wagon again.

  “Evey,” Tabby said soothingly. “I don’t think Wade will care where you are, do you? And as for your best friend, she should have been supporting your decision. Just like I am.”

  Was she right? Would Parks not care that I was gone? Maybe he would care for the safety of his unborn, but not me. And Steph couldn’t stand the sight of me, so why would that change?

  “I guess you’re right,” I admitted wholeheartedly. I remained quiet for some time to allow myself to think. My heart clenched as I thought about how much I already missed Parks. Missed his safe arms around me. His consoling words. His everything. I wished it could have been different. Never did I expect him to turn on me like he did. To disagree so strongly with my decision that he looked at me like he couldn’t stand me. I clenched my eyes shut tight, trying to wash away the pain. It was no use. Thinking back a week or so, we were so happy. Nothing could have burst the bubble we lived in. But this did. It truly and utterly shattered it. What did I do so wrong in my past life to deserve such terrible fate? To deserve so much hate thrown at me from all angles? I found love with Parks and everyone seemed to be against it, trying to out me and make my life hell. We grew stronger through all that. Holding on tightly to each other and never allowing anyone to break our bond. Then a pregnancy came along and broke that bond into a million pieces. Abandonment was my greatest nightmare, and I felt it too often to believe that it wouldn’t happen again. Even if my past wasn’t the factor that tore us apart, it was me. My doing. The wretched person I was had shown her true colours, and just like I knew all along, Parks would hate it. And he did.

  “I don’t feel too good right now. Could you get me some water?” My head fell into my hands, an action I seemed to be doing a lot. I drank the water from a murky, unwashed glass and unsteadily got to my feet. “Could I take a shower?”

  “Sure.” Tabby pointed to a door on her left. “Everything’s in there.”

  I picked up my bag with a change of clothes inside, got showered and changed, then went back into the living room, where Tabby was waiting. Then a beep of a car horn came from outside, and Tabby picked up the holdall by her feet and unlocked her front door. “Go on out,” she urged. “He should be in the red Audi.”

  I glanced back at her. “Who? Where are we going?”

  She threw the holdall over her shoulder. “Nico, my boyfriend. He’s going to take us to the hospital.”

  “Nico?” I was confused. “You have a boyfriend?”

  “Yeah.” She rolled her eyes like the thought of having a boyfriend was hideous. “He’s a mechanic.” She flapped a hand over her shoulder. “I’ve forgot my medication. Go on out.”

  As I made eyes with the door, a painful jab that felt like a punch to the stomach stopped me from walking to it. I closed my eyes, my superstitious mind telling me it was my body refusing to go ahead with it. I hadn’t given this much thought. I acted impulsive and too quickly, denying any possibility that keeping this baby was a good thing. Instead of acting rational, I did what I always did–ran away.

  Pulling open the door, I glanced outside and saw a red Audi. He beeped again to get my attention, but I could walk no farther. An odd feeling sta
rted to flutter inside my gut. Was I having second thoughts? The heart I dismissed inside my chest seemed to be working again, my fuzzy, abandoned brain bursting back to life. Parks–my fiancé—and our baby. Shit. Parks was on my mind, continuously, and I would have killed just to hear his voice.

  “I need to see him.” I panicked, backing back into the living room. “I can’t just go ahead with this idea without consulting him. Without even talking about it.”

  Tabby was suddenly standing behind me and placed a firm hand on my shoulder that kept me in place. It wasn’t until I glanced down to where Tabby’s hand was that she let me go. Her knowing sigh and downcast eyes, however, forced me to question her.

  “What is it?”

  “Evey, I…” Tabby paused, uneasy about what she was about to spill. Whether she was uncomfortable or not, I wanted to know, so I snapped at her because I knew it was something to do with Parks.

  “Tell me.”

  “He’s called off your engagement,” she spilled out, woefully glancing away from me as she delivered her news.

  I gulped down a hard lump in my throat and blinked excessively to keep the tears at bay. “What? How do you know that?”

  “It was on ECG.”

  “ECG?” I frowned, remembering what Parks did to that magazine. “It couldn’t have been. Parks got that column and any traces of it shut down.”

  Tabby’s cheeks flushed rose, then she flapped a limp hand. “Oh, silly me. It was another column, but Nadia writes for them. That’s why I’m getting confused.”

  I clenched my fists and felt the steam from my temper rising from my toes to my forehead. “Nadia’s a fucking liar.”

  Tabby distressingly disagreed. “It was a statement from his PA. Is her name Joanna?”

  I ignored the constant ache in my head and the piercing, high-pitched sound that almost burst my eardrums from a scream that came from my throat. I scurried over to the kitchen sink. Doubling over, I grasped the pain in my stomach and forced myself to stand so I could get a glass of water. I grabbed at a glass, turned on the tap, and allowed it to run for an age before placing the glass underneath and filling it halfway. I kept the tap on as I took a gulp of my water, drinking it down and wishing the cold, nothing taste of it would cool me down. No chance. Slamming down the glass, I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth, rethinking what Tabby just confessed.

  “Wade wouldn’t have said that publicly,” I told her, leaving the tap running behind me. I knew my mind was fuzzy, but I also knew I was the only person who knew Parks in depth.

  Tabby sighed and met my saddened gaze. “He did, Evey. I’m so sorry.”

  I turned to the tap, turning the damn thing off. “He probably thought I left him after finding me gone last night.” I lifted my hand to my mouth again, but the tears fell, and sobs caught harshly in the back of my throat.

  “Oh, honey.” Tabby had her arms around me in an instant. Soothing with me words, comforting me with an embrace. Even though it was kind of her, I didn’t want her words, or her arms around me. I wanted Parks. Longed for his words. Ached for his arms to be around me as he told me everything was going to be okay. I felt like a bag of nerves. My mind was still fuzzy and confused, but it was easing. My body was not responding the way I wanted it to, but I was forcing it to. I didn’t feel confident. I felt exhausted. Exposed. Knowing Parks wasn’t on my side anymore, and knowing his arms weren’t ever going to keep me safe had my body shutting down. My mind was unwilling to believe that he was gone. That he didn’t want me anymore. It was the ultimate rejection. Although how could I feel surprised at being rejected when I was going to reject his baby? Our baby?

  “You want something to drink? I have watermelon juice.” Tabby beamed, hoping it would cheer me up.

  “Only the juice. Thanks.” I sank down into the sofa and brought my knees up to my chest and rested my chin on them. Glancing out of the glass, I watched the rain drops trickling down the windows until Tabby thrust a glass of watermelon juice in front of me.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, taking it from her hands and taking a gulp. The taste of it remained me of Parks, and I knew everything would. Like the rain outside. I remembered him tying me to the balcony outside a boathouse and seducing me in the rain. Why was I so stupid? The only time I was unprotected was when he fucked me in rage after I goaded him into taking his temper out on me. After that, he left me. It was both our faults, but it looked like it I was paying the price by myself.

  Ten minutes of silence had passed, and I had to bite my tongue and ignore the way Tabby seemed shifty and eager to leave.

  “We should get going, Evey. You don’t want to miss your appointment.”

  I mindlessly placed the empty glass beside me but missed the side table and sent the glass shattering to the ground.

  “Shit.” I was about to get to my feet to clean it up, but Tabby pulled on my elbow.

  “Leave it.” Her tone was almost snappy, so I gazed into her eyes, feeling light-headed all over again.

  “I feel strange.” I wobbled on my feet, feeling like I had little control over my body again.

  “Come on.” Tabby pulled on my hand and led me out the door. All I could do was follow. I couldn’t think straight.

  We walked to the small Audi, and Nico climbed out to greet us. He wasn’t who I imagined in my head. Nico was eastern European, had a goatee, and his hair was black and pulled into a ponytail.

  “Evey?” he said, his accent proving he was Romanian. “Tabby’s friend?”

  I nodded politely. Nico turned his body so he was facing me, and I watched his gaze tumble down me. It was odd. I was revolted by his presence and his glaring, beady eyes.

  He grinned snidely. “Tabs said you were feisty one.”

  Ignoring him, I crossed my arms around myself and watched on as he took Tabby into his arms and kissed her hard. What the hell was Tabby doing with a slime ball like Nico? Maybe it was because he seemed loaded. His car, his clothes, his gold jewellery screamed money. But she said he was a mechanic? Did they make that much money?

  As I stood still, trying to ignore their embrace, that fluttering feeling in my gut turned to slight stabbing pains and refused me any peace. As Nico was about to get into the car, I caught a glimpse of a large tattoo that started from his ear, then trailed all the way down his neck. It was a green snake. I tried to collect my scattered thoughts quicker than a secretary flicking through a filing cabinet. Had I seen a tattoo like that before? Or was I imagining it? I urged my damn brain to try and remember. Why the hell was I always forgetting! It was annoying the crap out of me because I knew I saw it somewhere. Maybe on a sketch from Travie’s parlour, I thought.

  The image suddenly stabbed into my brain like sharp butcher knives, paralysing me again. That tattoo. A snake tattoo. I saw it on the neck of the same guy in the CCTV footage. I saw it on the same guy that cut the brakes on Parks’s and Cleaver’s cars.

  My heartbeat sped up, the sound thrashing through my ear drums. Shock hit my chest so hard I held on to it to ease the pain. No way. Nico could not be the one that almost tried to kill my fiancé, could he? I felt sick. Bile lurched up my throat. I held on to the wall beside me and puked until my throat burned.

  “Evey?” Tabby’s voice sounded sweet in my ears as she brought her hand to my back when and supported me to stand up straight. “You okay?”

  “No,” I breathed, wiping any stray vomit from my mouth with the back of my hand. “Tabby.” I quickly glanced over to Nico, who was watching us a few feet away by his car. I wanted to tell her discreetly who this criminal was and try to escape without him knowing I was going straight to the police. “Nico,” I whispered, backing away from him slowly. My past self would have beat his arse, but I wasn’t sure what he was capable of.

  “What about him?” She smiled uneasily.

  “I am not going anywhere near him. We need to call the police.”

  “Why?” She laughed, looking at me like I was a sick escapee.

  “He tried t
o kill Wade. I know it’s him. He has the same tattoo.” I pulled on her arm. “We need to the get the fuck away from him. Right now.”

  They way Tabby pulled her arm out of my grip and stood firm sent another instinctive pain to my gut. Fuck.

  “You’re not going anywhere, Evey, except the abortion clinic. You’re tired and aren’t thinking straight.” She was about to take hold of my hand to pull me towards that thug, but I swiped it away from her fingertips.

  “Tabby.” I gritted my teeth. “He is a criminal. He tried to kill Wade. I know it’s him.”

  Tabby glanced over her shoulder towards Nico, then looked back at me. “Don’t be silly. He’s harmless. You’ve been odd all morning, Evey. You sure you haven’t taken something?” She grinned.

  I ignored her and knew I had to try and get back into her flat, find my phone, and call the police. Call Wade. I’d been so fucking stupid.

  “You’re right.” I smiled, shaking my head, acting like I was being foolish. “Could you let me back in your flat? I just need the loo again.”

  Tabby smiled. “Sure. We’ll wait out here for you.” She unlocked her front door and let me in by myself. I watched as she let the front door go, but it didn’t close tight. I stayed where I was for a couple of seconds, then creeped to the door. I could hear them whispering.

  “She knows,” Tabby said, and that was all the clarification I needed. I remained paralysed on the spot, willing my old self to come alive. But not even the fearless, gobshite Evey wanted to help. That’s because I realised I wasn’t fearless. I wasn’t untouchable. Shaken up and losing grip of any options I had, I stayed where I was, feeling like their prey, trapped in a corner with no way out.

  “The sooner we get her to that hospital and get rid of that fucking baby, the sooner we can play games. Wade and my precious family will wish he never fucked with me.”

  My hand slapped against my mouth. Wade? She was trying to punish Wade? “Fuck.” I was shaking as I backed away from the door. They both were. I scanned the kitchen counters for anything I could grab to defend myself. There was a knife block, and I counted six knives and a pair of scissors, and took a deep breath. Who was I kidding? I didn’t have the balls to use those things. But if it was a matter of life and death, would I see it differently? This time my paranoia lost. I hated that I thought I was crazy to think Tabby was harmless. I was crazy for thinking she was my friend and the only one I could rely on. Truth was, I had no idea who she was. Only now I knew she was planning revenge on Parks and using me to do it. Fuck, I thought. Is she a crazy ex?