Page 252 of The Long Way Home

Sixty

BJ

The next morning we fly out on Parks’ plane. Gulfstream G700. Ten-seater with a master suite. Bougie as fuck.

When we walk onto it Parks pretends like it’s nothing and she’s not frothing over it, but she texted me about it all week when she got it.

“What does your dad do again?” Jordan looks over at Parks, not remotely concealing her awe.

Gus, suffering from what he’s described as the world’s worst hangover, lays face-down on the couch. Magnolia sits down in one of the two seater layouts. Tausie sits across from her.

“He wins Grammys,” she says, adjusting her Versace headband.

Julian sniffs a laugh because he’s the sort of person who’d genuinely appreciate how obnoxious she’s being. I try not to smirk at it, do my best not to look at Parks or I’ll start laughing.

Jonah, Julian, Daisy and Christian sit at the front, huddled around a table and talking about gang lord shit or something, I guess.

I sit down at another one of the two seaters, pull on a hoodie I know Magnolia bought for me. Bunch of clothes on my bed when I came home the other day. She buys clothes for all of us, especially when she’s feeling out of control.

Jordan sits on my lap instead of across from me even though the seat’s free and I get the feeling she’s doing it on purpose.

She gives me an eighth of a smile, leans back into me and Instagrams the take off.

Nothing I can do about that. Why wouldn’t she sit on her boyfriend’s lap? Why wouldn’t she Instagram it?

Magnolia is well pissed though. Watches over darkly as Jordan now chats away to Bianca Harrington, the girl who, in my humble opinion, Jonah is actually in love with but he fucking swears up and down that they’re just friends. Friends who had sex once, I’m just saying.

Her and Jords get along well enough it seems, so I have all the time in the world to stare at the girl I love over there in that dress and cardigan. I watch her how I haven’t been allowed to for too long.

Love fucks you up, man. In what world, what shit has to happen between you and someone that you miss just being able to stare at them, because I’ve missed staring at her.

I love watching her do nothing, love how she moves, especially when she knows I’m watching, which she does right now.

She’s swallowing, nervous, and peeking over at me whenever she can squeeze it in naturally. I can’t look away because I’m thinking about all the things I used to do with her on an airplane. Never wasted a minute I had alone with her, not an inch of her skin I’d have left untouched or a corner of this plane I wouldn’t have kissed her in.

Julian’s a fucking idiot.

∞

“This is nice!” Magnolia says as we walk into the foyer of the Haites home and Henry and I stare over at her in surprise. Can’t believe it, actually.

To put this into perspective for you, when I took her to Versailles she didn’t say a fucking word. Didn’t blink twice. Actually, I think she might have said, “It’s bit gauche, don’t you think? Rather gold heavy.”

I’ve taken her to the nicest hotels in the world — Baur au Lac, the Mandarin in Doha, Rambagh Palace — and she thinks nothing of them. She’s completely indifferent. Let that be a measuring stick for you of how insane this place is.

It is off the fucking chain.

“Wow, how good is dirty money?” Magnolia blinks up at an ornately painted ceiling.

Both the Hemmes boys snort a laugh.

“Well, I guess it’s true—” She shrugs, flicking her eyes between the Hemmeses and the Haiteses. “Crime really does pay.”

I swallow a smile. “The expression’s actually ‘crime doesn’t pay.’”

She looks over at me with a bit of a frown. “That doesn’t even remotely make sense…”

Julian hooks his arm around her neck and smirks down at her for a second before he kisses her.