Lost In Mr. Parks (Park #3)

by Lilly James

  Chapter Fifteen

  We didn’t talk much the next morning, just kept staring longingly at each other as we dressed in silence after our bath. Parks told me to promise him I would tell him where I was going and always ask Cleaver to take me places. At least until he found out who had it in for us. My bet was on a crazy ex-girlfriend of his, but he told me I had nothing to fear there. His sex exes were crazy, but not possessive crazy. Maybe he was lying? It didn’t matter, because we had a session with Nia, and I had to stay focused.

  Parks offered Nia the sofa, but like she did with me the first time I met her, she got seated on the white rug in the middle of the room and crossed her legs. I took the sofa, sinking down into the cushions, and Parks sat after me, wrapping a protective arm around my shoulders and kissing my ear tenderly before looking towards Nia.

  “Do you still want to do this?” I glanced across at him.

  He brushed my cheek with his lips. “Now is a better time than any. We’re getting married, and we need to have clear minds going into it.” He was sceptical about the whole situation; I sensed it. His demeanour was tense, his grip on my shoulder hard. But since we arrived back in London after our shortened trip in Australia, Parks told Nia he wanted her to fix us. No, he demanded that she fix us. I kept telling him that she couldn’t do that exactly, but she could help. The only people that could mend what was broken was us.

  “So,” Nia began, clapping her hands once as her eyes searched mine, then Parks’s. “You know how I work. I ask you to be honest with me, and what you ask of me is to be honest with you. So I’ll start by saying this.” My stomach lurched. I had a feeling we were under scrutiny. “I don’t agree with you both working on your issues together, because the issue isn’t being together. The issues are personal and individual.”

  “There is no compromise,” Parks said, his voice firm and dismissive. “I won’t stay away from Evelyn for selfish reasons any longer.”

  Nia simply shook her head. “Giving yourself time away from Evelyn to work on your inner anger, inner demons, was not, in any way, selfish, Wade.”

  “Why is it better to work separately?” I asked, curve-balling a chance for Parks to fly off the handle.

  “Not going to happen,” Parks butted in, giving me reason to turn my head and scowl at him.

  “Will you shush?” I shut him up, looked away from his gawp, then turned to Nia. “Go on.”

  Nia uncrossed her legs, pulled her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them. “Okay, Evelyn, Wade has given me permission to answer any questions you may have about him.” She glanced over at Parks, making sure he was still okay with the scenario. Parks nodded confidently, but I didn’t miss the dubious breath he let out afterwards.

  “Okay.” I tried to pretend Parks wasn’t in the room with us and went straight into my first question. “I know why Parks fucked broken women. And I know why those women wanted to get used, because I used to be one of them.” Parks’s lids closed, hiding the suffering in his eyes. “But I want to know, would you have wanted me if I wasn’t damaged goods?”

  “What kind of question is that?” Parks interrupted. His voice was sharp, his gaze hard. “I knew you were broken, yes.” He looked away and out at the rain beating against the windows. “But I saw so much more in you as I got deeper. And I wanted more.”

  I pressed my hand to his cheek. “I know,” I whispered. “But you still wanted to punish me, wanted me to obey. You wanted me like you wanted your other fucked-up women. Withdrawn. Obeying and catering to your every whim.”

  Parks held my gaze. “It sounds fucked up, but yes, I wanted to be the one who held the power. I still do. But with you, I don’t feel like I have to draw out the worst in you to make myself feel better. I want to get you better. That aim in life is a far better distraction that covering my own suffering.”

  I frowned, getting emotional again and took my hand from his face. “So I’m only a distraction for you?”

  “Evey,” Nia gently called, making me turn my head. “Wade is trying to tell you how he feels, and you’re turning it into a negative.”

  “It’s because she can’t find happiness in anything,” Parks piped up.

  I turned to him, my eyes locked on to his greens. I absorbed all the emotion they always brought me and suddenly deflated. “I find happiness in you.”

  “And I you.” Parks leaned in to kiss my lips, not caring that Nia was watching us.

  Nia cleared her throat, and when she had our attention, she continued. “Now, Wade, what’s your first question for Evey?”

  Unlike me, he remained watching me, his eyes looking into mine, his hand resting in my lap. “I want to know the full extent of why you used to drink. I know you were abused; you’ve told me parts of it.” He turned to Nia. “But I don’t want to ask her about the full extent because I don’t want to bring back her dark past. I don’t want her to relive those memories just to feed my curiosity. That’s not fair.”

  Nia nodded, understanding his question better than I did. “So what you want to understand is what Evey gets out of drinking? What anyone gets out of drinking?”

  “Yes.” I knew his teeth were clenched because his answer came out forced, giving me a greater understanding of his question. He hated alcohol because his father depended on it and it ruined Parks’s life. Damaged his past and miss-shaped his future. He wanted to know what I got out of drinking to try and understand it better for himself. He didn’t want to go into why I did because he knew talking about that pained me.

  Nia took a breath, making sure she had Parks’s full attention. She did; he was listening with everything he had. “Depression hits people in different ways, Wade. Some drink. Take drugs. Eat too much. It’s almost like self-medicating but with the wrong prescription. Numbing your pain in an unhealthy way.”

  “Instead of dealing with pain, we freeze it out,” I agreed but kept my focus on Nia.

  “Exactly.” She nodded. “That pain builds up inside with nowhere to go but around and around in your mind. In your case, Evey, you thought you were unlovable, unworthy. Your mother called you names, used you as her punch bag for so long that you started to believe you deserved those hits, you deserved what she called you. The thing with numbing pain is it numbs all other emotion too. In both your cases, this is why people call you cold. You both numb all of your feelings, not just the pain.”

  I started reliving my past in my head again, just like I did when I stopped to think about it. Just like I did when someone asked me about it or I had no choice but to confront it.

  I looked into my lap. “I’ve thought about ending it. Years ago. When my grandmother died. It felt like time had stood still. The world around me was empty. Dark. Full of shadows but no life. All the weight of my problems just seemed so much heavier. It was like my soul was begging someone to bring me back to life, but my body, my mind couldn’t physically do it. I always knew my life would never get better. I didn’t want there to be a tomorrow. I was silent on the outside but screaming at the top of my lungs for someone to hear me, yet I couldn’t be heard. I was stuck in a cage that wouldn’t set me free. Putting on a smile so I didn’t have to explain why I wasn’t happy.” I could feel heavy tears threatening to let loose, so I paused, begging myself for some composure.

  “What about now?” Parks’s gentle voice brought me back from my thoughts.

  “Now.” I took my gaze from my lap and looked at the man that had brought me back to life, given me back hope. “Now my life has suddenly begun again. I denied you when I first met you because I couldn’t afford temptations at that time in my life. Drink. Lust. Sex. Emotion. I needed to remain numb. It was working for me, but when you came along, it fucked it all up. At first I couldn’t deal with the massive change, but now, now I know it was for the best.” I managed a smile through that threatening buildup of waterworks, because the sigh Parks let loose informed me of how happy he was to hear me say those words.

  “Sometimes you have to crawl thro
ugh shit to eventually glide through air.” Nia smiled, her eyes affectionate as she watched the way Parks looked at me like I was the most beautiful human being on the face of the earth. Like I was his one and only reason for living. And yes, he was mine.

  “Your reason for drinking is understandable, Evelyn. I see why you did it. However, I’m failing to understand why my father thought it was acceptable to become an alcoholic and treat his family the way he did. The way he still does.”

  “Have you ever asked him why?” I said, my voice gentle and encouraging.

  Parks scoffed, disgusted. “No. I have never had a conversation with my father, not one, neither do I ever wish to. What he put us through is unexplainable. Despicable. There is no excuse. Whatever the reason may be.”

  I got where he was coming from and completely agreed. He wanted to understand why his father treated him and his family that way but never wanted to ask him because he knew Clinton deserved none of his time. Trying to understand something and not wanting to at the same time is a mind-fucking task, and until the desire to know leaves you, how can you ever move on?

  “Do you recall the most difficult time in your life, Wade?” We both turned to Nia. My gaze fell into my lap again. I watched my thumb twirl around my beautiful engagement ring as I waited, but his pause made me look up at him again. Parks straightened up and looked past Nia, his gaze hard on the wall behind her as he seemed to be agonizingly reliving memories.

  “Drinking until I blacked out.” My gasp made him wince, but he continued, “Fucking all those damaged women and disciplining them to make sure they knew I held the power. I had so much money, so much success so young that I thought I was fucking God. I treated my colleagues like filth, working my way to the top by being a huge dick. All the while making my PA work overtime to keep my shit out of the papers.”

  “You don’t drink,” I breathed, astonished.

  “I did when I was sixteen. I did it to try and see why it was so important to my father. To see what gave him that kick that was much more important than his kids. His wife. Every time I came home drunk, my father would give me a beating. By then, I was numb to the abuse. When I was able to get away from my father at eighteen by working my ass off to get into Harvard, I cut it out. Alcohol was useless to me. It never served any purpose. It was the thing I blamed for the way my father treated us, so I never wanted to touch a drop again. Soon after I needed something else to numb my pain, and I turned to another fucked-up thing my father did—discipline. He ruled all our lives, controlled every aspect of them, so I thought, ‘Why can’t I control? He will no longer be in control over my life because now I hold my own power.’”

  I only realised I was crying when tears fell onto my hand I’d placed over my mouth to stifle a gasp. The images of a scared, green-eyed kid being beaten and humiliated was rawer than the ones I had of myself. It was because I loved this man. Loved him so much that his pain overruled mine, and I would take away his pain over mine in a heartbeat.

  “That’s extremely brave of you to admit, Wade,” Nia said softly.

  “It’s not brave, it’s just the truth. I just wish I wasn’t like my father in any sense.”

  “You’re not,” I croaked. “Your father is a vile, despicable excuse for a man. Abusing his children and wife? You are not like him,” I couldn’t help but yell. My anger towards Clinton was white-hot.

  “She’s right,” Nia said. “You are nothing like your father. You only had the desire to seek out what pleasures he found from alcohol and from discipline and being obeyed. The desire to understand him in your own way.”

  “So why am I still seeking pleasure from holding power over everything?”

  “It’s because you want to be in control of your own life, dammit.” I smacked my hand on my knee, getting furious because the man I’d fallen in love with was not a monster. “It’s because you want to remove every trace of that dickhead and become your own man.”

  Parks turned from me. “It doesn’t excuse what I did to women.”

  I pulled on his arm, getting him to face me, to absorb my words. “But it was consensual. You can’t beat yourself up about it. You are the kindest, most loving man I have ever met. You’re loyal, warm, generous, and are always thinking of me. There is no doubt in my mind that you would ever hurt me.” I turned to Nia. “He loves me; I know that now.” I shifted my whole body to face Parks and cupped his cheeks. “This is why I’m marrying you. I love you with all my heart. Yes, I have an addictive personality, and right now, what I am hooked on is you. But you’re my only addiction that isn’t unhealthy. You’re my strength when I am weak, Wade. When I’m not around you, I fall apart, and I need that. I need you. You fell in love with me, but you also fell in love with my flaws. And I have fallen in love with yours. I’m lost in you, and I don’t ever want to find a way out.”

  “Princess.” Parks sighed, a sound of exhilaration. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Nia clapped her hands, the biggest smile she could produce splashed around her face. “My doubts about working with you two as a couple are fading. Now, let’s talk some more before you two dismiss me and run for the bedroom.” She laughed, but a strange feeling had me doing the opposite to her. Thinking about how Parks preformed in the bedroom had me hot as hell, of course, but also even more curious. We’d never really addressed it.

  “Talking of the bedroom,” I added, and Parks tensed against me again. I wasn’t sure if it was because the thought of us in the bedroom together turned him on just as much as it turned me on, or because he knew what was coming.

  “Go on.” Nia nodded, her eyes narrowed as she got back into listening mode.

  I clasped my fingers with Parks’s, glancing into his eyes and smiling a bit, making it known that I was still on his side one hundred percent, even with the questions I was about to ask. “When he spanked me, before, he wouldn’t let me look at him nor touch him.”

  “And you want to know why?” Nia understood, so I nodded, telling her yes.

  “Can’t we talk about this part more privately?” Parks stiffened, his hand around mine tightening.

  “Oh Wade, come on,” Nia chastised. “I know more about you than you do.”

  I turned to Parks smugly and nodded. Ha. He found it amusing. The corner of his delicious mouth rising upwards told me so.

  “Okay, Wade.” Parks glanced down to Nia, who was still sitting on the rug. “Would you like to explain this?”

  His eyes narrowed, and his focus shifted from Nia to the TV behind her. The deep breath he drew in sent a shiver down my spine and an ache to my heart. I knew the subject was hard for him. Knew the question was going to be torture to answer. However, we had to pull all those skeletons out of the closet, bring them back to life, and then get rid of them.

  “I…uh.” He rubbed his hands over his face and exhaled harshly. “Fuck.” He chuckled at himself, nervously, and seeing him so torn and troubled had me hating myself for asking something that was evidently so deep and personal to him.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered, placing my hand onto his thigh. His head dropped, and he stared at my hand resting in his lap, then closed his eyes.

  “Why is it so hard to deal with your emotions around Evey?” Nia harmoniously switched the question, trying to break him down gently.

  Parks shifted his knee so my hand fell from his thigh, giving me reason to think he wanted zero contact. “Because when I’m with Evelyn, my control disappears, and I don’t know how to cope with that. Evelyn is my shield of protection, but at the same time, my fucking enemy.” He chuckled.

  I frowned in confusion as I faced him, my heart rate ramping up. “Why?”

  He brought his hand up to my cheek. “You’re my protection because when I focus on you, my past disappears. It stays in the back of my mind because I have you at the forefront. But you’re also my enemy because you’re the only woman who has the will to bring my past into the future.” He held up his palm to stop me interrupting like I was going to.
“I know it’s a must for our future to work, but, Christ, I fucking hate it.” He turned to Nia. “Excuse my language.”

  I smirked because even in the middle of all the debate, he still remained a gentleman.

  “His language is even filthier in the bedroom.” I chuckled, knowing I would be filling Parks with embarrassment. Sure enough, as I peeked through my lashes to see his face, he was scowling at me.

  “So let’s get back to the bedroom.” Nia held our attention again. “I think Evey asked why you act so dominant in the bedroom. Needing a submissive to obey. Not wanting to be touched or looked at while you’re in that dominant trance.” Nia knew why Parks acted this way, but of course she was trying to push it out of his own mouth.

  “She knows why,” Parks snapped out, getting uncomfortable again. He shook his head at himself, battling with self-hate. “I ordered the women not to touch me because they had no right. I ordered the women not to look at me because they would have hated what they saw. Fuck, I hated what I saw.” Parks got to his feet and gripped his hair with a hand as he walked towards the window. His hands flopped to his sides and he bowed his head as he stood with his back to us. “I used to look at my father in fear while he was punishing me. But that didn’t stop him. It never bothered him after watching my mother’s tears. Hearing my sister’s cries.” He balled his hands into fists. “I couldn’t deal with a woman looking at me in pain because, unlike my father, I would have felt something.”

  I clutched at my chest, trying to stop the twinge in my heart. “You once told me you were rightly punished as a child,” I croaked, trying desperately not to cry. “That discipline needs to be obeyed.” I drew in a deep breath, my focus on Parks’s back as he couldn’t face us. “You’re wrong saying you were rightly punished. And I know you said it because you thought you must have done something wrong to deserve it, just like I thought, but you didn’t, Wade.” Sod the tears. They started to come anyway, hard, fast, and relentless as I worked my words around my sobs. “You didn’t deserve the hate your father felt for you. You didn’t deserve those punches, those kicks, those harrowing words of abuse. You deserved none of it because you were just a small child who wanted to be loved.” I started hiccupping over my sobs, but determination kicked in to finish my sentence. “But now you are loved, Wade. You’re loved by me, and hell if I can’t do a good job of it. Excuse me.” Nia looked on in empathy as I got to my feet, rushed out of the room, up the stairs, and locked myself in the bathroom. There, I sat on the toilet seat, brought my knees up to my chest, and cried, heartwrenching sobs. The tears that ran down my face were for all the grief, pain, and agony I felt about the way Parks was made to feel worthless, abandoned, and unloved. Just as I had been.