Addicted to Mr. Parks (The Park #2) (40 page)
Read Addicted to Mr. Parks (The Park #2) Online
Authors: Lilly James
Pushing up from the bed, I was careful not to rub my backside against anything because I knew it would sting and dragged my body upwards, wrapping myself within the sheets. The material chafing against my backside made me wince. He saw the pain etched upon my face and almost broke down.
“I’m such a sick fuck,” he bellowed, his voice strained as he so desperately tried to knock back tears. The sight stunned me. His soul was so wounded, deep and indebted into hell that he saw no way out. He hated himself. It was a sight that made my heart bleed for him. He’d taken me out of my own darkness but pulled me into his.
“Wade, I…” I couldn’t look at him.
“You hate me. Of course you do.”
My head shook telling him no, but a lump in my throat strangled words, tears falling heavily.
“No.” He cupped my face with his hands and wiped my tears. “Please don’t cry. I’ll soothe the pain. I will.”
My head bowed down into my lap. “It’s not my pain that’s breaking my heart. It’s you.”
I heard his gasp. “Then punch me, Evelyn. Kick me, beat me, because that’s what I deserve.”
“No, you don’t,” I wailed. “You need help.” I was begging him over tears, forming words over a swollen throat. “People like us don’t deserve the worst, Wade. We deserve to be treated as equal.”
“Princess,” he breathed raggedly, green eyes looking lost and deep in my breaking soul. “I’m not good for you. I am going to drag you down with me. I’m going to make your life darker than it ever was. I can’t break you again. I love you too much.”
“Don’t say that.” I touched his face as he crouched in front of me. “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
He shook his head determinedly as he held his hand over my fingers that were cupping his face. “We’re going to tear each other apart, Evelyn. Two broken souls can never make a whole.”
“You don’t mean that.” I was mentally praying he wasn’t about to do what I so desperately feared. Wade Parks was my complete and utter solace. He was my peace. My life. He always seemed the strongest one in our relationship. The one holding us together. But holding us together and focusing on getting me better made him take a step back from his own issues. Now was the time to take that step forward and address them. Work though them. I also hoped to God I was strong enough for him.
“Wade, you’re such an amazing person. I’d probably be dead right now if it wasn’t for you. Please don’t say that being together will tear us apart. Being alone is the only thing that will kill us.”
He distanced himself from me and wandered across the room to a chair. He sat and rested his elbows on his knees, head bowed between his legs, looking like a man that had bad memories eating him alive. In that moment, far gone was the controlled and confident, cocky, arrogant arse I first met.
“Talk to me,” I pleaded, edging towards him.
His swallowed harshly and spat it out. “He abused me. He abused my mother and sister.”
His words wrapped around my lungs, knocking out my breath and halting my step. “What?”
Parks ignored me. Speaking to the wall rather than to me. His eyes blacked out. “I took the worst beatings from him every damn day. I took beatings from him to protect Jasmine. To protect my mother. I could never stand hearing them cry out in pain. I took beatings from him when my grades weren’t good enough in school. He broke my fingers when he heard I played one note out of tune at the piano. I was a kid, for fuck’s sake. He punished me. Mentally tortured me. I was never good enough for him. Everything I did was never good enough.”
“Your father?” My hand went to my mouth to suppress the building sob that was begging to escape me. It hurt my throat to keep it in, and my eyes started stinging from a new buildup of fresh tears.
“My mother is scared of him, but she stays because she loves him.” His eyes closed agonizingly before he glanced up at me. “Just like you’re staying with me.”
“No.” My words came over the painful ache that stabbed me in my chest. “I’m not scared of you.”
“And now,” he went on, “I have adopted his ways. Punishing women when they do wrong. I was so angry he humiliated me. So that’s what I’ve done to women. Trying to find out what he got out of it. What he got out of punishing and subduing.” He closed his tightly, the demon in his head taking over. “I’m a sick fuck,” he repeated. “You need to leave.”
“No,” I wailed, holding on to his arms as he stood up. “Please. Don’t make me leave.”
I was sobbing. My heart cut in two. One half was throbbing from the pain I felt towards his childhood. His father abusing him. Telling him he wasn’t good enough. The other half was dying because he thought he couldn’t stay with me. Thought he was going to hurt me.
“Is that why you’re so controlled?” My voice became hoarse. Tears emptying. The pain I felt as I sensed Parks slipping away from me was going to hurt more than the cane did.
He nodded, his expression ice-cold. “My life has become adsorbed in the need to become the one in control. My father controlled my life for so long. Everything I said or did. My goal was set on getting my own things in life and being in control of them. Businesses. Women. Nothing and no one will ever control my life again.
I am
in control now.”
“Is that why you want to control me?” I was slowly understanding his world.
“Yes,” he said firmly. “Because you’re mine. Not his. He wants to take you away from me, Evelyn, because he likes to hurt me. That’s why I told you to stay away from him.”
I felt guilty as sin. He had a damn good reason to ask me to stay away from his father, and I misplaced that trust. “Is he an alcoholic?” I asked.
“Yes,” he hissed.
I swallowed hard again, my eyes closing briefly as I remembered the way he looked at me when he found out I was an alcoholic. His repulsed reaction suddenly had meaning. “That’s why you acted the way you did when you found out about me?”
He couldn’t look at me. “Yes. I revolved my life around aspiring not to be anything like my father. Staying away from alcohol because I knew the pain it brought. Alcoholics disgust me.”
“Then you fell in love with one?” I cried. I could only imagine how he felt when he learned about my issue.
What drives people like you to drink?
he once said, all the thoughts of his childhood and abusive father hitting him suddenly when he found out. I felt sick, bile rising in my throat.
“But his discipline is still drummed into me,” he went on. “When I punish you, I’m no better than he is. I told you hurting women is not what I’m about. But it clearly is.”
“You’re not an abuser, Wade.” My whimpers were pitiful. I felt miles away from the strong woman I once was. “It’s not the same. It’s just the way you cope.”
He marched towards me and pulled me into the bathroom. Grasping my hips he turned me around in front of the mirror and I came face-to-face with red welts that had appeared on my buttocks. Slight bruising was also starting to appear, and the way my face paled caused Parks to get angry at himself all over again.
“You tell me how that’s good for you.”
Spinning around and moving away from the reflection, I pulled him back again. “I asked for it.”
“But this is what I have the desire to do when you disobey, Evelyn. You are a victim of child abuse. How the fuck can I do something like this to you? I can’t. Ever again. The way I cope with things is going to kill us. I inflict pain to forget my own. I don’t want to hurt you, Evelyn. A sadist is not what I want to be with you. It’s best if you leave. You don’t deserve this.”
He picked up my dress and gently placed it in my hands.
“Princess, I’m not stable enough to be with you right now.”
My head was shaking, disagreeing considerably. “And I’m not stable enough to live without you. Please don’t take away my solace. You are my life. The only thing that keeps me sane. If you leave, I don’t know what I’d do.” He wiped away my tears, but they wouldn’t stop falling. My heart felt weighed down in my chest, making it feel empty.
“But it’s better than staying with me and getting hurt.” He pulled my dress over my head and took my hand, leading me downstairs. My body was fighting against him, trying to break free, but he wouldn’t let go.
“I will fight for you, Wade. I will fight until I have no air left in my lungs to breathe. Just like you fought for me.” I clung to his body. “I love you. I love you so much. Don’t you get that?”
He punched the security button on the lift, and my attempts to pull free were useless. He was so out of his control that the realization of his naked form being seen by security didn’t faze him.
“No,” I begged him. “You’re hurting, please don’t let me leave you when you’re hurting.”
The lift opened, and inside was a security man. The violent shaking of my head told both men I wasn’t going anyway. “No,” I sobbed. “You’re my remedy, Wade. I need you.”
“Get her out of here,” Parks ordered the security guy, who took hold of my waist and pulled me into the lift. Tears fogged my view as I watched his pain flow through his veins. I was fighting, trying my utmost to get out of the lift.
“Good-bye, Princess.” He whispered. “Never forget you belong to me.”
“But I belong nowhere when I’m not in your arms,” I cried and broke free from the security man’s grip. “Don’t do this.” I pulled him into me. “I’m begging you.”
He gently cupped my cheeks, his thumb stroked as my tears fell onto his fingers. Those green, vivid eyes I loved staring into my ambers were lost and wounded. “I have no choice, Evelyn. I’m doing it because I love you. I will never stop loving you. Let me deal with my shit by myself, if only temporarily.”
“Let us deal with it together,” I sobbed as security pulled me back into the lift just as the doors were closing.
“No.” He turned his back on me. “Good-bye, Princess.”
About the Author
British Author Lilly James is a woman with a wild imagination that has to be set free into the arms of a keyboard.
Writing gives Lilly that chance to escape the real world and live in a world of fantasy with her characters.
When she’s not writing you’ll find her singing terribly to music, curled up with her kindle, or doing something boring like everyday chores that unfortunately need attention.
Lilly lives in Wales, is a mother of one beautiful little girl, and loves reading, chocolate and wine. All in that order.