Love Hurts: This Love Trilogy Book 2
Love Hurts
This Love Trilogy, Book 2
Emily Snow
Contents
Prologue
Act 1
1. Fall, Now
2. Winter, 7 Months Ago
3. Fall, Now
4. Veronica
5. Bennett
6. Veronica
7. Veronica
8. Veronica
9. Bennett
Act 2
10. Summer, 15 Years Ago
11. Late Fall, Now
12. Bennett
13. Veronica
14. Bennett
15. Veronica
16. Veronica
17. Veronica
18. Bennett
19. Bennett
20. Veronica
Act 3
21. Veronica
22. Veronica
23. Veronica
24. Veronica
25. Winter, Eight Days Ago
-End of Book 2-
Join Emily Snow’s Rock Stars
His Pawn Sneak Peek
Acknowledgments
Books By Emily Snow
About the Author
Copyright © 2019 Emily Snow
eBook Edition
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher in writing.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Emily Snow LLC
Prologue
Summer, Eight Years Ago
Veronica
John Legend and Andre 3000's "Green Light" dissolves into "Makes Me Wonder" a split second before club security barreled across the bright blue and pink LED floor in our direction. The guard is a giant of a man who, thanks to the thick veins straining on his muscles, reminds me of a spray-tanned Hulk. But the tingle at the nape of my neck? Well, it’s there because of the song. Adam Levine's trademark falsetto hits too close to home tonight since that's exactly where I am.
Home.
My former flatmate and longtime friend, Freya, sidles close, nervously slicking her fingers through her jet-black fringe that's damp from dancing. She regards Jersey Hulk warily. "Twenty quid says that bint Nicki didn't pay for the drinks she brought over earlier.”
"And twenty dollars says he's a stripper," I retort through a smile because he’s now within earshot, stopping just a foot away where he darts his eyes between us.
"Which one of you is Veronica Palmero?" At his question, I lift a finger and mouth "guilty." He shoves a letter against my open palm. “This is for you, ma’am.”
"Who hired you? Rachel? Nicki?" I spin my attention to our booth, which consists of two of my step-cousins and a handful of friends from the fashion industry, and search for the telltale grin. I don’t find it, so I thin my eyes at the brunette hanging close to me. “Or maybe even Freya?”
Her lips flap apart in outrage. “For once in my life, I’m clueless!"
Smirking, I open the note, expecting a filthy scavenger hunt that leads to more muscle and a lot less clothing, but the sloppily written words clear the air from my lungs and scour the smile from my face. "This is a joke, right?"
Because the handwriting is all wrong. The fact I’m even receiving it is wrong.
Jersey Hulk half-shrugs and jabs his finger to the elevator on the opposite side of the dance floor. "I was told to let you know the VIP lounge is that way. Then take the stairs up to the rooftop. Have a good night, Ms. Palmero."
"You too," I mutter, my dry throat rasping at his retreating form. I crumple the note, but it’s no use. Each word is ingrained in my skull, just like the song blasting through the club. Adam's still crooning about goodbyes and wanting something to believe in. The lyrics are so relevant, so prophetic, that a tremor spirals through me.
Freya’s dark eyebrows clump together. "Is everything all right?"
"Yes, it's..." Catastrophic. I pivot in the direction of the elevator. Toward déjà vu and certain disaster. "There's just something I need to do before I ... before tomorrow."
Reaching the rooftop VIP suite only takes a couple of minutes, but it all seems to go in slow-mo. Faces blur around me, becoming featureless under the flashing neon lights. Noise distorts, and the song changes to OneRepublic's "All the Right Moves," but Maroon 5 continues to play in my head. I should have known it would be a harbinger for what greets me when I step out onto the rooftop and the summer heat envelops me.
Blue eyes, the same that haunt my wildest and worst dreams, penetrate mine from the plush chaise across the terrace. At first, I tell myself that's precisely what this is—a dream, a prelude to another sleepless night. Then he stands and rumbles out my name.
"Vero."
That voice. That damn voice and I’m laid to waste.
I meet him halfway, beneath white paper lanterns and hundreds of twinkle lights which dance on the shadows of his face. This club has a strict policy—no jeans, no T-shirts—but that's what he's wearing since rules never seemed to apply to him. We stand toe to toe, his denim scratching my bare legs and the soft cotton of his white shirt meshed against the front of my dress. The tip of his nose skims the spot between my eyes before he leans back and tilts his stare down, granting us both a better look at each other.
My heart springs into my throat.
With his blond hair unruly, stubble marking the angles of his jawline, and eyes bloodshot, he looks wrecked. Worse than I've ever seen him and still so stunning, so beautiful, that he makes me physically, emotionally, mentally weak.
"Ben—" His cologne, clean and familiar, filters through my nose, suffocating me. I hold my breath for several seconds, then let it go in a rush of feelings—pain and shock and love doomed to never die. "Bennett,” I successfully get out on my second attempt.
Long, powerful fingers bracket my waist and electrocute me through my red bandage dress when he hauls me to him. I gasp and glue my eyes shut. It's a defense mechanism so he won't realize he tears me to pieces, but that's why I'm not prepared for his other hand. He brushes it up the arch of my neck and rests his fingertips on the side of my face. Grenades blast beneath my flesh, and without thinking, I clutch his marble-like shoulders as though he's the only thing preventing me from blowing away.
Perhaps he is.
"I had to see you," he slurs, caressing the pad of his thumb along the curve of my cheek. "If only for five minutes, I had to see you."
He's drunk, which explains the messy handwriting. I taste the liquor on his tongue, feel the flames of it lashing against my face, but I can't draw myself away. This is a new level of wrong, bathing in his touch and trailing my hands from his shoulders to his upper arms where I fist my fingers around the sleeves of his T-shirt. His muscles, hard and sinewy, strain beneath my grip.
Gathering my nerve, I part my eyelids to discover his gaze scorching a path across my flesh as I lick the seam of my lips. He looks away quickly, and his posture caves, like he's going to be sick. "How did you find me, Bennett? Why?"
"Graham called. Said you can't..." He pauses. Huffs out a breath before continuing, “He told me you weren't sure you were ready to—"
The clang of the metal roof door interrupts him. We break apart, but not before Freya witnesses us clasped together. The look she gives me isn't accusatory but sympathetic. It only makes this worse, and I press my palms to my cheeks to hide my embarrassment as his mouth twists in a snarl.
/>
"This is a private area. Fuck off."
She ignores him, fixating on me with confusion lining her features. All I need to do is say his name for her to understand. She’d heard me call it out plenty of times in my sleep when we lived together. "I’m sorry, Veronica. I just had to make sure you were all right.”
"I am." My reassuring smile stretches my cheeks taut. “I’m just catching up with an old friend. Shouldn’t be too much longer.”
She backpedals, fiddling with the bedazzled sash draped over her left shoulder. "I'll see you downstairs then." As she quietly exits the rooftop, Bennett rivets his gaze on the gold stitched lettering on the sash. Once we're alone, he angles his face down to mine. My stomach tangles because now he appears sober, so much older than twenty-six.
“An old friend?” I answer his question with a helpless nod. What did he expect me to do? Introduce him as the man who’s screwed me up for years? "She was wearing that thing because of you?"
"Yes. We're celebrating." But my fragile whisper sounds more like a eulogy than an enthusiastic declaration.
His hand shoots out for my waist again, but he thinks better of it, locks his fingers into a tight fist, and lets his arm fall limply to his side. As he puts an agonizing amount of space between our bodies, I tell myself it’s a good thing. It has to be. His touch will always be home, but my home is elsewhere now.
"That's why you came back, isn’t it? You didn't cancel it like Graham said you did."
It takes all my restraint to stand in place and watch him move farther away to the edge of the roof. "Your brother was mistaken because it's … I’m doing it tomorrow."
He turns his back on me, bracing his forearm on the glass guardrail. I have a full view of his firm, brooding expression and the way his chest swells and deflates unevenly. "Graham told me you were still hanging on and refusing to move on with your life. Guess the bastard was wrong."
But Graham is right—sort of. I'd spent over an hour this afternoon crying to him and second-guessing my next move. I was calm by the time I left his new place on Fifth Avenue, and I never, never expected him to rehash my panic and doubts to Bennett. "What would you have done if he wasn't?" I ask since the damage has already been done.
"I would have told you …" A ragged exhale gushes from his lips, and at last, I step toward him. My hand extends for one touch—just one more touch—as the possibilities stream through my head.
"I would have told you not to go through with it."
"I would have told you that I love you as much as you love me."
"I would have told you that seven days, seven weeks, seven years—none of that matters when you're one of the only things I look forward to."
After so many years, I'm not sure how I would respond to any of those, but I realize that my assumptions are a level ten on the foolish scale once he speaks. “I would have told you why you need to forget me.” He faces me, his blue eyes so hollow, I snatch my hand back to my chest and dig my fingertips into my dress. "Luckily, you're fine now.”
Poison. His words are a poison that pumps through my system, violently pitching my stomach. Knees wobbling, I inch away from him. "You’re right. I mean, why would I still be hanging on to someone I fucked when I was eighteen? That would just be pitiful." He winces, but on my end, it sounds precisely like what it is—a lie. "In fact, I'm the happiest woman in New York."
"That's all I ever wanted for you, Vero."
The final kick in the face. That all he wants for me is happiness. Heart sinking to the roof floor, I drag both hands through my hair as a wry laugh sways my body. "Then why do this?" Releasing my long platinum locks, I motion around us at the opulent outdoor lounge. "Why couldn't you let me let go on my own? I never needed your permission to move on, so why tonight?"
Darkness clouds his features, but he wipes it away with a harsh scrub of his palm. The man staring back at me is now made of stone. And I am glass. "It was a drunken lapse of judgment. For that, I apologize."
I squint to trap the moisture prickling at my eyelids. "Your remorse means the world to me." I reach the exit, but shame doesn't stop me from whirling around to demand, "Was it ever real for you? Was it—I don’t know—tender curiosity?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose at my book quote. Before, they made him smile. Before, he was mine. This—this is our aftermath. “Vero, please—”
I shake my head. “No, I won’t stop because I deserve to know. And don't worry, telling me the truth won't change anything. It can be your gift to the blushing bride."
"What I felt was...” He shutters his eyes. “You were as real as breathing."
"And then you woke up and realized you fucked up by marrying the nanny's kid and were on the fast track to lose your trust fund, huh?"
His eyes fly open and his jawline stiffens beneath his golden flesh. "Now that I know you’re okay, I won't bother you again." He doesn't answer my question, and a sob bubbles up at the back of my throat. I gulp it down. Force my legs to carry me into the narrow stairwell.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for, too.” Pinning my back to the wall, I cast him a final look before loosening my grip on the door. "Because I'm—" The metal bangs shut, the sound ricocheting through me, before I can say it.
Happy and thrilled.
Those words filter through my head on repeat for the rest of the night and all through the next afternoon, until I'm weighed down in yards of white tulle and silk and my stepfather's arm is looped through mine.
"Breathe, kid," Jon whispers in my ear and gives my hand a loving pat. “Breathe.”
But I can't. Can't fill my lungs with enough air. Can't convince my heart to align with my head. My left-hand itches with every step we take toward Alder, the man who's waited months for me, so the chant becomes faster, panicked.
It only pauses when the priest asks if anybody objects. When nobody does, I force the mantra to start again.
Happy and thrilled.
Not numb and screwed up but happy.
Act 1
"Lovely"
Khalid & Billie Eilish
1
Fall, Now
Bennett
"She's asking for ten mil.”
I hike an eyebrow and glance up from the unsent message on my phone. My attorney is on the other side of his desk, digging his elbows into the plush black armrests of his high-back leather chair. The equinox sunset splinters through the wall of glass behind him and distorts the skyscrapers outside his fifteenth-floor corner office into a stone, brick, and reflective blur.
Doesn't stop me from staring Connor down.
This is the urgent news that couldn't and wouldn't wait until Monday morning? Like a dumbass, I swam straight for the bait, assuming the worm at the end of the line was a final resolution. I rushed through my appointment with the architect of our newest development in Jersey City to hurry back to Madison Avenue before Connor left for the weekend all for a recap of facts I already know. At least he had the good sense to offer me liquor, some new whiskey from his family's Tennessee distillery. While he poured me a glass, he mumbled about subtle hints of raisin and chocolate. I don't give a flying fuck about flavor profiles, just the liquor itself. Discussing divorce settlements on a Friday night screws with you like that.
I swirl the whiskey, slant the glass and my head back, and drain it in one gulp. He was right; I do taste the chocolate. Slamming the empty glass down by the black leather pen stand, I finish the text I was sending my assistant before he started breathing dollar signs.
6:52 p.m.: Reschedule my drinks with Zeke to sometime after ten. Thanks, Nova.
Irritation laces my smile as I stuff the phone in my jacket's inner pocket. "If you wanted someone to drink with, you could have asked. I never turn down good whiskey. Just make sure I’m not billed for this because I won't pay for services not rendered."
He fists the neck of the bottle and drags it closer to him when I reach for it. Whoever came up with that pitch on Southern hospitality was h
igh on meth and drunk on moonshine. "You misunderstood me. She's asking for an additional ten million."
My head jolts so far back, it's a miracle it doesn't roll off my shoulders and down to the thin beige carpet that reeks of powder freshener—Fresh Rain, Fresh Air, or whatever brand of Fresh Suffocation the firm's cleaning crew uses. "What?"
Dark eyebrows shoot for the hairline of his ridiculous haircut, one of those douchebag styles with a shaved part that requires bi-weekly drugstore outings for gel. "Daria." His voice climbs an octave on the second syllable as though he's trying to jog my memory.
On the subject of Daria Hollister-Delaney, my brain doesn’t need a nudge. Graham calls her Monica Jr., after our mother. The nickname fits her like a python leather glove. Wife number three loves money, clothes, power, and collecting vintage wine. In no particular order.
"Why is she asking for more money?" I challenge.
"The prenuptial agreement—"
My lips squash into a ruthless line. "Exactly, the prenup."
She gets five million for each year we were married—ten million total—plus forty thousand a month in spousal support for twelve months. Not to mention the house in Bermuda, all the jewelry I've given her, a bag and shoe collection that made Buzzfeed headlines, and the fleet of vehicles she accumulated while she was Mrs. Bennett Delaney 3.0.