The Consequence of Loving Me: An Enemies to Lovers Romance (Aftershock Series Book 1)

by Kat Singleton

  “I’m not using his death as an excuse.”

  “Oh, please. That’s exactly what you’re doing. You’re so scared to lose someone again that you hide behind this façade that you’re trying to protect others from you when in reality you are the one that needs to be protected.”

  I scoff. “Shut up, Lily. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re right. I know nothing.” The look she gives me from across the table dares me to continue to argue with her.

  “There’s a consequence for loving me. You wouldn’t understand,” I tell her.

  “The only consequence of loving you is that you’re too damn scared of being loved.”

  “You’re one to talk. How long have you been in love with Aspen? Because I’m guessing it’s been a long time and isn’t some new event.”

  Lily’s eyes defiantly narrow at me. I know I’ve pissed her off—it’s what I do. I’d rather lash out at someone than maybe show them how I really feel.

  “Don’t try and pin this on me,” she says. “I confronted my feelings. I’m not the one parading around pretending they’re doing the world a favor by just messing around with guys instead of accepting the fact they’ve been hurt.”

  We stare at each other for another long moment before she grabs her purse and scoots out of the booth, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  My eyes follow her as she says goodbye to Maverick. He holds her elbow as she whispers something in his ear. Whatever it is, his eyes snap to me. She continues to tell him something while he leans a hip on the old pool table. His eyes stay on me the whole time. When Lily’s done, she gives her brother a hug, Aspen the middle finger, and me one more piercing look before she leaves.

  35

  Maverick

  “What did you and Lily talk about tonight?” I ask Veronica as we lie in bed after our second round of sex.

  We both came home from Lenny’s ready to taste each other. As soon as we ditched Aspen in the living room and made it to the basement, we were all over each other. We didn’t even have time to make it into her room before I was inside of her.

  We fucked against the basement wall. We were clawing at each other’s clothes, unable to strip them off fast enough. I had to keep my lips on hers to keep her from making too much noise so Aspen wouldn’t hear us.

  Now we’re in bed, cuddling and talking.

  I haven’t been able to get Lily’s words out of my head. When my sister was leaving Lenny’s, she told me to confront Veronica about my feelings. It caught me off guard. I hadn’t realized I had such strong feelings for her until Lily pointed it out to me. I was probably in denial because I knew they wouldn’t be accepted well by her.

  As my mind races, I hold her head to my chest, letting my fingers run through the long strands of her hair. My clothes are somewhere between her bed and the basement stairs. She’s wearing a T-shirt of mine that she’s worn to bed every night for the last week.

  “Oh nothing,” she mumbles against my chest nonchalantly.

  As I’ve gotten to know Veronica more, I’ve seen different sides to her. Where she’s bitter and blunt with others, she’s quiet and timid behind closed doors. There’s no doubt in my mind that she’s jaded and that attitude of hers will never go away, but she doesn’t try as hard to seem so bitchy when it’s just us. She’s just her—the her I’ve come to know I like maybe a little too much.

  “It didn’t appear that way. When I looked over at the two of you, it seemed like you were talking about something that had you both heated.” My fingers are still playing with her hair. I wish I could see her face right now, but it’s tucked into the crook of my neck.

  “You might’ve misread things. Aspen was being weird next to you. Maybe his gyrating hips had you excited.”

  “Veronica, can we have a serious conversation for two seconds without you changing the subject?”

  She begins to trace along my stomach. Her bright pink nail inches down my abs. Another contradiction of hers. I envisioned her as a woman who would wear black nail polish, maybe something duller, but I’ve only seen her wear girly colors.

  “It was nothing. I don’t want to talk about it, Maverick.” The resignation in her voice is very clear to me, but I decide to ignore it.

  Now that Lily has planted this seed in my head, I can’t get it to go away. I need to tell her how I feel, even if it will start the fight I know is bound to happen.

  “Well, I do,” I say softly.

  “We had a conversation about you. Happy?” She sighs against my neck. Her breath is warm on my skin and I want to bury myself inside her, but I know I’ll feel even worse if I don’t have the balls to confront her about us.

  “What kind of conversation?” Her finger stills on my bare chest.

  I’m confident she can feel the thrumming of my heart underneath it.

  She lifts her head, looking at me with those big blue eyes that convey innocence even though I know she is anything but. “She doesn’t want me to break your heart. Lily is protective of you. I get it. I told her there’s no possible way you and I will ever be in the position where I could break your heart.”

  A pit forms in my stomach. I don’t know if she’s just oblivious to how I feel about her or if she’s still in that much denial. I’m betting it’s the latter, which pisses me off.

  “Would it be that bad if I did have feelings for you?” I couldn’t keep the question from leaving my mouth for another moment longer. The more I try to put her pieces together, the more I realize I’m falling for all the individual pieces that make her. And now that she’s let me in to see the whole picture, I can’t look away.

  “I told you, Maverick. You can’t have feelings for me.” Veronica sits up, her blonde hair creating a blanket around her face as she looks down at me.

  The fear is clear as day in her eyes. She wants to flee, I know it. But I will stand my ground until she decides to run for the hills, all while hoping she won’t.

  I pull myself up in the bed, taking part of the sheet so it still covers my naked body. “You can’t just tell someone not to have feelings for you. It doesn’t fucking work like that. You told me not to fall for you, and I appreciate the warning, but I’m telling you it didn’t work because I’m sitting in front of you with feelings for you and I’m tired of the bullshit. This thing we’ve had for the last month has turned into something more than I thought it would. I’m falling for you and there’s no warning you can give me to stop it from happening because it’s already begun.”

  Her head starts to frantically shake. Her small hands pull at the bottom of my T-shirt she’s wearing, wringing it to give her hands something to do. “No, this isn’t happening.”

  Dread begins to pool its way through my body. It starts in the pit of my stomach and oozes out into every single part of me. The look on her face makes it apparent that she isn’t letting go of the silly thought that no one should love her again.

  My hand reaches out to touch her, my body craving to feel her, even if it’s a small amount. Right as my fingertip is about to graze her thigh, she scoots away from me, so far down the bed that there’s no way I can touch her unless I move.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be, but I am. I didn’t have the intention of wanting you. I really didn’t.”

  “Don’t do this, Maverick. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  I shake my head at her in disbelief. “Looking back, you’ve been collecting small pieces of me this whole time. And it was wrong. I didn’t even realize I was doing it before, because I was so committed to Selma. But now that I’m not pretending anymore, I can say I’ve been handing myself over to you, hoping to maybe get a damn scrap back.”

  Veronica steps off the bed and begins to pace back and forth.

  It’s ironic, because as I throw the covers off me to look for my boxers, I accidentally knock a picture she painted of Connor off the nightstand.

  Connor. A man I haven’t met, but a man that still holds her heart ca
ptive. More than that, holds her soul captive, because neither her head nor her heart can get past what happened to him.

  I search for my boxers, finding them on the floor in front of her closet. My mouth continues to ramble on as I shove both my legs through the holes. “Now that I think about it, it’s pathetic how I’ve been begging this whole time for something from you. Whether it be your thoughts, your feelings, your past, or even a small fucking piece of your heart. I was begging for any of it, all of it, even if it was the smallest piece. Anytime I feel that maybe I finally have something from you, even if it’s broken and jagged and bleeding, you pull it out from me so fast I land on my ass. But I stand up and ask for more again and again and again. Just when I think I’m lucky enough to have that from you, you slap it out of my hand with your dismissive comments and attitude.”

  “It’s the sex. You’ll get over it once you aren’t inside me all the time. You’ll find you were attracted to my body, not the pieces of me within it.”

  “Don’t degrade yourself like that, Veronica. It’s childish. I’m an adult who can navigate my own feelings. I could never be buried inside you again yet still feel this way.”

  “You don’t know that.” She opens the door and stomps out of her room like a damn child.

  Even though I’m still in nothing but my underwear, I follow her, nowhere near done with this conversation.

  36

  Veronica

  I’m a few steps out into the living area of the basement when Maverick comes charging in behind me.

  “For fuck’s sake, Veronica. What do I need to do to prove to you that I’m not just spewing shit out of my mouth because I want to sleep with you? Because I’ll do it.”

  I turn around and face him. “I need you to keep your promise. The promise that this wouldn’t be more than just sex. You promised!”

  “I didn’t promise a thing. I remember it very clearly. This has never been just sex for me. Is that really what I am to you? Just another guy to get you off? Because I refuse to believe that.”

  “Well believe it, Maverick.” My hands are on my hips as I speak the words to him. While I stand in nothing but his T-shirt—the T-shirt I refused to return because it smells like him and I relish in the comfort it gives me.

  His hands fly up in the air as an exasperated sigh escapes his lips. “You make it hard to fall for you, you know that?”

  “That’s the point! You weren’t supposed to feel anything. I may be a lot of things in this world, but one thing I haven’t been with you is vague. I’ve told you from the beginning that I don’t want anyone falling for me. Not since Connor.”

  “Connor isn’t a part of this, Veronica. Don’t you get that? He’s not here anymore and I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I wish you didn’t have to lose him like that, but he’s been gone for years now. You need to let yourself move on. How am I supposed to fall in love with you when you’re still in love with a ghost?”

  “Stop talking about Connor.” I cover my ears, the walls beginning to cave in around me. My past and present are colliding in a vicious moment I’m not prepared for. Hearing Connor’s name come from Maverick’s mouth causes me to feel too much at once.

  “That’s the problem. You have to acknowledge what happened to him. You have to acknowledge that you loved him, that the love wasn’t enough to keep him alive, and I’m sorry. The fact of the matter is that no matter how much you love someone—and I mean really fucking love them, mind, body and soul—you can’t keep them alive when their time comes. He died. He died and he’s not coming back. My feelings are so strong for you I would do anything in the world to bring him back to you. Just so I don’t have to see your grief. But I can’t. And you can’t keep using his death as your excuse to never love again. You have to fall out of love with a ghost. Come back to reality. Come to me.” His voice cracks by the end.

  The look on his face is serious, his eyes pleading. “I think you’re scared. And I think you blame yourself for Connor’s death because I think it’s easier for you to pretend that there’s a reason, a cause behind his death other than to simply admit that sometimes people die, Veronica. Sometimes people die and it’s horrible and tragic and I wish it wasn’t. But they die. And it isn’t anyone’s fault. Could things have been different if the two of you weren’t in the water? Yes. Yes, they one hundred percent could have been, but you both made a choice. It isn’t anyone’s fault. It’s just life being life.

  “You and Connor could have never gotten in the water and he could have died the next day in a car accident. Or he could have lived to be a hundred years old. We just don’t fucking know. We have to live, and we have to live every single day. And god damn it, Veronica, if I don’t want to live each day with you. I don’t fucking care what that means. I don’t care if you think I’ll get hurt or that you’ll destroy me. Because I would rather die tomorrow knowing I got the girl that’s holding my heart in her hands than die seventy years from now after living with what ifs for the rest of my life.

  “You think you’re selfish and I think you’re selfless. You think there are consequences for falling in love with you and I think they’re benefits. You think you destroy what you love but I think you heal it. Because you’ve healed me. You’ve taught me what it is to love someone, unconditionally, and to love them for who they are, not for who you want them to be.

  “You’re scared, and baby, I get why you’re scared—I do. I’m scared, too. I don’t want to lose you, but I would rather have you for a little while than never at all. I would rather have any moment life will give me with you than play it safe. It’s scary to know there’s no rhyme or reason why infants get cancer, why people abuse animals, why parents leave their children, why people fight wars they want no part in. There’s absolutely none. We can’t make sense of why things happen the way they do, but we also can’t blame ourselves for every hideous thing in this world. Because there’s a lot. And one person can’t handle it all. So, I need you to stop blaming yourself for Connor’s death and realize that people just die because they do.”

  Part of me understands what he’s saying. I know I need to leave the pain I associate with Connor in the past and move on, keeping only the happy memories of the two of us. I have to let go of what happened to him and forgive myself, because Maverick is right. Connor’s gone, but I’m still here. And I know, with every part of me, that if there’s something beyond this messed up world we live in that allows Connor to be looking down on me, he’d be disappointed by my actions.

  A large part of me understands all of it. That part of me wants to drop this fight with Maverick and run into his arms and tell him even though it was quick and unexpected, I have strong feelings for him, too. I desperately want to tell him he isn’t alone in this.

  But I’m terrified.

  I’m absolutely petrified that I will ruin Maverick somehow. It’s what I seem to do. So, even though my limbs desperately want to wrap around him, I hold back. I hurt him more—to protect him. “It was just sex for me, Maverick.”

  His body jerks like I punched him in the chest. He runs a hand through his hair, pulling at it while he looks at the ceiling. I’ve hurt him so much he can’t even look me in the eye.

  I stand next to the old couch we explored each other on in nothing but his T-shirt. My hands play with the fabric at the bottom, twisting it. With every twist of the shirt, I feel my heart twist inside of me. I try to think of something else to say to him, something we won’t be able to come back from, but he beats me to it.

  “Destroy what destroys you.” He recites the words that are tattooed on my body. The words that his fingers—and tongue—have traced many times.

  But this time, it doesn’t give me butterflies. Now, all the butterflies inside me are dead. My stomach feels heavy, full with the weight of his words.

  His gaze finds mine and I do something right for the first time in my life. I look him in the eyes and allow him to say what he needs to. It’ll kill me later to think of this anguish and re
gret on his face, but I know whatever he’s about to say is important to him. So, even though it kills me to look into those ocean eyes, I do. For him.

  “The first time I read those words on your body, I was confused,” he says. “When you told me love destroyed you, I couldn’t comprehend why you would want to destroy it. The ironic thing here is that you told me from the beginning that you wanted to destroy love, but I didn’t listen. I didn’t want to believe you. And I want to feel shitty about it, but I don’t. Because even after all this, Veronica, it’s you I feel bad for. This will hurt me for a long time, but I’m strong enough to know that love heals. It doesn’t destroy. Your pain, that’s what destroys.

  “I thought maybe if you allowed me to love you, I could heal you. But I was wrong. You’re too busy with your illusions. I feel bad for you. It’s easy to let the pain in, to let the pain win. But you know what’s harder? To love. Because loving someone—even if there might be consequences—takes strength. I have that strength, but I can’t say the same for you. Love didn’t destroy you, Veronica. Pain did. Insecurities did. Guilt did. Love is the only thing that can heal you, but you’re too scared to heal. So, go destroy somebody else’s heart.”

  He doesn’t say it with malice.

  I know he’s done when he walks up to me and presses a lingering kiss to my forehead. A gesture that obliterates every piece of my heart. The pieces of me he put together have just shattered all over again, but this time into even more pieces than before. Maverick keeps his warm lips against my head long enough for me to almost ask him to stay.

  But before my words can come out, and before he can see the tears fall from my eyes, he walks up the stairs and leaves me there—silently sobbing, too scared to even watch him walk away.

  The slamming of the door opens up the flood gates of my heart.

  I fall to the ground, the sobs taking over me.