Intermission (Love Triangle Duet Book 2) Read online

  INTERMISSION

  LOVE TRIANGLE BOOK TWO

  © 2019 Lisa Suzanne

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the US Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher or author constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. 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 the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law and except for excerpts used in reviews. If you would like to use any words from this book other than for review purposes, prior written permission must be obtained from the publisher.

  Published in the United States of America by Books by LS, LLC.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All characters and events in this work are figments of the author’s imagination.

  Cover Designed by Najla Qamber Designs

  Cover Photograph by Rafa Catala

  Cover Models: Fabian and Gabriela

  Content Editing by It’s Your Story Content Editing

  Proofreading by Proofreading by Katie

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  BOOKS BY LISA SUZANNE

  A LITTLE LIKE DESTINY SERIES

  A LITTLE LIKE DESTINY (Book One)

  ONLY EVER YOU (Book Two)

  CLEAN BREAK (Book Three)

  THE UNBREAKABLE THREAD DUET

  THE POWER TO BREAK (Book One)

  THE INVISIBLE THREAD (Book Two)

  THE POWER TO BREAK - AUDIOBOOK

  THE INVISIBLE THREAD - AUDIOBOOK

  THE TRUTH AND LIES DUET

  IT STARTED WITH A LIE (Book One)

  IT ENDED WITH THE TRUTH (Book Two)

  TAKE MY HEART

  THE BENEFITS OF BAD DECISIONS

  CLICK HERE FOR MORE

  DEDICATION

  Still for my 3Ms.

  Love you three!

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE: DELANEY

  CHAPTER TWO: DELANEY

  CHAPTER THREE: DELANEY

  CHAPTER FOUR: DELANEY

  CHAPTER FIVE: DELANEY

  CHAPTER SIX: GAVIN

  CHAPTER SEVEN: DELANEY

  CHAPTER EIGHT: GAVIN

  CHAPTER NINE: DELANEY

  CHAPTER TEN: GAVIN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: DELANEY

  CHAPTER TWELVE: GAVIN

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: CHASE

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: DELANEY

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: DELANEY

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: CHASE

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: DELANEY

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: GAVIN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: DELANEY

  CHAPTER TWENTY: CHASE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: DELANEY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: DELANEY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: DELANEY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: DELANEY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: DELANEY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: DELANEY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: GAVIN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: DELANEY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: CHASE

  CHAPTER THIRTY: GAVIN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: DELANEY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: DELANEY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: DELANEY

  EPILOGUE: DELANEY

  A LITTLE LIKE DESTINY: A PREVIEW

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AUTHOR LINKS

  CHAPTER ONE: DELANEY

  over fourteen years ago

  “There’s nothing like high school, Dee,” my older brother Theo said to me. School would start in less than a week. He’d be a senior and I’d be a freshman, and I couldn’t wait to wear the new outfit my mom took me shopping for. I couldn’t wait to meet new friends, and I couldn’t wait to see all the cute boys I kept hearing about.

  It wasn’t like I was going to the big public school that my junior high fed into like most of my friends. No, my parents selected Prestbury Academy for me, an elite school attended by the sons and daughters of people who could afford it. I didn’t really understand what a mid-five-figure tuition meant, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop thinking of my brother’s friends and how freaking hot they were. I couldn’t wait to go to the same school as them and maybe meet boys my own age who were just as hot.

  I remember seeing one in particular that caught my eye when my mom drove me there a week earlier to drop off some paperwork. He was walking from the building to the freshman football practice field. He had dark blond hair, and even from a distance, I could tell he had eyes the color of the sky.

  I had a dream about him last night.

  I dreamed he asked me to Homecoming and he kissed me, and I couldn’t stop feeling his lips on mine in that dream.

  I’d only kissed one other boy, and it was hardly worth mentioning. He was a junior high boy. The one in my dream, though...he was a high school boy.

  “You’re gonna love it,” Theo said from my doorway. “Just make sure to study like Mom and Dad always say. Earn good grades so you can get into a good college. Don’t go boy crazy, but remember why you’re there.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes. Sometimes Theo came across like he was the boss of the family just because he was the oldest kid, but he wasn’t. He didn’t have any control over me, and so I mostly just let him talk and pretended like I was listening. Except when his hot friends were over. Then I paid a little closer attention.

  He turned to leave, like he got the last word in, and my attention turned to the window as a large, white moving truck pulled into the driveway next door.

  A black Mercedes and a white Lexus parked at the curb, and then an elegant woman stepped out of the Lexus followed by two teenaged girls who looked to be a little older than me. A dapper looking man stepped out of the driver’s side of the Mercedes, and a boy who looked to be close to my age stepped out of the passenger side.

  I studied him from my bedroom window. He was definitely way cuter than the boys I graduated junior high with, but I couldn’t tell from this distance whether he was as cute as the football boy I’d already formed a major crush on.

  I moved a little closer to get a better look, and just as I was about to open the blinds wider to squint through the screen, the boy’s attention turned up toward my window. I flew to the ground just out of view, feeling like a total fool that I might’ve been caught.

  I backed away from the window in mortification, hoping he didn’t see me...but what if he did?

  I shook my head at myself. Great first impression, Delaney. Getting caught spying on the new neighbors.

  I shook my head at myself and scurried out of my bedroom to let my mom know someone new was moving in next door.

  “We should introduce ourselves,” she said, and then she stepped over to the pantry. She found an unopened package of puff pastries in there—she always kept something around for cases just like this, though she ended up throwing much of her stash away when it expired because she didn’t need it. My dad tried to convince her to start purchasing something that stayed fresh longer—like nuts or chocolates, for example—but she was stuck in her ways.

  “I’ll come with,” I said bravely as she arranged the store-bought pastries on a plate so they looked like she freshly baked them.

  She nodded and we walked over together. She rang the bell, and I stood
a little shyly behind her. A beautiful girl that looked about Theo’s age opened the door.

  “Hi, honey,” my mom said smoothly. “We live next door and just wanted to come over and say hello. I’m Mrs. Lockwood and this is my daughter, Delaney. Are your parents here?”

  “How nice!” the girl said. “I’m Mila Brooks. They were just telling the movers where to put some of the furniture. Come on in and I’ll see if I can track them down for you.”

  She opened the door wider and we stood in the empty foyer that would soon hold family portraits on the walls as this house turned into a home.

  The dapper man stepped into the hallway and gave us a big smile. He had dark blue eyes and just the start of some gray peppering his dark hair near his sideburns and temples. A beautiful woman with navy eyes and caramel hair trailed slightly behind him. Mila, the one who answered the door, was the spitting image of the mother.

  “Hi there,” the man said, his smile so friendly that it reached his eyes, which crinkled at the corners. “Palmer Brooks. So pleased you stopped by.”

  “And I’m Naomi Brooks,” the woman said. “It’s lovely to meet you.” She stuck out her hand for both my mom and I to shake.

  “Monica Lockwood,” my mom said. “And this is my daughter Delaney. We live next door.” She pointed to the left. “And we just wanted to bring you a little something to welcome you to the neighborhood.”

  “That’s so kind of you,” Mrs. Brooks said, accepting my mom’s proffered plate of pastries. “We’d love to return the favor by having your family over for dinner once we get settled.”

  The boy I saw from my window passed through the hallway just then, and he was cute up close. “Ma?” he said, and then he stopped short when he looked up and spotted my mom and I standing there.

  “Come meet our new neighbors, honey,” Mrs. Brooks said. “This is Gavin. He’ll be a freshman at Prestbury Academy this year.”

  “Me too!” I said way too enthusiastically—but I was excited to have a potential new friend before school even started, and a cute one at that. I needed to rein it in a little, though. Like Theo said, it wasn’t about being boy crazy...but maybe finding a boy to be my friend could help unlock a few doors, and who better than my new next-door neighbor? “I’m Delaney.”

  He gave me a little wave, and I had the sudden inclination he totally saw me checking him out through the window. But the way his eyes met mine now, even with a little bit of shyness behind his...I could tell he was interested in getting to know me a little better, and I wasn’t opposed to that at all.

  “Is your daughter attending Prestbury as well?” my mom asked.

  “Mila will be starting her freshman year at UCLA,” Mrs. Brooks said, “but our other daughter, Joss, will be a junior there.”

  “We have two boys, Theo who will be a senior at Prestbury, and Porter who is just starting seventh grade.”

  “How wonderful to have friendly neighbors with kids!” Mr. Brooks interjected.

  “We simply must get together for pinochle and the kids can swim in our backyard,” my mom said. “Let’s do it tonight, even. You don’t want to worry about dinner, so come over and we’ll cook for you.”

  “Oh we couldn’t possibly impose,” Mrs. Brooks said at the same time Mr. Brooks said, “We’d love to!”

  They glanced at each other, and then Mrs. Brooks repeated her husband’s statement with a smile. “We’d love to.”

  And so began my family’s friendship with the Brooks family.

  CHAPTER TWO: DELANEY

  almost ten years ago

  I glanced at the boxes stacked in the corner of my bedroom with a heavy sigh. It was time to fill them. I only had a few more weeks before I had to leave Beverly Hills for Stanford, a nearly six-hour drive, and I certainly wasn’t ready to leave my boyfriend of two years behind. He was staying near home, heading off to USC to play football, and I was going to Stanford because I was accepted at my dream school.

  Well...not my dream school, per se. More my parents’ dream for me. But I had to admit, as the third ranked medical school in the country, it was a solid choice, and since I had aspirations to become a surgeon, I’d agreed to Stanford nearly a year ago since my brother already attended and paved the way to make things easy for me.

  But dreams sometimes transition as life does, and in this particular transition, I wasn’t ready to leave Chase, the boy I had a crush on before I even started high school, the boy I finally landed at the end of our sophomore year.

  I’d thought a hundred times of telling my parents I just wanted to go to USC, or even UCLA. My grades were good, and paired with the volunteering and extracurricular participation my parents forced on me along with their steep bank accounts, I could get into any school I wanted.

  And, unfortunately for me, I wanted to go to the same school as Chase.

  As I stood in my bedroom staring at boxes that had yet to be packed, the skin on my arms prickled with some sense of foreboding. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention beneath my swinging ponytail, and then a knock sounded at my door over the loud music coming from my stereo system.

  I turned down the music and opened the door to find Maya, our housekeeper, and Chase standing a few feet behind her. “Ms. Lockwood, Mr. Camden here to see you.”

  “Thank you, Maya.” I opened the door wider and grinned at my boyfriend, but he didn’t smile back. In fact, he was looking at the ground...not at me.

  The sense of foreboding intensified, but I pretended like it didn’t.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked as Maya left and I pulled Chase into my bedroom, shutting us into privacy. I tossed my arms around his neck and planted a kiss on the corner of his mouth, expecting something in return...but he stood stiffly. He was normally very affectionate, so something was definitely wrong. “I thought you had that one-on-one meeting with your coach today.”

  He nodded. “I did. I’m done.”

  “Well, how’d it go?” I dropped my arms from around his neck as fear stabbed at my spine. I drew in a deep breath because I somehow felt like I’d need the extra oxygen.

  He nodded and started pacing my room. “Fine. Good.”

  “That’s it? Fine. Good? What did he say?” My knees suddenly felt a little weak as I watched him pace. He was deep in thought, a look I usually only saw in his eyes right before a game.

  He stared down at the carpet as he wore a pattern back and forth. He wasn’t looking at me, an immediate sign that I wasn’t going to like what he had to say. “We talked a lot about how hard it is for freshmen to balance academics and athletics. We talked about how football will be my life for the foreseeable future, and if I’m serious about a potential future in the game, I need to block out distractions and work my ass off.”

  I didn’t say anything because I suddenly knew deep down what sort of distractions he might be referring to. I backed up into the bed, my knees folding as I hit the edge. I sat wordlessly and involuntarily, not even realizing I was actually seated as his words tore into my chest.

  I felt the truth as it seared into me. Like it was some competition, he was choosing the game over me. Over us. Ironically, just as I’d been contemplating choosing him over my own future.

  “And I’m a distraction,” I surmised, as if it’d help the blow if I warded it off first.

  It didn’t.

  He froze in his pacing and finally looked up to meet my eyes. Chase Camden, the boy I knew so well inside and out, stood in front of me with fear etched onto his damn perfect face. It was everywhere—in his eyes that matched the sky on a clear day, in his perfect cheekbones, in his square jaw that was just starting to show a bit of a shadow that was transforming him from a boy into a man before my very eyes.

  He stepped over to me and pulled me up from the bed before pulling me into his arms. I stared up at him for a beat before I gave in and nestled my head onto his chest, but I didn’t miss it. This strong kid who carried our football team to a state championship and was always the
life of the party had tears in his eyes.

  “Dee, I love you. So much. But you deserve the kind of man who can dedicate his life to yours. That isn’t me, not right now, and not for the next four years. Maybe beyond that.”

  “We can make it work, Chase,” I said softly as tears started to pinch behind my eyes. “I won’t distract you. I’ll just be here to support you. To cheer you on like I’ve always done.” My voice wavered on the last few words as the tears started to spill over.

  “Yeah, six hours away.” His arms tightened around me. “Babe, I can’t do it. I can’t have a long-distance relationship with you and focus on football here.”

  “Then I’ll switch schools.” I was begging, and I damn well knew it. But I couldn’t let the best thing that ever happened to me just walk away like this. “I’ll go to USC with you.”

  “Then you’ll be a real distraction in the flesh. Coach said I have to focus on football, and as much as I hate it, for now, that means I need to go into this by myself.”

  I pulled out of his arms. “So that’s it?” I asked, tears staining my cheeks.

  He eyed me sadly and wiped one eye. I understood that this was hard for him, too, but he was the one making the decision. It wasn’t like he was ending it because he didn’t want to be with me. He was ending it because he thought he had to, and I wasn’t sure how to talk him down from that.

  He lifted a shoulder. “I guess.”

  I closed my eyes and wiped my cheeks as I drew in a breath, and then I shook my head. “No, Chase. It’s not. Give me one more night. One more try to convince you that we belong together, that we can make this work.”

  His eyes edged over to my bed in contemplation—the very place I first gave him my virginity over eighteen months ago, the same place I’d allowed him inside my body hundreds of times since. It was easy to find the time since my parents were always off at some charity event or networking soiree, and we’d always taken full advantage of that.