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“It’s not that simple,” Lachlan says, sharper than I like. “Having a fight with your boyfriend and getting drunk is one thing, but this...” he trails off with a shake of his head. “There are boundaries we can never come back from, and I know you don’t want that.”

“You don’t know what I want,” she shoots back. “How can you when no one ever asks? Everyone assumes I’m fine. Everly’s strong. Everly’s sweet. Everly will smile and say she understands. But I’m not a kid. I’m not stupid or confused. I know what I want, and it’s never changed.”

“You’re dating my son,” he barks. “When the alcohol wears off tomorrow and you have to look Bron and Lauren in the eyes, will you still think you’ve done the right thing?”

“I’m tired of always doing the right thing,” she snaps around the shredded hitch of emotion rising over the anger. “I’m tired of being sweet, reliable Everly who does everything she’s told. For once, I just ... I want...” she’s breathing hard. Every word is a jagged pant encompassing her. It kills me to see her so broken and being unable to drag her into my lap. “I want to be wanted. By you.”

I don’t know how Lachlan is keeping his shit together because I’m not. I can’t look at her without unraveling. I can’t sit here, inches from her, listening to her heart break withoutwanting to gather her up into my arms and never let her go. A deep, buried part of me can’t ignore the nagging little fact that I have never wanted anyone as brutally and violently as I want the tiny creature at my side. Not even Therese who I loved dearly and loyally for eight years. Who I raised a beautiful daughter with. Yes, I wanted Therese. Of course I did. She was my wife. But, God help me, I never burned for her. I never ached just to hold her. The passion I held for her was always soft, gentle. I loved her with the calm breeze of summer whispering through a field.

But Everly is a goddamn hurricane.

She is rage over the sea, pulling me to my death. She is gasoline and I am a lit match ready to burn to ashes in her. It’s chaos and destruction. The kind of possessive need that begs for me to grab her, pin her to the wall and fuck her until neither of us can walk again. It’s wild and untamed, and reckless. I want to protect her and destroy her in the same breath. I want to taste her tears and make her scream. I want to worship her and be her safe place, and I know he feels it, too. I know he’s dying to go up in flames with me. I saw it in his eyes back at the bar. I saw it in the way he held her like he’d die if she slipped through his fingers.

But I know why he’s resisting. I get it. Lauren is all I have left of Therese, and I love her. I have loved her from the moment I met her when she was twelve years old. Lauren will always be my daughter. Blood or not. She’s my responsibility. The promiseI made my wife and intend to keep until the end. So, I don’t pretend to misunderstand Lachlan’s restraint.

“It’s the alcohol talking,” he protests firmly. “You’re confused.”

Her voice splinters around the pain welling in her eyes.

“Stop telling me what I am!” I don’t miss the clumsy swipe of her hand across her damp cheek. “Stop treating me like I’m stupid. I know you want me. I’ve seen the way you look at me. Tell me it was the alcohol making me think—”

“Everly,” I whisper, and am ignored.

“Tell me it was the alcohol that made you touch me like that. Tell me it was the alcohol that made you look at me like I was yours all these years.”

Lachlan opens his mouth. Shuts it.

“You chose Bron!” he snaps at last.

Silence claps through the cabin as heavy as the promise of an approaching storm, but it lasts only a second before Everly fires back with brittle softness.

“And you let me!”

Lachlan casts her a sharp glance from the corner of his eyes before facing forward. “What did you want me to say, Everly?”

“That you want me.” Her voice softens. “Bron was your substitution. I thought, if I can’t have you, it would be close enough. I thought I could learn to love him the same way, but heused me and hurt me over and over again. He found ways to steal parts of me until I can’t even tell you who I am anymore, only what he wants me to be. All because I wanted you.”

Her voice rises with every confession, a shattered tumble of words unspooling into the cabin. Her tears cut into my soul, but her heartbreak, her pain fuels a hatred and rage in me that defies morality.

I want to kill Bron Shaw. I want to lock him in a cage and torture him until there’s nothing to grasp, except madness. I want him to cling to hope only for me to rip it from him with every piece of flesh I claim. I want to know everything he’s done to my Everly so that he can pay it back with his screams.

I may have made a vow to protect, to serve and defend. But I am a killer first. I have blood on my hands and a mark on my soul, and the second I get my hands on Bron, I will add another. I will clean him from Lachlan’s life. From Everly’s. From the world. I may have overlooked his behavior, his treatment of Everly because she never expressed her level of pain, but now that I know, now that she has given me a reason...

“I don’t want to be alone anymore,” she’s murmuring in her broken slurs.

I capture her chin and lift her damp face to mine, unable to sit quiet anymore while she suffers. “You are never alone, little one. I promise you. We will never let that happen.”

Her bottom lip quivers and I instinctively kiss it softly.

“You don’t have to make me feel better, Mr. Weaver. Mr. Shaw’s right. This was a mistake. I don’t know why I thought tonight was a good idea. I’m sorry I was wrong ... I thought for a second maybe I was enough. That I could be wanted back, but no one wants broken things—”

Lachlan twists the wheel off the road and stomps on the brakes. The truck shrieks to a stop on the side of the empty highway with an explosion of burnt rubber and asphalt.

My arm snaps out to grab Everly, to keep her from smacking the dashboard, but the other man’s hands are already on her. They’re closed around her arms, dragging her out of her seatbelt and into his lap. Her long legs extend across the seat she’d been occupying, and her heels dig into my thigh, but I barely notice as I watch my best friend claim her like a man possessed.

“I fucking want you!” he growls before his mouth clamps over hers.

It’s not lust that propels him, but despair. He’s silencing her, devouring her words until she’s a wheezing bundle twisted in his arms, too weak to do more than blink up at him.