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I study the man I’ve known since our scraped knee days. The guy I stayed friends with after my parents moved us out ofVancouver to Jefferson in the middle of high school. Thirty-two years later and we’re still as tight as brothers. We’ve been through the good times and the shit times. He was there for me when Ashley decided Jefferson wasn’t big enough for her, packed up and left me, taking our five-year-old with her to keep the child support coming. I was there for him and Lauren when his wife died unexpectedly during a routine gallbladder surgery. There is no one I trust and respect more.

But even I don’t know how to fix whatever is going on when he won’t tell me.

“Is there someone specific you had in mind?” I press.

He’s given a reprieve from answering when our drinks arrive and are set down in front of us.

I take mine, but hold it while he throws back half of his and motions the waiter for another.

So, it’s going to be one of those nights,I muse.

“It’s complicated,” he grumbles at last.

I raise an eyebrow. “Married?”

He snorts, staring hard at the neck of his bottle. “Boyfriend.”

I hiss through my teeth. “Shit. We could kill him?”

Van laughs, and it’s the real thing that throws his head back.

“Man, you have no idea how badly I would love that, but it still wouldn’t work out.”

I know Van gets women. There’s been more than one Friday where I’ve had to drive back to Jefferson alone. But I’ve never seen him hung up on anyone. Of the two of us, he’s the one women usually wanted to settle down with. He could have his pick without trying. So, the fact that there’s a woman out there who has caught his attention, but he can’t have, baffles me.

“Who is she? Do I know her?”

Van starts to shake his head. His gaze shifts to a million spots around me but never settles on mine. I can tell he’s about to make up a shitty lie when he freezes. His pale eyes stop their shifting and blink, fixed on something over my shoulder.

“Everly?”

The name alone has the power to absorb the air. It ignites an awareness, a collapsing sense of panic and euphoria that I am never fast enough to hide.

“What do you mean Everly—?”

He’s not listening to me. He barely acknowledges my sputtering when he’s shoving to his feet, a blur of rage as he practically upends the table. The assault topples his beer. Nearly does the same to mine, but I’m scrambling to save his drink as it rolls, giving the table the first wash of its life as beer sloshes free.

“Jesus, what the fuck?”

But my friend is moving and the chaos has my senses scrambling as I make to follow him through the crowd at a speed that seems almost inhuman.

Van is a charging bull through a China shop. His hulking six-five frame with arms like tree trunks and the build of a tank plows through the masses in the direction of the bar.

I see her a split second before Van has the mother fucker grinding on her by the back of his shirt. The kid, no more than twenty-five, may as well have been a kitten the way he’s tossed across the room. The table he slams into crashes under his weight, sending bottles and glass shattering across the floor. No one had been sitting there so the chairs go down with a riot of crashes. A few people scream and scramble away, but no one makes any attempt to jump in — thank God.

The commotion pulls the plug on the party as the music shuts off and all heads turn to the brawl as Van falls on the kid, fists flying. In the stifling silence, the crack of bone on meat is vicious and violent. It echoes. A cacophony of pain and retribution as the boy tries to fight him off and fails.

I should probably help, but my legs rush to the tiny creature gripping the bar for support.

“Everly?” I brush back a tangle of auburn off her flushed face. “Are you hurt? Where’s Bron?” I lift my head and scan the crowd for my son. Not finding him, I face her once more. “Stay here.”

Leaving her, I hurry to pull my friend off the kid. Being roughly the same size and build makes the task easy enough intheory, but Van has murderous rage on his side, and about thirty years of military training.

“Let him go,” I growl into his ear. “Do you want to spend the night in a cell?”

“He had his hands on her,” he snarls.

The kid, despite his busted lip and nose, the blooming shiner starting to halo his left eye, glares up at him. Bloody teeth bare in a sneer.