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I’m not sure I wouldn’t have punched him in the mouth if he’d said that tomy face. Son or not.

Bron has always been like his mother. Ashley had all the beauty, but zero compassion. She didn’t care who she hurt as long as she got what she wanted.

At sixteen, she decided she wanted me, and my teenage, hormone riddled brain hadn’t thought twice about fucking her bare because she swore she was on the pill. I trusted her. I knew that she knew I was leaving Vancouver at the end of the month. I thought it was a goodbye fuck only to learn four months later I was having a kid with her.

That news had turned my whole world upside down and didn’t stop until Ashley decided a small town wasn’t big enough for her. She took Bron and moved to the city thinking I would follow only to realize she didn’t want a teenager and sent him back at nineteen.

But that reckless, irresponsible behavior runs through Bron. Even as a kid, his temper was off the chart. His rage left holes in the walls and shattered dishes. Ashley waved it off as growing pains and gave in just to stop him from fussing.

I love my son, but I don’t like him. He’s not a man I respect. His mentality alone, his greed to be pampered and doted on is a pure reflection of his mother who thought owning a construction company in a small town would make her rich, but became furious when it didn’t. Sure, I made good, honest money, but not the kind Ashley and Bron wanted.

So, he found Everly at her weakest and latched on.

“Since it’s none of your business how I talk to my girlfriend when she’s acting like a baby. Tell her to call me or—”

“Or what, Bron?” I threaten through gritted teeth.

His scoff is unmistakable.“Just tell her to fucking call me.”

I watch Van poke Everly in the side with a glittery fairy wand while her back is turned. The box she’d been rifling through slips from her fingers with her involuntary jolt. The contents spill across the concrete. She eyes the mess with horror before swinging narrowed eyes on the man blinking at her with feigned innocence.

She says something and snatches the wand from him. To my amusement, she swats him on the hip. Her squeal of laughter when Van lunges to take it back from her has my lips curling.

“Hello?”

The voice in my ear reminds me why I’m standing alone in the middle of the path rather than with the two people who mean the world to me.

“No.”

I bite back my chuckle when Everly grabs a fistful of fake flowers and smacks Van in the chest, sending an explosion of fabric petals and leaves flying, tangling with Everly’s hysterical laughter.

“What? What do you meanno?Is that Everly? Put her on.”

I’m barely listening but answer, “We’re busy. She’ll call you later.”

I hang up on his outraged sputtering and pocket my phone. Everly and Van are having a full war by the time I reach them. Artificial flowers lie in a tattered mess around their feet. There is glitter everywhere, caught in Everly’s hair, on her skin. It clings to Van’s top. His hands. There is an upended box of Thanksgiving decorations strewn across the concrete. Getting trampled and crushed. Going unnoticed by the pair. It’s chaos in every sense of the word, and yet so painfully natural something in my chest pangs.

Everly catches sight of me with her beautiful face bright with laughter and lit with a light that reminds me of the first time I saw her. Really saw her. Not little Everly Cavanaugh, but Everly with the tidy suits and charming smile standing on my porch with her clipboard and a pocket full of dreams. She’d held out her sign up sheet and asked me to help her save the old bridge separating Jefferson from the Ditch. The bridge her parents would die on three years later. I would have signed my soul away if she’d asked. I would have given up everything I owned. And felt like a complete pervert melting over a twenty-year-old, but the feeling never went away.

“Lachlan, control your friend,” Everly of today teases, making a futile leap for the stick.

Van snatches it out of her reach. His arm loops over her head and comes down behind her. It makes contact with a sharp, satisfying smack across her tight ass.

Everly yelps. A sound that goes straight to my cock. Her hands fly down to cover her backside.

“Ow!” her bottom lip puckers and I’m starving to draw it in between my teeth. “Mean!”

Van smirks and she earns another spanking on her other cheek.

“Van,” she whines, holding her cheeks protectively. “You’re not playing fair.”

Instinct or some other madness born from the last twenty-four hours has me closing the space between us. Has me slipping up behind her as if I’ve done it a million times and she shrinks back into me like I’m there to protect her. Not assist my friend in marking her round little ass until she can’t sit. All I want is to pull up her skirt and let Van do the strikes while I soothe the after burn with my palms.

“Maybe you deserve it after what you did last night,” I remark, sliding my arms across her back and pinning her to my chest. “You were such a bad girl, Everly.”

She’s gone still in my hold. Her head is tipped back, eyes dark as she searches my face. She stands with her arms pinned between us, restrained to my mercy and she’s not fighting.

“What did I do?” she breathes, words barely audible.