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Breathing hard, I tip my head back to find Lachlan standing at my back, face stormy with concern.

“You okay?” he asks softly.

I nod slowly. “Thank you.”

I wait for him to let me go. To step back and put space between us. Unlike Van, I know he understands the importance of keeping our distance.

But he stays. He keeps his arm fastened around me like he might never let me go. His heart is a steady, confident drum beating into my shoulder blade through the strong wall of his chest.

It’s taking everything in me not to lean back and succumb. Made even harder when he brushes my hair back, lets his fingers graze my cheek, trace my bottom lips.

“Lachlan...”

His sigh reverberates through me. “You’re fucking killing me, sweetheart.”

It would have hurt less if he’d driven a dagger straight into my heart and twisted. His solemn confession is pain unlike any other and I am frozen to do anything but bite back the tears building in my throat.

“I’m sorry,” I say in barely a whisper.

His features soften even while his heart continues to break behind his eyes. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

With that, he brushes the sweetest poisonous kiss to my lips before letting me go.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

VAN

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The last bin gets strapped down and Lachlan slams the tailgate shut. He dusts his hands on his jeans and turns to Everly.

“Where to next?”

She hasn’t said much in the last hour. Her silence hangs heavy in the heat. It weighs on my chest. It’s not that she’s usually a chatterbox but seeing her so lost breaks something in me I can’t explain.

“My place, please.”

Lachlan hesitates and I think he’s going to man up and tell her he’s changed his mind about putting Jefferson and Bron before her. But he only nods and turns his head away.

“Are you hungry?”

Everly shakes her head and I can’t take it anymore.

“Did you eat this morning?”

Her big eyes jump to my face, startled like she hadn’t expected anyone to push, and that’s the damn problem, I think. It’s like she said yesterday, no one ever asks her how she actually is. Everyone sees the smiles and moves on with their own lives.But the person who is supposed to be looking after her, the man she let into her life, is a man child with no love for her.

That’s going to change. I don’t care what she’s used to. She’s my responsibility now.

“I’ll eat when I get home,” she murmurs.

Not good enough.

I glance past her to my best friend and I’m partially relieved to see the same look of displeasure on his face.

I know Lachlan isn’t an asshole. He is, but not to Everly. I know he can be rigid and set in his ways, with everyone but her. I have known his feelings towards her from the second I saw them in the same room for the first time. It may have eluded the people around us enjoying the winter festival, but no one knows Lachlan Shaw the way I do. And he watched her walk into that dance like a man prepared to sign his soul to the devil for just a kiss.

She was single then. Her parents alive. Her smiles were real and blinding and full of hope. She’d been wearing a pretty, silver dress with sleeves that fell off the shoulders and matching, strappy sandals. She’d been breathtaking. A Christmas present I ached to pull into a dark corner and unwrap.