Page 1 of Craving Consequences

LACHLAN

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PRESENT DAY

“Does the music suck balls or am I just getting old?”

I sidestep a heavily painted grandmother in leather chaps and a sheer halter. Her bloodshot eyes squint through me as she ambles past.

“You’re getting old,” I yell back over the heavy thump of bass accompanied by a shrieking wail of angry hyenas.

Van isn’t wrong. What used to be a gin-soaked house of rock and roll has fallen to the times. Devolving from a great place for a cold beer to a mosh pit of oily bodies and cat torture ... or whatever this music is.

“We need a new place,” Van gripes as we find our usual spot near the bar.

The round table is layered with a sticky sheen of taffy and carved with initials, slurs and a tiny dick with massive balls. The surface alone harbors several health code violations, but what’s a little risk of death for the chance to unwind after the longest week in history ?

Van drops into the seat opposite me with a grunt that has me side eyeing him.

“You okay over there, old man?”

At forty and thirty-nine, neither of us are particularly old, but some days, I’m ready to hang up my hardhat and live in the wild somewhere. Grow my own food, hunt, fish. Just live in solitude until I’m dead.

“I’m ready for bed,” he mutters, making the mistake of setting his forearm on the tacky table.

I smirk when he flinches and jerks his arm back.

He scowls and rubs the spot before fixing me with his annoyed glower.

“I think we should just meet at one of our houses and drink. At least it’s quiet and I won’t need a shot in the morning. ”

Our usual Monday night tradition of driving the four hours to Mayfield has had a good run, but even I have to agree it’s getting tired. Or I am.

It used to be Fridays before our schedules started to clash. Van, as the assistant to the town’s only electrician, is on call around the clock. So far, Mondays have been pretty good in terms of boys’ night.

“Jefferson needs a fucking bar,” he continues to mutter.

I do laugh then. “I can’t imagine what kind of town meeting a fucking bar would require, but I guess we could bring it up to council. ”

Van rolls gray eyes. “You know what I mean. Eight hours of driving for two drinks is a waste of gas and energy.”

I catch the eye of a waiter with lime green hair and enough piercings to get stopped at the airport and I motion for two beers.

“Didn’t realize you had such a busy life outside of this,” I remark, facing my best friend once more.

Van’s expression hardens before he deflates with a sigh. “Sorry. I’ve been weirdly on edge the last few days. I feel restless and annoyed. I can’t explain it.”

“When’s the last time you got laid?”

His scoff says it before the words come out. “It’s not always about sex, Lach. I miss having a person.”

“Then date. There are at least a dozen women in Jefferson alone who—”

“I’m not interested.”

I laugh. “You know the only way you’re going to start a relationship is by dating, right?”

Lines pinch the corners of his mouth. His gaze locks with mine and I can see him working up the nerve to spill the thoughts clamoring up in his head.

But I also see when he changes his mind and looks away.

“Just forget it.”

I study the man I’ve known since our scraped knee days.

The guy I stayed friends with after my parents moved us out of Vancouver 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 in theory, 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.

“She fucking asked for it!”

That only adds gasoline on the inferno that is Van.

“You piece of shit!”

I barely manage to pull him back when he lunges again.

“We need to check on Everly,” I tell him, knowing that is the only thing that will calm him. “She could be hurt.”

Body practically vibrating, Van growls deep in his throat. A sound I know means it’s over — if the kid is smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

He’s not.

“Maybe put a fucking leash on her.”

Van’s entire weight slams into mine, nearly taking me down when I put myself between him and the idiot still sprawled across the filthy floor.

“Enough! Fuck him. Let’s go.”

Gray eyes nearly black, Van bares his teeth but shoves away from me to turn to Everly .

As if the very sight of her has the power to stifle the fire, every drop of his fury vanishes. His monstrous frame shrinks, softens as he goes to her.

“You okay, baby?”

Everly slurs something about fish that I don’t hear.

With Van distracted, I get my first real look at her, at her barely clad figure stuffed in a tiny, red dress that covers nothing and the ice picks strapped to her tiny feet. Her hair is a riot of soft curls around a face painted to make a man sin.

Smokey hazel eyes peer up into Van’s face with all the trust in the world when he drags her into his arms and lifts her up against his chest. Her head immediately finds the curve of his neck like they’d done this a million times before.

I’m jealous. I’ve never been jealous of Van for anything, but watching Everly loop her arms around his shoulders and nestle in, suddenly I want to punch something.

Instead, I dig into my back pocket, pull out my wallet and drop several bills on the bar to cover our drinks and the damages.

“Sorry about that, Tommy,” I tell the barkeep. “Let me know if that’s not enough.”

Tommy waves the offer away with a shake of his head. “I was about to step in myself if Van hadn’t.”

I offer him a humorless grin and start to thank him when a scuffle has me glancing back .

Van and Everly are already out of sight, but the kid has untangled himself from the ground and looks on the verge of doing something stupid.