Page 10 of Craving Consequences

It hadn’t been an easy conversation. Lauren had been neck deep in whatever drug she could get her hands on, whatever she could use to numb her thoughts through the night.

Leaving her supply had been a fight. At twenty, she was an adult and I had no right to force her to do anything, but I dragged her along with me.

And it worked. Not right away, but she became calmer.

Less erratic. Less angry and volatile. The pivot was more noticeable when she met Everly.

The two clicked on a level that felt almost supernatural.

Part of me thinks it was Everly’s calm to Lauren’s chaos, Lauren’s fire to Everly’s shyness.

Together, they seemed to find their place.

Lauren made new — better — friends. Got a job she loves, and an apartment.

I don’t think she’s ready to fully submerge herself in the Jefferson hivemind, but she’s safe and happy, and that’s all I can ask for.

We pass the church belt of town, the looping band extending three city blocks and housing a cluster of religious homes. Even in the murky dusk, Our Lady of the Lake looms proudly above the others. The original building of worship with its prominent bell tower extended against the night sky .

I’m exhausted by the time Lachlan turns down Maple Crest and into the driveway of his two-story bungalow. The house sits in secluded darkness, hidden amongst walls of brush and trees that never fail to make me uneasy.

“I don’t see Bron’s SUV,” Lachlan murmurs quietly. “He must be spending the night at a friend’s.”

Or Lauren’s.

I don’t say it. I don’t think I have to. His bright, cherry red Cadillac Escalade is unmistakable in Jefferson, a place content with their trucks and compact cars. It wouldn’t take long for the whole town to be talking about seeing it parked outside of Lauren’s apartment.

Everly shifts and I turn my attention to her and the tiny goosebumps rising on her skin.

“She’s cold,” I tell the other man.

Lachlan’s out of the truck before I even finish. I kick open my door and gingerly lift her against my chest as I follow the other man up the steps. He holds the door open and motions with the other to the set of stairs on my left.

“Guestroom.”

I had expected him to put her in his room. I would. I would have kept her in my bed until neither of us could walk straight, but I suppose the guestroom makes more sense in case Bron returns early to find his girlfriend — ex-girlfriend — in his father’s bed .

Still, I don’t ask questions when carrying Everly up with Lachlan right behind me. At the door, he continues past me to the room at the end of the hall, leaving me alone to take my bundle inside.

Everly doesn’t stir, not even when I set her gently on the mattress with her legs dangling over the edge. The front of her dress slips open, baring a firm tit, the peak already pointed and ready for my mouth. But I restrain myself as I wait for Lachlan to return with a black t-shirt in hand.

He stops next to me and we continue to study the beauty splayed before us in offering. Her body, marked and stained by our seed. Her hair, a wild tangle haloing her perfect features.

My attention drops to the hem of her dress. It’s bunched up high enough that I don’t miss the damp streaks running down her thighs.

Next to me, Lachlan breathes as hard as I am. A comforting sound given my own attempts to restrain the urge to do things I know are wrong.

“We have to take the dress off,” he states with the conviction of someone declaring a new law.

It does not need to be said that we both know she’s completely naked once we do. She doesn’t even have shoes on. She’d be on the bed wearing nothing, except our cum.

I reach for the stretched and wrinkled garment. It comes off too easily with the single tug. It falls to the floor at our feet, and neither of us move. We make no effort to replace it with the top bunched in Lachlan’s fist.

Those earlier glimpses of Everly painted in the shadows of the truck is nothing to her lying in the light, skin soft and bare and beautifully displayed as if in welcome.

This Everly is a buffet of everything I want to dive face first into.

I want to push her thighs wide and clean the mess she let us leave in her.

I want to add to it. I want her to wake up in the morning so full she leaks for a week.

Things that are highly inappropriate given that she’s unconscious.

“We should...”

I nod at Lachlan’s random gesturing.

“I’ll sit her up and you pull the top down,” I say, already reaching for her.

The other man makes no argument, but shakes out the shirt. He bunches it in preparation as I slide my hands under the supple curves of her breasts and down across her ribs. I tuck down and across her back.

Somehow, we manage to make it work. We get her dressed. Lachlan scoops her up so I can pull the sheets down and step back, letting him lay her down.

Then we leave.

Quickly. Without looking back.

Lachlan shuts the door on the heap of trouble we’ve gotten ourselves into and we lock eyes. Neither of us say a word, but the silence speaks volumes. This whole night has been a test and I can’t fully be sure if we passed or not.

Lachlan starts downstairs and I follow. I know he’s heading into the kitchen before he makes the turn down the corridor. The fridge is thrown open and two beers are pulled out.

“Maybe we should start drinking at home,” he mutters, shoving a frosted bottle into my palm.

I snort a laugh as I round the island. We each pull out a wooden stool on opposite ends and drop into it.

“So...” he starts.

I twist the cap off my drink, throw down half and swallow before mumbling, “So.”

He raps his nails on the glass. “That was not on my bingo card this year.”

My laugh is harder this time, laced with resignation and defeat even as the two guilty fingers pang with reminder.

“Me neither, man.”

Lachlan pops open his drink at last and takes a swig. “So, what you said...?”

I don’t ask for clarification. Don’t have to. The fact that neither of us can meet the other’s eye is answer enough.

“Yeah.”

“Did you mean it?”

I clear my throat. “Yup. You?”

He takes a longer, deeper pull. “Yeah. ”

I nod and scratch my chin. The growing fuzz scuffs under my nails.

“What now?”

Lachlan shrugs. “Nothing. We can’t. It has to end tonight. She’s Bron’s girlfriend.”

“Ex,” I mumble a little too quickly.

“What difference does that make?” His brown eyes pierce through me, hard with a simmering annoyance he’s fighting to restrain.

“In this town, the only person who will get hurt is Everly. They will crucify her. No one is going to accept her with two men, never mind the fathers of her boyfriend and best friend. She’ll lose everything.

And after what Lauren and Bron did, I don’t know if she’ll be strong enough to take the hit.

Besides,” he pauses to take a deep pull of his beer, “she shouldn’t have to be. ”

That part slaps the hardest because he’s not wrong.

Everly shouldn’t have to be strong enough to survive another storm just because we couldn’t keep our hands to ourselves.

She shouldn’t be the one paying the price for the chaos we dragged her into and she sure as hell shouldn’t be the one left holding the pieces after it all falls apart.

I grit my teeth and stare at the wall behind him. “So what? We just walk away?”

Lachlan leans forward, elbows bracing on the island. “Wouldn’t you to protect her? ”

I don’t respond. I can’t. The silence between us is thick. Heavy with guilt and a longing that makes my chest ache. I’m ready to rip my ribs open and claw it all out just to calm the pain.

And maybe that’s what breaks me.

The knowledge that I have no choice. I will never be the reason she’s dragged through the mud.

I won’t be the cause that breaks her. It’s an acknowledgement I already had in the truck on the drive back, but hearing the words out loud, the rational thought verbalized, I will never be selfish with her.

“We let her go.”

It’s a statement, but Lachlan nods wistfully. “We let her go ... after tonight.”

My gaze meets the other man’s and an understanding forms between us. A silent agreement we both know is wrong, but there is nothing else.

We finish our drinks and make our way upstairs to the pintsized destruction curled up in a bed much too large for her. Neither of us speak when we undress and climb in on either side of her. It shouldn’t be so easy to fold her between us. We’re not small men, but she fits like she was made for us.

I breathe her in, brush a kiss to the top of her head and close my eyes.

We’ll let her go in the morning.