Page 6 of Craving Consequences

“Why?” our torment murmurs in the painful silence. Her face tips to mine, so fucking close I could kiss her without moving. And I do. I fucking do because she’s right there and I’m not passing up a single opportunity. “Why won’t you fuck me? Was I not good? I can try harder.”

My heart shatters in my chest at the hurt in her eyes.

“God, baby, you were fucking perfect. ”

She licks her lips, and I’m ensnared in the simple motion. “Then why? Why does no one want me?”

“It’s not that simple,” Lachlan says, sharper than I like. “Having a fight with your boyfriend and getting drunk is one thing, but this...” he trails off with a shake of his head. “There are boundaries we can never come back from, and I know you don’t want that.”

“You don’t know what I want,” she shoots back. “How can you when no one ever asks? Everyone assumes I’m fine. Everly’s strong. Everly’s sweet. Everly will smile and say she understands. But I’m not a kid. I’m not stupid or confused. I know what I want, and it’s never changed.”

“You’re dating my son,” he barks. “When the alcohol wears off tomorrow and you have to look Bron and Lauren in the eyes, will you still think you’ve done the right thing?”

“I’m tired of always doing the right thing,” she snaps around the shredded hitch of emotion rising over the anger.

“I’m tired of being sweet, reliable Everly who does everything she’s told.

For once, I just ... I want...” she’s breathing hard.

Every word is a jagged pant encompassing her.

It kills me to see her so broken and being unable to drag her into my lap. “I want to be wanted. By you.”

I don’t know how Lachlan is keeping his shit together because I’m not.

I can’t look at her without unraveling. I can’t sit here, inches from her, listening to her heart break without wanting to gather her up into my arms and never let her go.

A deep, buried part of me can’t ignore the nagging little fact that I have never wanted anyone as brutally and violently as I want the tiny creature at my side.

Not even Therese who I loved dearly and loyally for eight years.

Who I raised a beautiful daughter with. Yes, I wanted Therese.

Of course I did. She was my wife. But, God help me, I never burned for her.

I never ached just to hold her. The passion I held for her was always soft, gentle.

I loved her with the calm breeze of summer whispering through a field.

But Everly is a goddamn hurricane.

She is rage over the sea, pulling me to my death.

She is gasoline and I am a lit match ready to burn to ashes in her.

It’s chaos and destruction. The kind of possessive need that begs for me to grab her, pin her to the wall and fuck her until neither of us can walk again.

It’s wild and untamed, and reckless. I want to protect her and destroy her in the same breath.

I want to taste her tears and make her scream.

I want to worship her and be her safe place, and I know he feels it, too.

I know he’s dying to go up in flames with me.

I saw it in his eyes back at the bar. I saw it in the way he held her like he’d die if she slipped through his fingers.

But I know why he’s resisting. I get it.

Lauren is all I have left of Therese, and I love her.

I have loved her from the moment I met her when she was twelve years old.

Lauren will always be my daughter. Blood or not.

She’s my responsibility. The promise I made my wife and intend to keep until the end.

So, I don’t pretend to misunderstand Lachlan’s restraint.

“It’s the alcohol talking,” he protests firmly. “You’re confused.”

Her voice splinters around the pain welling in her eyes.

“Stop telling me what I am!” I don’t miss the clumsy swipe of her hand across her damp cheek. “Stop treating me like I’m stupid. I know you want me. I’ve seen the way you look at me. Tell me it was the alcohol making me think—”

“Everly,” I whisper, and am ignored.

“Tell me it was the alcohol that made you touch me like that. Tell me it was the alcohol that made you look at me like I was yours all these years.”

Lachlan opens his mouth. Shuts it.

“You chose Bron!” he snaps at last.

Silence claps through the cabin as heavy as the promise of an approaching storm, but it lasts only a second before Everly fires back with brittle softness.

“And you let me!”

Lachlan casts her a sharp glance from the corner of his eyes before facing forward. “What did you want me to say, Everly?”

“That you want me.” Her voice softens. “Bron was your substitution. I thought, if I can’t have you, it would be close enough.

I thought I could learn to love him the same way, but he used me and hurt me over and over again.

He found ways to steal parts of me until I can’t even tell you who I am anymore, only what he wants me to be. All because I wanted you.”

Her voice rises with every confession, a shattered tumble of words unspooling into the cabin. Her tears cut into my soul, but her heartbreak, her pain fuels a hatred and rage in me that defies morality.

I want to kill Bron Shaw. I want to lock him in a cage and torture him until there’s nothing to grasp, except madness.

I want him to cling to hope only for me to rip it from him with every piece of flesh I claim.

I want to know everything he’s done to my Everly so that he can pay it back with his screams.

I may have made a vow to protect, to serve and defend.

But I am a killer first. I have blood on my hands and a mark on my soul, and the second I get my hands on Bron, I will add another.

I will clean him from Lachlan’s life. From Everly’s.

From the world. I may have overlooked his behavior, his treatment of Everly because she never expressed her level of pain, but now that I know, now that she has given me a reason. ..

“I don’t want to be alone anymore,” she’s murmuring in her broken slurs.

I capture her chin and lift her damp face to mine, unable to sit quiet anymore while she suffers. “You are never alone, little one. I promise you. We will never let that happen.”

Her bottom lip quivers and I instinctively kiss it softly .

“You don’t have to make me feel better, Mr. Weaver. Mr. Shaw’s right. This was a mistake. I don’t know why I thought tonight was a good idea. I’m sorry I was wrong ... I thought for a second maybe I was enough. That I could be wanted back, but no one wants broken things—”

Lachlan twists the wheel off the road and stomps on the brakes. The truck shrieks to a stop on the side of the empty highway with an explosion of burnt rubber and asphalt.

My arm snaps out to grab Everly, to keep her from smacking the dashboard, but the other man’s hands are already on her.

They’re closed around her arms, dragging her out of her seatbelt and into his lap.

Her long legs extend across the seat she’d been occupying, and her heels dig into my thigh, but I barely notice as I watch my best friend claim her like a man possessed.

“I fucking want you!” he growls before his mouth clamps over hers.

It’s not lust that propels him, but despair. He’s silencing her, devouring her words until she’s a wheezing bundle twisted in his arms, too weak to do more than blink up at him.

“I want you,” he rasps again against her swollen lips.

Her cheek. Her throat. Back to her mouth.

“I want you so fucking much it hurts. Watching you with him...” his head bows and he nuzzles the side of her neck, breathes her in while she curls her fingers into his shirt and grips him closer.

“I told myself it was for the best. That you’d be good for each other.

I tried to convince myself I was doing the right thing.

But every time he touched you in front of me, every time I thought about you in his bed .

.. God, Everly, I wanted to fucking murder my own son. ”

Everly pulls back just enough to stare up at him, wide-eyed and blinking through a fresh stream of tears.

Lachlan continues through his own trembling fury and grief.

“I hated it,” he chokes out. “Every second of the last two years. I hated him for having what I wanted. I hated having to pretend I wasn’t dying inside every time I had to resist the urge to rip you away from him and never let anyone near you again. ”

“There is no one else,” she whispers with a tiny quiver. “There hasn’t been my entire life. It’s always been you and Mr. Weaver. I don’t want anyone else.”

Her admission tears through me, a giddy surge of excitement I have no business feeling, but she’s pulling me apart thread by thread and has been from the moment Lauren brought her home.

Brought her into my life with her beautiful smile and warm radiance.

I fought so hard to keep my distance. But she kept intertwining with every aspect of my existence.

If she wasn’t with Lauren, laughing and filling up every corner of my dark world with her light, she was with Bron and Lachlan.

She was sitting next to that useless prick, letting him talk down to her.

Hurt her. But she’s been a constant nearly every day for five years .

I’m not oblivious. I’m old enough to know when a woman wants me.

I know what I see in Everly’s gaze every time our eyes meet, but I also know I’m not a homewrecker.

I may not like her choice in a partner, but Bron is who she’d chosen .

.. and he’s my best friend’s son and she’s my daughter’s best friend.

It’s messy and complicated, and I don’t do either. End of story.

Still, I can’t lie to myself just how quickly I’d fold if she asked.

“But this doesn’t change anything, sweetheart,” Lachlan’s murmuring when I focus once more. “None of it will end well if we do this.”

I expect a protest from her, but she rests her brow to Lachlan’s chin and closes her eyes.

“I know.” Her voice is barely more than a breath.

Not defeat, but deeper. A chasm of sadness with no bottom.

She’s no longer pleading or pushing but sits with crippling acceptance in my friend’s arms. “No one will understand.”

“I’d give anything to change it,” Lachlan murmurs into her temple where she presses her face into his neck like she’s hoping to hold onto this moment knowing it’s already slipping through her fingers. “To keep you.”

I can’t pretend I’m not affected. Not when every inch of me is screaming to tear her out of his arms and bury myself in her softness.

To get my few minutes before it’s over. But the way he’s gripping her with white knuckles and a lock in his jaw, I know that’s not happening.

As much as I want my turn, Lachlan looks like he’d break into pieces if he lets her go.

And I hate it. I hate that this has to be the right thing. That doing what’s good and safe means turning our backs on the only good thing in our lives.

I drop my head back against the seat and shut my eyes. I force my chest to rise and fall. To breathe around the jagged remains of my shattered heart and the sweet scent of her torturing me.

“Mr. Weaver?”

My eyelids spring open at the sweet murmur of Everly’s voice.

My head rolls in the direction of where she’s still curled up in Lachlan’s lap.

Her small, round face glows in the dashboard lights, but it’s her eyes that haunt me.

They practically broadcast every thought she’s having in that pretty head of hers.

“Yeah, baby, I want you,” I tell her softly. “But you’d hate me if you lost Lauren because of me.”

Her mouth opens. Closes. Her gaze drops like she’s ashamed of what she’s about to say.

“That doesn’t matter anymore,” she whispers.

Lachlan and I exchange glances.

“What do you mean, sweetheart?” Lachlan asks.

Her teeth nibble on her bottom lip, an anxious picking that nearly has me reaching over and stopping before she tears a hole, but I stay in my seat. I watch her in the dusky light of the cabin while she tries to find the words.

“I don’t think we can be friends anymore,” she says at last.

I almost think I’ve heard her wrong. The quiet confession makes no sense, and I can’t help wondering if she’s just confused because — aside from Lachlan and I — I have never seen two people closer.

Practically conjoined at the hip. From the moment we arrived in Jefferson, Everly and Lauren have been inseparable.

There is no way either of them could have done something so horrible that it jeopardized their friendship.

“What happened?” I ask.

She’s not quick enough to turn her head away before the tears start. Her bottom lip quivers and she tries to contain it between her teeth, but it doesn’t stifle the first tattered sob.

“Hey.”

Lachlan gathers her closer. Folds her into his chest and she doesn’t resist looping her arms around him and burying her face into the side of his neck. Her back shudders under the strokes of his palms as she falls apart.

I unsnap my belt and move closer. My fingers wrap around her ankles, and I drag them across my thighs as I get as close as I can without joining her in Lachlan’s lap.

My gaze never wavers off her even as I undo the tiny buckles on her heels and release her feet from the torture devices.

The shoes are abandoned to the floor of the truck as I let my touch run up her calves in what I hope is comforting strokes.

“Talk to us,” I prompt gently. “It can’t be that bad.”

Every breath ragged and wet, Everly lifts her face just enough so there is no missing her words.

“I caught her with Bron.”