Page 114 of Craving Consequences

Resigned to the discomfort, I reach down with the hand not possessively clasped in Everly’s arms and lightly brush her hair back.

“Evie?” I kiss her brow. “We’re here, baby.”

It takes her a moment to stir. Her lashes flutter and she shifts. Her small, bunched fingers lift to cover her mouth when she yawns.

“Already?” she groans, pushing upright.

She sighs and blinks through the windshield at the grand structure through the steady fall of rain.

“I love this place,” she says quietly. “I could honestly stay here forever.”

It would be nice. Isolated from the world. From Jefferson. Just wilderness on all sides. My only hesitation is her living alone with break-ins. Her, unprotected and vulnerable to whoever decides they want in. Maybe it’ll be different if someone is actually living in the place full time, but I still don’t like it.

“Want to run in and make space for the stuff?” I ask her.

She nods and I nudge open the door.

My clothes are soaked within seconds as I wait for her to find her keys and hop down. Her slippered feet hurry up the path to the front steps. We watch her get the key in and push the door wide before disappearing inside.

It takes several minutes of grabbing the groceries and hauling them up to the house. We’re pointed to the kitchen and the slab of marble island in the center.

The party bins follow and get dumped in a line along the bottom of the stairs.

When it’s all finished and we’re dripping all across the polished hardwood, Everly directs us upstairs to the bedrooms with our duffels. I follow Lachlan with the sound of Everly puttering around below unpacking the groceries.

Thecabinis a home. There’s no other name for it. Its walls of memories hung with love behind framed glass along the stairs. It’s the little touches that, while sparse, hold significance.

The upstairs landing extends wide down a dimly lit hall lined with doors. Five. Two on either side and the fifth at the very end — the master bedroom, I assume.

Lach and I pick the second set of doors at the end and step inside.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

EVERLY

––––––––

I have soup and sandwiches ready by the time the boys return. The combined weight of their footfalls echoes along the walls and reverberates across the hardwood before the pair darkens the doorway.

It’s insane how my nerves quiver. My stomach flips. The tango of my heart makes no sense when I have been intimate in nearly every possible way with both of them. Still, seeing them in dark sweats, t-shirts and bare feet standing there, watching me ... my mouth goes dry.

“Hungry?” is all I can manage around the tremor.

I’m alone with them. Utterly and truly in a way that I never imagined. There isn’t a soul for miles. No one who can just pop in. No one to question why we’re alone together. It’s just us in this sliver of the world, hidden away.

At peace.

“Smells good.”

Lachlan closes the seven steps between us in three and stops when I’m caged between him and the bubbling pot. His big hands settle on my hips, ten anchor points keeping me in place ashe leans over my shoulder and inhales the scent of creamed broccoli.

Even he seems at ease. There is a lightness to his touch that echoes in the way he tilts his face and buries it in my neck. It’s so fluid and natural I’m melting back into him.

“Sit. I’ll finish,” he murmurs into my skin.

I’m not about to argue with him, but my fingers are captured by the second figure, and I’m drawn out of Lachlan’s hold. A muscular arm snags my waist, and I’m hoisted straight off my feet and hauled to the table washed in the filmy hue of late afternoon light. He yanks a chair free and sits, dragging me into his lap.

It shouldn’t feel so right.

---