34. Everett
34
EVERETT
I t’s been a trying day.
Ransom has assumed charge of cleaning up the pieces of Claire that today’s revelations smashed apart. For my part, I’m doing my best to let him.
It’s not me she wants to see right now.
I understand this very clearly.
Claire has friends, and Claire has enemies. Right now, I’m an enemy. Someone who can’t be trusted. I don’t blame her for putting a length of space between us.
Even if it takes every ounce of willpower within me not to rush upstairs, peel Claire’s clothes off, shower her, and tuck her into bed.
The urge to care is a throbbing organ inside of me, split and bleeding and poisoning me internally.
I can’t take care of Claire. So I focus on the one thing I do have control over.
My palm is slashed in the middle. Mr. Preacher’s trap left a red line across it like a new lifeline. It’s a thin cut and I run cold water over it, cleaning it.
I hear Ransom approach. His heavy footfalls. He’s the opposite of stealthy. He hangs in the bathroom doorway, shoulder on the frame. “Need a hand with that?”
I don’t reply. He steps inside anyway and gets in beside me. His shoulder bumps into mine as he opens up the mirror, finding an antibacterial.
“Give me your paw,” he says.
I hold up my hand. He douses it. The cut stings, fizzes. I hold it steady.
“How’s Claire?” I ask.
“Down for the count. She’s taking a nap. Think she wore herself out.”
There’s wrapping tape in the cabinet as well. Ransom takes it out and binds it around my hand, snaking the tape through my finger and thumb and around again.
His hands are calloused and rough, but he works with a surprisingly gentle touch.
Against my better instincts, I find myself letting him.
“Just…gonna say this out loud,” Ransom says. “Claire’s in danger. The way I see it, we’re the only two looking out for her right now. So as far as I’m concerned, between you and me, there’s no bad blood.”
He snaps off the tape. I touch it.
“How’s that feel?” he asks.
The cut throbs, but it’s contained. “Fine. Thank you.”
“So.” Those brown eyes lift to meet my gaze. “What’re you thinking?”
“Don’t worry, Ransom,” I tell him. “You’re a semicolon.”
He blinks at that. “Thanks. I think. A semicolon. That’s good, right?”
I leave him guessing and exit the bathroom.
Claire is asleep. Ransom is lingering. I give myself a task. Because Ransom is right about one thing—Claire is in danger, and we need to be prepared.
Operation: How Many Guns Do We Have In This House?
The answer is: many, but not many that are worth a damn.
Much of the late Mr. Preacher’s collection is for show. For example, the double-barreled shotguns hanging above the mantlepiece are covered in dust and rusted. Collector’s items, but more likely to blow the user’s hands off than reach their target.
So I keep searching, until I reach the basement.
And this is where it gets very exciting because I find his hunting locker.
It’s locked, but the lock comes apart easily with a little muscled encouragement. He owns hunting rifles. Shotguns. Pistols.
The Smith & Wesson revolver is a comfortable classic. Not too heavy in my hand. I open the chamber. It’ll give me seven shots, so I’ll need to make them count.
And then—bless Mr. Preacher—I find a SIG Sauer.
Not unlike what we carried in the Navy. 10mm auto cartridge. Accurate in close range. Good for hog hunting—or, in my case, Oculus hunting.
I carry both guns, a shotgun and a long-range rifle, upstairs with me. I set them out on the dining room table and begin taking them apart to clean and grease them. I enjoy taking them apart. Knowing each piece intimately. Understanding it.
I have to run through these details in my head because I don’t have my headphones, and the silence in this house gives me the same sensation of having a thousand needles poking through my skin. Every time there’s a new sound—a dog barking in the distance or a clock ticking—the needles tremble and shudder.
I am an exposed nerve.
I stop greasing the weapon when I hear a creak coming from the stairs. I glance up from my spot. Claire is in a soft, pale nightgown. It clings to the small roundness of her breasts and flows along her legs. Her bare feet thump lightly on each step before rounding into the dining room. I watch as she pulls out the chair, takes a seat, and folds her hands in front of her.
I’m glad she sat across from me, not next to me. I need the distance. I need to put a leash on the temptation to reach under her nightgown and feel her soft skin prickle to my touch.
I temper my hands by locking them around the wooden knobs of the chair. “Do you need something?”
Her gaze flickers briefly over the guns. Her eyes are glassy. Her nose is red. She sniffles. “What’s all this?”
I chose the least frightening descriptor. “A precaution.”
She seems too exhausted to argue. She has something in her hand and she sets it on the table.
“I found these in my bag,” she says. “A spare.”
She pushes a small case across the table. I thumb it open and find a pair of new, working AirPods inside of them.
Thank God .
“Thank you,” I say. I put them aside.
“Aren’t you going to put them on?”
“Not now. I don’t need them now.”
Everything feels better when Claire is in the room.
She watches me. There’s a deep, curious intensity in her gaze.
It makes me feel like a dragonfly on a pin.
“Your pancakes smelled…really good this morning. I’m sorry I didn’t eat them.”
The edges of my eyes crinkle. My heart fucking explodes .
But my tone remains, somehow, neutral. “Stay put,” I tell her.
She obeys like a child. I clear the weapons from the table and set them aside. Then I go into the kitchen, wash my hands, and start pulling out pans.
I make Claire three blueberry pancakes, two slices of bacon, two sausages, a mushroom-and-onion medley, and a bell pepper, onion, and cheddar cheese omelet. Then I sit at the table across from her and watch as she carefully uses the edge of her fork to slice the fluffy pancake into small, square pieces.
Each bite she takes heals something inside of me.
I could watch her eat all night.
She finishes her meal in silence, minus the clicking of her fork against the plate. She swallows down half the glass of orange juice. She looks more herself now, her skin rosy and warm, the blues of her eyes brighter.
“Thank you for cooking,” she says.
“Thank you for eating. Feeling better?”
She sets the glass down on the table with a soft thump. “I think I’m taking this admirably well.”
My body prepares itself by quietly turning to steel. “I agree.”
Those gray eyes stare at me from across the table. In the soft lamplight of the night, there are no hard walls between us.
For the first time since my confession—Everett, agent, Wolfpack —I feel an openness from Claire. Not anger. Not pain. Her gaze is a quiet, genuine invitation for honesty.
One I am willing to accept. Even if it means removing the mask.
Even if it means being more exposed than I’ve been in a very, very long time .
“You lied to me,” she says plainly. “Thousands of times.”
“One thousand, five hundred, and thirty-eight times, to be exact.”
She blinks. “What?”
“That’s how many times I lied to you.”
“You kept count?”
“I was raised in a Catholic orphanage. We were trained to keep score of our sins.”
Her gaze measures me. My skin tingles as though her stare were a physical touch.
“I’m a bitch,” she states. “But I’m not an unreasonable bitch. You were a man doing a job, and you performed it admirably.”
Her tone is cool, but there is no hint of sarcasm in her voice.
So I give an inch. “I lied to you. I manipulated you. And I betrayed your trust. And I’d do it again to keep you safe.”
The clock on the fireplace mantle ticks in the silence between us.
Why does Mr. Preacher fill his house with the loudest clocks?
“I don’t fault you for doing your job,” Claire says plainly. “But moving forward, I’ll require complete honesty. No more lies. Even if you think it’s for my own good. I’ve had enough men in my life who lie to me, and I won’t tolerate one more. Is that clear?”
Claire is setting boundaries. Making rules. Laying down the foundation for a future between us.
There’s a future between us.
My blood goes hot at the prospect of it. “Yes. Crystal.”
“Good. Because there is one thing I was curious about.”
“Alright.”
“How far were you planning to go?”
My tongue recoils from the truth, so Claire continues .
“I mean, eventually, the lies were going to catch up with you, weren’t they?” Ever so slightly, her head cocks. My pulse beats along the side of my neck. “We were engaged to get married. What happens on the wedding day? When you go to sign the papers…does James Calloway appear out of thin air? Do you forge a marriage license?”
“Possibly. I hadn’t worked out the details.”
“I find that hard to believe.” She taps her finger against the table. “One thousand, five hundred, and thirty- nine .”
She’s not wrong. Fuck .
I’ve spent the last year and a half lying to her, and yet still, she knows me too well.
“The plan was to change my name. Legally.”
Her eyes narrow. “All that…to protect your cover? Eventually, the job was going to end. And then you’ve got a new name and a very legally binding contract to your target.”
“It’s just a name.”
Those perfect, pouty lips purse together. I want to kiss them. I refrain. She looks away for a moment, debating her words, and then her eyes return to mine. “You’re a lot of things. But you’ve never been stupid. I need you to be honest with me. Complete, ugly honesty. Where did the job end and the fantasy begin?”
Truths slither like pythons in my throat, entwining and tightening until I can hardly breathe. I turn away from her piercing gray eyes.
Outside, night’s fallen. The moon is three-quarters full. It’s too bright. It blinds the stars.
“ July twenty-fourth ,” I recite, “ Dear diary. I slept in the barn last night. Daddy found out I’ve been going to the river to see Ransom. He told me he’d teach me a lesson. I was certain he was going to put Calypso down. I stayed in the stable with her all night. I fell asleep on her body, listening to the sound of her breathing. I’ll sleep here again tonight if I have to. I’ll sleep here every night. There are worse fates than straw in your hair. Maybe that’s how scarecrows are made. Scarecrow? ScareClaire .”
When I look back at Claire, she’s wearing a soft, confused expression. “You…memorized my diary?”
“Part of it. You wrote a joke at the end of your diary entry. Why would you do that if you were the only one reading it?”
Her lips purse. “Maybe I wanted to remind myself that I was funny, once upon a time.”
“You were an attention-starved young girl in a single-parent household where your only company was a man who wanted a prodigy, not a child. Every entry is a cry for someone to read it. To see you.”
I’m compelled to lean forward—to put my elbow on the table, to be closer to her. A magnetic, impossible-to-deny yearning.
“You wrote this wanting to be seen,” I say. “I see you, Claire.”
Her gaze measures me. “You know everything about me. Everything. Every dirty secret I wrote in my diary.”
“Yes.”
“So tell me something about you. Something no one else knows.”
“How will you know if I’m telling the truth?”
She doesn’t bat an eye. “I’ll know.”
I take my time, considering. And then I start.
“I grew up in an orphanage not far from here. That’s why I was assigned the job. Familiar territory. Stone Hollow Home for Boys.” I brave her gaze. It’s unwavering. “Hollow,” I repeat. “It’s where my name comes from. When small children are dropped off without a name or note, they belong to the home. The surname Hollow is intended to be a temporary fit until you’re adopted into your new family. Only boys like me—boys who never got adopted out—got stuck with the name. So when I say it’s just a name, I mean… it’s just a name .”
Claire listens. She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t interrupt. She is quiet and considerate, so I pull the truth like thorns from my throat and continue.
“Life at the home was…difficult. Being a child with auditory sensitivity living in a communal space with fifteen to twenty teenage boys at any given time…it’s a bit like walking around with a full body rash, only no one can see it, and no one believes you when you tell them you’re itchy. So I found other ways to ask for what I needed.
“There was this dragonfly that would hover outside my bedroom window. I told myself that the dragonfly was my friend. When the Sisters asked—well, it wasn’t me who didn’t like noise—the dragonfly didn’t like noise. The dragonfly needed calm. The dragonfly didn’t like the cafeteria. The dragonfly was my brother. My friend. My companion. My voice, when I felt voiceless.
“You asked me why I took the job. You asked the wrong question. I took the job because of the money. I stayed on the job because…for the first time since my dragonfly, I felt like I wasn’t alone.”
I reach across the table. I thread those soft, lithe fingers in my own. “Everett Hollow is the fake. James Calloway…he was a real man. With real feelings for you.”
Claire looks down at our hands. Her fingers detach from mine, and the absence of her touch leaves me cold as well stones.
But then she rises, walks around the table, and puts her hands on my shoulders. I swivel my legs toward her, and she sinks down into my lap, straddling me .
She looks me directly in the eyes and says, “I’m not your dragonfly.”
“Alright.”
“I’m your Claire. I’m a real person. Not a fantasy. I’m tough. I can handle you.” Her forehead drops against mine. I close my eyes. Her hair whispers against my cheek. Her breath beats against my skin. “No more lies. No more deceit.” She whispers, “Let me know you. Let me know Everett .”
Her palm falls to my chest and rests at my heart.
Can she feel it pounding through the fabric?
Her head tilts against mine. I can’t breathe as her fingertips trickle down my chest. They find the bare skin of my arm. The hair there. They dance along my marked skin—the wolf tattoo that curls around my forearm. She clutches my arm. Pushes her thumb against the tattoo. Tracing it. Learning it.
Learning me.
I catch the back of her head and take her mouth in mine. She melts against me, giving herself. Her lips part, and I take the invitation. I taste the inside of her mouth as my hand slips up her thigh. She lifts her hips, and I take off her pants, pulling them down the curve of her rear, then off her legs. She nestles her sweet body against mine, and she whimpers as she pulls at my belt.
We need this.
She takes my cock out and rocks over me, guiding me inside of her. When she lowers herself down, we both take in a short, tight breath.
Her head curls against my shoulder. “Fuck, James—” She catches herself. “Sorry, Everett . I’ll get used to that.”
I grasp the back of her head. Her soft hair bunches in my hand. I murmur against her mouth, “Call me whatever you want. Name me. Claim me. I’m yours.”
She gasps. I use the opportunity to hook my fingers in her mouth.
“Open wider,” I instruct.
The problem is:
I know everything about Claire .
Every dark fantasy she penned in her diary. Everything.
I know she acts tough and hard, but secretly, she gets off on being knocked down a peg.
Degraded.
Forced to submit.
She trusted me to take her there when I was James.
But does she trust Everett?
Her blue eyes flare, but then she opens her mouth, accepting my fingers.
That’s a yes.
I coax two of them inside, pressing against the soft muscle of her tongue.
“Suck,” I demand.
She wraps those beautiful lips around the digits and closes her throat, tugging. It’s as though there’s a direct line from the pull of her soft lips around my fingers to my cock. I swell inside her, and my blood sings.
“Good girl. Now, ride.”
I draw my fingers from her mouth and drop my hand between her legs. My darling is very, very wet. I slip against the crease of her. I touch the space where our bodies meet. I trace her entrance, pleased to feel her stuffed full of me. Her breath shudders against my cheek when I draw my fingers back and find her small, swollen nub. I butterfly my fingertips around that sweet, sensitive part of her .
She rocks over me, gliding against my hand. Her thighs squeeze me, and her arms wrap around my shoulders. Her nails dive into my hair and sharply trace my skin, sending a shiver up and down my spine. She moves with slow, deliberate purpose, chasing her own pleasure with every rut of her hips.
The gentle, rhythmic beat of her breath on my neck twists me open, like turning a lock.
I feel my lower muscles tensing. Wanting. Aching for a release I won’t permit.
Not yet.
Not until my Claire has had her fill.
I can’t, anyway. Not like this. Her movements are too slow. Too subtle. There is a feral hound inside of me. Something with no home and no discipline. Something that bites the hand that feeds it. Something that can only get off with a hard, deep, animal fucking.
But the gentleman prevails.
The gentleman will wait his turn. Will let Claire crumble and shake to pieces in his lap. Will kiss her, and hold her, and lick her through every wave of pleasure.
The gentleman would spend every second of his life devoted to Claire’s pleasure, if she permitted it.
“Ever—” she starts my name, but she chokes on it when I pinch the swollen nub of her clit.
“ Ever .” I breathe against her neck. “I like the sound of that. Do it again.”
Her legs tremble. “ Ever .”
When she comes, it’s a tidal wave. She muzzles her cries into my shoulder. Her body shivers and squeezes me, pulling me with tight, needy pulses.
In this moment, Claire is mine , and that thought alone is nearly enough to push me over the edge.
Nearly .
Claire settles her hips so I’m buried in her to the hilt. Her hot core pulses weakly in the aftershocks. A wicked twitch sends a lash of ache through me. She nestles, her small nose nuzzling mine. Her blonde hair tickling my cheek. Those light, rapid breaths slowly resetting against my mouth.
I don’t mean to let the dog off its leash. But when she surprises me with a single lick—the tip of her tongue running a path up my lips—the animal growls behind my teeth.
Claire smiles.
“How’re you holding up, Ever?”
“Perfect.”
She touches my collar, her fingertip tracing the bone there. My entire body is an erogenous zone. “Tell me what you want.”
I nestle against her ear. “You. Just you.”
“You have me. Take me.”
I don’t need to be told twice.
I lift her. She gasps when her back hits the table. I claim her mouth and her cunt, pushing my tongue and cock deep inside of her. She whimpers, soft and pliant and open, as I ravage her without grace.
A plate clatters to the ground and crashes. We’re going to break the table. Its old, antique legs creak with every brutal push of my hips.
She wants Everett? She’ll get Everett.
“Just like that,” Claire begs. Her hair is splayed out so far it waterfalls down the other end of the table. Her body bounces with each thrust, her mouth open in half pain, half pleasure. “Don’t stop, don’t stop, oh God , Everett, don’t stop.”
I close my hand around her throat. I push my thumb into the side, restricting her air, and she comes immediately. Rapid, needy pulses that must be borderline painful because she tries to writhe underneath me, but I only tighten my grip, trapping her in the prison of her own pleasure. I pound deep inside of her, and then?—
I lose control, groaning her name. “ Claire …”
She kisses me, and I pant in her mouth as I empty inside of her. My beast brain growls for deeper, more, fill her, fucking fill her— and this time, I let it win. I clutch her thigh, pushing upward, and bury myself as deep as I can, giving, giving her more. She whimpers into my mouth, and I take that, too, swallowing her sounds.
The world is blue and quiet when we come down. I can hear my blood in my ears, but we’re stiller.
The passion is cooling. The beast is satisfied. I can pull myself back into comfortable order now.
But when I start to rise, Claire grabs my face suddenly?—
“Stay,” she pleads. “Just a second longer.”
—as if she can feel me pulling away. As if she can feel the locks turning.
Against my instincts, I allow myself to soften for her.
I stay. The heat of her skin kisses mine. Our lips touch. Gentle now. Nurturing.
I linger here. I let the seconds stretch into minutes. Our breaths, slowly, even out.
She cups the side of my face. A strand of her hair is stuck under her thumb, which she pushes against my cheek.
We’re irrevocably tangled.
“Everett,” she says softly. Learning me. Relearning me. She hums on the name. “I think I like him.”
“I think he likes you, too.”
She smiles, and my heart smacks into my rib cage.
“Now?” I ask.
She nods. “Okay. ”
I pull away. I ease out of her and tuck myself away. She sits up. I help her back into her pants, and she takes my hand to get off the table.
She drops a couple of inches and has to lift her chin to meet my gaze.
“Well,” she says as she buttons her pants.
“Well.”
We have now entered the where do we go from here? phase.
“I should clean up.” I motion to the scattered remains of Claire’s meal and the broken glassware.
“I’ll help.”
I shake my head. “My mess. My job.”
Her mouth twists, but she accepts.
“Come to bed when you’re done,” she says.
My heart hiccups. But I’ve locked everything away now, so my voice betrays no emotion when I say, “Alright.”
She nods, satisfied, then turns and leaves. I watch her wobble a couple of steps ( I did that ) before she grasps the railing and climbs the staircase.
Come to bed. It’s not a marriage invitation. It may not even be an open door. But it’s a window, cracked open just enough for me to crawl back into Claire’s life.
It’s mine, and this feeling is so sweet I can taste it like sugar melting on my tongue.
I’m floating an inch above my body when I clean the dishes. I don’t mind picking the pieces of ceramic and food off the floor. I don’t even mind the skin-ripping, clinking sound the broken shards make as they clatter together in the bottom of the trash bag.
I can endure it. I can endure anything right now.
I can even endure the dumb, irritated look on Ransom’s face when I enter the bedroom .
He’s tucking away his bandana on the nightstand. Claire is at the edge of her bed in her robe, which parts slightly as she reaches over to moisturize her legs.
Like a child, he looks at me, then at Claire, then back at me again. His face pinches.
“What’s he doing here?”
“I invited him,” Claire says. Long blonde hair cascades over her shoulder as she rubs moisturizer over the soft curve of her strong calves.
Ransom blinks. “You kicking me out?”
“No,” Claire says as though it’s obvious. “There’s room enough for three. Move over.”
Ransom gives me a dubious look. Then he pulls up his legs in bed and leans his broad body against the headboard. “Long as I ain’t middle spoon.”
Claire slides her body into bed. She folds back the edge of the sheet, inviting. I get in behind her and wind my arm around her soft belly. She curls herself into the crux of my body, her silk robe against my chest, her hair tickling my throat.
Even after our foray in the living room, I start to awaken.
She lifts her swan neck to glance over her shoulder at me.
“Can you keep your hands to yourself?” she asks me.
Her hair shivers in the wake of my exhale.
“Let’s find out.”
Across the bed, Ransom’s eyes catch on mine.
I hold his eye contact as I kiss Claire’s shoulder.
“G’night, crazy kids,” he says.
He reaches over and turns out the light, swathing all three of us in darkness.