Page 7 of Crave

I gripped my beer so hard my hand started to hurt. The day after the wedding, there had been a group text from Cal, telling me about a reception they were planning out at the ranch. Guess they finally noticed I wasn’t there. Twenty bucks said it was the moment they figured out they needed someone to handle the catering.

If it wasn’t West riding my ass, it was Brody. And if it wasn’t Brody, it was Cal. And none of them got it. None of them could. I would never minimize what Lacey had been through by pretending our experiences were even on the same playing field. But you didn’t get banished for four years and come back the same person you were when you left, either. And I’d felt the shift in the way my entire family looked at me when I got back, no matter how hard they tried to hide it. How many warnings had our parents issued over the years? I was now the object lesson. The mistake. The fallen son with tarnished wings. I might have served my time up in Calgary, but there was no scrubbing the shame of what I’d done off my skin. I was toxic. Irredeemable. Damaged.

My phone buzzed. I swiped to unlock the screen.

Lacey. A feeling I couldn’t name stirred in my chest. I forced it down.

BabyGotBake: Supergluing all my pens? Please, Caldwell. I expect better.

Me: Off night.

BabyGotBake: And thanks for the creepy rubber roach marching band formation across my prep counter.

BabyGotBake: There’s nothing a girl dreams of more than seeing her name spelled out in insects. Speaking of which, when was the last time you got laid?

Me: Interested?

BabyGotBake: Hmmm… cheesy rom-com where you sweep the roaches to the floor and make hot love to me between my dirty baking pans?

Me: And they say romance is dead.

BabyGotBake: For real, though. Are you busy later?

Some people had chemistry. Lacey Blair caused a physical reaction in me that was dangerous. Ten years might have taught me to control it, to keep a leash on my wolf whenever she was around, but that was because I didn’t take chances. I wouldn’t let her get hurt again, or anyone else. It was why tonight, just like every other month at the full moon, I made myself scarce.

She’d already paid the price once before.

Ethan drew a long breath, pulling me from my thoughts. “August said he included you in the group text, same as everyone else. He showed it to me, okay? Not my fault you got so wasted you dropped your phone in the can.”

I drained the rest of my beer. “Yeah? So how come no one even tried to come and find me? It was the lunch rush. You knew where I was. A mile down the road, and none of you could be bothered to—"

“I was a little busy getting married.”

“Bullshit. We both know if you had really wanted me there, you could have sent Brody or Cal—"

“Yeah. Because with you, it’s always someone else’s fault.”

Whatever.

I rose from the bar. “Think we’re done here.”

“You really blame me for thinking you were a no-show? This thing between us has been going on for years. Hell, you’ve had it in for me since the day Ben and Sofia got me out of foster care.”

“That why you slept with her?” I felt my chest constrict until I could barely draw in air, my wolf so close to the surface the room briefly greyed out. God, I needed a drink. “To screw with me?”

Ethan held up his hands, palms out in a submissive posture, warily facing off against me.

My breath sawed in and out, my hands starting to shake where my fingers had curled into claws. But I’d been holding this in for a goddamn year and a half, ever since the night I’d been walking home from the bar where we’d been celebrating Brody’s promotion and seen Lacey’s car parked outside Dark. Felt her and Ethan through the pack bond upstairs.

Together.

I forced my voice to remain flat. I was getting this out. Even if it was the last conversation my brother and I ever had.

“You know, if you’d really cared about her, wanted something real, I would have found a way to be okay with it. Hell, I would have even been happy for you. Might have taken a while, but I would have gotten there, no matter how much it tore me up inside.”

Ethan blanched. “Dallas—”

“But you hooked up with her just to get back at me. That stuff that went down when we were kids—that was between you and me. How would you feel if I’d hooked up with Hayden, made her feel like trash, then blown her off in a text message like she’d never been anything to me but a way to get off?”