“Fuck. Stand up.” Easton did, his chair shooting away from the table.
Halsey stayed seated. He didn’t change one aspect of his posture, while Lenny sat straighter and Mallory sank lower in her seat. He could hear Lenny’s shortened breathing.
“Halsey,” she whispered in warning.
It was time to finish this.
“You don’t want to fight me, East. But if it comes to it, you should know I might have a unicorn rainbow tattoo, and I will hurt you if I have to.”
“Stop it. It’s not funny. You should go,” said Mallory. “Easton is sorry. He’s sorry. We were just having fun. It was just a few laughs.”
“You don’t speak for me, brat!” Easton shouted, jabbing a finger at Mallory’s face. “You’re a dumb kid. Is it any wonder I don’t want to pay you any attention? You’re a waste of my time.” He scanned the table. “Fuck you all.”
In his rage, he turned and walked into his chair, stumbled, swore, and knocked it into a side table. It tipped, and he could easily have righted it; he let it crash over, taking a lamp with it, before he made his way out of the room and leaving the front door hanging open.
They all stood. Lenny closed the door and rescued the lamp. Halsey reset the side table on its feet.
“You’re a jerk,” Mallory said. “You made everything worse.” She evaded Lenny with a shove and left the room, closing a door down the hallway hard.
Until that hollow thud of the door slamming, he hadn’t thought about the consequences of besting Easton.
“You shouldn’t have interfered.” Lenny held the lamp base in her hand, the torn shade and glass from the broken bulb littered the floor.
Easton was a wrecking ball who worked to shape his family’s sense of security around his own pride, and Halsey had let his personal feelings trump his professionalism. To satisfy his own ego, he’d lost whatever trust he’d earned with Lenny the moment he fucked up and drove Easton from the room.
This is why he didn’t do fieldwork.
There was a lot to clean up, and he wasn’t sure Lenny would give him the chance to help.
Chapter Fourteen
Lenny waited until Mal’s bedroom door banged and then let Halsey have it. “What the hell were you thinking? You inflamed the situation and upset Mallory. If that’s the way we’re going to work together, forget it. We’re done.”
She was yelling, and Mallory would hear. Not the words, but the intention. Good. It would be helpful if Halsey would leave. But he stood there like a big rock and let her shout at him.
“And calling him East. You had to be able to see he hated that, yet you kept it up, even when he told you not to. What the hell was that about? Would you have hit him? I mean seriously, would you have punched Easton? Do you have a taste for it now? How was that supposed to help things? Hmm, tell me how beating up my brother was going to help me keep my family together.”
Big mute rock. You’d think he’d say something, but without a word he went to the kitchen, forcing her to follow him.
“Sure, take your chocolates with you, as long as you go, and I never have to see you again,” she said, arriv
ing to see he’d opened the cupboard under the sink.
“Where’s your pan and brush?”
Oh God, they’d been here before. “I’ll do it.”
“Let me help.”
“You’ve done enough.”
He closed the cupboard door and straightened up. “I fucked up.”
“Stunning observation.”
His eyes flicked away briefly and came back to hers again. “I had to make a choice.”
“You were thinking ‘Do I club Easton or smart-ass him to death?’”