Chapter 10

Gage

I didn’t want to let Kendall go. The feel of her body against mine as she climbed onto my shoulders had my eyes jerking up, but the water prevented me from seeing much until I surged up out of it. The way her hand held mine so tightly had forced it all to come rushing back.

We didn’t spend all our time tormenting Kendall. Sometimes we played together just fine, something I remembered because her mum always commented on it.

And those times were the worst.

When we got older and started noticing her as a girl, not just Finn’s sister, playing took on a whole other vibe. One that left me aching and feeling like shit all at the same time.

“Fucking Gary Sweethas been sniffing around my sister,” Finn growled one day during our lunch hour at school. All of our eyes had found the little prick in the yard, watching him laughing and showing off with his mates, catching every time his eyes slid to Kendall and her friends.

“What’re you gonna do about that?” Van asked, but he knew. We all knew.

Bags and lunch discarded, we rose as one, everyone else knowing the best thing to do was scuttle out of our way as we crossed the yard.

“Make clear what a mistake that is.” Finn glanced at the rest of us. “Right?”

We’d all readily agreed because we were just as maddened by the sight of someone trying to catch Kendall’s eyes, though our motivation was completely different. Finn didn’t want some dickhead messing with his sister, but we… We just didn’t want another guy doing the one thing we wanted the most.

And that hadn’t changed one little bit.

I stared up at her,watching her freak out and cling to my hands. Her weight felt like nothing on my shoulders, even as she curled her toes, trying to get a better grip. I didn’t want to let her go when we used to muck around in the pool, nor now, but I felt her knees bend as she readied herself to flip away from me. I dropped my body down, ready to give her extra momentum, then shot back out as she threw herself free.

“Oh fuck…!” That wild grin as she emerged from the water, wiping it from her face, was the same thing that motivated me then as well as now. I’d do anything to make sure she always smiled like that. “I forgot how much fun that was.”

“Again?” I asked, grabbing my t-shirt and pulling it off over my head, tossing it with a splat onto the side of the pool, but she didn’t answer. My girl just stopped right where she was, smile fading, but I didn’t mind at all. Her eyes felt like they raked over me, taking in my chest, my arms, and the tattoos I’d had inked there.

Look, I mentally urged. Look and keep on looking. See me, the man, not the boy who was too much of an arsehole to know he should’ve treated you better. See me. And she did just that to the sound of my own heart thundering in my ears, only to be interrupted by the friend.

“I’ll just go get that beer…”

Barbie’s grin made clear she knew exactly what was going on as she beat a hasty retreat, and I wondered if we’d have an ally there. Her disappearance seemed to shake Kendall out of whatever reverie she was lost in, her eyelids fluttering as she pursed her lips and then went to turn away.

“I should go—”

“Don’t.” Fuck, that came out far too sharply, too intense, but that was me all over, wasn’t it? I raked a hand through my hair, my mind racing to come up with a reason to keep Kendall here. “I mean, the guys, they’re putting your bed together—”

“So I can empty my boxes—”

“You know how Connor gets.” She froze then turned back my way, sipping her drink with a nod. “He’s a cranky prick most days, but when he’s on the tools…” I shrugged.

“Right. Right.” Another sip of her drink then her teeth burrowed themselves in a bottom lip that made me want to suck it free and then kiss it better. “So you guys have done well for yourselves.”

She looked at the canvas shade sail, the landscaping around the pool, the sun loungers… Anywhere but me. For some reason that it took that much conscious effort for her to keep her eyes off me had me grinning. I stood up out of the water, feeling the drops run across my skin and wishing they were her fingers as I came closer. Not too close, though. There was some unspoken limit, because when I got too near, she edged away.

“It’s not bad,” I agreed.

“Not bad!” My non-committal response got her looking my way, right before she flushed. “If you saw some of the places I saw today…”

She drank down the rest of her drink in one long gulp, the slight shake in her hands making clear what an experience that had been, and it killed me.

My Kendall walking into some dickhead’s place, looking at the spare room. Faceless men clustering closer, looking at her, watching her, imagining creeping down the hall to stand in front of her door, his breath fanning across the wood when he wanted to see that happen across her skin.

Just as I had done, back at her parent’s place.

That she was too young stopped me from turning that doorknob. Then it was the knowledge that it would ruin any friendship I had with Finn when she got older. And the fact that her mum and dad slept two rooms over, some sixth sense only parents experienced possibly waking up if they even heard a creak of the floorboards. And Kendall herself, the moments of pleasure and fun and amusement so fucking fleeting, because I drove each and every one of them away, pretending I didn’t want to see her smile like I wanted my next breath. The silence between us then, and right now, stretched on and on. I knew I had to say something.

“You’re safe here.” Yes, that. “For now,” I added hastily.

“Right,” she said. I picked up Barbie’s drink and carried it closer, something that had her frowning slightly until I poured it into her glass. “Trying to get me drunk enough that my defences are down?”

“Well, if you do get drunk, you know I’ll hold your hair back,” I told her, watching her eyes follow my arm as I propped it on the edge of the pool.

“Right…” That little breathy word gave me hope in ways I hadn’t experienced in years. A sharp feeling that any other time would have had me worried was a heart attack stabbed into my chest. The lump in my throat was a welcome thing, keeping me from saying it, all of it, everything I’d intended to tell her that night. But her focus sharpened, the wariness we’d hard coded in her back in seconds. “Right before you give me an impromptu haircut?”

“Kendall—”

“Or smear peanut butter in it.”

“Kendall—”

“Thank god you didn’t go through with the bubblegum thing.” She looked me up and down, eyes narrowing. “Mum would have had your arses for that. Getting the peanut butter out took long enough.”

“Kendall—”

“I’ve got drinks!”

I cursed Barbie in that second as she re-appeared with a jug of margaritas and a beer in tow. My thanks was not at all grudging when she handed me the can. I edged backwards, needing to put some distance between me and Kendall, between the memories and the scars she seemed to carry, knowing I put every one of them there. The beer was bitter all the way down, or was it just the knowledge that I was a little dickhead my entire childhood? I didn’t know, but I kept on drinking.

“Sooo… were you guys catching up on old times?” Barbie asked, sitting down on the lip of the pool.

“Something like that,” Kendall replied tightly, putting her glass down before hauling herself out of the water. She didn’t catch the moment when I catalogued every curve, every cling of her clothes, but Barbie did, her lips twitching in amusement. “I need to get dried off and— Shit, my towels are in the boxes.”

“I’ll get you one.” I was moving before I even thought about it, being able to do this one little thing helping ease the ache in my chest. “For both of you,” I added belatedly, but Barbie didn’t seem offended in the least. Her eyes danced as she watched this shit show unfold.

“Right, thanks.”

I’d played in my mind numerous times how things would go if I ran into Kendall again. On the street, in a cafe, at night at some pub. Each time I’d had something smooth to say. A whole lot of smooth things, my lips moving as I explained, justified, then finally, apologised until she finally forgave me. Inside the house, I found the linen cupboard without too much effort, but rather than pull it open, my hands wrapped around the cool metal door handles as my forehead pressed against the timber. Water dripped free of me, pooling on the granite floor, and something seemed to leak free of me with it. Hope, that was what dropped down on to the floor, puddling at my feet only to be savagely mopped up with a spare towel when I jerked one free.