Chapter 26
Gage
I knew Kendall. She didn’t think I did, but that wasn’t true. I watched her too damn closely, had observed her reactions, and I knew exactly what she was going to do right now.
Bolt.
Connor went to her bakery and bought out the shop, giving every bloke on the site an impressive feed, but I knew why. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself from pushing, and that would get her feet moving, away from us, not closer. So I needed to step in and stop everything, which was why I slipped away not long after lunch. I arrived back at the house before I went to work and found it empty, no trace of Kendall having returned or taken her stuff.
I grabbed the sauce bottle out of the pantry, then the mustard. We’d used them as guns back in the Kennedy family home, and she’d been our main target more than once. It was only her mum stepping in because we were wasting too much food that stopped us. A tub of peanut butter came next. I nuked it for a few seconds in the microwave, then screwed off the lid, seeing that the heat had turned it into a slightly runny, lumpy mess. When we’d smeared it in Kendall’s hair, we’d told her it was diarrhoea, and she screamed until she realised what it really was. Flour. I set that on the counter along with a box of tissues from the bathroom, then went to work making flour bombs. They were considered more benign uses of food as weapons as Mrs Kennedy bought it cheap in bulk. I scanned shelves in the kitchen, the bathroom, the garage, finding weapon after weapon and then lined them all up on the kitchen bench, working until I heard the click of the front door lock.
Kendall froze when she saw me standing there, blinking and staring, with limbs almost quivering like a frightened fawn.
But my girl was no Bambi.
She straightened up and looked me up and down coolly, having no idea how hot she was when she did that.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” I said back.
“I’m just gonna grab a shower and then head out. I’m meeting Barbie at a bar.” No the fuck she wasn’t, but I couldn’t say that right now, so I kept my lips closed, nodding. “She’s shouting me a few drinks and then will play ‘have you met Kendall’ a few times with disinterested finance bros before getting an Uber home.”
When her hand moved towards me, my heart clenched, wanting her to reach for me, but instead she was offering me her keys.
“I won’t take the van, so you may as well take them back.”
“You won’t get an Uber,” I corrected, closing the gap between us, then curling her fingers around the keys. “You’ll call one of us, and we’ll pick you up.”
“You don’t need—”
“Yes, I do, but before you go, there’s something we need to do.”
Her whole body stiffened as a frustrated sigh escaped her lips.
“Is this the whole ‘we need to talk’ thing, because I gotta say, can we not? I’m only here temporarily. Like I need to thank each of you for saving me from the sight of Todd’s lily white arse pumping away between Marcia’s legs, but hopefully I’ll be moved out by the weekend.”
“No.”
I injected everything I was feeling into that one word, and Kendall responded as if she was slapped.
“No? Well, I’ll try to find somewhere earlier, but it”s kinda hard right now.”
The words were spilling out of her, coming faster and faster, and so was her breath. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed, and she never looked more beautiful. I loved Kendall when her feathers were ruffled.
I loved Kendall.
“No, you’re not moving out.”
What I was saying was too much how it’d been like when we were kids. The four of us were petty tyrants, and she was our unwilling slave.
But that was the point.
The others wanted to get her flowers and chocolate and try to buy their way into Kendall’s good graces, but I knew. I grabbed a flour bomb and saw her flinch, and knew my instincts were right. There wasn’t enough money in the world to spend on our girl to make up for what we’d done, just this.
“A flour bomb?” There was a note of disappointment, of betrayal in her voice, but it was quickly replaced by the grey haze of resignation. I remembered the way the light used to die in her eyes, so I knew exactly what was happening right now. “Fuck, we’re back to this again?” She threw her arms wide then, her bag falling to the floor. “Well, at least you waited until the end of my shift to pull this shit, because my uniform is going straight in the wash. So hit me.” Her eyes flashed. “Hit me with it, Gage. Get your revenge and…”
That, that was something new, and I soaked her shift in expression in. As I pressed the fragile bomb into her free hand, she stared in wonder.
“What the…?”
“I’m not going to throw any flour bombs,” I told her. “Partly because Connor would shit his pants if we messed up our house. For someone who used to trash your parents’ place, he’s really fucking anal about keeping this house clean, but mostly because of this.”
I pulled away when she gripped the bomb and stood before her.
“We were fucking arseholes to you. Because that’s what it took to be Finn’s friend, then because there’s a shitty kind of pleasure that comes from picking on someone smaller, weaker, and unable to fight back. We were bullies.” Her eyes were so wide, her pupils swallowing the warm, brown depths of her irises, her throat working as she just listened. “Cruel, small-minded, little-dick energy bullies. We hurt you over and over because it was the only way we could get the reaction from you that we needed.”
“Don’t…”
A small croak, it came from the depths of her soul, not her throat, and I hated what I had to do. Because she’d said it so many times, to me, to Connor, Van, and to Finn, her own damn brother, and we’d ignored it each time.
I didn’t want to do the same thing now, but I had to. The only thing I could do about the shit I’d pulled was to make amends, and despite her protests, I had to try.
“You were beautiful, so fucking beautiful. The first time I noticed it was like a punch to the gut that I hadn’t seen coming. I didn’t know what the fuck to do about it, and by the time I did, Finn made clear what would happen. He warned us off you—”
“Don’t…”
The croak was louder now, more guttural.
“And we fucking listened.” I tilted my head to one side, wanting to get closer, to feel her denials uttered right against my skin, but I couldn’t, not until I got this out. “I curse myself every day for that, but I did. If I couldn’t hold you close and breathe in the scent of your hair and just feel your heartbeat pounding just as fast as mine then… I had to get you reacting the only way I knew how.”
“Don’t!” Her reply was as sharp as the crack of a bullet, smashing into my heart, her finger joining it seconds later. She stabbed it into the muscle, right into the tattoo I’d had done in her honour. “Fucking don’t! Stop, Gage…”
Real tears shone in her eyes, and I wished to fuck I’d never seen them before now, but I had. Over and over, I’d made my girl cry, and I wished I could find another way through this that didn’t end up making her cry again. My hands moved, my arms, needing to hold her for once, rather than leaving her to her misery, but she stared at me aghast, then knocked my hands away.
“You don’t get to come back into my fucking life after all of these years and… And…”
Her breath was heaving, and she was fighting to get the words out, and that was when my resolve broke. I was moving forward, wrapping my arms around her, even as she squirmed.
“Hey…” My voice was low, buzzing in her ear. “Hey… It’s OK now. I’ll do whatever it takes to get us past this, Kendall. Anything. Not to get you to see me as a potential partner, but because that’s what you deserve.” Her arms jerked spasmodically, a vestigial urge to get free. “No matter where you are, who you’re with. You deserve each one of us on our knees before you, begging for forgiveness and asking for a way to make this up to you.”
“Now.” Her voice was pure venom, and when she reared back, I worried she’d headbutt me, but instead she just craned her neck to stare into my eyes. “Now you want to make amends? Well, what did you used to say to me all the time?” She made a show of considering her own question. “Stiff shit. I say no, Gage. No.” When she pushed at my arms, I had to let her go, even as the ache in my heart flared hotter. “I don’t need your declarations, bringing up shit that’s best forgotten. It’s all done now. I’m… done now.” Flour trickled from between her fingers. “I’m done, and I don’t need you or your feelings or anything. I just need—”
A chirrup from her phone stopped her cold, and it took everything I had in me not to snatch it out of her grip and toss it away. Focus on this, I told her mentally. Focus on us. But I hadn’t earned that right, so I just watched her look at the screen then shake her head, before using her spare hand to wipe away the few tears she’d let slide free.
“I need to go.”
“Kendall—”
I’d meant to just tell her I was always willing to talk about this if she was, but when I grabbed her shoulder as she turned to walk into her room, I realised my mistake.
“What?” she snarled in a way she’d never been free to in her family home. “What, Gage? What?”
My wish was granted, and she tossed her phone onto her bed then turned to face me. I didn’t answer, seeing the pain in her eyes and knowing it needed to come. It was like a boil that had to be lanced, the poison not coming out any other way. Because when it did, her pain would go right where it needed to go.
To me.
She was crying for real right now, and my whole body shook with the effort of holding myself back. But when the tears started to stream and her nose grew all red and blotchy, when her body started to shake, the sobs tearing themselves free of her, I couldn’t anymore. I moved in, gently, slowly, and then said exactly the wrong thing
“Baby…”
“What the fuck did you just call me?”
She looked like a fox that had been run to ground, a dog that had one too many beatings and couldn’t take anymore. The way she turned on me, teeth flashing, eyes burning, should’ve had me stumbling back, but I didn’t. The guys were right. Kendall needed to know, but we also needed to be ready to cop the backlash that was coming. We’d made her think we hated her so very convincingly it was going to be almost impossible to make her understand the opposite was true.
“Baby.” I said it again, softly this time, feeling all of it rise up. God, it was so good to finally say what I felt. “You’re crying, and all I want to do is comfort you. I’m hurting you, right when I want to make you feel better. I just want to take it all away, Kendall, all the pain, and the bullying, and all the bullshit, because—”
“Don’t you say it.” The flour bomb was raised even as its contents started to trickle to the floor. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“Because all I want to do is love you.” A sharp ringing noise started up in my ears, reverberating through my head, cutting off her angry retort, watching her lunge at me in slow motion. “I love you, Kendall Kennedy. I fucking love you.”