Chapter 38

Gage

“We need to send Kendall flowers today,” Connor said, glancing at his phone as I drove us all to work. “Roses?”

“Not unless they smell nice,” Van replied. “She always loved daisies.”

“Daisies are kind of low rent. We need to make a statement.” Connor frowned at his phone. “Carnations? Lilies!”

“Sunflowers,” I said, flicking on the indicator.

“Why sunflowers?” Connor asked, but Van grinned.

“Fuck, remember Sunny?”

‘Sunny’ was a massive sunflower she’d grown from bird seed. She’d been so damn proud of it as it grew and grew. Kendall’s mum had a quiet word with us, making clear we would not like the consequences if we damaged Kendall’s plant, but we had no intention of doing so. Even we could see how invested she was in the growth of that flower.

“Sunflowers.” Connor nodded sharply. “That’s it. They’re very cheap.” He flicked through the options. “But we could get a few bunches. There’s these ones they call teddy bear sunflowers—”

“Not yet.” I drove up the street of the site we were currently working at.

“What?” Connor’s eyes locked with mine. “Yes, now. We need to make clear—”

“You’ll have her running with your over-the-top bullshit.” The van bumped over the muddy path that led to the site office. “Your heart’s in the right place, but you need to take it slow.”

“Don’t you think that was something we should’ve done before we all fucked her on the kitchen bench?”

I smirked and shook my head.

“It is, and we shouldn’t have rushed things then. Definitely not now.” But any amusement I might’ve felt at Connor slowly losing his shit evaporated as soon as I saw a familiar van pulled up outside the office.

Finn.

“But we did, and right now we need to stop Kendall scuttling out the front door because she’s feeling overwhelmed,” I said finally.

“I think she was feeling that this morning.” Everyone turned to stare at Van. “She was trying to sneak out when I was out getting the paper. I talked her down, managed to get her into the kitchen and not the van and on the way to work, but…” His eyes met mine. “Gage is right.”

“Fine.” Connor ground that out. “I’ll book them in to be delivered in a week. Things will have settled down by then.”

From his mouth to God’s ear, I thought idly, right as I saw the office door open. Finn looked tired and drawn, the stubble thick on his chin as his lips thinned.

“Fine,” I ground out, “but we’ve got bigger problems right now.”

Connor’s focus shifted, the flower order forgotten entirely as he took in our former business partner.

“What the fuck is he doing here?”

“Only one way to find out.” I swung out of the van, jumping to the ground, then strode towards the fucker the minute I landed. “We talked about this, Finn—”

“Talked about what?” That same defensive bullshit I saw him pull with teachers, parents, Kendall, and even coaches was plain in his tone and expression. “Taking away my livelihood? Taking food out of the mouths of my children?”

“Jesus fucking Christ…” Van shook his head slowly.

“The conditions will be fair.” Connor was in his element right now, all business. “You’ll walk away with a nice chunk of money. You could pay off your house, or set up your own business—”

“Just like that.” Finn threw his arms wide. “All over nothing.”

“If you call your sister nothing again, the nice shiner you’re sporting will be nothing compared to what I do to you.”

My voice transformed, becoming a feral growl rather than a man’s, but I guess that tracked. I’d seen him minimise, bullshit, and generally skate past consequences too many times, but not now.

“You kept Kendall from us.” Van’s voice broke at that, but he forged on. “That’s not something you get past with a few beers. Take the fucking deal.”

“But—”

“Or I’ll collapse the entire business and start again.” Finn shut up then because what Connor was threatening was very real. The whole reason we’d been able to get the business off the ground in the first place was due to the fact that Mr. Woods had provided the seed money. Connor shook his head, smiling slightly. “I didn’t want to have to sack all the boys, leave them without a job or money to feed their kids, but…” He crossed his arms and squared his stance, making clear arguing would be futile. “The way things are now? They aren’t continuing, Finn, so don’t get in my face pissing and moaning about your children when…”

I knew what Connor wanted to say. Because we might have had our own kids by now. I’d never thought I wanted to have them, knowing that Kendall would always have my heart, but now… It wasn’t hard to imagine it: little feet slapping down on the pebblecrete around the pool, giggling right before they—

“You made this bed, now you get to lie in it,” Connor finished.

Finn was dismissed, we all knew it, so we went to move forward, to get on with our day. He even got out of the way as we climbed the steps into the office, but it was his voice, thin and weak, that had me pausing.

“So that’s it?” He stared at each one of us, mutely pleading for things to be different. “After all these years. I’ve said sorry.”

“No, you haven’t,” I told him.

“Then here, sorry.”

He delivered the word like others might some kind of slur, bitten off with only a tiny amount of remorse. I just shook my head, and when I looked at the others, I saw that they remained equally unmoved.

“Sorry doesn’t cut it,” I said, knowing I spoke for all four of us. “Words are cheap, something we’re finding out right now with Kendall.” Finn’s brows dropped down into a frown, but he quickly smoothed that away. “You want things to continue as they are, but that’s not possible. We have to show your sister every damn day that we will never, ever allow the same bullshit from before to happen again. Start with that, mate.”

I didn’t spare him another look, didn’t stop to listen to his protests as I walked into the office, and when the others joined me, I knew they’d done the same. Connor nodded to me as we sat around the big desk we all shared while Van leaned forward.

“Making amends…” He ran a thumb over his bottom lip. “That’s what we need. All the flowers in the world won’t mean shit unless we can earn her trust. We have to prove to Kendall we’re the blokes for her.” He glanced up, looking slightly concerned. “But how do we do that?”

“Make clear we’re going nowhere,” Connor said, dropping his phone on the table. “That whatever she needs, we’ll provide it.”

“Give her a few laughs.” Van grinned, but that quickly faded. “Rather than make her cry all the time.”

“Everything we didn’t do when we were growing up. Instead of mocked, annoyed, teased, side-lined.” I stared at the fake wood grain of the desk, not seeing the table but rather us as kids. “She needs to feel safe, comfortable, treasured, important. That, that’s what we need to do.”

“All right, so that starts tonight,” Connor said. “So what do we do? Take her out to dinner?”

Not that, not yet, I had reasoned. We put in a full day at work, forced to answer our staff’s questions about Finn, then try and get this house renovation completed, but once the day was done, we focussed on her. I wasn’t sure if Kendall was up for fancy dinners yet, especially after Van caught her trying to bolt. We’d ask her over a meal we prepared at home.

“Did you ask her what she might like?” Van peered over my shoulder at my phone.

“Yeah, no reply yet, but I’m guessing after last night, not sausages.”

He deflated visibly because curried sausages was about all he knew how to cook.

“So not spag bol.” He shuddered. “Maybe—”

“Shepherd’s pie.” We all stared at Connor and then slowly nodded. It was always Kendall’s favourite when she was growing up. Her mum made it with lots of pumpkin in the mashed potato layer, something Finn hated, then heaps of sharp cheese melted over the top. “I rang Kendall’s mum and asked her for the recipe.”

Which meant she and the whole family had to know something was up. I grinned and so did Van, even though I knew it wasn’t going to earn us any brownie points.

“So you’ve got a shopping list ready?” I asked.

“Everything’s waiting to be picked up from the supermarket,” he said with a smile.

I wonderedwhat Kendall would think when she walked through the door. I was chopping celery ‘finely’, something I didn’t really understand. Like how finely? I’d watched some videos on YouTube to get an idea and the way they chopped it didn’t seem that fine, but—

“You done yet?”

Connor looked positively harassed as he fried off the meat. He’d started with the heat too high, so there were a few dark, crispy bits of meat, but we’d all swooped in and turned the heat down before he could mess it up too much. However, as the savoury smell of browning lamb mince filled the air, he glared at me.

“It says here the celery and the carrot should be fried off with the meat, so are you two done?” Connor stabbed a finger at the phone screen.

“Here you go.” Van moved towards the pan with his carrot slices.

“Not like that!” Connor snapped. “They’re supposed to be finely diced.”

“How do you dice a bloody carrot?” he asked. “Maybe we should ask Ken—”

“No.” Connor and I looked at each other, having said the same thing at the same time. “Mental load, remember.”

At my words, the two of them nodded and then went to work. Somehow we managed to get all the ingredients in the pan and as we added the different seasonings, a familiar aroma started to permeate the kitchen.

I’d seen a few videos about the mental load of dealing with looking after the home, or cooking, or childcare. All the stuff blokes like to shrink away from, claiming it was ‘woman’s work.’ I was fairly sure guys labelled it that because they knew how damn hard it was and wanted to get out of it because they had a penis. But they did so at the expense of their partner’s happiness, that became clear as I watched more and more videos. Statistics about relationship longevity, about sex, about everything were brought up, showing the toll on a woman when she had to look after all the aspects of a couple’s life.

And I could never do that to Kendall.

So we worked together and problem solved this shit until finally the meat was simmering away nicely, all of the flavours rendering down.

“OK, so now that’s cooking—” Van started to move towards the fridge to pull out a beer.

“We need to start on the potatoes.” I threw a peeler his way before grabbing a knife to start prepping the pumpkin.

“Kendall should be home by now.”

Connor had been eyeing his phone the entire time, trying to play it cool and failing utterly. The time she usually came home passed, then another half hour, then another.

“She’ll be here when she’s ready,” I said as I sliced into the bright orange flesh of the pumpkin.

“I’m going to send her a text.” Van and I looked at each other behind Connor’s back, shaking our heads slightly, right before Connor caught us. “What? What? I need to make sure she’s safe.”

He needed to take a fucking breath and a big guzzle of beer, something to take the edge off, but he wouldn’t. Eye on the prize, that was Connor, and right now, Kendall was everything. I felt a moment of sympathy for the bloke, remembering the way it had felt to hold her in my arms all night. I kept grabbing her far too tightly, sure she was a dream that would slip away. But she wasn’t. I remembered the way she looked under me, unable to stop thinking about her struggling to take me, then finally surrendering. Letting me in, letting me go as deep as I could, right before—

“You gonna cut that pumpkin or fondle it?” Connor asked, shooting me an uncomfortable look.

“Remembering what it was like, huh?” Van elbowed me out the way. “Oh, Kendall…”

He mimicked caressing the pumpkin with all the reverence we’d shown last night, making porn-star worthy groans all the while until I shoved him right back.

“Are the potatoes in the pot of water?” I growled. “No? Then move your fucking arse. I want dinner ready and waiting for our girl when she walks in the door.”

“Our girl…”

Van’s smile faded, but something much deeper rose in his eyes. The kind of joy that no expression can properly communicate. It felt like we were coming in out of the cold after too many long, shitty years, and while it stung a little to finally thaw out, we couldn’t help but warm our hands on the fire that burned in response to Kendall.

“Our girl—so let”s do this right.”