Chapter 40

Van

“I can do that,” I said as soon as we got into the kitchen. Kendall pulled open a drawer instead, sorting through the contents. “What’re you looking for?” I moved closer, leaning over and peering into the drawer filled with cooking implements. “I can—”

“You said that already.” She smiled slightly, her eyes shining in the dark as she brandished a spatula. “You’re acting all squirrelly, Van. Is there something in that drawer you don’t want me to see?” Kendall gave the spatula a wobble. “Crimes against kitchen spoons? Beaters that have been beaten? A misshapen whisk?”

“No.” I plucked the spatula from her grip. “Nothing like that.” I shook my head, wishing it was something as simple as mangled utensils, but instead, what I was trying to hide was this.

We’d tried so hard when we got home. To cook the meal exactly to Kendall’s mother’s instructions. I’d wanted to ring her again to get some clarification, but Connor shot that down instantly. We had to prove ourselves in his mind, and so we soldiered on. But when we were done and the meal started smelling the way it was supposed to, when we got a clean tablecloth out and smoothed it over the table, when baskets were produced, bread rolls heated and silverware we’d dug out of a deep cupboard polished and laid out, we sat down and waited.

And waited. And waited.

My hand wrapped tight around the handle of the spatula as I blindly cut a slice, transferring it to a plate. It smelled so damn good, but… It wasn’t what I wanted, no matter how much my stomach protested. That’s when I knew I had to tell her.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“What?”

She watched me cross the kitchen, shoving the plate into the microwave before pushing the buttons to reheat the meal.

“You finding the spatula.” I swallowed hard. “You serving me.”

Kendall glanced at the table and then back at me before nodding slowly.

“So you didn’t have a French maid’s uniform for me to wear as I scurried around the table, getting each one of you a beer?”

I watched her grin in the darkness, but there was an edge to it.

“No. If anyone would be wearing the uniform, it’d be me.”

“You?” The whirr of the microwave was a strange soundtrack playing as she stepped closer. She slid her fingertips across my chest, there and gone again, but leaving a fiery trail in their wake. “You know some guys do that as a thirst trap, right? I think it’d be kinda hot, seeing you all dressed up in black and white satin.”

I could see it clearly in my mind, how freaking ridiculous I’d look. That along with Gage and Connor’s desperate attempts to take a breath as they cried with laughter. But they didn’t matter, just her.

“If that’s what you want, I’ll have one ordered in my size and get it express delivered.”

“You would?” As she stared at me, her smile faded. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“As a heart attack.” Because that’s what it felt like as I grabbed her hand and placed it against my chest, right over my heart. It was beating too hard, too fast and I needed her to know that. “Whatever you need, Kendall.”

“You keep saying that—”

She went to pull away and that’s when I ignored everything the guys and I had talked about. Taking things slow, letting Kendall set the pace. That was the right thing to do, somehow I knew, but…

I just couldn’t.

My lips were moving, my lungs filling with air, because I had to tell her exactly what I meant.

“Whatever you need.” I pleaded mutely for her to understand as I stared into her eyes. “If you want shepherd’s pie made every night with extra pumpkin, it’s done. You’ll never have to cook or do the dishes. The floor will always be mopped, the toilet seat always put down and all you have to do is put your dirty laundry in the basket and one of us will return it, cleaned and folded.”

She took a step backwards then, obviously wanting to get the fuck away from me, but I couldn’t seem to stop. Following her, describing how it’d be.

“If you want to go out every night, one of us will drive you there. You never need to drive that rust bucket again—”

“You guys need to stop dissing Daisy.” Kendall tried for sassy but failed utterly, the whites of her eyes gleaming in the dark.

“We’ll take you to work in the morning, pick you up in the afternoon. Shit, if you want to quit that job entirely, we can support you, or if you want to retrain…” I paused to suck in a breath, my throat feeling tight as a result. “If you want to do something else, we can help you with that too.”

“Chris offered me a bakery apprenticeship today.”

Her voice was little more than a squeak, but that had me rushing forward.

“Did he?” My hands flexed, caressing the air when all I wanted to do was touch her. I grinned and then shook my head. “Of course he fucking did. Wait until he sees how business improves when you start baking. His sausage rolls are perfectly adequate, but not like…”

I forced myself to stop for a second, just focussing on breathing as I tried to get a read on her reaction.

“Do you want that?” I asked, realising how many ways that could be taken. “I mean the apprenticeship.”

“I…” That pause felt like it went on and on and I was strung along with it. Kendall let out a little bark of a laugh before frowning. “I don’t know. It feels like part of me just… gave up after that day. If I stuffed things up once, I couldn’t be trusted to try again. No…” She was staring into the living room, but she wasn’t seeing it. Her pupils flicked from side to side as she let out a sigh. “I didn’t want to try, because if I did…”

She could fail. I lived with that feeling every day. We took a risk each time we bought a place and renovated it. In the early days, the level of risk threatened to crush me. I’d wake up at 2 A.M., gasping as my heart pounded and a fine layer of sweat covered my entire body.

“What if I’m no good, Van?” It was her shift in tone that broke me, forcing me forward. I needed to hold Kendall with every breath in my body and this was the point where I surrendered to that impulse. She was so soft and smelled of flowers and baked bread as I tugged her closer. Her hands went to my chest, a little tension there letting me know her first impulse was to push me away, but she didn’t. I felt like I noted the point when each muscle relaxed and she sank against me. “What if I can’t do this anymore.”

“You were always an amazing cook.”

“Was, Van. Was.” Her fingers scratched at my chest. “Like I did OK today when I decorated a cake—”

“You decorated a cake?”

I peered down at her, trying to get a read on how that went, and she slowly met my gaze. A small smile formed and she nodded.

“The client wanted a last-minute redecoration, and Chris was losing it, so I…” She swallowed hard. “I fixed it for him. He was pretty shocked when he worked out that I knew what I was doing…”

I grinned, feeling a sudden lightness filling me. The microwave was beeping, but I didn’t give a shit about that anymore, just her.

“Of course, you did. I watched you, Kendall. Damn, I ate a helluva lot of the food you made. Remember that cake that didn’t rise?”

“The biscuit cake?” She snorted. “I left the cake mix in the fridge, wanting to go and play instead of finishing it and when I finally got around to cooking it, I learned an important lesson in kitchen chemistry.”

“You learned a whole lot.” I tilted her chin up, making her meet my eyes. “So much your mum kept pawning you off on the other mums and your grandmothers, trying to find someone else who could teach you new skills. Then you got onto YouTube tutorials and cookbooks. You taught yourself everything, Kendall, and nothing we or Finn did can take that away from you. It must be scary, getting back into it…”

My throat closed up then and she peered more closely at me.

“I mean that’s the problem about caring about something. If you give a shit, that makes you vulnerable. Your defences are down.” I shook my head slowly, hearing my heart pound in my ears. “You’re out there doing your damn best and waiting for the world to judge you. Are you good, bad, or worse, just really ordinary, no more special than anyone else, but…”

My breath was coming too fast, my chest too tight, but the warmth of her hand felt like it radiated all the way through, pushing back a chill that threatened to overwhelm me.

“But you can’t stop yourself from giving it a go, right? Succeed or fail, there comes a point where the pain of wanting something outweighs the potential pain of failure, and that’s when you know you just have to go for it.” I swallowed down that lump in my throat and smiled as I stood taller. “You just have to go for it.”

“So you think I should take Chris up on the apprenticeship?”

We weren’t talking about that anymore and I think we both knew it, so maybe that’s why my hand rose to trail the backs of my fingers down her cheek.

“I think you should do whatever makes you happy, Kendall. What would make you happy? What would you have done if Finn fessed up and we…?” My girl was brave today, tackling a last-minute cake decoration after years of not doing anything cooking wise, so I could do the same. “And we turned up at your doorstep, asking you to be our girlfriend?”

“Then?” She went to pull away but I kept her right where she was. If she was going to face things head on, so was I. “I don’t know.” Kendall made a rude noise, then eyed me. “Probably told you to piss off and stop teasing me.”

Sometimes on the footy field, you have these moments when you know you’re gonna get hit. You watch the ball or someone’s fist come hurtling towards you in slow motion and just know it’s gonna hurt. That’s what I felt right now. I was about to get the king hit to end all king hits, and I couldn’t bring myself to dodge out the way.

“You say that you teased me because you were into me,” she continued. “Well, you hid that well. Too well. It would’ve taken some time to convince me it wasn’t all just one really big prank. If we went on a date, I’d be looking around for a whoopee cushion or something. If you pulled out a chair for me, I’d be too scared to sit down on it, lest you yank it out of the way.”

“But if we didn’t.” I barely squeezed that out. “If we tucked it under you, made sure you were seated before we did, even flicked a cloth napkin out over your lap.”

“Silver service style?” she asked with a smile.

“Fuck, maybe built the chair for you from scratch, exactly to your requirements.” I was babbling, but I couldn’t seem to stop. “And the table. Maybe the whole damn restaurant—”

“And why would you do that?” Her fingernails scratched lightly at my chest. “Why would you do that, Van?”

“Because…” Connor was gonna kick my arse in the morning, but I didn’t care. I didn’t. “Because…”

I touched her face, wanting to memorise the shape of it, because right now I reckoned I knew how Kendall felt when she decorated that cake. Like her heart was in her throat, pounding so hard it was difficult to breathe, until she just reached out…

“Take the apprenticeship, Kendall.” My head dropped down, my lips needing hers, but not yet. “Stay in our spare room. Get the qualification you were always destined to get, but also…” My hand covered hers, and I squeezed it far too tightly. “Take us.” No, that wasn’t right. “Take me. I promise to make everything right going forward. Whatever you need—”

“Whatever I need?” Her hand went around my neck, and with almost no effort, she tugged me down. The feel of her lips brushing mine was fucking everything. I went to deepen the kiss, but she pulled back slightly. “I think I need you, Van, and Connor and Gage. I never allowed myself to even think that before but…” When her eyes started to sparkle, I knew I was gonna cop it, but as she smiled, so did I. “Three guys who promise they’ll always put the seat down? What girl can say no to that?”

“Don’t say no.” I kissed her hard, almost getting lost in the feel of her mouth in mine, but I swept her up into my arms and then down the hall. “Just say yes, baby.” I stood at the door of her room, gazing down at her. Kendall didn’t know what we’d set to work on once it became clear she wasn’t coming home, but she would very soon. “Just say yes.”

To me, to us, to Gage and Connor, to everything that lay beyond that door. I waited for her response, needing her to say that one word. Her grip on my neck tightened and she glanced at the door, then back to me with exaggerated care.

“Yes, Van. Yes.”