Chapter 46

Connor

“I can’t do this.” Kendall set the knife down with a clatter before snatching it back up again and checking the edge for nicks.

“Yes, you can.”

I came to stand behind her, running my hands along her shoulders, subtly trying to bring them down from around her ears.

“No, I can’t. Mum, Dad and Finn… I can’t. I’m not going.”

“Fine by me.” Van grabbed a chunk of carrot from her chopping board. Kendall spanked him across the knuckles with a wooden spoon, but he just grinned as he chewed up the carrot. Filthy animal. “There’s a footy game on tonight and—”

“Oh god, that’s probably why they came into town.” Kendall sagged against me, and my arms moved to cradle her closer. “They’re just gonna want to sit in front of the TV and watch the game and the women will—”

“Do whatever they damn well please.” I kissed her ear softly. “Watch the game. Drink wine and bitch. Dance naked—”

“Dude, that’s my mum you’re talking about.” Van’s nose wrinkled.

“Why are our mothers getting naked?” Gage had just returned from a run and was wiping the sweat from his face with a hand towel. My eyes narrowed, making clear he needed to stick that in the laundry basket afterwards.

“They’re not, because that’s disgusting,” Van said.

“So if I had children, you’d think I was disgusting naked?”

Kendall’s tone was as sharp as her knife.

“Kids…?” I knew that gleam in Van’s eyes because I felt the same damn thing every time I saw a family walk past. “You pregnant?”

“It could happen,” she said, waving the knifepoint in his direction. “Not right now because I’m on birth control, but—”

“Oh my god, that’d be so fucking hot,” Van groaned, and Gage and I clustered closer in response. “Your belly…” He made a curving motion with his hand. “And your tits. Like I already want to bury my face in them every minute of the day, but pregnant? They’d get bigger, right?” He glanced at us. “Right?”

“Shut up, idiot,” I told him, right before I pressed a kiss to Kendall’s neck. “You’re beautiful, period. Pregnant or childless, old or young. I promise I will stand to attention any time you decide to get naked for the rest of our lives.”

I’d meant that kinda light-hearted, but I didn’t do jokes well. She peered back over her shoulder at me, her eyes searching for the truth of the matter, but it was just there. There might be a game playing and the dads might cluster in the lounge room to watch, but not me, not Van, and not Gage. It didn’t matter how long we managed to stay together; I’d be by Kendall’s side. So I told her just that and apparently that was the right thing to say. Her smile spread as slowly as the sun’s dawn, lighting her up by the second, before she turned back to the salad she was preparing.

“We can do this,” she said.

“Yeah, we can.” Gage looked down at her chopping board. “So let us help you prep.”

Hours later, freshly showered and dressed, we walked up the driveway to Van’s parents’ house.

“Shit!” When Kendall froze to the spot, so did we.

“What?” Van asked, glancing around. “Did we forget the salads?”

“You’re holding one of them, dickhead,” Gage said with a dark look.

“OK, so did we make them wrong? Did we forget drinks?” Van looked around, seeing we had all the things we needed.

“What then?” Gage asked that gently, approaching Kendall like she was a frightened horse, not willing to make any fast moves.

“They’re gonna know.”

It wasn’t hard to work out who ‘they’ were because I’d already had this thought before we even got into the van. I had to admit, I liked it. If we walked into this BBQ with all of our families present—well, except mine—then everyone would know about our relationship. They’d see us together and know that Kendall belonged to us now.

“Your mother would’ve put two and two together when we asked for the shepherd’s pie recipe,” I told her.

“Yeah, but…” My girl turned around, and I soaked in the sight of her pretty, little, floaty top. I made sure my eyes didn’t drop down, meeting only her gaze. “They’re gonna know.”

“What?” I passed my burden over to Van as I ran a hand down her cheek. “That you’re ours. That we love you to fucking distraction?”

“I did nearly cut the top of my thumb with a circular saw the other day,” Van said with a nod.

“What?” Kendall’s attention snapped sideways, but I directed it back to me.

“That you’re our girl and we’re not going anywhere.” Gage said that, stepping forward, the two of us sheltering Kendall from the view of the house. Van moved quickly to join us. “This is who we are now, and they can either accept it or they can’t, but it won’t change anything.”

“If years of pining didn’t, then some grumpy parents won’t make a difference either,” I added.

“Right.” She let out a long breath. “Right. This is fine. Everything will be fine.”

But of course, it wasn’t.

“Here he is!” Van’s mother, Heather, got to her feet and came over, arms outstretched. “My boy! And you brought salad.” She shot it a wary look. “Is it edible?”

“Hello to you too, Mum.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Kendall made it, so yeah, it tastes amazing.”

“Kendall!” Heather turned to our girl and rushed towards her, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “We haven’t seen you for ages. How are you, darling?”

“Ah, good…” Kendall replied. “I made a couple of salads.”

“Oh, you didn’t have to do that!” Heather said.

“Not one of those fancy schmancy ones with frigging goat’s cheese in it again?” A gruff voice announced that Bruce, Kendall’s dad, had arrived.

“One time, Dad,” Kendall replied with a sigh. “One beetroot and goat’s cheese—”

“I dunno what was in it, but I know it tasted like shit,” he announced, but his tone softened the moment he spied what was in her bowl. “You made that potato salad, with the sun-dried tomatoes and the stinky feet cheese.”

“Parmesan?”

“Parma-get-in-my-belly,” he enthused, setting his beer down and wrapping an arm around Kendall’s waist. “Let’s put that down on the trestle table and then you can have a beer with your old man. Finn’s here with the kids. No Cheryl though. She must have the flu.” I watched her get steered away from us, unable to focus on the chatter or the music playing, just Kendall. “So, has any fella turned your head? You need to settle down soon, love, if you’re gonna give your mother grandkids.”

“Give me what?”

Alice, her mother, walked out the back door and took the lot of us in with a slow smile. “What do you have there, boys? Some nice shepherd’s pie?”

“Why would the boys bring shepherd’s pie to a bloody BBQ, Alice?” Bruce said in irritation.

“Why indeed?” Alice was a quieter presence in the Kennedy household, but that wasn’t because she lacked strength. Her steely gaze made that clear right now. She took the three of us in, one eyebrow rising slowly in question. “Connor rang me up earlier to get the recipe, so I assumed it was because they wanted to bring some for dinner.”

“Doubt it,” Bruce blustered. “Not when there’s perfectly good sausages and hamburgers on offer. The only time we ever eat it is…”

I watched the man who’d been more of a father to me than my own think, almost able to hear the cogs in his head whirring. His eyes narrowed as I stepped closer to Kendall. Nothing in his expression improved as Gage did the same, as did Van. The man watched Kendall take a step away from him and towards us, his frown getting deeper by the second.

“Did you make shepherd’s pie for us tonight, love?” he asked his daughter gently.

“No, Dad. The guys made it for me.” Heather had returned with several drinks in hand and a ready smile on her face, but that faded as soon as she sensed the shift in mood.

“And what’re you boys doing making dinner for my daughter?” Bruce grumbled that like we’d committed some kind of cardinal sin. “You always acted like right little bastards when it came to Kendall.”

“When they were boys.” Heather tried to smile, her tone light, but her eyes flicked back and forth, taking us all in before settling finally on her son. She widened her eyes, glaring at him meaningfully to defuse the situation, but Van just shook his head slowly. “That’s all done with, isn’t it? All those bloody pranks.” Heather nudged Alice with her elbow. “Remember when Kendall washed all of the boys’ footy jumpers with her red dress. They wore pink and black for several weeks before I found a dye remover that would work.”

“No more pranks,” Kendall agreed, looking down when my fingers tangled with hers. Bruce caught that too, his expression growing more thunderous by the second, but that was nothing compared to what came next. He went an alarming shade of red when Van grabbed her other hand, cradling it against his chest. Heather’s mouth opened, shut, then opened again, but no sound came out. Kendall leaned backwards when Gage’s hands came to rest on her shoulders, her head finding its place in the hollow of his shoulder, right as she regarded the others. “The relationship between us has changed quite a lot.”

“Mum, the kids…” Finn walked in, his face looking a little better. His eye was a horrendous reddish-purple rather than black. He worked out what was going on, then sniffed. “Well, I kept my mouth shut about what was going on, so don’t blame me.”

“You knew…?” Bruce turned on his son with a growl.

“Calm down, Brucie—” Heather started to say.

“Don’t tell me to calm down!” Bruce seemed to swell to twice his size, storming up to the lot of us. “What the hell do you buggers think you’re doing with my daughter?”

“What was always on the cards, I’m guessing.” Alice’s voice cut through the noise with all the precision of a surgical scalpel. “Probably some of the same things we used to get up to with those key parties back in the 80s.”

“Jesus Christ, Alice…” Bruce hissed, looking around furtively.

“Fuck, you lot were swingers?” Finn’s eyebrows shot up to meet his hairline. “No freaking way.”

“It was a different time—” Heather tried to explain.

“Jesus, Mum, I promise to clean all of the guttering and repair that crack in the roof tiles if you never mention this again,” Van groaned.

“What’s going on?” Gage’s dad appeared, brandishing a pair of tongs. “Food’s nearly ready. Hello, Kendall! Long time, no see.”

“Do you know what your son has been doing with my daughter, Phil?” Bruce spluttered, stabbing his finger in our direction.

“Gage and Kendall?” Phil shook his head.

“Gage, and Connor, and Van, and Kendall.” Bruce listed us like we were co-defendants, facing a judge for the same crime. “They’re together.”

“What, like we were—?” Phil said.

“No.” They were my elders. I owed them respect due to their age and the relationships our families had shared, but they wouldn’t get this. I surveyed each and every one of them, waiting for them to fall silent before I spoke. “From what I can tell, you guys… experimented back in the day, and the less said about that, the better.”

“Hallelujah…” Van said, his eyes sliding skywards. “I will do literally anything to stop hearing about that.”

“But there was no pressing need to be together beyond a few drunken nights, right?” When I stared at her, Heather nodded, so did Phil, even Bruce followed suit. “You just wanted to have a little bit of fun. What we have with Kendall has nothing to do with fun.”

“Um… thanks?” Kendall shot me a sidelong look filled with incredulity and just a little amusement. “I think it was pretty damn funny when I had you showering in beef stock, Bonox.”

“Fuck, yes…” Van chuckled.

“Pretty sure you’ve still got a bit of glitter on you, Sparkle Tits,” Gage told him with a nudge.

“OK, so we’ve done a lot of dumb things to each other over the years, but…”

I sucked in a breath, somehow able to imagine having this same speech somewhere else. A pretty little chapel or even under a flowery archway at some beautiful destination. Kendall would be dressed in white, while we… I couldn’t finish that mental image because the world hadn’t progressed that far yet, able to show on screen the kind of love I shared with my girl and her boys.

“I might regret all of the shitty things I’ve ever done before but not this.” I plucked my hand from Kendall’s limp fingers, using both to cup her chin. Our parents, the world, it didn’t matter-just her. “Not Kendall. I’ve been in love with your daughter for longer than I can remember, Bruce, and while I’d like your blessing to pursue a relationship, I don’t need your permission.”

I stroked a thumb over Kendall’s cheek, watching her lips twitch and then curve into a smile.

“The three of us worked out pretty damn quick that Kendall was the only girl for us and we could either fight each other for the honour of walking by her side, or…” When Kendall breathed in, I did too, drawing oxygen into starved lungs. “Or we could spend the rest of our lives making sure she was the happiest woman in the world.”

“Kendall is going out with all of the boys?”

That was Maggie, Gage’s mother.

“A good question, Maggie.” I knew everyone’s voice here like I knew my own because of our shared history, but none sent cold fingers raking up my spine like his. “I’d like to know the answer to that too…” My eyes began to close, flinching in anticipation of a blow. “Son. What the hell do you think you’re playing at, pretending to be in some kind of… depraved relationship?”