Chapter 7

Kendall

“So what the fuck are you doing?” I hissed at my bestie the minute we got into my car.

“What?” I watched her eyelashes flutter like a butterfly hopped up on acid.

“You know.” I shoved the key into the ignition, heard the car turn over but not start before I winced. The guys had followed us outside, about to jump into one of their vans when they frowned. “C’mon, Daisy…” That’s what I called my car. “C’mon, girl, you can do it.”

Whether it was due to my urgings or because the gods were finally smiling down on me, I choked back a shout of jubilation, merely smiling through the windshield as the engine roared to life. I waved at the guys, catching the frowns men always gave my car when they heard it before pulling out onto the road.

“That,” she said, waving a hand at my face as I glanced around to make sure there were no other cars before heading down the street.

“Gonna need more words than that to explain your point, Barb.”

“Do not call me Barb. Barb is the name of some old lady who runs the school tuck shop, who’s bingo wings flap in the breeze as she gives the kiddies their pies with sauce.”

“Being oddly specific there, Barb.” I grinned as I heard her growl of frustration, but that was quickly set aside as she got to the point. “And ‘that’ referred to that thing you do. You never want anyone to help you.”

“Is this about me sleeping on your couch?” I asked. “Because we’re close, but not close enough for me to be comfortable listening to you and Alan soft launching your Only Fans channel.”

“That and the fact those guys would’ve given you a jump start if Daisy finally gave up the ghost.” I slid my eyes, catching her sly smile. “Or would pop the hood and look at the rat’s nest you’ve got going in the engine bay.”

“Don’t go bad mouthing Daisy.” I rubbed a free hand over the dash. “Don’t listen to her, girl. I still love you.”

“And I think Daisy would love to have three big, hot guys working on her until she was purring like a kitten.” I could feel my best friend’s eyes boring into the side of my face as I flicked on the indicator, slowing to a stop at the intersection. “But you’d never let that happen.”

“They’d just put a banana in the exhaust pipe,” I said, gritting my teeth. “They did that to me in high school. I ended up bunny hopping, then stalling my car in front of the entire student body, right at the end of the day when everyone else was trying to leave.”

“Oh, I think they want to put a banana somewhere.” I took in her gleeful grin and then jerked my eyes back to the road, looking for a space to pull out into. “Three long, throbbing bananas that they all tried to force into—”

“Shut up.” I forced myself to smile to soften the impact of my words, but my glare made clear I was serious.

“You’re so cute when you’re in denial. You get this weird little pinchy thing going on between your eyebrows and—”

“Just shut up.” My eyes locked with hers, and I held her gaze until the smile began to soften. “You talked me into living with the three guys who made my life hell—”

“Because my gut is telling me they want to make everything all right now.” I shook my head, glancing up to see the guys’ van in my rear vision mirror. “Those guys weren’t looking at you like they were seeing their best mate’s kid sister. They looked like all their Christmases had come at once the minute you walked in that door.”

Was that what happened? I was hardly an impartial witness. The minute I saw the three of them, my whole body went on alert, my heart pounding fast as adrenaline pumped through me, but to what end? To run from them or…? I shook my head and pressed down on the accelerator, roaring forward and slotting into a gap in traffic.

“Your gut had us making a hasty pit stop at the local McDonalds so you could use the toilets,” I said. “No more dodgy midnight kebabs and no more messing with my life, Barbie.”

“OK.” Her compliance had me looking over at her, suspicions aroused. This was confirmed by her smug smile as she sat back in her seat. “I’m pretty sure I don’t have to do shit. I just hope you like bananas, girl, because I see a whole lot of crazy monkey sex in your future.”

“Barbie—!”

She interrupted me with a very terrible impersonation of a monkey, hooting and carrying on until the people in the cars near us turned to stare. That just had her laughing and acting like an even bigger dickhead until she collapsed down against her chair, cackling like the evil witch she was. Thankfully, she’d calmed down by the time we reached my place.

Not that it helped.

I rattledmy key in the lock, conspicuously making it apparent I was opening the front door of my old apartment, but when we walked in, we were blinded by the full moon. Todd’s bare white arse bobbed up and down as he pumped away between Marcia’s thighs.

“Oh my god!” Barbie yelped, and I made a similar sound of disgust, our hands clapping over our eyes.

“What’re you doing here!” Marcia yelped, and when I peeked through my fingers, I saw she’d pulled a blanket off the back of the couch to cover herself with. “You’re supposed to move out!”

“That’s why we’re here.” Gage stepped through the front door, taking in the cluttered living area, the sagging couch and a naked Todd, now with his hands slapped down to cover his dick. He lifted his tool box, his biceps popping in a way that had Marcia’s blanket slipping a little. Todd grabbed a pair of shorts off the floor and yanked them on, flushing bright red, but my female flatmate just stared, her lips parting as she took the guys in. But none of them paid any attention to that, moving closer to me. “Which room’s yours?”

“Down here.”

When we reached my door, I felt a moment of hesitation. Everyone was left standing in the corridor, which didn’t make sense. There was nothing personal left lying out in the room. I’d packed everything up into boxes the night Marcia gave me the news, hoping to be out and into somewhere else sooner than this, but still… The childhood memories kept on stirring up: of the four guys bursting into my room, ruffling my hair, making me smell their armpits and—

That was then and this was now.

I opened the door and ushered everyone in.

“Barbie and I can carry most of the boxes,” I said, “though if you could give us a hand with those—”

“Books?” Connor asked, going over to the boxes and then peering in through the flaps.

Part of me wanted to slap his hands away, stop him from prying, seeing, anything that had to do with me, but that was teenage me. I smiled slowly as I pulled one out.

“Yep. This one’s annotated, so if you want to do an impromptu reading of the smut chapters, look for the red sticky notes.”

“You read girl porn?” Barbie said, snatching it out of my grip. “Bitch, you’ve been holding out on me!” She flicked through the pages, seeing the flurry of sticky notes before staring at Connor. “Wait, why would you want to know where the smut is?”

“We used to embarrass Kendall by reading those scenes aloud,” he replied before dropping the book back into the box.

“You used to read the guy’s sections.” I pointed at Connor. “While Van did all the girl’s parts.”

“Before puberty finished my voice was the only one that was high enough,” Van told Barbie with a shrug.

“While he used to hold me down to make sure I listened to the entire performance.” Gage straightened up, meeting my gaze head on, but I caught the way his hand gripped the handle of his toolbox tighter. “Fun times.”

“Well, screw that.” She threw her hands up in the air and then backed away from the boxes, but not before grabbing the annotated book and shoving it in her pocket. “You guys can carry the lot down to the truck.”

“Barbie—”

“Fine by me.” Gage watched me steadily, daring me to contradict him, and god how I wanted to. “And you’re not driving back home in that rust bucket.”

“Daisy is not—”

“Registration worthy? Likely to last another trip?” he said, and with that, I was shoved right back into childhood. Big bad Gage Slater telling me how it was going to go and me being forced to listen.

Except now there was no one to put me in a headlock and make me do anything.

“The car is registered,” I said between gritted teeth. “It’s perfectly fine and—”

“Could do with a tune up.” I turned around slowly, unable to believe what Barbie had just said. She winced, obviously aware of how badly she had just betrayed the girl code. “C’mon, Ken, you know that thing is a death trap.”

“Then you won’t mind if we drive it.” Gage plucked my keys from my limp fingers, my hand spasming too late to stop him. “You’ve been wishing us dead since the minute you walked in our door.” He shrugged. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and that death trap of yours will take me out.”

I smiled slowly, visualising him getting into my tiny car like one of the clown cars at the circus. That and trying to work out how the hell to get Daisy started. My car was like me, a temperamental woman, and she didn’t respond to just anyone. Barbie had convinced me moving in with these guys was a good way to get revenge and apparently that started today.

“If you want to be sitting by the side of the road dealing with my car as I’m lying beside your pool, I’m fine with that,” I said before shifting my focus to Van. “We just need to go through the drive through bottle shop on the way back.” I glanced at my bestie. “Barbie and I have a date planned with a bottle of tequila.”

“You got it,” Van replied, shooting me the same smile that had melted a thousand hearts. “Now you’re bringing everything in this room?”

I nodded, walking over to pick up a box, but Connor was already there.

“We’ve got this,” he told me, putting one hand firmly on the box then handing me a set of car keys. “No need for you ladies to worry about hauling these downstairs. Open the car, turn on the aircon and relax.”

“Oh my god, perfect!” Barbie said, grabbing my arm.

It was. The day was already humid and sticky, and it was only going to get hotter, so hauling my shit down the narrow staircase of the apartment building would be a horrible way to spend it. That didn’t stop me from staring at the lot of them until she dragged me out of the room.

“Oh this is nice…”Barbie sighed as she slid onto the bench seat of the van and then turned on the aircon once the engine was running. “Very nice…”

I followed her gaze to where the guys had emerged with the first lot of the boxes, but I didn’t feel the same sense of satisfaction she did. Instead, my whole body tensed as I heard them open the back of the van and start to slide the boxes in. My ears strained to hear what they were saying, because I couldn’t relax back into the seat like she was.

The only time these guys were ever nice to me was right before they were about to do something shitty. I turned around, watching the boxes get pushed into the cargo bay and had to wonder what stunt they’d pull this time.