Chapter 9

Kendall

This was weird, right?

The sight of the house hit me as we pulled up front, my eyes taking in the beautiful facade while my brain struggled to accept this would be the place I would call home for a while. I shoved that to one side as the doors to the van opened and I slid out, right as a regular clunking sound let me know that Gage and Barbie had arrived. I blinked and then joined the guys at the back of the van, ready to start hauling boxes inside.

“No,” Gage said, appearing by my side.

“What?” I reached for the handle of the back of the van, about to open it, but Connor beat me to it, claiming it as his.

“Head out to the pool.” His spare hand offered me the house keys. “You and your friend can cool off, and we’ll get this sorted.”

“Oh, I like the sound of that,” my bestie said, looking Connor over more closely.

“Then I’ll make the margaritas.” I went to take the bag of bottles from Van’s hand, but his grip on them tightened.

“Nope.” He grinned to soften his words. “You don’t know where the ice or the blender is.” Then he said the words every woman wants to hear. “We’ve got this.”

Every woman but me.

Leaving home was a… moment for me. My dad was irritating as hell and didn’t do a thing to stop the boys terrorising me, but I hadn’t realised just how much he’d done for me until I moved out. I’d had to move my gear up three flights of stairs, get my car serviced, even learn how to replace a fuse in the ancient fuse box of the first place I’d rented, I’d worked it out and found myself growing stronger as I developed new skills. That feeling of competency that I clung to every day I was alive didn’t like being told no at all.

“C’mon, Fanta Pants.” The guys’ eyebrows shot up as Barbie wrapped her hand around my arm and dragged me away. “You can fight the good fight for female self-determination on a day that is less sweltering. Pool, girl.” Her voice took on the slightly manic tone pet owners used with their dogs. “Cool, splashy, wet, but most of all, cool.”

“You already said that,” I said as we walked towards the front door.

“It bears repeating.” I found the right key and twisted it in the lock. “As does this.” She shot the guys a look over her a shoulder before walking inside with me. “It’s OK to let people help you.”

But it wasn’t. If you let them, then you got used to it and what happened when they stopped? You felt a loss, an ache inside your chest that just wouldn’t stop until— I pinched off that thought like Mum did the dead heads of her precious flowers.

“Think of it as penance,” Barbie said, settling against the kitchen counter then craning a neck to watch the guys file in through the door, each one toting a box. “Sexy, sexy penance.”

“I’m not sure moving my shit makes up for what they put me through,” I grumbled.

“Then what would? Because damn, girl. I knew you were a freaking hard head, but how the hell did you keep your hands off those boys growing up? I’d be slipping down the hallway every night they slept over and…”

She began to make movements with her hands, making clear what she would do— something Gage caught out the corner of his eye. I grabbed her wrist and dragged her out through the glass sliding doors towards the perfectly turquoise pool.

“You would’ve been singing a different tune if you’d met them then,” I told her, opening the gate and then toeing off my sandals. The pebblecrete pressed into the soles of my feet, keeping me here rather than back at my parent’s old place. “Sneaking into their room would’ve just meant being tickled until you peed or being Dutch ovened.” I ran a toe through the water, feeling how refreshingly cool it was, the Australian sun burning far too brightly. “Remind me to check if there’s a lock on the bedroom door.”

She chuckled.

“To keep them out or you—?”

I slapped a hand over her mouth, making clear I did not want to hear her finish that thought. This whole thing was weird, and I didn’t need her making it weirder. The nice house, the lovely pool, and the fact my tormenters were moving me into their McMansion, I didn’t need her concocting sexy scenarios as well.

“My bathers are in my boxes and yours are at home,” I told her, “so what did you want to do? Work on our tans?”

“Where’s your phone?” she asked.

“In my bag. Why?”

Wrong answer. She grinned and then moved like lightning, shoving me forward, my limbs flailing through the air right before I hit the water. Cold, harsh chlorine hit me as I went under, then surged back up to suck in a breath.

“You b—!”

I didn’t get to finish that sentence as she leapt forward, curling her body into a ball before going slamming down into the water, forcing me to splutter all over again as waves of water hit my face.

“Fuck, Barbie…” I gasped.

“Shut your eyes when you get a blast to the face,” she said with a wild grin, her perfect waves of blonde hair now plastered to her skull. “Haven’t I told you that before?”

“I’ll give you a blast to the face,” I growled, slapping my hands down on the water to splash her. Of course that’s not how it worked. She just shut her eyes and held her face out in a porn-worthy performance, moaning as the water hit her. I, of course, doubled down, trying to get her spluttering, but she just made a further spectacle of herself, right as Gage appeared with two tall glasses in hand.

A small clearing of his throat was what stopped the two of us, our eyes blinking water away to see him just standing there. Those hazel eyes seemed to take everything in, what we were doing, the noises we were making, and the way our clothes were now plastered against our skin. No, make that my clothes.

Barbie, that would’ve made sense. During our entire friendship, I’d seen guys drop drinks, stop conversations mid-sentence, even with their girlfriends, or just leave off what they were doing to trail after her. But if I wanted to ascribe his sudden interest to her, I was out of luck. There was no mistaking who he was staring at.

I’d chucked on some light, floaty top this morning along with some shorts, the weather making it impossible to wear anything heavier, so that meant he could see everything. Not granny panties, but a super boring, slightly grey from being washed far too often bra. He traced its shape with his eyes like it was the finest lingerie.

Weird.

“Yummy!” Barbie moved to the edge of the pool, and that was when Gage paid attention to her, right? Nope, not when she swam over to the edge of the pool or gazed up at him with her baby blues. Instead, it took me wading closer to break whatever spell had been cast over him as he blinked and then swallowed hard.

“Your drinks.”

Was his voice this deep and rumbly when we were kids? I always remembered it being deeper than the other guys—Gage seeming to go through puberty before everyone else—but it didn’t feel like it vibrated all the way through me then, did it? I found myself reaching up for the drink, his hand not moving any closer, forcing me to cling to the rim of the pool and surge up to grab it.

And he watched every moment of that movement.

It was as if his eyes traced every rivulet of water, each droplet as it slid down my body, and why did that have me flushing? An instinctive need to cover up, to shield his eyes from my body, rose and was quickly stuffed down. This was Gage. He’d seen me in the pool, out in the yard, lounging on the couch, or mucking around on the play set since I was a little kid. This was no big deal. That didn’t explain the slight zap I got when I grabbed the glass from his fingers, our skin touching for just a second before I pulled away. I gulped down a mouthful of the drink, my mouth suddenly dry, and the sharp burst of lime, Cointreau, and tequila was a pleasant surprise.

“Damn, that boy does know how to make a good margarita,” Barbie said, taking the words right out of my mouth. “Hey, where’s yours?”

Gage’s head snapped around as if he just noticed my friend was there.

“I don’t really drink that shit.”

“Shit?” My tone rose abruptly. “Tequila’s amazing.”

“I guess I got put off by the smell of it that time you and your friends decided to neck a bottle of it doing shots.” His lips curved into the smallest of smiles. “Remember that?”

Oh fuck, yes I did. It was a long time after before I dared to drink tequila again.

“Kendall chucked up?” Barbie cackled when Gage confirmed this with a nod. “Did you hold her hair back when she spewed?” Another nod, sealing my fate.

My face flamed bright red, what memories I had of that night coming back. My friends and I were having a sleepover when we were about sixteen, and one of them had snuck a bottle in. We’d dared each other to take shots, the first burning its way down, but the next and the next… It got easier and easier to drink them until it didn’t. Mum had been pissed to find a gaggle of vomiting girls in her garden, her voice carrying across the yard as she called out my name. But I couldn’t be summoned.

Because I was in the corner of the garden vomiting my guts out as Gage held me.

I didn’t know how he found me or why he knew I needed help, just that he was there. His hands were firm as one supported my chest, my whole body convulsing as he held back my hair. I remembered snippets of his voice because it was soft rather than hard and mocking me when I was down. Then there was his hand when I was finally done, rubbing circles on my back to soothe me as Mum called out again.

“Kendall?”

Barbie stared at me, a mischievous smile on her face.

“I vomited up every damn thing I’d eaten in the last day or two,” I said with a sheepish shrug. “That was probably enough to turn anyone off tequila.” I held up my glass. “I guess I was too drunk to remember enough to know better.”

“Well, let me know when you want another one,” he told me. “Or if you need your hair held back.”

“Right. Thanks.” I smiled tightly.

“Hang on, where are you going?” Barbie asked him, never knowing when to leave something alone.

“To help put the bed together,” he told her.

“Where’s your phone?”

“Barbie…” I growled, watching her hands set the glass on the edge of the pool and then reach up.

“Inside, charging—”

Those words were enough to seal his fate. She rose up like a siren of old, grabbing his hands before he could say anything, and then used her momentum to pull him down into the water.

My hand shot upwards, trying to protect the precious margarita from getting contaminated by chlorine, but there was no saving it from the epic splash. I was left spluttering, and so were Barbie and Gage, but a mouthful of water wasn’t what drove the air from my lungs.

Gage was always a big guy; much was made of that in school. The local footy coach nearly wet his pants when he started playing because he was so much bigger than other kids his age. Some girls I knew speculated just how ‘big’ he was when we got a whole lot older, but teenage Gage had nothing on this. He’d been wearing a loose, old cotton t-shirt, but now I understood why he’d been staring. The fabric clung to shoulders that were so damn broad I didn’t know how he got through the door, his deltoids looking as big as basketballs as he tossed his hair and then dashed water out of his eyes, only for him to turn around and catch me staring.

Look away, a little voice shrieked inside my head. It was a familiar one that I hadn’t heard for a long time. Staring at my brother’s best friends would’ve just got my ponytail pulled or someone saying something snarky at my expense, so I knew better than to do a quick comparison, the teenage bare chest I’d seen displayed all summer overlaid on top of the man’s right now.

And the man won.

“Pool party!”

Barbie’s shout jerked me out of my head, making me all too aware of the water and the way the currents caressed my skin, my glass going to my lips, my hands needing something to do. The margarita had a chemical aftertaste to it that was not an improvement, but I drank it down while she scrambled out of the pool anyway. “If you don’t drink tequila, and shame on you by the way, then what do you drink?” She cocked her head to one side. “A beer, right?”

“There’s some in the fridge,” he said then moved to the pool ladder. “But I’ll get one.”

“Yeah, better than leaving him here with me.” Where the fuck had that come from? My mouth snapped shut as Barbie’s eyebrow jerked up in a way that I knew meant trouble. “I mean, he’ll probably start dunking me like they used to when we were kids.”

“You used to hold my bestie’s head under the water?” Barbie asked Gage in an accusatory tone.

“Sometimes.” He shrugged. “And sometimes we’d play Marco Polo, or she’d do backflips off my shoulders.”

Oh my god, shut up, I thought furiously.

“Backflips?” She moved closer to the edge of the pool. “I think I need to see such acrobatics for myself.”

“Oh no—”

“What’s up, Red?” I freaking hated it when they used that nickname, his mocking tone grating on every nerve. “You scared?”

Those two words were all it took to get me jumping off cliffs with them or climbing up the big tree in our front yard, going up far too high. They had me eating weird berries they handed me, or forced me to keep up when we went exploring along the coastline not far from our old house. They were like a red rag to a bull, and I could never just ignore them. My glass made a clinking sound as I set it down on the pebblecrete and then moved closer.

“Of you?” I was fired by a bravado that would fade the moment my head cleared, but right now, I grabbed his hands as the bastard smirked. “No way.”

Every time I let my temper get the better of me, they won. I knew that, but as he sank down into the water, I planted my feet on his shoulders. My own stupidity became apparent as he surged up and out of the water because I didn’t have a kid’s centre of balance nor athleticism. My legs shook, my hands gripping tighter as Gage stood up, but his hands gripped me right back, steadying me as I blinked and looked around.

Barbie’s shocked expression made clear she didn’t expect me to follow through. Me either, Barbs, I thought mutely right before he said the word.

“Ready?”

No, no I wasn’t, but when had that ever mattered? Fake it until you make it, that was a motto that worked well for me, and that was what I did now. I nodded sharply right before he dropped down and then launched me into the air.