Page 126 of Cross To Bear

That’s all we got from Hawk.

“The rumour mill has been at work.” Bjorn sighed, right as a woman came hustling over. She smiled brightly and then held out her arms.

“Bjorn, you’re here! Amazing!” She looked over at us, stopping momentarily when she saw me, but the smile stayed affixed. “And you brought your sleuth. Fantastic. I have a table set up for you over by the balloon animals. We got lots of paints for you, but didn’t have much luck with those thin brushes you were after.”

“Marcia…” Bjorn’s jaw flexed. “You know my sleuth.”

“Of course. Hi, Rafe.” She wiggled her fingers. “Maybe you remember me from school?”

“I remember.”

That’s all she got from him, but I got a little more.

She was all over me at the year 12 formal, he explained. Drunk as a fucking skunk before announcing to everyone I was going to take her virginity. I took her home to her dads instead.

Great.

“So can I get some of you big strong boys to help out today? It’s for the kids. Hawk, maybe…” Her chirpy voice faded away as my mate’s arms crossed his chest and he just stared at her. “Maybe not. Well, let’s get you started, Bjorn. Your mum said she would be by with some brushes later.”

“She what?”

Marcia paled, because she immediately had all of our undivided attention.

“I heard there’s a bit of tension there.” Marcia shot me an apologetic look. “I mean mating your brother’s girlfriend—”

“Ex. Girlfriend.”

Hawk enunciated every syllable.

“Right, so, don’t want to get in the middle of any family drama here, but she said she could grab the brushes, so I said yes. Just think of the kids, ’kay?”

At that she bustled away, gesturing for Bjorn to follow.

“Nelly’s coming?” I hissed at the other guys.

“This was not part of the fucking plan.” Razor said that through gritted teeth, eyeing the happy families as they walked past, as if my mother-in-law would pop out anywhere. His gaze cut through me as he looked down. “We’re getting you out of here.”

“Why?” I looked at each one of them then. “Is this the way it’s going to be? We hide away because ooh, Nelly might be here? If Bjorn wants to go, I’m happy to support him in that, but you’re not taking me home to sit by myself because of her.”

There was far more emotion in that than I intended. I shook my head, my cheeks flushing with embarrassment, but the three of them clustered around me.

“If you went home, we’d go with you,” Crash told me, bending down to peer into my eyes. “There’s nowhere else we’d want to be.”

“We’re not Jesse.”

Hawk’s hands landed on my shoulders, and he rubbed my back in slow circles before I nodded.

“I know. I guess I just…” I forced myself to smile. “Overreacted a bit.”

“There’s no overreacting or underreacting with us,” Razor told me. “Just how you feel. I’m just glad you could be open and honest with us. We know you’re still going to have moments where what happened with Jesse comes up.” He let out a sigh. “Especially when it comes to Nelly. We’ve got history and until we can replace those memories with something much more pleasant, you’re going to be processing them for a while, but…” He held out an arm, indicating that I should take it. “That’s nothing a good sausage sizzle couldn’t help with.”

“They always use cheap shit sausages,” Hawk grumbled. “And Wonder Bread.” He wrinkled his nose like he’d said pig foetuses, not commercially made bread. “I could—”

“Shut up,” Crash said cheerfully.

“But I would—”

“Shut up.” Crash looked over at me. “So sausage sizzle it is? How many did you want, love? One, two?” He grinned. “Two in the one bun?”

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