Page 108 of Messing With My Brother's Best Friends

I’d said that in a far sharper tone than I’d intended, but yesterday’s bullshit still stung. Then there was Mark and his bully-boy tactics. Mum had glanced pointedly at the kettle, obviously thinking that as the woman of the house, I should offer everyone tea, but I’d stayed right where I was.

“We’ve come to sort this mess out,” Dad had grumbled, arms crossed. “And I could murder a cup of coffee, thanks, love.”

“We’ve come to talk,” Mum corrected.

“Coffee things are there.” I pointed to the section of the kitchen with the kettle. “Mugs are in the cupboard overhead, but you’re not getting anything, not if you’re going to try and pull the same bullshit you did last night.”

Dad jerked back as if slapped.

“Kendall!”

“Dad.” I squared my shoulders. “This is my home and my life and it’s your choice if you want to still be a part of it but let me make this clear.” I stared past them to where Gage lurked, his lips twitching. “This is real. Gage, Van, Connor, and me, one way or the other, we’re gonna try and make this work.”

“Then we all better sit down and talk this out then, shouldn’t we?” Mum said, bustling into the kitchen to make coffee.

I relented, searching around in the cupboards for some biscuits, plating a packet of Tim Tams, but when I went to carry them over, Gage took them. He steered me over to a seat and then set the biscuits down, but it was the warmth of his hand that helped settle me. I looked up as I sat down, and all of my irritation faded away.

“There it is.” I looked up to see Mum smile as she set coffees down on the table. “I caught Gage looking at you like that more times than I can count.”

“You did?” Finn frowned as he looked at me, then Mum. “You never said anything to me about that.”

“Probably because I knew how you’d respond,” she said, settling down beside him. “Badly. You were always jealous of Kendall, even when she was a little girl.”

“Jealous?”

Finn and I said the word at the same time with almost identical expressions of disbelief.

“You were the baby of the family,” Mum said, “and the only daughter. Daddy’s little princess.” Dad shifted uncomfortably on his chair, dragging his mug closer.

“Princess?” I stared at them, looking for evidence of pod people because that couldn’t be right.

“You always got away with everything,” my brother grumbled. “We’d pull a prank and Dad would laugh, but then he’d make me clean it up.” He glared at me. “Even if you were the one who’d made the mess.”

“You needed to look after your sister—” Dad said.

“By terrorising me?” I’d meant to keep that lighthearted but failed. “The four of you tormented me the entire time.”

“And you gave as good as you got.” Finn’s arms came to rest on the table. “Remember when you weakened the seams on all my shorts?”

Shit, I’d forgotten about that. My lips twitched as I tried to stifle a smile, but a snort from Gage stopped that cold. I let out a little chuckle as I remembered my brother walking down the hallway, unable to work out why everyone was laughing, right up until the point someone pointed out the big hole in the back of his shorts. I’d used that trick a few times, waiting for Finn to forget and be lulled back into a false sense of security, pulling that prank off enough that he started exclusively doing his own washing.

“The piece of paper between my sandwiches?” Finn said.

God, I’d gotten him a few times with that one too. He was too damn slack to make his own and Mum would tell me to make him some as I was doing my lunch, so I’d slide a piece of baking paper between the bread and filling, cutting it neatly so he wouldn’t notice until he bit down into it. I did it often enough everyone stopped asking me to make my brother anything.

“I forgot all about that,” I said.

“That’s what happens.” Mum blew on her tea then took a sip. “Everyone keeps score in their hearts of the injuries done to them, forgetting about their own behaviour. How they’ve hurt others.” She glanced at Finn. “The things they… explored when they were young.” A meaningful look for Dad. “But what keeps us together as a family is our ability to make amends when we’ve done the wrong thing and to forgive, if not forget, once someone has properly atoned.”

Dad and Finn looked at each other then, then right as my brother sucked a breath in, the front door was pulled open and a voice cut across everyone.

“Kendall, you up? You will not believe the morning I had. I have seen photographic evidence of our parents, yours and mine and Gage’s and Connor’s, all having a gang…” Van’s lips fell closed as soon as he reached the kitchen. His eyes went wide as he saw everyone clustered in here, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed hard. “A gang photo.” He shot them a sheepish smile. “Our parents were… bikies, yeah, bikies, back in the day.”

“Heather still has those photos?” Dad asked Mum. “I thought she threw them out.”

“Have you ever known Heather to throw a thing out? She took in every old thing I tossed from the house when we moved,” Mum replied.

“They weren’t bikies.” Van whispered that in my ear. “It was a gang bang.”

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