Page 11 of Messing With My Brother's Best Friends

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.

Chapter 8

Van

Sitting in her parent’s car with Kendall was always fucking torture. Her mum had one of those big soccer mum vans, so she could fit us in, but one of us invariably ended up seated next to Finn’s sister. I could remember the press of her thigh against mine, the soft sigh of her breath, my own heart rate slowing to match hers; and while I remembered being boned up and burning for Kendall, it was nothing like this.

Her perfume had changed. I breathed in slowly, tentatively, drawing the scent into my nose. Before, she smelled sticky sweet and cherry scented, but now it was complex, woody, and floral with something green mixed in. I wanted to trail my nose down the side of her neck and just breathe it in until I worked out what every single note was. Instead, the van hit a bump in the road causing the whole cab to sway.

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