Page 51 of Messing With My Brother's Best Friends

“Kendall—”

I’d meant to just tell her I was always willing to talk about this if she was, but when I grabbed her shoulder as she turned to walk into her room, I realised my mistake.

“What?” she snarled in a way she’d never been free to in her family home. “What, Gage? What?”

My wish was granted, and she tossed her phone onto her bed then turned to face me. I didn’t answer, seeing the pain in her eyes and knowing it needed to come. It was like a boil that had to be lanced, the poison not coming out any other way. Because when it did, her pain would go right where it needed to go.

To me.

She was crying for real right now, and my whole body shook with the effort of holding myself back. But when the tears started to stream and her nose grew all red and blotchy, when her body started to shake, the sobs tearing themselves free of her, I couldn’t anymore. I moved in, gently, slowly, and then said exactly the wrong thing

“Baby…”

“What the fuck did you just call me?”

She looked like a fox that had been run to ground, a dog that had one too many beatings and couldn’t take anymore. The way she turned on me, teeth flashing, eyes burning, should’ve had me stumbling back, but I didn’t. The guys were right. Kendall needed to know, but we also needed to be ready to cop the backlash that was coming. We’d made her think we hated her so very convincingly it was going to be almost impossible to make her understand the opposite was true.

“Baby.” I said it again, softly this time, feeling all of it rise up. God, it was so good to finally say what I felt. “You’re crying, and all I want to do is comfort you. I’m hurting you, right when I want to make you feel better. I just want to take it all away, Kendall, all the pain, and the bullying, and all the bullshit, because—”

“Don’t you say it.” The flour bomb was raised even as its contents started to trickle to the floor. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Because all I want to do is love you.” A sharp ringing noise started up in my ears, reverberating through my head, cutting off her angry retort, watching her lunge at me in slow motion. “I love you, Kendall Kennedy. I fucking love you.”

Chapter 27

Kendall

The flour bomb left my fingers without meaning to. It sailed through the air, trailing flour from the tears in the tissue, only to hit him smack on the chest. The white flour exploded, leaving a white star on his work shirt, and for a second, I just stared.

“I love you, Kendall Kennedy. I fucking love you.”

My hands slapped down on that same chest, shoving him farther than I should’ve been able to. The guy was freaking massive. The boys at school could never bring him down when tackling him on the footy field, but somehow I was sending him stumbling back? I moved forward, shoving him again and again, that slap of my hands, his movement, the way his eyes went wide each time becoming a drug. I couldn’t help but go back for more.

“Kendall—”

“No.”

“Baby—”

“Don’t call me that.” I moved restlessly, my legs feeling like springs, my arms shaking with the power throbbing through them as my finger stabbed into the air. “Never call me that.”

“Darl—”

“Nope.”

“Sweet—”

“Are you fucking stupid? No, Gage.”

And there it was, that shit-eating grin he sported each time he was about to do something cruel to me, but this prank was the worst of all.

“Love—”

“NO!”

Someone had been so very helpful, setting me up an arsenal in the kitchen, and when his lips started moving, I knew I had to shut him up.

More flour bombs were neatly piled up, so I grabbed a couple of them, pegging them at him, both our eyes going wide when one hit his face. I instinctively flinched back when he raised a hand to brush it off, blinking to get the flour out of his eyes, but rather than grab his own bomb, he just grinned, his teeth almost as white as the flour.

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