Page 52 of Messing With My Brother's Best Friends

“Hone—”

“Good idea,” I snapped, grabbing the squeezy bottle of honey and then squishing it with everything I had.

That’s when the magnitude of what I was doing hit me like a gut punch. Thick golden liquid came pouring out, slow enough for me to think better of what I was doing. I went to pull back, but he just tilted his head to one side, and his smile widened, the challenge there obvious.

“Gorg—”

Honey matted his hair, soaking into the dark strands and then started to roll down his face. Rather than wipe it away, he let it fall and reached out, so slowly—as if time had grown for me as viscous as the honey. I knocked his hand away easily, slamming my arm into one his wrist, then the other, before rallying. The boys often told me they were doing shitty things to me to teach me a lesson. Well, now was the only time I understood that.

Because when I grabbed a sauce bottle and a mustard one, then squeezed them to send ropes of seasonings over him, I felt a vicious kind of pleasure, rather than being shit scared. I was showing Gage the error of his ways.

My lips twitched as I saw the sauce splattered on his shirt, his pants, the beautiful counter Connor wanted kept spotlessly clean, and then I grinned. The plastic bottles were left to clatter on the floor, mostly empty now.

“Angel—”

Honey dripped from his hair and into the flour on his face, and he left a red and yellow footprint stained with condiments behind as he stepped closer, ready to put his arms around me, but I dodged to one side, snatching the tub of peanut butter and then darting away to unscrew the lid, tossing it behind me before shoving my fingers into the tub. It’d been left out and was warm to the touch, especially when I slapped that handful against his face. He looked like someone had taken a big shit on his face, and that made me feel so much better, right up until his hand shot out and grabbed my wrist.

Now was the time when the tables were turned, I felt that in my heart, which was now beating rabbit fast. I surveyed the mess I’d made with a growing sense of horror, knowing he’d make me pay twice, three times over. I flinched, jerking against his grip when he grabbed the mayo bottle, as if that could help me right now, but it couldn’t. Despite his hands being slick with sauce, and mustard ,and honey, he held me fast. I watched the mayo bottle come closer, sure that the thick white liquid is going to hit my skin, but instead, he pushed it into my empty hand, and then he brought it closer, only to squirt the contents of it down the front of his shirt. I stared, he stared, and then when he had a bulging pot belly of mayonnaise, he looked up at me and laughed.

And that’s when my heart broke.

I couldn’t terrify him with pranks like he did me. I glanced around the beautiful house and realised I couldn’t wreak havoc in his life, trash it like he had Mum and Dad’s. I couldn’t bring him to his knees, just like I’d fantasised about so many times.

He was letting me do this because he could have a shower afterwards and wash it all away. Someone would buy more condiments, replace the honey and the peanut butter, and it’d be like none of this happened. He was Teflon coated. Everything would just slide off him, whereas I was cast iron. Unseasoned, unprepared, everything stuck to my surface and there it burned.

This Gage, he was a lot more perceptive than the old one, his smile fading when I pulled free. His eyes narrowed as he watched me shake my head while the realisation hit me.

I couldn’t ruin his damn life like he had mine.

“Kendall, love—”

“Don’t.” My tone was flat, almost quiet this time. I couldn’t make him stop calling me all of those dumb words, but I could make clear how I felt about them. “You don’t get to call me…” I sighed. “Anything. Anything at all, Gage.”

“I know we fucked up.”

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, because he didn’t know. He didn’t. If he did, there was no way he could think that this was a plausible direction for either of our lives, so I knew then I had to correct him.

“Fucked up?” My lips twisted into a smile so bitter my mouth filled with bile. “Fucked up? I don’t think those two words encapsulate what the three of you did. I was going to be a baker, get an apprenticeship at a place that would’ve set me up for life.”

He blinked then, but not in shame or anger but confusion.

“I know. Connor had to beg his dad to set that up. He promised to give away his apprenticeship and go and do engineering at university like his father wanted.”

“Why?” I’d wanted to ask that at the time, but I’d known how useless that would be. The three of them would’ve just laughed in my face then stared at the mess I’d created, cakes splattering Mum’s cupboards, thinking this was the best joke ever. “Why would he go to all of that trouble?”

“We—”

It wasn’t his time to speak. I’d needed to get this shit out of me, something I’d known for some time, but never felt ready to unleash it. No, it was the knowledge of how it would go over if I did that stopped me.

But I didn’t care what Gage thought right now. He wanted to tell me he loved me? Then he could explain this.

“Someone switched the salt for the sugar,” I told him, expecting to see self-congratulation, something smug or even glee in his expression. Instead, the confusion just deepened, and that made me wonder. Was this his biggest prank? Was their offer to let me stay here just one big game to them? They liked to try to break me, and I’d just walked back into their lair like a stupid little bunny, not realising the axe was about to fall.

“I checked the sugar religiously because Finn had switched it out more than once, but I was in such a damn flap about getting everything perfect before the owner of the bakery came around. I didn’t taste the batters, just trusting that my recipe would taste as good as it always had before.”

My teeth clenched together, remembering that moment before I forced myself to relax my jaw.

“How fucking wrong I was. I made everything right, spent the whole damn day decorating cakes sweetened with salt, not sugar, and when they came…” My chest felt too tight and my smeared fingers raked down my sternum. “When they came…”

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