Page 7 of Messing With My Brother's Best Friends

Where the hell had that growl come from? Shit, it was me. Water spilled all over my hands as I squeezed the bottle way too tight, then forced to set it down on the counter.

“It’s fine,” Kendall said with a familiar shake of her head, because I knew all her tells. When she was masking how she really felt, dismissing it with a nod and a smile. “I wasn’t going to pay four hundred a week for that.”

“Four hundred…” Van stepped closer, peering into her eyes as if to see if she was lying, but Kendall just flushed red in response.

“Things are insane right now.” Kendall’s voice was tight, her words defensive. “I’m not sure if you’re aware, but there’s a rental crisis going on right now. There’s just not enough places to rent and—”

“We’ve got a room.” Van spoke the words I wanted to say before my mouth could move. “I mean, you know that. That’s why you’re here.” He scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. “So, if you’re struggling to find a place, and we need a housemate—”

I felt like a vise was tightening around my heart and it wouldn’t let go, not until Kendall said yes.

“Nope.” There it was. That scalding hot pain that rushed through my every extremity, feeling like parts of my body were shutting down, one by one. Kendall sat up straighter, eyeing the lot of us, that same fire that used to blaze in her eyes relit. “No way.” She shook her head sharply, and with that, all hope inside me died. “Not you guys.” If I ever needed a clear indication of the damage we’d done, here it was. “I’d have to be mad, moving in with the three guys that made it their life’s mission to torment me.”

But we wouldn’t now, I wanted to tell her. Never again. The stupid kid I was had died a hard death the minute she walked away, but the man? He’d do anything to stop her from having to look at people’s sheds and consider whether or not she should pay to live there. He’d do absolutely anything to make sure she was safe and…

Happy.

I just wanted Kendall to be happy.

“We screwed up,” I said, my voice sounding hoarse. Everyone stared at me, which had me clearing my throat abruptly. “We were idiots and we should never have treated you the way we did. I could try to pass it off and say it was because we were young, but…”

Not that, my brain said, throwing up stop signs while my heart beat faster, wanting to make even grander declarations.

“But that’s no excuse. We need to make amends for what we did to you, so, how about we start by giving you somewhere to live?”

Chapter 5

Kendall

“Yeah, no thanks…”

I’d caught my breath, gotten over the shock of running into my brother’s best friends, and had a few sips of coffee. There was nothing more to do now than slide out the front door and see if any other new rental listings had popped up on the website. Ones that didn’t include portable toilets or idiots from my past. But right as I went to collect my stuff and leave, Barbie grabbed my arm.

“Just give us a second,” she told them, not me, and when I went to splutter out a response, she shot me a warning look. The girl was tiny, doll-like even, but she was freakishly strong. She hauled me down the hall towards the front door, my escape route now in sight, but before I could make a break for it, she stood in front of the exit, hands on her hips. “Don’t be a dickhead.”

“You don’t be a dickhead,” I snapped back, poking her in the shoulder. “Pools and margaritas are not enough of an incentive to make me spend time willingly with these guys.”

“What about revenge?”

I had a temper—that was well documented—but right as I was sucking in a breath to shoot back a response, my brain stuttered.

“Revenge?”

Oh… I liked the sound of that. Revenge conjured images of being the one to short sheet their bed, or greasing their doorknobs with petroleum jelly.

“Revenge,” Barbie confirmed. She peered over my shoulder and down the hall. “I dunno what they did to you when you were a kid, but right now… They seem awfully keen to try and make up for it.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “Pretty sure that’s a perfect opportunity for you to even the score a little bit. You’ll be just down the hall.” Her eyes took in each one of the bedroom doors. “They’ll be asleep, with their guards down…”

“This is just you trying to prevent me from crashing on your couch, isn’t it?” I said, arms crossing.

“Sort of.” She shot me an unrepentant grin. “Alan might seem like a mild mannered finance bro.” He didn’t. I could tell by the twinkle in his eye he was just as bad as my bestie. “But he’s a freak in the sheets. I like it loud, I like it hard, I like it in every room of our meagre little apartment, enough to have Mrs Franklin down the hall making noise complaints.” Her smile turned feline as a hectic light danced in her eyes. “She called the cops thinking Alan was killing me, but instead he was just wrecking my vagina.”

“Oh my god, ew…” I said.

“Like dead, but from multiple orgasms, y’know?”

No, I didn’t. It’d been a long time since I’d had a real boyfriend and my ex wasn’t exactly proficient in the O department. I’d be lucky if I had one every third or fourth time we had sex, and when I said something, he’d made clear that I should be grateful he even bothered, pretty much killing that relationship.

“Please don’t start telling me about your orgasms again,” I said quickly.

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