Page 78 of Messing With My Brother's Best Friends

“Did he?” My hands flexed, caressing the air when all I wanted to do was touch her. I grinned and then shook my head. “Of course he fucking did. Wait until he sees how business improves when you start baking. His sausage rolls are perfectly adequate, but not like…”

I forced myself to stop for a second, just focussing on breathing as I tried to get a read on her reaction.

“Do you want that?” I asked, realising how many ways that could be taken. “I mean the apprenticeship.”

“I…” That pause felt like it went on and on and I was strung along with it. Kendall let out a little bark of a laugh before frowning. “I don’t know. It feels like part of me just… gave up after that day. If I stuffed things up once, I couldn’t be trusted to try again. No…” She was staring into the living room, but she wasn’t seeing it. Her pupils flicked from side to side as she let out a sigh. “I didn’t want to try, because if I did…”

She could fail. I lived with that feeling every day. We took a risk each time we bought a place and renovated it. In the early days, the level of risk threatened to crush me. I’d wake up at 2 A.M., gasping as my heart pounded and a fine layer of sweat covered my entire body.

“What if I’m no good, Van?” It was her shift in tone that broke me, forcing me forward. I needed to hold Kendall with every breath in my body and this was the point where I surrendered to that impulse. She was so soft and smelled of flowers and baked bread as I tugged her closer. Her hands went to my chest, a little tension there letting me know her first impulse was to push me away, but she didn’t. I felt like I noted the point when each muscle relaxed and she sank against me. “What if I can’t do this anymore.”

“You were always an amazing cook.”

“Was, Van. Was.” Her fingers scratched at my chest. “Like I did OK today when I decorated a cake—”

“You decorated a cake?”

I peered down at her, trying to get a read on how that went, and she slowly met my gaze. A small smile formed and she nodded.

“The client wanted a last-minute redecoration, and Chris was losing it, so I…” She swallowed hard. “I fixed it for him. He was pretty shocked when he worked out that I knew what I was doing…”

I grinned, feeling a sudden lightness filling me. The microwave was beeping, but I didn’t give a shit about that anymore, just her.

“Of course, you did. I watched you, Kendall. Damn, I ate a helluva lot of the food you made. Remember that cake that didn’t rise?”

“The biscuit cake?” She snorted. “I left the cake mix in the fridge, wanting to go and play instead of finishing it and when I finally got around to cooking it, I learned an important lesson in kitchen chemistry.”

“You learned a whole lot.” I tilted her chin up, making her meet my eyes. “So much your mum kept pawning you off on the other mums and your grandmothers, trying to find someone else who could teach you new skills. Then you got onto YouTube tutorials and cookbooks. You taught yourself everything, Kendall, and nothing we or Finn did can take that away from you. It must be scary, getting back into it…”

My throat closed up then and she peered more closely at me.

“I mean that’s the problem about caring about something. If you give a shit, that makes you vulnerable. Your defences are down.” I shook my head slowly, hearing my heart pound in my ears. “You’re out there doing your damn best and waiting for the world to judge you. Are you good, bad, or worse, just really ordinary, no more special than anyone else, but…”

My breath was coming too fast, my chest too tight, but the warmth of her hand felt like it radiated all the way through, pushing back a chill that threatened to overwhelm me.

“But you can’t stop yourself from giving it a go, right? Succeed or fail, there comes a point where the pain of wanting something outweighs the potential pain of failure, and that’s when you know you just have to go for it.” I swallowed down that lump in my throat and smiled as I stood taller. “You just have to go for it.”

“So you think I should take Chris up on the apprenticeship?”

We weren’t talking about that anymore and I think we both knew it, so maybe that’s why my hand rose to trail the backs of my fingers down her cheek.

“I think you should do whatever makes you happy, Kendall. What would make you happy? What would you have done if Finn fessed up and we…?” My girl was brave today, tackling a last-minute cake decoration after years of not doing anything cooking wise, so I could do the same. “And we turned up at your doorstep, asking you to be our girlfriend?”

“Then?” She went to pull away but I kept her right where she was. If she was going to face things head on, so was I. “I don’t know.” Kendall made a rude noise, then eyed me. “Probably told you to piss off and stop teasing me.”

Sometimes on the footy field, you have these moments when you know you’re gonna get hit. You watch the ball or someone’s fist come hurtling towards you in slow motion and just know it’s gonna hurt. That’s what I felt right now. I was about to get the king hit to end all king hits, and I couldn’t bring myself to dodge out the way.

“You say that you teased me because you were into me,” she continued. “Well, you hid that well. Too well. It would’ve taken some time to convince me it wasn’t all just one really big prank. If we went on a date, I’d be looking around for a whoopee cushion or something. If you pulled out a chair for me, I’d be too scared to sit down on it, lest you yank it out of the way.”

“But if we didn’t.” I barely squeezed that out. “If we tucked it under you, made sure you were seated before we did, even flicked a cloth napkin out over your lap.”

“Silver service style?” she asked with a smile.

“Fuck, maybe built the chair for you from scratch, exactly to your requirements.” I was babbling, but I couldn’t seem to stop. “And the table. Maybe the whole damn restaurant—”

“And why would you do that?” Her fingernails scratched lightly at my chest. “Why would you do that, Van?”

“Because…” Connor was gonna kick my arse in the morning, but I didn’t care. I didn’t. “Because…”

---