Page 95 of Messing With My Brother's Best Friends

Try and find a fucking way out of this mess. My heart clenched tight in my chest, like it was trying to squeeze every drop of blood out of it at the same time. I’d taken that loan from my father, knowing what strings were attached, but it was the only way I could see to go forward. To build something for the lot of us.

A life.

Gage nodded and did just that without a word, the van silent during the entire ride home. I stared out the windscreen as we pulled up at the house, filled with the knowledge that I’d pushed for the guys to buy this house rather than something more modest, in this suburb, rather than a much cheaper, but less safe one, further from the city. I’d pushed us to take on all of these financial burdens, investing our money in this rather than paying Dad out.

So I needed to find a way out of this.

“Connor—”

Kendall followed me as I strode through the front door, her hand going to my arm and it was her touch that stopped me. Just the feel of it, of her willingly reaching out to grab me filled me with a strange kind of light that threatened to dispel the shadows.

But I couldn’t allow that to happen.

“I need you to go with the others, just for tonight.” I pulled Kendall close, treasuring the way she fit against my chest. “I need…” I swallowed hard. “I need to sort this out, but come morning, I’ll have a solution, I promise.” Gage appeared over her shoulder, staring at me steadily, Van joining him moments later. “I’ll get this sorted.” I pulled back to look down at her, forcing myself to smile. “That’s why you have three boyfriends, babe. The other two can look after you while I—”

“No.” My heart sank as Kendall shook her head sharply. “No. That’s not how this is going to work, so”—she nodded to my bedroom door—“let’s go in and work out how big the problem is before we find a way to fix it.”

Chapter 48

Kendall

It was bad, really fucking bad.

“I should’ve been paying off that loan more aggressively.” Connor raked his hands through his hair before I reached over and stopped him. His fingers wrapped around mine as he stared at the computer screen.

“How much do we still owe?” Gage asked, crouching down beside me and rubbing a hand across my back.

“A lot. Like a whole lot,” Connor said.

“How much, Connor?” Van’s eyes widened. “How much?”

“Over a hundred thousand.”

“Fuck…” Van’s hiss was an echo of what we were all thinking.

“If we were just paying out Dad, we could take that hit, but…” Connor said.

They were also paying out my brother.

“I can talk to Finn—” I started to say.

“No.”

Each one of them said that about as firmly as they could without yelling. I blinked and shook my head.

“Even if we asked him to wait a bit for his payout…” But as soon as I said the words, I knew how stupid they were. He and Cheryl would be relying on that money as well. “Or maybe we don’t buy him out.” Connor’s eyes met mine, searching my face, and his frown deepened by the second. “I mean, fuck, the whole bakery apprenticeship thing is water under the bridge.”

“No, it’s not.” Connor turned around in his office chair and then pulled me down onto his lap. “It’s not. It was just one more thing in a long line of shitty behaviour and no one that loves you is going to be willing to subject you to that crap again.”

“You love me?” I rolled my eyes up to meet his, catching the moment when the thin line of his lips quirked up to an almost smile.

“You know I do,” he replied, trying to refocus on the screen, but I tilted his chin back my way.

“No, you love me.”

He paused then and the mood changed instantly, becoming less fraught and somehow fragile. I was gazing up at him and he was staring at me like we were the last people on Earth, but we weren’t. Gage and Van clustered closer, their hands taking mine, which shifted my focus. I couldn’t stop staring at each one of them, as if they were about to be snatched away. Perhaps that was what I was afraid of. We’d had a few golden days, where it felt like everything was falling into place and somehow sharing that with our bloody families threatened the peace we’d found. Well, not without a fight.

“Which is good, because I…” I’d never said this to another man ever, so I felt my vocal chords seize. “I love each one of you, and I’m not prepared to let us go down without a fight.”

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