Page 73 of Messing With My Brother's Best Friends

“Then here, sorry.”

He delivered the word like others might some kind of slur, bitten off with only a tiny amount of remorse. I just shook my head, and when I looked at the others, I saw that they remained equally unmoved.

“Sorry doesn’t cut it,” I said, knowing I spoke for all four of us. “Words are cheap, something we’re finding out right now with Kendall.” Finn’s brows dropped down into a frown, but he quickly smoothed that away. “You want things to continue as they are, but that’s not possible. We have to show your sister every damn day that we will never, ever allow the same bullshit from before to happen again. Start with that, mate.”

I didn’t spare him another look, didn’t stop to listen to his protests as I walked into the office, and when the others joined me, I knew they’d done the same. Connor nodded to me as we sat around the big desk we all shared while Van leaned forward.

“Making amends…” He ran a thumb over his bottom lip. “That’s what we need. All the flowers in the world won’t mean shit unless we can earn her trust. We have to prove to Kendall we’re the blokes for her.” He glanced up, looking slightly concerned. “But how do we do that?”

“Make clear we’re going nowhere,” Connor said, dropping his phone on the table. “That whatever she needs, we’ll provide it.”

“Give her a few laughs.” Van grinned, but that quickly faded. “Rather than make her cry all the time.”

“Everything we didn’t do when we were growing up. Instead of mocked, annoyed, teased, side-lined.” I stared at the fake wood grain of the desk, not seeing the table but rather us as kids. “She needs to feel safe, comfortable, treasured, important. That, that’s what we need to do.”

“All right, so that starts tonight,” Connor said. “So what do we do? Take her out to dinner?”

Not that, not yet, I had reasoned. We put in a full day at work, forced to answer our staff’s questions about Finn, then try and get this house renovation completed, but once the day was done, we focussed on her. I wasn’t sure if Kendall was up for fancy dinners yet, especially after Van caught her trying to bolt. We’d ask her over a meal we prepared at home.

“Did you ask her what she might like?” Van peered over my shoulder at my phone.

“Yeah, no reply yet, but I’m guessing after last night, not sausages.”

He deflated visibly because curried sausages was about all he knew how to cook.

“So not spag bol.” He shuddered. “Maybe—”

“Shepherd’s pie.” We all stared at Connor and then slowly nodded. It was always Kendall’s favourite when she was growing up. Her mum made it with lots of pumpkin in the mashed potato layer, something Finn hated, then heaps of sharp cheese melted over the top. “I rang Kendall’s mum and asked her for the recipe.”

Which meant she and the whole family had to know something was up. I grinned and so did Van, even though I knew it wasn’t going to earn us any brownie points.

“So you’ve got a shopping list ready?” I asked.

“Everything’s waiting to be picked up from the supermarket,” he said with a smile.

I wondered what Kendall would think when she walked through the door. I was chopping celery ‘finely’, something I didn’t really understand. Like how finely? I’d watched some videos on YouTube to get an idea and the way they chopped it didn’t seem that fine, but—

“You done yet?”

Connor looked positively harassed as he fried off the meat. He’d started with the heat too high, so there were a few dark, crispy bits of meat, but we’d all swooped in and turned the heat down before he could mess it up too much. However, as the savoury smell of browning lamb mince filled the air, he glared at me.

“It says here the celery and the carrot should be fried off with the meat, so are you two done?” Connor stabbed a finger at the phone screen.

“Here you go.” Van moved towards the pan with his carrot slices.

“Not like that!” Connor snapped. “They’re supposed to be finely diced.”

“How do you dice a bloody carrot?” he asked. “Maybe we should ask Ken—”

“No.” Connor and I looked at each other, having said the same thing at the same time. “Mental load, remember.”

At my words, the two of them nodded and then went to work. Somehow we managed to get all the ingredients in the pan and as we added the different seasonings, a familiar aroma started to permeate the kitchen.

I’d seen a few videos about the mental load of dealing with looking after the home, or cooking, or childcare. All the stuff blokes like to shrink away from, claiming it was ‘woman’s work.’ I was fairly sure guys labelled it that because they knew how damn hard it was and wanted to get out of it because they had a penis. But they did so at the expense of their partner’s happiness, that became clear as I watched more and more videos. Statistics about relationship longevity, about sex, about everything were brought up, showing the toll on a woman when she had to look after all the aspects of a couple’s life.

And I could never do that to Kendall.

So we worked together and problem solved this shit until finally the meat was simmering away nicely, all of the flavours rendering down.

---