Page 119 of Bodybuilders for the BBW

Chapter59

Rhys

Where the hell was Garrett? He was the one best suited for this kind of thing. I heard one little sniff from Katie and then tapped out a quick message in the group chat.

Katie’s upset. Follow us in the car.

That done, I turned around to see my girl dabbing at her eyes.

“Hey…” I was gonna say don’t cry, but that wasn’t how this shit worked. If Katie was hurting, she needed to feel safe enough to let it out. My hand snaked over, grabbing her free one, feeling a wrench in my chest when she squeezed back. “Where did you want to go?”

I watched her throat work, her eyes flick to the windscreen and then back again, just in time to catch a tear slide down her cheek. Fuck… I wanted to tear her family apart, throw them up against the wall and demand answers, because Katie wasn’t capable of giving right now.

“You can’t tell me.” I said that with some certainty. “It’s OK.” My hand reached across and pulled her seat belt across her body, making sure she was safe before I eased the car out onto the road. A quick glance in the rear vision mirror showed me that Garrett and Rhett had gotten the message. They came running over to the car, but when we pulled away, they climbed into Garrett’s sedan and followed behind. “I’m gonna take you somewhere that was special to me.”

It took a bit to remember the way there, and in some ways that made this easier. I couldn’t press Katie, force her to answer, so instead I focussed on the street names, the traffic lights, as I drove towards the sea.

“I fought a lot with my parents when I was a teenager.” My voice felt too loud in the cabin, punctuated only by Bronson’s rhythmic pants. “My dad mostly. School wasn’t exactly my focus. I was going to be the greatest skateboarder to come out of Australia, remember.” A little snort had me stealing a look at Katie and her watery smile had me grinning along with her. “He wanted me to have a backup plan, which to me showed a fundamental lack of confidence in my abilities.” I shook my head, realising I should give the old man a call again. It’d been a few weeks since we last talked. “After one screaming argument or another, I’d end up here.”

The skatepark was built on the foreshore. During the day, you’d have the waves crashing behind you, the sun beating down on you. Some surfers came to skate when the waves were too damn cold, winter biting them on the arse. Others, like me, were skating rain or shine, and so I pulled up in the now empty car park.

“Skating in the dark.” If I squinted my eyes slightly, I could see my younger self out there. Hair too long, falling in his face and yet he still slammed his foot into the concrete, propelling himself forward, rolling over the concrete and then swooping up and across the ramp, grinding along the lip, before rolling back down again. “Practising over and over, able to see it.” I looked over at Katie, glad to see the tears had stopped, but there was still pain in those beautiful brown eyes. “The tours, the girls, the awards..”

I shook my head.

“Turns out my dad was right, of course, but…” My throat felt suddenly dry, so I was forced to swallow hard. “That doesn’t mean your family is. What did they do?” Then I got to the question I really wanted to ask. “What did we do?”

“You…?” Bronson stepped on the centre console the moment the car stopped, straining to get those massive shoulders between the front seats. Anything to get closer to his girl. With a whine and a wiggle, he was through and scrambling onto her lap. Her laughter when it came, helped ease something inside me I didn’t know was hurting. “You came and met my parents despite only going on a couple of dates.”

And I’d do it all over again, if that’s what she needed.

“You dressed nice and brought Mum some flowers, which is more than any other guy I’ve dated has done.”

That little note of outrage in her voice, it was for my sake, I realised. That had me shaking my head, wanting to tell her she didn’t need to be angry for me, but if I’d learned one thing from hanging out with Drew, it was shut up and listen when a woman was talking.

“But that wasn’t enough.” Her tone transformed into a little growl. Bronson decided that deserved a kiss as he planted a big lick on her cheek. “Arrgh, Bronson! Bronson!”

“B Dog.” I shot the pup a dark look, and he sat back on his butt, having the decency to look a little sheepish as he nestled down in her lap. “So we didn’t go hard enough? That’s OK, we can regroup and try again. Don’t worry, we’ll win your family over.”

“Just like that, huh?” Katie looked out at the skatepark, missing the moment when the others arrived. “Sure, it’s not just another big dream, like skateboarding awards and babes?”

“Can’t be harder than pulling off a 1080 on a vert ramp.” She blinked, having no idea what that meant, which forced me to smile. “Hit me with it. What did we do wrong?”

That’s when I fucked up. Katie’s smile faded, and she kept on staring at the ramps, as if the answer lay there. I wished that was the case, because I’d looked hard for them each time I rode out here.

“They aren’t happy about the whole polycule thing,” she said finally.

My breath came out in a long, almost silent sigh. This was to be expected. I mean, it was a pretty left of centre way to live your life, but I was confident that we could?—

“My family has never approved of the guys I date. There’s always something not quite good enough.”

OK, my confidence wavered for just a moment, because yeah, I was pretty sure I had to agree with the fam here. Katie deserved better than us, but every day I woke up, trying to work out a way to be better for her.

“I thought this time it would be different.” Her eyes finally met mine, and they felt like they stabbed right into the core of me. Anger, pain, they combined together to form a righteous fury. For our sake, I realised belatedly. “You own your own business. Garrett saves people’s lives. Rhett fights bushfires, but it's more than that. You…” Her throat was working again and that had me grabbing for her hand. “You guys are amazing, but…”

This was it, the moment of truth. Somehow her family had seen past our neat clothes and spiels about our lives, and I was beginning to think it wasn’t just the fact that Garrett was late.

“But they’re hung up on the idea that your lives, your jobs, mean I’ll never really be able to rely on any of you.”

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