Page 82 of Broken Pieces

“Again,” Max orders and I bite my lip to hide how this new demanding side of him turns me on.

I look back and Maddox smirks at me before slapping my cheek in the same spot again.

“I’m sorry! I give in!” I cry as both my cheeks start to burn. I’m granted one more spank then Max lets go of me and I roll over so my head rests on his lap whilst my legs are up on Maddox’s knees.

I can’t take my eyes off him as he smiles down at me. In the last memory I had of him before I left, he was full of so much pain and it’s like it’s all been washed away.

I reach out to touch his chest, my fingers tracing the intricate patterns of his new tattoo. It’s so much bigger than any of his other ones and the bright violet coloring of the flowers makes it stand out amongst all his other black ink.

“This is pretty.”

“It means you’ll always be with me. With us.” He places his hand over mine, pressing it down over the skull. “Even in death you're ours.”

I try not to cry from his beautifully tragic words. Because they’re so true. We’ll always be together.

No matter what, I’m not ever leaving them again.

“When did you get it?”

“The day Max first came to see you.”

“Wait,first?How long have you been watching me exactly?” I sit up so I can look at Max and he shrugs, not giving anything away.

I narrow my eyes at Maddox and he folds easily. “About a year after you left, Max came looking for you.”

“And you stalked me since then? Rather than just talking to me?”

This time Maddox shrugs. He looks a little bit guilty about it all, but not like he’s sorry for it. To be honest, I wouldn’t want them to apologize. If it was either them stalk me or not see me at all, I know exactly what I prefer.

“You had fun didn’t you?” Max says behind me, his chin coming to rest on my shoulder.

“Is there anything else I should know about? Are you not even going to tell me about your hair?”

Maddox runs a hand over his head, his fingers weaving through the longer locks on top. I can’t deny how much the new look suits him. It’s just odd seeing him look so noticeably different to his brother.

They've both changed and grown up in the time we’ve been apart.

“You don’t like it?”

I run my fingers over the short sides and smile. “I do, it looks good.”

For some reason, it feels right. Like Maddox is finally letting himself accept that it’s okay to be his own person. No matter how much they might change, they’ll still always have each other.

It hurts thinking about how much I’ve missed by not being by their sides for so long.

Maddox still looks oddly sheepish about something like there’s another secret he’s not telling me.

As I stare at him, trying to pry the secrets from him with my mind, his eyes widen and his cheeks go red.

Okay, now I really have to know what it is.

“What are you hiding?”

“Since we’re getting everything out in the open you might want to know about your body lotion or whatever it was.”

My body lotion?

I try to think about what he could be talking about and can only assume he means the moisturizer that was on my desk in my dorm.