Max: A Stepbrother Romance (5 page)

When she finally breaks free from my grasp, she grabs hold of a glass of champagne and throws it over me. Unsatisfied with the result, she takes another one from the counter and does the same.

“You fucking asshole.”

Even though I don’t think it’s helping, I can’t stop smiling.

There are a number of people looking at us, including my Dad and his new wife, and neither of us know if they’ve seen us kiss. By the way their mouths hang open in stunned silence, however, I’d wager they have.

My shirt is soaked through with champagne, my face cold. The bar tender passes me a towel and I begin to mop myself up, while Lola stands to the side, her face red with embarrassment, ready to defend herself. To the casual outsider, it may look like I’ve fucked things up entirely, but I know Lola won’t be able to resist me now. Although, to be fair, to the casual observer, at the moment it’s a little difficult to tell.

“Lola?”

Pushing through the crowd comes a face I hadn’t expected to see again. Unimpressed and somewhat angry, he looks at me - a flicker of recognition crawling across a face - and then quickly over to the angel by my side.

“Tyson?”

“What the fuck is going on?”

I hold my hands up passively, while Lola folds her arms across her chest.

Rumbled by the meathead of an ex boyfriend! This is easily the best wedding I’ve ever been to, and we haven’t even started on the food yet.

––––––––

Lola

T
he only good thing about the sudden appearance of Tyson is that it seems to have distracted people’s attention away from what they might or might not have seen Max and I doing a heartbeat before. Or, more accurately, what Max was doing to me. I’m going to kill him for that, right after I deal with Tyson. We are supposed to be stepbrother and stepsister. What is my Mom going to think if she sees me fooling around with the brand new member of our family?

Fuck.

Tyson looks like he’s just come from the gym. Sweat pants and casual T-shirt in mis-matching colors. Next to Max, he looks like a man-child. Here, as he probably did everywhere else in my life, he looks completely out of place. Clearly he’s not here for a wedding, he’s here for me.

I grab his arm and lead him away from the gathered crowd (especially Max, who has a grin on his face that tells me he’ll probably be making a bet with himself about how long I’ll be away before I eventually go back to him), past family members and waiting staff, back through the main reception room and out into the hotel lobby.

“What the fuck, Tyson?”

He waves his phone at me.

“I called you like sixty times, Lola. Where have you been?”

I sigh so hard they can probably hear me up on the sixth floor. I’m so pissed off with him still, and with everything else going on, I definitely don’t need this now. Tyson is the last person I wanted to see here.

“Who’s that jerk anyway, are you fooling around with him?”

“Tyson, please go home. I don’t want to see you. I told you that last night.”

“Come on, Lola, stop messing around. I’ve told you I’m sorry. What more do you want? Why don’t you come home with me? My folks are out for the weekend anyway. We can, you know, get busy with it.”

I can’t believe this. That cheating pathetic bastard. I bet he’s only here because any one of the other casual fucks he’s got turned him down. I want to punch that smile off his face.

“You’re pathetic, you know that?”

“Pathetic? What’s pathetic about wanting to spend some quality time with you?”

I haven’t got time for his complete and utter idiocy.

I begin to walk away, but before I get very far, Tyson grabs my arm, locking his fingers tightly around my wrist and jerking me back towards him. It shocks me enough that I let out a little scream, and although she doesn’t come over, the receptionist looks over to us, alarmed. I can feel my shoulder burning where he’s nearly pulled my arm out of the socket. It’s the bar all over again.

“Don’t do something you’re going to regret.”

His fingers are so tight around my wrist, I can’t move without him hurting me, and no matter how much I claw at them, I’m not strong enough to get him to pull them away. I decide reasoning with him may be the best way to get him to leave me alone.

“Tyson, please. Go home and we’ll talk later, I promise.”

“Yeah I tried that, didn’t I? Sixty times.”

“Now is not the time.”

“Stop fucking around, Lola. It doesn’t suit you. You want to make a scene in front of all these people, go ahead. I’ve had enough. I came to get you and now you are coming home with me.”

Before I have time to react, he begins to drag me towards the door. He’s literally dragging me away from my own mother’s wedding and even though there are people looking at us, including hotel staff, nobody’s doing anything. Perhaps they don’t think this is real.

“You can’t be going home already, Lola, they haven’t even put out the buffet yet.”

I don’t even need to look up to see who it is, and instantly I feel a million times better.

“Doesn’t look like she wants to go with you, Tyson. I’d be a gentleman and admit defeat if I was you.”

Tyson stops dead. With his free hand he points a fat finger towards Max.

“Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do with my own girlfriend?”

“Ex-girlfriend. And I’m Max, Lola’s brand new, hot off the press, much better looking than you stepbrother.”

Tyson looks him up and down. “Yeah well, you know what you can do Max, you can fuck off, right back to where you came from.”

Tyson turns away to resume his dragging of me towards the door.

“I could do that I suppose, yeah, but I’m not going to.”

Tyson stops dead again.

“Are you fucking stupid?”

“Let her go, Tyson, you’re hurting her. She doesn’t want to go with you. This is her mother’s wedding for Christ sake, you fucking imbecile.”

“What the fuck did you call me?”

Fuck. I can see Tyson getting tense and I decide to warn Max against it. There isn’t much between them in height, but Tyson is much broader and definitely used to scrapping. I don’t want to see Max get his beautiful face ruined for trying to be a gentleman and save me from what has always been a bad mistake.

“Leave it Max, he’s not worth it.”

Max decides to ignore my advice.

“I called you a fucking imbecile, you cloth-eared twat. I could have called you a pigfucker, or a pencil dick - both of which would have suited you quite well I’m sure -, but I prefer the sophistication and simplicity of the word imbecile. I even like the sound of it, you fucking imbecile.”

There is a moment of silence in the room that hangs between us all, where for a second or two I wonder if I’ve actually heard what I think I’ve heard. When Tyson releases his grip and lets me go, and I see him charge towards Max like a taunted bull seeing red, I know I definitely have.

I take the opportunity to escape to a safer part of the room, and Tyson closes the distance between him and Max in seconds.

I’m not the kind of girl that likes to have men literally fighting over her, especially if one of those men is my newly appointed stepbrother, but something about seeing someone finally stand up to Tyson is getting me hot under the collar. I know this is something I shouldn’t be enjoying - especially at such an important event - and the sensible girl inside me should be yelling at them to stop, but I can’t help it. I’m overtaken by the rush. Max is protecting me from the bad guy and it’s getting my panties wet all over again.

Max holds his hands up passively while Tyson begins to square up to him,
his
hands raised and clenched into fists. By now, a crowd have gathered, including two of the hotels security staff, both slight men in their fifties and clueless about how to best approach the situation.

Max allows himself to be led by Tyson’s movement’s, the two of them circling like fighting dogs.

“Come on Tyson”, Max says, “You’re embarrassing yourself now.”

Tyson throws a punch, which Max deftly avoids, before slapping his assailant lightly across the cheek with an open palm. It does nothing but enrage Tyson further. He throws another punch, and Max expertly does the same, ducking underneath it and slapping Tyson’s face again, this time hard enough to leave a red mark.

Tyson grits his teeth and goes for a different approach. He tries to grab Max around the waist and drive him to the ground, but Max is far too quick to allow Tyson anywhere near him. He chops at his hands, every so often delivering a quick blow to Tyson’s face, moving so quickly Tyson can’t keep up with him.

With a permanent grin on his face, and what seems like the slightest effort, Max has Tyson red faced and breathing hard in a matter of minutes. Max even stops at one point to pick his glass of champagne up from the bar, which he drinks while keeping Tyson at bay with a single hand.

It’s impressive enough to receive a round of applause from the watching crowd, who must feel as though they are witnessing a pre-planned, choreographed performance. Even the security guards, whose responsibility it is to break this up, watch on with barely concealed delight.

I have to say I’m impressed. I hadn’t expected Max to be as capable in this respect as he clearly is in others. He’s completely embarrassing Tyson, without once needing to resort to brute force. This is self defense extraordinaire.

“Want to give up yet?”

Max teases him, before expertly blocking a jab and chopping Tyson across the bridge of his nose with the back of his hand. I can watch him do this all day. Right before he fucks me.

“I’m going to tear out your fucking eyes”, is Tyson’s levelheaded response.

Before he gets a chance to do that, however, a booming voice from the crowd makes him stop in his tracks.

“What on earth is going on here?”

It’s Mom. She’s pushed her way through the gathered crowd and stands with her hands on her hips and her dress flowing beneath her like a plume of smoke. It’s a striking image.

“Tyson? Max? Lola? Can someone explain to me what the fuck is going on?”

“He called me an imbecile”, Tyson is quick to respond.

“You are a fucking imbecile, look at you. The pair of you. This is my wedding day, and you are out here in the hotel lobby fighting each other like a pair of kids. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

“Tyson was just leaving, Mom.”

“No I wasn’t.”

“What the fuck is going on here?”

It’s Alex, come to join the party.

“Max? Jesus Christ. What have you done now?”

I feel like I need to speak up for him. “He was protecting me.”

“Oh, right. Is that what I saw him doing over by the bar before as well?”

My eyes go wide, my mouth drops open and I can feel myself going red.

“Aye. When this is over, we are going to be having serious words, I can tell you that. All of us. And you can wipe that grin off your face and all Max. When are you ever going to treat anything seriously?”

“Tyson?” Mom says, in a voice dripping with fury. “Go home.”

He waits for someone to speak up to defend him, and then pushes past as many people as he can on the way to the exit when nobody does.

“Slut”, he says to me as he passes. I keep my eyes down, mostly because I can’t stop laughing.

“Well, that was fun”, Max says, and downs the rest of his champagne.

Alex shakes his head. “Right, let’s go and get something to eat. You can try not to fuck that up.”

Max and I are the last to filter back into the reception room. I let him take my arm in his and lead me.

“Your ex-boyfriend is a right asshole.”

“Yes he is.”

When everyone else is out of earshot I put my hand across his belly and stop him. I’m playing with fire, I know it.

“I know I’m going to regret this, but-.”

That cocky bastard cuts in before I’ve even had a chance to finish, taking the words right out of my mouth.

“Would I like to fuck you in one of the restrooms?”

“How the-.”

I’m halfway through saying again.

Max smiles at me. I am unable to do anything but smile back. He’s got me.

“Fuck that”, he says. “Let’s go up to the penthouse suite and do it there. That’ll fuck my Dad off for sure.”

O
ne year later...

Max

This is horrible.

Warm, expensive beer, a tacky, light up dance floor and a room full of ugly women trying to dance to shit, tinny music.

Nothing changes I guess.

Well one thing, I suppose. It’s not Dad’s wedding anymore, it’s his first year anniversary.

I’m just as surprised as anyone that he’s made it this far to be honest, especially if his dancing is anything to go by. He looks like an epileptic having a series of controlled fits out there on the plastic dance floor. I never knew he was that bad.

It’s not only Dad’s anniversary either, so I suppose it’s kind of fitting for us that’s he’s chosen this place to celebrate it in.

Talk about a fucked up family. All we need is for Granny and Gramps to get it together and we might make it into the Ripley’s museum.

What could I do? I knew I was playing with fire, and so did Lola. I never thought I’d ever be the kind of guy to settle for just one girl, but when you find an angel I guess it isn’t all that easy to let her go. Lola is something else, seriously. And the sex is out of this world good. I mean absolutely, off the scale insane. She knows how to do things that would make porn stars blush with embarrassment.

After that day we just couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Family gatherings, parties, holidays, birthdays, you name it. Any excuse we could find to go at each other we took. After a while, Dad and Katherine just stopped caring about what kind of moral conventions we might be breaking. They knew I wasn’t coming down here to visit them anyway, and when they saw how much we were into each other, they just figured they’d leave us alone.

Lola wanted to keep it a secret from day one, but we both kind of ruined that on the wedding day itself. We were sort of semi-rumbled after that stolen kiss by the bar, and then fully rumbled when we realized just how evident our disappearance over lunch had been. Two hours, paper thin walls, torn shirt. You get the picture.