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“Thanks for the invite, but I have to get back to church.” It’s a lie. But it’s better than the alternative. Even if I did do something completely out of character as to accept Noah’s invitation. I know I’ll be unwelcomed. The look on his brother’s face is a clear indication I’m not wanted.

  “Okay, well, I guess I’ll see you at school?”

  “Yeah.”

  I turn away from them. “Bye, Aylee.”

  Looking over my shoulder, I give Noah what I hope is a nice smile. “Bye.”

  Chapter 4

  Maddox

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you had a hard-on for her.” With my gaze trained on her retreating back, I tip back the bottle of Heineken and guzzle down the little bit that remains. Doing what I’ve been doing since we entered the cemetery, I swing my arm back and hurl the bottle. It flies through the air and explodes against the tree in front of her. When she stops, I wait for her reaction, wait to see if she’ll turn around and reveal that startled, wide-eyed rabbit look I saw on her face earlier. I’m thinking she’ll say something, maybe even flip me off, but when she peers over her shoulder, it’s to look at me with those eyes. Eyes that are like the stained-glass windows at St. Peters on Main Street. My mom used to go to that church a lot, to pray to a God who didn’t give a shit about her. I broke in a few months after she died, trashed the altar, spray painted the cross, and shattered the windows with rocks. All simply because I could.

  Eyes locked, she shows me nothing but her well-maintained mask of composure. It’s a pretty mask, made of golden skin touched with a hint of flushed pink undertones. She’s like a living doll with that heart-shaped face and sunlight-blond hair. It’s almost wrong of me to imagine her Cupid’s bow lips wrapped around a cock. My cock, to be precise. I can see her on her knees, between my legs, her cheeks hollowing as she struggles to take every inch of my nine inches between those lips. I’d guide her, too, help her out a little because I’m Mr. Fucking Generous. Bria would be there, too, showing her exactly how to take me in.

  “Not everything is about sex, Max,” my shadowed self replies, with his typical chastising tone effectively breaking my nice little fantasy. My eyes flick back to where she’s standing just in time to see her turn and walk away like nothing happened.

  “But then again, what can I expect from someone who makes a living out of it?”

  A switch flips inside of me and suddenly my impartial indifference switches to annoyance. I know where this conversation is going. That little dig is the beginning of Noah’s shit stirring, and honestly, I’m not nearly drunk enough for the lecture. One of the major differences—and there are many—between me and Noah is he has morals. I don’t. It pisses me off that he wants to impose his self-righteous bullshit on me, though.

  I scoff, “Not a whole fucking lot, little brother.” Pulling my vibrating cell phone from my back pocket, I glance at the screen. I send a quick reply before putting it away. “Look, we about done here? We did the whole monthly grave visit shit you wanted. I’m ready to head out.”

  “I thought we were chilling later?” Bria—not exactly a friend, but someone who did occasionally provide a great distraction—looks at me expectantly.

  “Not really my problem, Bree.” Heading to the grave I was sitting on earlier, I set the empty case of beer next to the gravestone marked, “Laura May Moore, Beloved Mother.” Then finally answer, “Got shit to do.”

  “Then why the fuck did you call me?”

  I shrug. “Don’t need you anymore. But you can tell Noah all about Two-4-One. Tell him how great you look in front of the camera, and don’t forget to mention how much you made last month. I think he’ll appreciate hearing how lucrative fucking for a living can be.”

  “Max…”

  Walking away, I raise my hand in the air. “It’s been great, Noah. We’ll do this again next month. Mom will be so proud.”

  ***

  When you’re born into the sort of family I was, you’re pretty much fucked before you even realize the meaning of the word. Every time I think of our past, I relive that shit all over again. Dad was a sick piece-of-shit pedo who taught my brother and me the fine arts of fucking at the ripe ole age of seven. Incest kiddie porn put food on our table and paid for our house. I guess people paid a fuck of a lot for illegal shit. Mom was a manic depressive wife driven batshit crazy by her abusive husband. She put thirteen bullets into his head before blowing off her own in front of me and my brother. That’s what’s in our portfolio. The thick folder labeled: Noah and Maddox Moore. People in the foster system learn your story pretty fucking quick when you come with heavy shit like that. Potential foster parents, the good ones anyway, hoping for a good little, parentless kid they can foster and raise to be an upstanding member of society, were always warned about our history. Mine specifically because I’m the troubled twin. They were told about the fights I got into at school. They were told about my supposed disregard for authority. They were told about the frequent run-ins with the law. They were told about my tendency to run away and the time I spent in juvie for repeatedly bashing a kid’s head against the wall at school for calling my brother a fudge packer. They were even warned of my alcohol and drug use and my violent fits of rage. The good ones wisely opted to keep looking, steering clear of me. But not Noah. People generally prefer Noah because Noah is the better twin. He came out of the shit show that was our family relatively unscathed. Noah toes the line while I bulldoze it. He’s the one they chose. The Ridleys. Jan and Alan. They’re an interracial couple who seemed like decent enough people, not the quintessence of suburban living, but they were the closest thing to normal Noah had ever had. Jan’s a lawyer, and Alan is a chef. The best part about them is that they’d genuinely wanted Noah from the beginning. Me? Not so much. They only took me in because Noah begged them.

  I didn’t last a month with the Ridleys before they kicked me out. They caught me fucking their oldest daughter on their bed. Apparently that was a big no-no. That one really pissed Noah off. He accused me of fucking up shit on purpose because I didn’t want anything good to happen to me. That wasn’t it. I genuinely didn’t give a fuck about anything. Except for him. I still don’t. Mom had asked me to look out for him before she put a hole into her head. That’s exactly what I did. Noah was happy. He was loved for the most part, and cared for by these people. He had all the elements to thrive. To become something other than a fucking drain on society. He had so much potential. He had what I didn’t want. A future. And I was the only thing holding him back. I was a reminder of the cesspool we came from. A reminder of the fucked-up things Dad made us do. I was something he didn’t need. So I eliminated myself from his life as much as I could. We saw each other in school—when I bothered to go, and did the monthly cemetery visits to Mom’s grave. But for the most part, I made sure to stay away from him.

  Six months after Noah was fostered just before our sixteenth birthday, I ended up as some afterthought in a piece-of-shit housing project on the other side of the city. My foster dad was a blue-collar sort of guy, a welder by the name of Droski who liked his booze like he liked his women. Cheap and wet. He dealt drugs on the side. Heroin, pills, and weed.

  “The government check I get from feeding your ass ain’t enough, kid. You wanna stay here, you’re gonna earn your keep.” Dealing came surprisingly easy for me. But then again, it wasn’t like it was that difficult selling drugs to high schoolers looking for a good time. I moved the pills and weed pretty damn quick. It was a good flow of cash. Dro took his cut, which was a huge-ass percentage, but he wasn’t a complete dick. He let me keep some of the money I made.

  I’ve learned a lot from him.

  “You don’t shit where you eat.” I learned that lesson the hard way. Two broken ribs, a busted lip, and a broken nose. “You gonna work for me, kid, you better remember not to fuck with my shit.” My mistake had been thinking I could take a few of his drugs for my own personal use. Apparently Dro had full count of his product. “Here.” On the floor, f
eeling like I’d gotten hit by a Mack truck and with the taste of my own blood coating the inside of my mouth, I looked past his extended hand at his hard, bearded face, his beady eyes like marbles staring back at me. There was a lot that was said in those few, prolonged seconds of tense silence that words couldn’t have properly expressed. But when I finally took his calloused hand and he hauled me to my feet, I could tell something had changed. Mutual respect and understanding. He didn’t take me to the hospital. He did the next best thing. Lit up a joint and gave it to me. Best fucking medicine of my life.

  The second thing I learned from Dro was how to cut up the merchandise to double up on profit. We did this for obvious reasons; more money in our pockets. There was also the fact we had a dirty cop we needed to pay off each month in order to keep dealing. Dro always did the payoffs and occasionally he’d let me tag along. It was roughly a year into showing me the ropes that he let me make my first drop-off. Saturday night, quarter past nine, I headed to the meet-up spot. Driving the white, beat-up truck I picked up a few months back at a salvage yard and was slowly restoring, I had nearly three grand on me and a few bags of pills stashed under the passenger seat. So of course the fucking cops chose that exact moment to pull me over. Seeing the flashing red and blue lights in my rearview, I was tempted to stomp on the gas and hightail it the fuck out of there. The only thing that stopped me from doing exactly that was the pickup truck wouldn’t go that fast if my life depended on it. Pulling up to the left shoulder of the road, I knew I was fucked six ways to Sunday. Not only did the inside of the truck smell like the bud I smoked earlier in the night, but I had a warrant out for my arrest. I’d skipped out on my court date two months earlier for beating up that kid who’d talked shit about Noah. They found the money and the drugs, slapped a pair of shiny cuffs on me, and hauled my ass to jail. I was looking at hard time. Nearly eighteen, they could technically charge me as an adult. I wasn’t stupid enough to call Droski. I had only one other option, and it took me practically the entire night before I finally folded and called Jan.

  ***

  “This is it, Maddox. After today you don’t get any more chances.” She turned and said as we came out of the court house. The expression on her face was supposed to be serious. But she couldn’t really pull it off when she looked like a twelve-year-old year rather than the thirty-three-year-old she was supposed to be. “I had to call in a lot of favors to get Judge Sims to go easy on you."

  I scoffed, raking a hand through my hair in agitation. “You call a thousand hours of community service and anger management classes getting off easy?”

  “Yes,” she hissed through clenched teeth that looked flawlessly white against her chocolate complexion. “If it’d been another judge, he would’ve thrown the book at you.”

  “Well good thing we had your buddy here to save my ass from the pen. I’m curious as to the sort of favors you had to call in though. Maybe you’re letting good ole Judge Sims get in a few good billable hours?”

  “You’re such a fucking little ingrate. Alan and I have tried to do the best we can for you, but I guess there’s no helping someone who doesn’t want it. I don’t know how you and Noah can be related, let alone be twins. You’re lucky he cares about you so much, otherwise...”

  “Save it. I don’t need the goddamn lecture. But thanks for bailing my ass out, you’ve been a real doll.”

  “You better show up for that outpatient group therapy, Maddox. You miss one and you end up in prison. And I won’t be there to represent you.”

  She was saying all this to my back as I walked away. “Say hello to Carle for me.”

  “Stay the hell away from my daughter!” The smirk on my face grew a little wider as I heard her curse the hell out of me.

  Chapter 5

  Maddox

  As expected, Dro was pissed about the loss of his money and drugs. But I quickly figured out a way to repay him every last penny of the three grand the cops confiscated. Seeing as I learned to fuck in front of cameras from a very young age, I figured why not capitalize on what Daddy Dearest taught me. A few months into eighteen, I bought a domain name and Two-4-One was born. Two snatches. One dick. I didn’t date girls. I fucked them in front of a camera in pairs. After that, I wanted nothing to do with them.

  I’m not the flowers and candy type of guy. I don’t take girls out on dates with the hopes of getting a chaste goodnight kiss at the end of the night. Girls—women, are a means to an end. Always have been. I get off. They get off. That’s the scope of my generosity. Pussy, money, drugs, and Noah. Not particularly in that order but that’s what it’s come down to for me. I’m as shallow as they come. Some girls think I’m emotionally stunted. So they go out of their way to try and ‘fix’ me, try to make me dateable. The boyfriend that’ll give a fuck about the tedious shit in their lives. But that’s their problem, not mine. My main concerns are how far they’ll allow me to push their sexual limits and how good they looked on camera sprayed with my cum. Two-4-One was about the ‘Sluts of Brigham High.’

  I know, I know. One would probably be thinking right about now that I’m a piece of shit. Well shame on them for actually thinking I give a fuck about their opinion. I’ve embraced each and every one of my faults. Besides, if it helps them sleep better at night, the girls are all consenting adults and all over the age of eighteen. The ones I fucked were desperate for a little camera time and were all as horny as I was. Case in point, Bria Daniels and Grace Logan. I wasn’t a one-girl sort of guy. It didn’t take much to convince them to participate in my little movies. Of course, there was the money, but Bria and Grace had been on my dick since the better part of our sophomore year. Last night, I finally gave them the opportunity to ride it together. They both weren’t much to look at, but the fact they had nice bodies made fucking them tolerable.

  It’s now three A.M. “Maddox,” I hear Grace call. She’s lounging across my bed, her left arm propping her head up as she looks at me with gleaming brown eyes. She’s a genuine redhead. None of that god-awful rainbow-bright shit that comes in a bottle and makes it look like a girl’s done a stint in a fucking B-rated horror movie. The carpet matches the drapes. Not typically a redhead sort of guy, but like I said, she’s easy pussy. Her hair is mussed, tumbles around her face in that disheveled way that makes it look like she just had the best lay of her life. And seeing as she was a virgin, I’m thinking I was. Not bragging here, but I’m fucking confident in fucking. I know my shit. I know pussy and I know how to fuck. Grace is another notch. Bria I’ve had before. Two more flags, among dozens of others, I’ve stake in the glorious South Seas. She’s still flush in the face, red cheeks, kiss-bruised mouth, and the faintest hint of my handprint around her pale throat. Not my idea. Completely hers. That surprised me. The virgin is into erotic asphyxiation. I’m telling you, it’s always the quiet ones. Shy and sweet but freaks in bed. I wasn’t complaining.

  “Max.” There’s a breathy quality to her voice now that I’m guessing is supposed to sound sexy. It’s not. It’s fucking irritating. In fact, the moon-eyed way she’s looking at me now is making me nauseated. The sheets rustle around her as she comes to a sitting position. There’s a smile on her mouth. “Come back to bed.” She pats the bed invitingly.

  “Yeah, come back to bed, Max.” Bria pokes her dark green-colored blond head from under the burgundy, downy blanket and turns her head to look at me with sleepy eyes. A smile like the one Bria is sporting curls her lipstick-smeared mouth.

  I’m so fucking done with them. I take a moment to glance up from tinkering with the tripod across the room and say, “Fun’s over. Get the fuck out.”

  I hear Grace gasp, see her eyes widen a little because she can’t possibly believe I’m not interested in a second round. And I’m not going to lie and say I don’t enjoy that look. I fucking live for this moment after. The moment I tell them to fuck off. Thanks for the screw, sluts, now vacate the premises.

  I look at Bria and she’s looking back. Unfazed. She knows the fucking drill
by now so there’s no reaction from her. I hear her sigh before she sits up. Big double D’s, white, and fucking luscious bounce as she gets off the bed.

  “What…? Why?”

  Grace’s question draws my gaze away from a silent Bria searching the floor for her clothes. I frown and stare at her.

  “You’re shit in bed, Grace.” I don’t like beating around the bush. Fuck. That’s a terrible pun. “Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed how tight you were. Great little gift, by the way. But I was fucking bored to tears. It’s a good thing we had Bria here. At least she knew her way around a dick. I should be pissed at you for making me waste my time. But instead I’m going to be nice about this and let you leave here with a little bit of dignity. So do us both a favor. Don’t fucking cry and don’t beg for God’s sake. Lift your head up, grab your shit, and leave quietly. Like Bria is doing.” This is damn near arousing for me.

  “Maddox…please…I can do better. Maybe if we…practiced…”

  I laugh. Genuine, gut-wrenching laughter spills out of me. It takes me a minute to compose myself again before I can look at her. I walk away from the tripod and proceed to the bathroom. “Sweetheart, there isn’t enough time in the day. But don’t worry, I’m sure the camera got your good side.”

  “You’re a piece of shit, Max.” Ah, there goes Bria’s sunny disposition.

  “Thanks, sweetheart, it’s never too early for the compliments. Now, be a dear and close the door behind you when you both leave. I need to take a piss.” I enter the bathroom. “And don’t steal anything either,” I call out, before I close the door behind me. It takes the length of me emptying my bladder and washing my hands before I finally hear the front door click shut. Good fucking riddance. My charity work is done for the week. Grace’s going to end up hating me. They always do. And when she does, she’ll realize like the rest of them that they’re better off. It’s all about money to me, anyway. Porn, like dealing, is part of my budding enterprise.