Page 23 of My Ex-Boyfriend's Brothers

They both listened as I spoke with varying degrees of horror and shock but neither of them tossed me out. I took that as a decent starting off point. And by the time the whiskey ran out and we were all shitfaced, the horror and shock had turned into shrugs and maybes. Morning brought hangovers and sobriety but the horror didn’t return.

20

***Maggie***

“Mom. I’m serious. I think I’ve fallen down a tree stump or whatever Alice fell down. If you were here, I’d tell you to pinch me.” I paced in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to see what the older Heath brothers saw when they looked at me.

“That’s dramatic, Maggie. You’re not Alice. You’re a stunning young woman with your mother’s great tits. Of course, men are going to line up for a chance.” Mom loved a chance to talk about her tits. It never failed. “When I was your age, I was beating guys off with a stick. I had tits up to my chin and enough sass to get away with it.”

“Mom. As much as I appreciate hearing about your tits, I need your advice.”

“I already gave you my advice, child!”

“Screw all of them isn’t good advice, Mom.” I groaned. “I don’t know what I was thinking calling you about this. If I took your advice, I’d be in jail by now.”

“If you took my advice, you wouldn’t be on the phone with your mommy when you could be out with those fine Heath men.” She made a spitting noise. “With the exception of Brad. He sucked.”

“What did they put in your meds this morning?” I heard a knock on my door and grabbed Jackson’s robe that I wasn’t ever going to return. “Someone’s at my door. I have to go.”

“Call me when you’re ready to have a little fun, honey.” Mom was already talking to someone in the background before she hung up.

I tied the robe tight and slipped my feet into the slippers Luke had given me. When I made it to the door, I was engulfed in Jackson’s scent and as lost as ever about what I was doing with my life. I really had expected Mom to say something that knocked even a little bit of sense into me, which was dumb of me. Mom had always had a take life by the balls attitude but since her stroke, she was all about living life.

I pulled open the door, expecting anything but the three men I saw standing in front of me. I would’ve been less surprised if I’d opened the door and found Santa Clause staring back at me. I made an embarrassing squeak and felt my entire body go bright red. I felt like a cheater, caught red-handed even though, we certainly never had an exclusivity contract. I shouldn’t have kissed each of them, much less let them touch me the way I had. I was being easy and it was coming back to bite me in the ass.

Before I could burst into a series of apologies, Jackson pushed my door open and stepped inside. He planted a kiss on the tip of my nose and patted my ass. “Morning, Bubbles.”

Ryan stepped in after him and wrapped his arms around me in a tight hug. “You look beautiful like this, Maggie.”

Luke was there as soon as Ryan let me go. He shut the door behind him and lightly pinched my chin to tip my face up to his. “I like your slippers.”

I was still slack-jawed when he dropped a kiss on my lips and walked to the other side of my small room to join his brothers. I spun around to face them and realized that my room was even smaller than I’d thought. With the three of them standing in it, it was laughable how tiny it was. For some reason, that was the thought that I blurted out first. “This room was made for children, I think.”

Luke raised his brows. “What?”

I shifted from foot to foot. “This room is tiny. It’s miniscule, right? Is it hot in here to you guys? Wow, I’m burning up.”

Jackson flashed me a wicked grin. “Take the robe off then, Bubbles.”

My wide-eyed expression made them each laugh. I normally loved the sound of their laughter but in that moment, it was starting to transform into a carnival theme song in my head. “What is happening?”

Ryan glanced at his brothers before leveling a serious expression at me. “We have a plan we want to run by you.”

“A plan?”

“I don’t know if plan is the right word. We have an idea, I guess.” He bit his lip and looked shy for the first time in his life. Or at least for the first time in all the years I’d known him. “For how to go forward with our relationships.”

“Our relationships?” I’d turned into a parrot. I couldn’t form any other thoughts when I couldn’t make sense of what was happening, though.

“We each want you, Bubbles.” Jackson stepped forward and pushed my wet hair over my shoulders. “And it seems like you want us.”

Apparently,that’swhere my brain wanted to start piping in. “I’m so sorry. You talked to each other about what I did? With each of you, I mean? Oh, god. I didn’t mean to let things get so carried away. I’m not usually like that but I think my libido isbroken, or something. I meant to go to my room and I ended up sleeping with one of you. I meant to fix a wedding problem and ended up humping another one of you. I was just trying to eat breakfast when I tossed my spanx into the woods like a real lunatic for you, Luke.”

Luke looked like he was struggling to keep a straight face. “You humped one of us?”

I climbed into the bed and dragged the blanket over my head. “Leave me to die in my shame and mortification.”

I felt the bed dip and then I was being lifted. Jackson put me down in his lap and pushed the blanket off my head. He brushed my hair out of my face and then surprised me by gently kissing me.

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