Page 178 of Make Me Mean It

My tattoos are right there beside his bare skin, dark ink covering my hand and wrist while Connor’s is completely untouched. Our fingers are laced together on my lap, his hand fitted through mine so naturally that something painful twists behind my ribs just looking at it.

I remember when he took this.

Fuck, I remember exactly how his hand felt in mine.

There’s a strip of my bare stomach caught at the bottom of the frame, Connor pressed into my side close enough that there’s no pretending we’re just two people who happened to be sitting next to each other.

Anyone who knows me could work it out.

Anyone who knows him could work it out.

And Connor posted it anyway.

My throat tightens.

What the fuck are you doing, princess?

The bench jolts beneath me with a loud creak, and I nearly jump out of my fucking skin as someone drops down beside me.

Marcus.

Of course.

He leans towards me immediately, eyes already trying to catch whatever’s on my phone, and I flip it face down against my thigh before he gets the chance.

My head snaps around.

“What do you want, Reid?”

The words come out harsher than they probably need to, but my chest is still doing something fucking weird and Marcus is about the last person I want sitting beside me while I try to work out why his brother has just posted a picture of us holding hands for the entire fucking internet to see.

Marcus doesn’t bite back.

That catches me off guard more than anything.

His hand comes up instead, settling against the back of my neck and squeezing once, familiar and grounding in a way I don’t particularly want from him right now.

He exhales. “I suppose that’s fair.”

I stare at him for a second before folding my arms over my chest and leaning back against the lockers.

“More than.”

My tongue catches the split in my lip when I press it into my cheek and pain stings through me. I drag it over the cut anyway, tasting copper and immediately remembering exactly who put it there.

Marcus slumps back beside me with a sigh, his shoulder knocking against mine.

“Fuck, man.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “I’d just found out you were doing my kid brother.”

My jaw tightens immediately.

“He’s not a fucking kid, Marcus.”

The sharpness in my own voice surprises even me, but I don’t take it back.

I turn towards him properly, shaking my head. “He’s not. So stop fucking treating him like one.”

Because maybe Marcus can still look at Connor and see the kid who used to follow him around, but I can’t.