A/N: Hey everyone! Glad you're still checking back this week to see the newest entry from Brandon. This covers Ch. 6 in TMMM which is Meet The Maxfields. 

Hope you like it! 

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I was five when my mother died so there isn't a lot that I remember about her. I knew she had thick, dark hair and warm brown eyes and she always gave me two chocolate chip cookies with my milk every night before I went to bed. 

It was a winter day and I had been sick in school. The nurse told me to stay put in the clinic because Mom was coming to get me. I fell asleep on the sick bed and when I woke up, Dad was there, sitting on a chair next to me. Calmly, he put a hand on my arm and told me that Mom was gone. I don't remember if I really understood then what he meant but the rest of that day was fuzzy, blurring together with the memories of standing at the cemetery, chilled to my bone as I stood next to Dad watching the coffin being lowered to the snow-covered ground. 

I don't recall much of what happened after that until one day, Dad came home with a woman. He told me her name was Evelyn and that she was going to join us for dinner. At seven, I don't think I really knew what was happening but I hadn't minded because Evelyn was so nice. She always smiled and laughed but I think I liked her better because she made Dad smile and laugh, too. Dad sat down with me one night, when he came into my room with a glass of milk and cookies and the book we were going to finish, and told me that he was going to marry Evelyn and that even if she was going to be his new wife, she didn't replace my mother. He told me that my Mom needed someone to look after me because she couldn't anymore. I told him that Mom would've liked Evelyn because she made really good cookies and always reminded me to comb my hair. 

Soon after they were married, they told me I was going to be an older brother. I listened to Evelyn's belly a lot and she didn't mind letting me touch it when the baby kicked. When Anna was born, I think I might have commented that she looked awfully ugly with her wrinkly skin and bald head. I'd thought that Evelyn would get angry at me for calling her baby ugly but she just laughed and told me that they get better after a few days. After Tessa was born a year later and the house was filled with crying and screaming babies who kept either biting me or drooling all over my shirt, I started to worry that I was forgetting my Mom. 

The sound of her voice was the first thing I couldn't remember anymore and I panicked. Evelyn found me staring at her picture one day and told me that mothers didn't mind things like that as long as their children remembered the more important things—to be a good son and brother, to take care of the family, to protect the ones he loved. It might have been then that I started to be fiercely protective of my family. It wasn't perfect but it was all I had. It didn't matter that Evelyn wasn't my real mother or that unlike my sisters, I only half-belonged into this family. 

Our home was warm and happy, full of family dinners and evenings spent together in the library. When Evelyn announced they were having another child almost ten years later, it was quite a surprise for Anna, Tessa and me, especially since I was already in college at that point. But Evelyn had married my Dad when she was only twenty so it wasn't incomprehensible. It didn't mean though that I enjoyed doing the math and being forced to think about my parents' sex life. 

Mattie was quite special when he was born. I still remember when we all surrounded his crib, gazing in wonder at this little bundled up baby with Dad's blond hair and blue eyes. He'd looked like an angel and gurgled and giggled probably like one, too. 

Everything seemed perfect until four years later, when Evelyn fainted in the kitchen. She hadn't been feeling well, calling it one of her recent migraines, but dismissed it and told us to enjoy the Sunday dinner she'd organized out on the patio that summer evening instead of worrying about her. Mattie, only four, found her and we heard him cry out. I dashed into the house with Dad and my sisters behind me and found her sprawled on the floor unconscious. I was about to pick her up when my Dad told me to leave her in case she had any injuries. Anna was sobbing on the phone at the 911 operator. Tessa had pulled Mattie to her, turning his face away from the sight of Evelyn. I got up and backed away to let my Dad get closer to her, watching him sink on his knees, his face as white as sheet as he picked up her lifeless hand and pressed it to his mouth. 

A week later, we buried her. 

It was well-attended, just like my mother's funeral. She and Evelyn were both celebrated Mrs. Maxfields after all—society darlings, paragons of grace and good breeding, fashionable wives to the great Martin Maxfield, mothers to the golden Maxfield children who were one day going to own the world. 

I was old enough to understand the parallelisms of both women's fate and I'd gotten drunk with Jake after the service, washing down the bitter taste of my family's tragedies until there was nothing but the burning streak of the alcohol down to my gut. I was still sober though when I declared that perhaps I was going to marry a new Mrs. Maxfield so we'd have a perfect row of three dead ones in a few years. Jake cuffed me in the head and told me to quit being a moron. 

The next day, after my hungover receded, I showered and shaved and decided that there wasn't going to be another Mrs. Maxfield anytime soon. Dad wouldn't dare marry again—two dead young wives was more than he could manage on his conscience despite how strong he is and even though none of it was his fault. 

I certainly lost any interest in filling the next grave with my own young wife. 

This was what hit me early this morning, as I sat in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, reading the Sunday paper and wondering how brunch with my family was going to unfold when I arrive with Charlotte in my arm.

She wouldn't count. She wouldn't be cursed because she was only going to be my wife in a technical sense. Fate would be a little more discerning, I think—I hope. 

I nearly scalded myself with coffee when the idea of Charlotte, lifeless on the ground, flashed in my mind and made me drop my cup. 

I'd hissed and cursed as I mopped up my mess, telling myself loudly that Charlotte was exempt from the tragic destiny of a Mrs. Maxfield because she wasn't really going to be one. She wasn't going to die, by a car accident or an aneurysm, because she was simply doing a temporary name change. 

Her blue-green eyes wouldn't dim and go blank. Her warm, tanned skin wouldn't grow ashen and cold. Fate could try but she would be too stubborn to die. She'd probably kick fate in the balls first and spit on his face, and I would be eternally relieved and grateful. 

Satisfied with my reassurances, I got ready and went to pick her up. 

Gilles and I were discussing a Sox game so I didn't see her come out.

Good thing I was leaning against the small kitchen island because my knees literally went a little weak when I first saw her. 

She had this soft pink dress that made her skin glow along with her dark, honey blond hair that floated around her radiant face like sun flares against the camera lens. With her high heels and pearls, she looked poised and elegant that my feet were moving before my brain could catch up.

As I got closer, the symptoms of Charlotte stood out more clearly against her strawberries and cream backdrop—the small skull pendant, the worn denim clutch looped over her wrist, the rugged black leather belt cinched around her waist, the wayward curls that framed her face instead of smoothly flowing over her shoulders, the sardonic tilt of her half-smiling mouth, and the ever-present dare in her aquamarine eyes.

I'd let out an inward sigh of relief. It was reassuring that she was still very much there because I'd worried for a second there that despite how beautiful she looked, she might have turned into a well-dressed mannequin after yesterday's makeover.

She further relieved me when she haughtily declared that the little rebellious touches were hers and they were staying on. I didn't tell her but she wouldn't have gotten any argument from me.

We got into the car and after testing out a few compliments in my head, as articulate as I often credited myself to be, I blurted out some lame comment about her being pretty. Pretty was quite a bland term actually, in application to Charlotte. My sisters are pretty and that's that. Charlotte was... something else.

It didn't matter that I sounded like a completely inept fourteen-year-old complimenting his first crush because she blushed and faltered, telling me I was pretty too. It helped me to know I wasn't the only one fumbling around this highly inconvenient but irresistible attraction.

For all my discipline, I couldn't keep my hands off her. I couldn't keep my mouth shut either, admitting that what I wanted now weren't the same things I wanted at the start of all of this. Well, I wanted the same things before I knew the vibrant girl who'd caught my eye in the diner was the same girl I was commanded to marry but those were mere technicalities. Technicalities I quickly forgot when I pulled her into my arms and urged her not to fight this low-burning fever we'd caught together. 

Kissing her in the backseat, holding her in my arms, tasting sunshine and sin from her maddening mouth—it took all of my will power to let it end there when I wanted nothing more than to feel her skin against mine and discover every complicated inch that made up Charlotte Samuels.

Unfortunately, we arrived sooner than I'd hoped at Dad's house and got caught red-handed by the entire family.

She had been mortified, adorably so, but just like her attitude in life, she quickly recovered and pulled herself together more calmly than I was feeling, despite appearances. If Dad hadn't been there, smiling smugly at us, I would've slammed the car door close and yelled at Gilles to drive us to my condo. 

Besides, it was our first act. The first people we had to convince was my family, especially my father.

A voice in the back of my head reminded me that I was lying to my family but I quieted it with the resolve that it was necessary. Dad had something at stake in all this and I couldn't recall a time in my entire life that I'd ever disappointed Dad. I wasn't going to start now, no matter how unreasonable this request was this time around. Charlotte also had her entire future riding on this—a means to live a better life. For both their sakes, I had to orchestrate and see this whole thing through. Besides, to act as if I wanted Charlotte was no great task because I did want her, more than I should. If I had to suffer from what I wanted but couldn't have to make both their wishes happen, I'd do it. 

The friendship between Charlotte and my father was easy to see. It wasn't hard to believe. They were both the kind of people who drew others in with little effort, disarming with their smiles and candidness. Whatever accusations I'd come up with in the beginning of all of this evaporated. Charlotte may never openly admit it but she needed a father and my Dad indulged her in being what he could for her because he was that kind of man. He'd done it before for Francis.

Mattie was equally smitten but he was still young and sheltered and trusted everyone to be good and mean well. 

My sisters however were a different story.

I knew Charlotte went to Worthington Prep with them through the work-study scholarship she'd earned. The program gave a lot of kids out there the opportunity to gain an excellent quality of education but it was a double-edged sword, also highlighting their financial deficiency compared to the rest of the student body. I highly doubted that Charlotte moved in the same circles my sisters did but I didn't really think it would pose much of a problem. I should've remembered that the three of them weren't out of high school that long ago and their juvenile claws weren't yet sheathed. Charlotte was only nineteen after all—a fact I easily forget because despite her bubbly, ballsy attitude, Charlotte grew up a long time ago and she talked and acted like it.

Charlotte steeled herself against my sister's cold reception though and continued to smile her way through it. It made my chest ache a little bit. Before we walked into brunch, I teased her and scooped her up. My first instinct was to turn around and run so I could get her away from the lie she'd have to sit through and my sisters' snobbery she'd have to endure but I couldn't, really. In the end, I just kissed her, hoping it would calm her nerves even though it frayed mine.

Brunch turned out okay, despite Anna's attitude. I was getting fed up with it but for the sake of everyone else, especially Charlotte who was trying hard to behave, I kept a lid on it, telling myself to wait for a better opportunity to make it very clear to her and Tessa that I wasn't going to put up with their cattiness. I was almost relieved when they not-so-subtly maneuvered to separate me from Charlotte after lunch. 

The moment we stepped out to the patio, Anna launched her list of protestations at my "idiotic" decision to marry Charlotte, rendering me tales of the many times Charlotte bit back at her friends during high school. If by friends she meant Bessy and the shallow, self-centred squad of girls that followed her around for years, then I applaud Charlotte. Bessy's a very attractive girl who'd thrown herself at me once when she tagged along with our family on a ski trip. She's hot but she's way too aggressive and appallingly sure of herself. I'd steered clear of her since then.

Anna insisted I should get checked out in case I was mentally impaired to be seriously considering marrying Charlotte. Tessa sat quietly and listened, not offering her own criticisms but doing nothing to stop Anna either from dragging Charlotte's character through the mud.

With my control slipping away fast, I asked Anna why she was so opposed to Charlotte, apart from her amusing but completely irrelevant recounting of their high school days. She'd blinked at me, as if confused, and said that "Charlotte's not a bad person but she's too brash and rough around the edges to be the kind of wife you're supposed to marry."

I'd raised my brow at that and asked when she'd become such an expert at the kind of woman men should marry—when she decided that Jason Reid married the wrong woman since he's so in love with her?

It was a low blow, one that caught both her and Tessa off guard, but my sisters shouldn't be that surprised to know that there were very few things they could keep secret from me and Dad. It conveniently came up after I poked around when Tessa came to me to appeal for a new apartment for herself. 

It pissed me off to realize just the kind of trouble Anna got herself into and I'd been meaning to discuss it with her as soon as I cleared it with Dad but in my anger at listening to her rant about Charlotte for a full twenty minutes, it just came out and I wasn't sorry about it.

Anna sat there and stewed in silence, offering nothing in her defense because she knew how much in the wrong she was.

There was no further argument or comment as we went up to the music room where Mattie was performing a piece for Charlotte and Dad.

From the doorway, I could see a bit of her profile and I stood there and enjoyed the variety of animated expressions on her face.

Charlotte wore her heart on her sleeve. It made her vulnerable to anyone crude enough to rip it off and trample on it but it also made her incredibly precious. She might be living the biggest lie of her life right now but I suspected that apart from it, she wasn't capable of many. 

Anna was correct in her assessment that Charlotte is nowhere near the Mrs. Maxfield the world expected when time came for me to marry. I had no problems with that. 

The last thing I wanted was for her to have more parallels with my mother and Evelyn, good women they may have been.

Charlotte wasn't going to fill that third grave—not while I still had breath left in my body.

- B

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So, what do you think? There are such different dynamics from Brandon's side that we just never got to see in TMMM that are fleshed out in this mini bonus material. It also allows us to get to know the other characters a little better through experiences they've had that Charlotte hadn't known. I'm thinking I might include a short spin-off on Evelyn and Martin—a little flashback on how they fell in love since Martin has tons of fans. =)

On a side note, to those asking what I'm going to be writing next, I don't really know yet. I don't have solid plans of writing much this summer but I'll be preparing for whatever next project I'll set my mind so i could start it going into fall. I'll be continuing the TMMM-spin-off updates and probably do the mini-stories for the other couples but no promises yet as to when. I don't mind hearing what you're rooting for though so let me know. =)

 ♪♪♪Journal Soundtrack: Moondust by Jaymes Young ♪♪♪

I'm building this house, on the moon
Like a lost, astronaut
Lookin at you, like a star
From the place, the world forgot
From the place, the world forgot
And there's nothing, that I can do
Except bury my love for you

[Hook:]
The brightness of the sun, will give me just enough
To bury my love, in the Moondust
I long to hear your voice, but still I make the choice
To bury my love, in the moondust

Nothing can breath, in the space
Colder than, the darkest sea
I have dreams about the days, driving through your sunset breeze
But the first thing I will do
Is bury my love for you