Time to Bounce (Carter Brothers #6)

Chapter 13

Current relationship status: sleeping diagonally across my bed.

— Athena to Maven

ATHENA

I was in shock.

Someone had been recording my every breath.

They’d watched me undress.

They’d watched me bathe.

They’d watched me run naked from my laundry room to my bathroom.

“ Oh my God .” I angrily rubbed my knuckles against my eyes.

“ Honey ,” Gable said. “ It’s going to be okay.”

I was already shaking my head. “ I think I need an intense therapy session, stat, to talk about how disgusted I feel that someone’s been watching me.”

Gable rounded the bend that would take him to the cul-de-sac his family lived in and groaned.

“ What ?” I asked, immediately looking for what caused him to make that sound.

I found it and laughed.

Maven was standing in his front yard, looking angry.

“ Ruh -roh.” I giggled. “ I guess she was let in on the fact that I have a stalker.”

“ That’s probably pretty accurate seeing as Shasha , Dima , Milena , and Nastya are sitting on my porch,” he grumbled.

He pulled into the driveway and Maven met me at my door and opened it wide.

She had to stand fairly far back, too, because her big belly was in the way if she got any closer.

“ I’m fine,” I assured her.

Gable snorted and got out, causing Maven to glare at him. “ What’d you make that sound for?”

“ Because she’s lying to you. She’s not fine,” he ratted me out as he closed the door and walked around the hood of his vehicle.

I followed much more sedately because Maven was a lot more unwieldy since she was so pregnant now.

Shasha stood up from the porch chair he was in when we approached and said, “ I got a ping off where the cell signal was heading.”

“ Where ?” Maven snapped at him.

He looked at her with a cheshire cat smile on his face that likely had more to do with him having his sister back, rather than liking her snapping at him.

He’d take her any way he could get her.

Which I found really sweet.

Maven could do no wrong in their eyes.

But that smile cut off when he looked at me.

He pulled a piece of paper off the table. “ Printed this off the printer at Maven’s shop. Look familiar?”

My breath caught in my throat. “ Fuck .”

“ What is it?” Maven and Gable asked at the same time.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, praying for patience.

“ It’s my mom’s house.” I groaned. “ Of course it is.”

Maven sucked in a breath.

The rest of them looked at me like they were waiting for the punchline.

“ My mom is, what you would call, very overprotective, although really it seems as if she hates me,” I grumbled darkly. “ I’ve already given her my location on Find my Friends on my iPhone. I’ve also agreed to let her track me on the Life360 app. I drew the line on her having access to my Ring Doorbell , though.”

“ What are you going to do?” Maven asked.

“ Kill her,” I snapped.

Maven patted my shoulder comfortingly.

But it didn’t help.

I was so mad I couldn’t see straight.

“ Do you want to press charges?” he questioned.

I thought about that for a long moment.

My mom had gone through so much.

Could I blame her for wanting to keep an eye on me in a neighborhood like this?

Not really.

She’d already lost two kids.

I could see how she was so scared she felt like she needed to take this step.

That didn’t stop me from being disgusted.

“ Is it bad that I’m relieved it was my mom and not some random disgusting man?” I asked him.

“ No ,” he said as he gestured to the front porch furniture for me to take a seat. I did, but did so rather angrily. “ I think I’d be more comfortable knowing that, too. Though , I’d still be pissed as hell.”

“ I am,” I said. “ To answer your earlier question… no. I don’t want to press charges against her.”

I could tell he wasn’t happy with my answer, but it would be the only one he got.

“ Can’t say I blame you,” he admitted as he took a seat directly next to me, pushing Dima farther into the corner without a single care.

Dima went willingly, though, not saying a word.

None of the other Semyonov siblings had chimed in, and I felt somewhat bad. “ I’m sorry for not saying hi.”

I smiled at Dima , practically leaning over Gable’s lap to do so.

His hand went to my ass, and a fire I hadn’t realized was already burning in my belly sparked back to life.

“ Hey , honey.” Dima winked. “ I think you have more important things to talk about right now.”

He might’ve had a point.

I sat back and crossed my arms over my chest. “ Y’all want to hear more about my childhood?”

Maven was the only one I’d ever told about my near kidnapping.

But I went ahead and filled them all in on what happened with my sister’s kidnapping.

Then I explained how my parents were when they’d recovered enough from their gunshot wounds to come back home.

“ When I was a pre-teen, my mother refused to let me leave the house, so I started doing a food strike,” I explained. “ I refused to eat and lost fifteen pounds before she let me go back to school.” I paused. “ I was in high school then, so she freakin’ hated it.”

“ Tell them what happened when you tried to go to college,” Maven urged.

I felt my eyelid start to twitch.

“ My dad had passed away, so it was just her caring for us. And my mom seemed to cling even harder to me and Gavrel . He was in an online college taking criminal justice courses at the time, and she just… lost it. In between me going to college, and Gavrel putting his life on the line in the military, she couldn’t function. I went to my first day of classes, and my first professor told me that I was needed in the registration building, because there was something wrong with my financial aid.” I curled my toes in my sandals. “ According to admissions, my financial aid was pulled last minute, and I either needed to pay, or not go to college.”

“ What did you do?” Gable asked, looping his arm around my shoulder.

I leaned into him, something inside me loosening out at how he was treating me.

God , I needed him. Did he know how much?

“ I called the bank, had them up the limit on my account, and paid for the classes outright,” I answered. “ Used my entire savings to do it. From that point on, I refused to go back home without Gavrel . Gavrel let me use his GI bill to cover the rest of my schooling since my mom kept finding new and inventive ways to make the college not want to let me through the door.”

“ Your mom sounds like a bitch,” Dima muttered.

I thought about that for a long time before saying, “ My mom is a bitch.”

I snatched my phone out of my dress pocket and quickly looked up, then dialed her number.

I found it after a few scrolls of my phone log and hit call, then put it on speaker.

Maven grinned wickedly at me. “ Let me talk to her.”

I pointed at her. “ No .”

She snickered as she leaned back in her chair.

Shasha pressed a kiss to her forehead before looping his arm around her shoulders and tugging her closer.

Maven went willingly.

My best friend loved her siblings, even if she was still slightly overwhelmed at times with their presence.

“ Hello ?” my mother answered cautiously.

I counted to five before I said, “ Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

There was a long pause before she said, “ Not that I know of.”

“ How about you tell me about…”

“ Hey , not to interrupt, but I was about to call you,” she said. “ I had a call from someone from the orphanage we got you from. They were letting us know that your birth mother passed away from a disease that might be hereditary, and she recommended us getting you a blood test to make sure you don’t have this genetic malformity.”

Shock poured through my system at her words. “ What was wrong with her?”

“ Hold on, I wrote it down in case you asked.” She shifted what sounded like papers around. “ I can’t find it. But it’s something to do with a blood disorder that makes too much blood or something. Your birth mother didn’t know she had this condition and she died a couple of weeks ago.”

My mouth fell open. “ A couple of weeks? This happened a couple of weeks ago and no one thought to tell me?”

I was very open with my mother on my desire to meet my birth mother.

From what I’d learned from my father’s paperwork, my birth mother had me when she was thirteen, and her parents had forced her to put the child up for adoption.

I’d wanted to learn who she was. I wanted to get some background info.

But again, my mother had freakin’ complained that I didn’t love her because I wanted to know my real mother, so I’d put it on the back burner.

But she’d known about this for weeks?

“ Oh , no. Only a week and some change. I called the doctor, and I made you an appointment to get your blood drawn next Tuesday ,” she explained as if she hadn’t just rocked my world with her words.

I gritted my teeth. “ I already told you I don’t like using your doctors.”

“ Yeah , but they were able to get you in right away,” she countered. “ And I didn’t want you to needlessly worry about it.”

“ I can move it up to tomorrow, if you want,” she said after I stayed silent.

Gable’s hand tightened on my hip, and I somehow knew without looking at him that he was trying really hard to keep his mouth closed.

He was angry.

I could feel it in the tension of his muscles.

“ I have to work tomorrow,” I replied shortly. “ Next Tuesday is fine.”

She sighed. “ What about Friday ?”

I ignored her. “ I can also find my own doctor. Can you send me whatever info you’ve given your doctor so…”

“ No , no.” She started to sniffle. “ Please , Athena .”

I fucking hated when she used her tears on me.

“ Mother .” I drew in a deep, calming breath. “ Just …”

“ Keep the appointment, honey,” Gable murmured quietly, squeezing my hip for emphasis.

I worked my jaw for a long few moments before saying, “ Mother , you remember the reason for my call, right?”

“ You asked me if there was anything I wanted to tell you,” she hedged. “ I assumed it was for the blood test thing.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “ No . I didn’t know about that. How could I if you hadn’t shared? But I did find something at my house today that was very… informative.”

She drew in a quiet breath. “ I can explain.”

Why did she sound like she was so relieved to hear about what it was that I wanted to talk to her about?

“ How about you do that?” I suggested.

“ Well , actually, see…” She thought about it for a long moment. “ I guess maybe you need to give me more details.”

She was hoping I didn’t know the full extent of what she’d done.

Maven made a sound of anger, ready to launch herself at my phone by the looks of it, but Shasha caught her before she could make a single move toward me.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose with one finger—the middle one because telling my mom to go fuck herself would’ve been frowned upon by my dad—and said, “ The cameras, Mother . I know about the cameras.”

She inhaled sharply. “ I really can explain.”

I waited for her to do just that, but after a few long, awkward moments she hadn’t said anything, and I snapped.

“ Mother , now’s the time to tell me if you’re going to tell me,” I snarled. “ Or I won’t have anything to do with you. Ever .”

“ I just wanted to know you were okay!” she cried out.

“ You can’t do this anymore,” I said. “ It’s unhealthy, and if I took the police officer’s advice today, I could’ve had you arrested. This is beyond disgusting behavior. I’m an adult! You can’t keep doing this.”

She started to wail, and I knew I’d never get anything out of her.

Knowing that, I listened for a solid thirty seconds longer than I wanted to before I hung up.

I shoved my phone across the table and closed my eyes, leaning my head back to stare at Gable’s stupidly gorgeous ceiling.

I loved it.

I loved everything about his house—even though I hadn’t been inside it since it’d been finished— I knew it’d look fantastic just like the outside.

I had gone through it once with Maven when they were putting up the walls.

I liked the design concept.

He’d done away with the open floor plan that all the other brothers had done.

He’d gone more cottage feel with his inspiration, and the entire house looked like it could be in the middle of an English countryside.

There was a lot of stone and darkness to it, but despite all the darkness, it looked open and airy—from what I’d seen.

The ceiling above our head was actually made of stone.

The porch itself extended out over our entire group and had plenty of room to spare.

It was cool and shielded us from the sun that refused to let go despite it being October .

“ Are you listening, my good girl?” Gable whispered in my ear.

I blinked, then brought my head back up to see that while I’d been resting it on Gable’s bicep, they’d apparently been talking all around me.

I was good at that—disassociating.

When I was younger, I’d become increasingly good at it as I tried to find a foothold in a world without my sister.

Eventually , it became a way to escape after my dad’s death.

“ I’m processing,” I admitted.

“ Okay ,” he said. “ In the meantime, they asked if we wanted to go eat with them.”

The pizza had never happened.

Though it’d arrived, we’d given it to a neighborhood kid who’d ridden by on his bike. Neither Gable nor I had been hungry at the time.

“ Where ?” I asked.

Because I wasn’t going to say yes if it was fish.

I hated fish.

I also hated anything overly spicy, so a lot of the Thai places were out.

“ How about Rocky Roads ?” Maven suggested, her eyes lighting up. “ Food sounds really, really good.”

“ You just want the chili cheese fries,” I laughed. “ Yeah , Rocky Roads sounds good.”

Rocky Roads was good for me in multiple ways.

It had a plethora of food to choose from, but it also had a very extensive dessert menu, which actually sounded way better than actual food.

I needed to eat my feelings in calories.

And Rocky Roads was the perfect place to do it.