Time to Bounce (Carter Brothers #6)

Chapter 14

So I may not even be close to a 10 at the beach, but I’m a solid 8 at Walmart .

— Athena’s secret thoughts

ATHENA

You know what I loved about all the Carters ?

They didn’t care if I asked a lot of questions.

I’d had a boyfriend once who liked to give me shit about all the questions I asked.

At a dinner with his family, one of many I’d gone to with him, I’d overheard his mother and sister talking about me when I got back from the restroom. And my boyfriend at the time had done nothing to stop them from making fun of me.

I couldn’t help the questions I needed to ask.

That was just my brain.

It ran a million miles an hour.

Quaid , Quincy , and Quinn —the triplets—were laughing at my previous question and discussing it amongst themselves now.

Their wives were chiming in, and I loved that my need for knowledge fueled their own, too.

I’m not sure how we’d gotten onto the next subject, though, just that we were now on it, and I had questions.

“ Why is it that people will swim in an ocean, or a lake that has a ton of dead bodies in it, yet they won’t swim in a swimming pool with a dead body in it?” I asked Atlas , who’d been talking about the lake he wanted to go fishing at that his parents owned a house on.

My mind was firing, though, and I didn’t realize that no one had answered it at first.

“ Do people have a corpse to body of water ratio?” I asked.

Silence .

I looked up from the blanket I was crocheting—yes, at the dinner table, it helped me unwind, and I carried it everywhere in my purse with me— to see the Carters staring at me like I was crazy.

They usually didn’t have any problems with my odd line of questions. Perhaps , this one was a little too weird?

Even though there were only half of them there—as well as the Semyonov Bratva (even though I had no confirmation on the Bratva part)—they were still overwhelming in their intensity.

“ What ?” I asked.

“ You know,” Gable said from my side, a grin in his voice, even though it didn’t show on his face. “ You always manage to entertain us with your questions.”

“ How many people do you think are in Lake Ray Hubbard ?” Hollis asked, curiosity written all over her face.

“ A lot,” Garrett answered. “ I just pulled a dead body out of there last week with Boss .”

Boss was Garrett’s K -9 officer. He was a large, black German Shepherd that had the prettiest blue eyes ever seen. In my mind, I called them wolf’s eyes, because if you glanced at him really fast, you could definitely see the relation.

Boss wasn’t here tonight.

He was at home resting after a strenuous day of training, according to Garrett . I’d definitely asked when he’d shown up and Boss wasn’t with him.

“ But like, how many?” Hollis pushed, her daughter fast asleep on her shoulder.

Quincy , who had his arm thrown around Hollis’s chair, caught his beer off the table and took a large draw before answering. “ Well , in the last year, I think nine people have been fished out of there dead.”

“ What ?” Ellodie asked.

“ Yep ,” Atlas said. “ I actually helped with the retrieval of one. But we can’t dredge the bottom because of the trees. There are just too many of them down there. Hell , a dead body that was sunk to the bottom would appear to look just like one of those dead trees that they flooded when they built the lake.”

I shivered, causing Gable to start running his hand up and down the length of my thigh.

“ Is it kind of like concrete shoes?” Pepper asked. “ I thought that was just a thing they made up for movies.”

It was unsurprisingly the man I knew had to be Bratva answered. “ Concrete shoes are a real thing, but it’s messy. Not to mention getting someone out there with concrete shoes, as well as on a boat, with no one there to see them, is nearly impossible. Especially on a frou-frou lake like Ray Hubbard . All the rich bitches in Dallas either live near it, or use it. Trust me when I say, there are other ways to dispose of a body in this area that would be less visible. I think your lake is probably pretty safe.”

It wasn’t Shasha who said that, though. It was Dima .

Maven looked over at Dima and said, “ Why do you sound like you have so much knowledge about that?”

“ He took multiple courses in college that specialized in organized crime,” Nastya murmured. “ Dima here also took all kinds of psychology classes, focusing on the criminal mind.”

“ Do you have your degree in psychology?” I wondered.

“ No ,” Dima laughed. “ I took classes. College is boring to me. I don’t like all the courses that they want you to take to get the degree. I like to hop around and get information from everywhere. I took a language arts course and immediately dropped out because it wasn’t something I was looking for. Now , all the criminology classes were entertaining.”

“ Little Miss Smarty Pants over here is like that, too.” Maven grinned. “ She was really conflicted on whether she wanted to get her doctorate. She hated that they forced her to take classes she didn’t want to take.”

“ I wanted to make a career out of having a plethora of knowledge.” I put my crochet hook down and reached for my water glass. Gable got it for me so I didn’t have to dislodge my work, and handed it to me. “ Thank you.”

“ What’s your degree in?” Shasha asked.

“ Social sciences,” I answered. “ It was the most diverse one, and I could choose to study a lot of information. I thought about a medical degree, but I didn’t like the actual medicine part of it. Engineering was considered, too, but it’s the most popular one, and I’m not really interested in going to a lecture hall full of people who are only there to make a buck.”

“ I like to call Dima a perpetual student.” Nastya looked at her brother fondly. “ I think he’s already signed up for classes here.”

“ Food science,” he agreed. “ I want to know what kind of bullshit they’re putting in our food supply. I also want to know why I can go to Russia and eat like a total asshole, and not gain weight, but lose it. Yet I stray off my celery diet for one single day here, and I gain ten pounds overnight.”

“ Probably because when you stray off your diet,” I said, “you eat like you did tonight.”

“ She got you there, bro.” Shasha chuckled.

“ Does anyone want dessert?”

I looked up, excitement lighting my features, as I said, “ Yes !”

Gable’s hand left my lap only to come down on my neck.

“ What’s your dessert special for tonight?” Auden asked, likely reading Maven’s mind.

The waitress listed off a plethora of specials to the table, and everyone ordered something.

The waitress left looking surprised.

“ I don’t think she expected everyone to order dessert. They’re pretty big here,” I admitted.

“ It’s so we can share,” Pepper admitted, repositioning herself in her seat.

She looked uncomfortable, which was not surprising seeing as she’d been in an accident a few months ago that had stolen her ability to walk while her fractured spine healed.

Reading this likely like I did, Atlas carefully scooped her up in his arms and positioned her in his lap, while from the other side, Gable put the chair she’d been sitting in under her feet.

I loved that they were all taking care of her.

Even the Semyonovs got into the act by scooting over and giving the two room to spread out.

Once we were sure Pepper was more comfortable, we went back to our conversation, and eventually when the dessert came out, I realized something.

I was in love with Gable’s family, Maven’s family, and Gable .

I wanted this life.

I wanted to be here, exactly where I was, for the rest of my life.

We didn’t talk about my mom’s revelation today.

We didn’t talk about how it was safe for me to go home now.

We did, however, talk about what my mother had thrown at me today. We talked about what would happen if I did donate, and what would happen if it didn’t.

“ You’re not a diagnosis, Athena . You’re mine. It doesn’t matter what the doctor says. In the end, nothing changes on my end, and I hope you feel the same.”

At the end of the night, Gable took me right back to his place, deposited me into his bed with a t-shirt he’d taken off his own body, and I realized something else.

I didn’t just want the life he could give me.

I wanted everything we could make with that life, too.

I just had to be brave and put myself out there one more time.

But I didn’t do it.

Instead , I fell asleep in Gable’s arms.

And the next morning when I woke, he was talking to another woman in his kitchen, shirtless.