Chapter 6
Call me old-fashioned, but I like my men without wives, fiancées, and girlfriends.
— Maven’s secret thoughts
MAVEN
“ Okay ,” Athena sat down in the booth at our favorite coffee shop, The Roost , and said, “ Tell me everything.”
I did, from start to finish, before either one of us had a single drink of coffee.
She stared at me with wide eyes and said, “ That’s … insane.”
“ I know!” I said.
“ I can’t believe you actually asked him out.” She chuckled. “ Who is this new Maven ?”
“ The new and improved Maven .” I giggled. “ You’re right, though. I never would’ve done this before. But I’d had a really bad day yesterday, and though he was kind of quiet and grumpy the entire time we were fishing, he was sweet. He took my fish off for me. Baited my hook. Got me snacks. Walked around with me when I got bored. Offered to get an umbrella from the truck when it got a little too sunny for me to see my book on my phone. Heck , he even let me use his charging case for my phone.”
She blinked. “ That’s why you did it, isn’t it? Because he let you read and didn’t complain.”
My face immediately went blank.
“ It’s a good thing, Mave ,” she said softly. “ There’s not a single thing wrong with reading.”
I knew that.
She knew that.
But that didn’t stop the childhood trauma of my dad and brother giving me so much shit that I had to hide my books from them so they didn’t bully me relentlessly.
I looked away, my eyes taking in the coffee shop around us.
My gaze slid to the back corner booth where a group of men was gathering.
My eyes narrowed when I saw the familiar blond hair.
“ Is that…”
“ The asshole?” Athena guessed.
‘ The asshole’ was Sheldon Greene .
Sheldon was my ex-boyfriend as of nine months ago.
He was a member of the SWAT team, my stepbrother’s best friend, and the man my dad had approved of and given permission for me to marry.
It’d taken me a while to see that my dad and brother had set me up with Sheldon for a purpose.
On Sheldon’s part, I didn’t think that he was aware of their manipulation.
I think he was so focused on getting a rise in rank, making the SWAT team, and getting all the ins he could that he didn’t much notice he was being strategically placed into a situation where we could find each other.
On my part, I didn’t exactly notice the manipulation until I broke up with Sheldon .
Sheldon wasn’t a bad guy.
He was easily influenced and liked to climb the ranks. Sure , he used me to accomplish that, but he also was under the assumption that he was killing two birds with one stone.
However , when I told him that I didn’t want to be with him anymore, he turned into someone who was more like my brother.
Scott was an asshole.
Vickie , my stepmother, had two adopted children, Scott and Dorsey .
When my dad met Vickie , I was young.
My dad only had me because my own mother had died during childbirth with their second child.
Both the baby and my mom didn’t make it, and my dad saw absolutely no reason not to find another suitable substitute as soon as possible.
I was seven when Scott , Vickie , and Dorsey officially became my step-family.
Dorsey was great. Vickie , my stepmother, was just existing. She was never supportive, but never quite against me either. She didn’t fight for me, but she didn’t fight against me. Again , she was just someone who lived in the house and kind of took care of me when she was required to.
Scott , on the other hand? He was not great and never had been.
The moment he and Dad got together, they turned into horrible people, each making the other more horrible the longer they were around each other.
When they got together, they would torture Dorsey and me.
Vickie , for her part, was working her ass off as a doctor, and didn’t much notice it.
Dorsey and I didn’t really tell her about the issues, either.
I wasn’t sure what it would accomplish. If Vickie decided to leave, I would still have to deal with my dad.
And Dorsey , well, I wasn’t sure why she never snitched on her brother or my dad, but I assumed it had something to do with their previous life.
“ Incoming ,” Athena muttered under her breath.
I looked up to see my brother storm inside the coffee shop and veer toward the table that Sheldon was occupying with what looked like other members of the SWAT team.
There was a certain face that was missing, and it made me both sad and happy.
I didn’t want him to hang out with those assholes.
But also, I would’ve liked to see him.
It’d only been a couple of hours, and I already wanted to see him again.
But not with Scott and Sheldon anywhere around.
Returning my gaze back to my table, I said, “ What are you working on that you couldn’t talk until today?”
Her eyes dimmed. “ I was trying to find out about my sister and work on my thesis.”
My stomach clenched any time she talked about her long-lost sister, and this time was no different.
“ Any leads?” I wondered.
“ No ,” she fisted her small hands on the table.
Athena was bite-sized, as she liked to refer to herself.
Small in stature, big in attitude.
Her utter devastation had me shaking my head.
“ I truly don’t understand you sometimes, Athena .”
Athena , my best friend in the world, rolled her head on the back of the booth and stared at me. “ What do you not understand?”
“ You have a genius IQ ,” I pointed out. “ Create an app. Have people upload their loved ones’ photos. Then use the photos uploaded to create what they would look like today. Then , you create a database of all the missing kids’ photos. Maybe you’ll start getting some hits that way.”
Athena was doing a project for her thesis.
Her thesis centered around missing children in America , and what could be done to help.
There was obviously more to it than that, but Athena had a vested interest in the topic because her little sister, Mary Beth , had gone missing at the age of five and had never been found.
It’d hit her especially hard after last year when her one and only surviving brother, Gavrel , had been killed in the line of duty with the Dallas Police Department .
“ That’s very…” she scrunched up her nose. “ Stupidly simple.”
It wasn’t simple for normal people.
But Athena was a genius, literally.
She’d gone to a school for genius kids. Had graduated high school at eleven. College at fifteen. She’d played around in the working field for a couple of years, then decided to go back to school for her master’s and graduated in a year. Worked more.
Got bored, switched jobs.
Which eventually led us to now, her getting her doctorate.
In the meantime, she was working as a dispatcher for Dallas Police Department because she thought it was fun.
Honestly , my best friend had the smarts to take over the world if she only wanted to.
“ Then do it,” I suggested as the door opened, catching my attention.
That’s when the Carters stepped into the house.
My breath hitched, and my gaze went to them as they filed into the door, one by one.
The Roost was a popular coffee shop for cops because it was run by a cop’s wife.
She only served actual coffee in actual coffee cups.
She didn’t give discounts, and she had a time limit of thirty minutes that you could stay, unless you were a cop, or a cop’s family. Then you could stay there for two hours.
Athena and I liked it because it was hard to find good, normal coffee.
Others liked it because it was a good place to hang out near the police station.
That was a downfall for me.
At least, it used to be.
Now , knowing that the Carters came in? I might become more of a regular.
Quincy was first, followed by Atlas . Auden was behind Atlas . Gable , Garrett , Quaid , and Quinn followed up.
All of them went up, paid, and took up a large table right in the middle.
My eyes automatically went to the women who also had their eyes on the Carters .
“ They sure do know how to draw the gaze, don’t they?” Athena murmured.
My gaze was settled on one Carter in particular.
And I knew he could tell he had eyes on him, because he kept his face downcast, and his eyes only on his brothers and not the room around him.
Though , I knew that he was very much aware of the people inside the shop.
He was just trying his level best not to attract any more attention than he was getting.
“ You should go say something,” Athena whispered.
I was already shaking my head.
My bravado from yesterday was long gone. In its place was the girl who had trouble talking to any boy, even one who showed that he was interested.
“ Did you give him your number?” Athena asked.
I was about to answer when there was a loud bang across the room.
I looked up and found that Scott and Sheldon were standing up, both of them with their eyes on me.
“ Fuck ,” I grumbled darkly.
The romance novel on the table between Athena and me started to feel like a chain wrapped around my wrist.
I hastily picked it up and shoved it underneath my thigh.
“ Well look who the cat dragged in,” Scott drawled as he made his way across the coffee shop.
I gritted my teeth and crossed my arms over my chest, hoping to appear calm when inside I was a trembling wreck.
See , here was the thing about Scott .
He might be my stepbrother, but he acted like he was my father, and not a good one at that.
Between him and my actual father, I felt suffocated.
The day I moved out of their house was the day I could finally breathe again.
Not once in the eighteen years I’d lived at home did I feel like I could actually breathe.
I couldn’t walk out of my room without wondering what they were going to do to me.
Hell , Dorsey and I had made a pact to always be there for each other. It got to the point that we always went to our rooms at the same time. We left our rooms at the same time. We made sure to always carpool to school together.
At school, we made sure to always have the same classes if we could—because being together meant that he couldn’t single us out while we were at school.
Scott was not a nice kid.
If he wanted something we had, he’d take it. If he couldn’t take it—like the one time he felt like he needed the brand new bedspread I’d gotten from my paternal grandmother for my birthday—he would somehow manipulate my dad into giving it to him, or ‘borrowing’ it.
Then I’d just never get it back.
Like when he wanted to borrow my car for a long-haul drive for spring break his first year in college because mine would get him better gas mileage.
It’d been the one I bought and paid for using my own babysitting money the summer of my senior year.
Of course, when he’d asked/demanded, I’d told him no. I mean, I had to get to my own job at a bakery at five in the morning. So when I’d walked out of the house at five that morning, with Dorsey in tow because she worked with me, to find my car gone, I’d called my dad.
And that was when my dad told me he’d given Scott permission to take it because ‘what did I need it for?’
Needless to say, I had hundreds of stories of the asshole ruining my childhood—and now my freakin’ adult life come to think of it—and I didn’t want anything to do with him at any time.
And there he was, coming our way, a sneer on his face.
“ Son of a bitch,” Athena snarled underneath her breath.
My sentiments exactly.
“ What’s that look for?” Scott asked as he and Sheldon came to a stop at our table, looming over us as he did.
I wished I’d taken the booth seat against the window, but then he might have had the audacity to sit down and act like we were one big, happy family.
“ She hates you, remember?” Sheldon snickered.
He wasn’t lying.
I didn’t respond.
Which he hated.
“ I’m talking to you, Maven Amalia .” He placed both hands on the table and pushed his way into my space.
I narrowed my eyes as I said, “ I realize that, but I’m trying to eat breakfast with my friend. I’d appreciate it if you gave us some space.”
When I shifted, though, my book fell to the ground on the other side of me, skittering across the floor and stopping somewhere in the vicinity of his feet.
His mouth turned up into a sneering smirk as he bent down and picked it up, his eyes lit with glee at the book.
“ Oh , look!” he called out. “ The reason you could never compare, Sheldon .”
I gritted my teeth.
What was so wrong with reading romance novels, and dreaming about a man who was exactly like the hero?
I mean, Jesus Christ , was it wrong to want a man who treated you right, that could lick you to completion, and you actually wanted to be around?
I didn’t think so.
But Scott and my dad had seen my reading romance novels as a slight to all of mankind and had given me so much shit for it that I’d had to hide my reading from them.
It never worked. Scott always came into my room and destroyed my secret book stashes.
I’d gotten to the point where I hid my most recent novels in the dog food bags because God forbid Scott actually take care of the animal he’d demanded we get.
My stepmother had adamantly refused. My dad had allowed it.
Neither my dad nor Scott took care of the dog.
That always fell on the women—because apparently that was a woman’s job.
And to make matters worse, the freakin’ dog liked Scott and Dad more than us.
“ Please give it back,” I said, holding out my hand.
When he held it up in front of me as if to tease me with it, I launched myself out of my chair to grab it. I actually managed to catch it, but he held on tight.
I pulled, and he pulled harder.
Finally , realizing I wasn’t going to win this the easy way, I let go.
I hated making a spectacle of myself, and stupid Scott always managed to make one.
The moment I let go, the book went flying through the air to land somewhere beyond us.
I gritted my teeth and glared. “ Leave me alone, Scott .”
“ Sorry , no can do, sister .”
God , I hated when he called me that.
He was not anything like a brother should be, so I detested when he tried to act like one. As if just the moniker made it so.
Asswipe .
A throat cleared somewhere beyond us, and Scott and Sheldon parted, revealing Auden .
He split between the two men, coming toward me.
“ Why didn’t you sit with me, darlin’?” he teased as he bent down and kissed me directly on the mouth.
I was so surprised that I gasped, and he took advantage by smoothing his hand to rest at the back of my neck, his thumb running a sweet path along my jaw. He swept his tongue in for a sweet kiss before pulling away and saying, “ Hey .”
I swallowed hard before saying, “ Hey .”
He placed my book back in my lap, then twisted so that he could see my brother, putting Sheldon at his back.
I realized rather quickly that he was purposefully dismissing the loser behind him.
It made me smile. It made Athena downright giggle.
“ Scott ,” Auden said, sounding just as annoyed as I’d been earlier. “ Can you give her some space?”
Scott’s brows went up, and I saw the hesitation in his eyes as he gave me the space I wanted that he wasn’t willing to give me earlier.
Jerk .
It was also more than obvious that Auden made him nervous.
That was a surprise, because Scott was at the top of the food chain. I hadn’t seen him cower from a single person in my life.
It made me absolutely giddy inside to see him reacting in that way with Auden .
“ What the fuck is going on here?” Scott snarled.
“ What are you talking about?” Auden asked.
“ You and my sister ?” Scott stiffened, the veins in his neck popping out with his anger.
“ She’s your sister?” Auden asked.
I knew he knew we were ‘related.’
He’d brought it up yesterday.
But Auden was acting like Scott was so insignificant to both me and himself that we hadn’t discussed him at all.
Well played, Auden . Well played.
Scott puffed up his chest, ready to fight now, but Sheldon appeared from behind Auden’s back and said, “ Who are you?”
“ I’m Maven’s man. Who are you?” Auden challenged sarcastically.
“ I’m her ex-fiancé,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “ There was never a fiancé title to be an ex.”
“ Amen ,” Athena said. “ Dodged that bullet.”
“ Why the fuck are you still here? Shouldn’t you be in your high school classes still?” Sheldon snarled at her.
I snorted.
Athena was young.
She was twenty-one, and far younger than I was. Than Sheldon was, too.
When Sheldon and I were together, he’d hated that I hung out with a ‘kid.’
Truthfully , I’d loved Athena the moment I met her. She was younger than me, sure, but she was mature for her age and always had been. We’d hit it off because of a book club we’d attended years ago and had stayed fast friends ever since.
Sheldon didn’t like Athena because she was too smart.
His words, exactly.
He hated feeling stupid when Athena was around, and it was inevitable that Athena wouldn’t dumb herself down enough that Sheldon could stand her.
“ How about you go back to your table with your friends, and leave us alone to finish our food?” Athena suggested. “ We only have twenty more minutes left before Maven has to go visit with her lawyer.”
Scott’s anger turned to me again, his eyes narrowing. “ What lawyer?”
“ Don’t act like you don’t know why I need a lawyer. It’s beneath you.” I stood up, my body brushing along Auden’s as I did. “ You’re late.”
Since we were putting on a show…
“ Come join us,” he suggested, his hand going to mine—the one still clutching the book.
I didn’t protest his hand tugging me toward his table.
I did, however, catch Athena’s hand and pull her along with me.
When we arrived at the Carter table, all eyes were on us.
Atlas’s were amused.
Quincy’s were narrowed and aimed at the assholes behind me.
The rest of them were ping ponging between the two emotions.
“ This is Maven , as you know,” he said to the group as he tugged a chair to stuff it between myself and his brother, Quaid . “ Athena is her best friend.”
I was smiling so big my face hurt.
He didn’t raise an eyebrow at introducing the two of us.
“ Hi ,” Athena waved.
“ You’re Gavrel’s sister,” Gable said as he leaned back in the chair. “ How are you doing?”
Athena went sad for a short second before shrugging. “ Making it.”
She was.
Day by day.
“ I was just encouraging her to work on an app to help find her sister who went missing when she was a child,” I said, changing the subject.
It wasn’t that Athena didn’t want to talk about Gavrel , but she would start crying, and at least the topic of her sister wouldn’t make her cry at the drop of the hat.
Gavrel’s death was still too fresh. Her sister’s disappearance was a long ago wound that still hurt her, but she could cope with it.
“ Your sister went missing?” Garrett asked. “ What happened?”
“ You know what happened, dummy,” Gable said. “ This was the little girl who was playing at a park with a friend, right across the street from the friend’s house. Nice neighborhood, even nicer park. Upper crust of Dallas elite. That was why Gavrel joined the DPD . To help other kids who went missing like his sister did.”
“ Oh , yeah.” Garrett winced. “ I’m sorry. I should’ve remembered that.”
Athena smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“ I’m trying to encourage her to make an app that’ll help her compare old missing persons photos. Ones that’ll transform the kids into what they’d look like today. Then create a database with all kinds of helpful stuff.”
“ It’s already been playing out in my head for the last ten minutes.” Athena looked far away. “ I have so many ideas.”
I grinned. “ Go , friend.”
Athena glanced at me. “ I was going to go to the lawyer with you.”
“ Yeah ,” I said. “ But I don’t need a ride anymore.”
“ You don’t?” she asked.
“ She doesn’t,” Auden replied succinctly.
That hadn’t been what I meant.
“ Okay then.” Athena stood up. “ It was very nice to meet you all. Thank you for the save back there.”
She pointed at Scott and Sheldon who were still at our old table with our drinks, glaring.