Chapter 26
Your driving skills have me looking both ways at green lights.
— Text from Athena to Maven
MAVEN
“ Women will never know the horrified feeling of when your dick accidentally touches the toilet bowl,” Garrett said, sounding grossed out.
I snorted, but it was sweet and sassy Ellodie who said, “ Men will never know the feeling of a fart that rolls up the front and into your vagina, which you then have to walk funny and squeeze your vaginal muscles to get out.”
There was a long moment of silence and then, “ You’re joking.”
That was Gable .
“ Not even a little bit, baby Carter ,” Ellodie countered.
“ Don’t call me that. I’m not the baby. Garrett is.” He pointed at Shayne , as if she was going to tell him a different story. “ Is that true?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it, mortification rising up her neck and taking over her entire face.
It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen.
And she seriously did some cute things.
“ I mean, yeah.” She glanced at me, then quickly looked away.
I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped my lips.
This family.
I loved them with everything I had.
When I’d needed a family, the Carters were there.
And even though I now had my own family—my family that was at this very party— I couldn’t help but feel more of a pull toward the Carters than my own family.
Though , maybe a lot of that kinship would come with time.
I’d only known about them for a week now.
It was now seven whole days since I’d found out about them, and they looked no closer to leaving now than they did a few days ago.
In fact, from what I understood from Jessa —who was currently in the pool floating around with a squirt gun in her hand aiming it at all the little Carter kids—they were in the process of buying a house here.
“ Is it true, sis?” Gable asked Ande .
“ You know it’s true, you moron,” Ande said. “ Why are we even talking about this?”
Everyone pointed at Ellodie .
“ Hey !” she cried out. “ I was just being honest! You act like you’re all screwed if your penis touches the bowl! But there are worse things! Like falling in the toilet!”
“ And when you pee, and the liquid splashes up onto your lady bits,” Hollis offered.
“ Or when you get your period, and you can’t tell if it’s your period, or if you have to go number two,” Mom joined in.
“ Mom ! Oh , God ! Don’t ever tell us anything about your period again!” Gable cried.
Garnett rolled her eyes and stood up, her hands out for me. I took them, and she pulled me up into her waiting hug.
“ I’m so happy for you, honey,” she whispered. “ It’s been a long road, hasn’t it?”
Tears filled my eyes, and I nodded. “ Yeah .”
“ You should go talk to them,” she urged.
I followed her advice, walking up to where Auden was having a deep conversation with the entirety of the Semyonov clan sans Jessa .
“…taking her in tomorrow so she can get her answers,” Auden was saying to the group. “ Maybe she can get him to talk. Because he’s not saying a fucking word for us.”
“ I actually would like to go see him,” I said to the group once I arrived at Auden’s side.
He looped his arms over my shoulders, and I allowed my gaze to travel along the line of my siblings.
Athena’s laugh from behind me had me glancing over my shoulder to see her giggling at a now-wet Gable who’d apparently just gotten shot right in the face by a water gun.
Jessa looked at the sky, playing innocent.
I looked back at my siblings to find them all staring at me.
Over the last week, I’d tried my hardest to get to know them, but they were a lot.
One on one was a lot. But together, they were a force to be reckoned with.
“ Auden !” I heard Garnett call. “ Can you come help me with the sprinklers? They’re not turning on.”
Auden squeezed my shoulder, then bent down to whisper in my ear. “ Give them a chance.”
Dorsey , who’d been in the huddle as well, winked at me and disappeared with Auden , leaving me alone with a family that had always known about me, but I hadn’t known about them.
“ Uhh ,” I said. “ Hi .”
It was Dima who said, “ You know, if you want us to go, all you have to do is tell us.”
I blinked at Dima . “ I don’t want you to go.”
The four of them looked relieved.
“ I just don’t know what to say,” I admitted, sounding just as vulnerable as I felt in that moment. “ I mean, logically, I know you’re my siblings. But I feel like that ratty, dirty kid looking into the diner window at all the people who can afford food when she can’t.”
It was Shasha who said, “ You have a trust fund that’s bigger than all of ours because you haven’t touched yours and we have. Trust me when I say, you’re not a ratty, dirty, poor kid.”
A trust fund.
Who knew?
I was already shaking my head, though. “ That’s not quite what I mean. I guess I just feel like y’all are part of a club that I want to be a part of but can’t.”
“ You can,” Milena urged, reaching forward and grabbing my hand. “ Come sit down.”
I followed her to the seating area that was just to the left of the pool, shaded by a beautiful trellis of climbing roses.
Idly I wondered whether the roses had been planted by Auden .
Probably .
That man and his green thumb were so appealing.
“ Tell me everything,” I blurted out. “ Start from the beginning, please.”
So they did.
“ Well , I guess we should start with going to Gatlinburg ,” Shasha looked guilty. “ That was my fault. I saw the mountains there on the television one day when I was around twelve…”
When he was done telling me all about how he’d ‘screwed up’ and gotten us there, only for me to go missing mere hours after arriving, stolen from the state park right under all of their noses, I was just as devastated as they were.
Apparently , during a bathroom stop at the park, just north of Gatlinburg , they’d sent me in to go to the bathroom while the rest of them checked out the Little Pigeon River that ran alongside the road.
Since it was utterly deserted out there, and the only car in the lot was their car, they’d let me go alone, which they wouldn’t have done normally.
While they were looking at the river, I went missing.
From that point, they had no clue what happened to me. The reception in that area was spotty. No cameras were set up in that portion of the park. There were no people around for miles since they’d gone in the off season.
And even worse, they’d had to drive twenty minutes into town before they’d gotten enough reception to call the authorities.
They’d waited in Gatlinburg for a month while search parties had searched for me. I’d been all over the news. I’d even been on a milk carton.
Yet , all these years, they’d heard nothing.
They’d hired every single private investigator they could.
They’d just never been able to find me.
“ It would be nice to know what happened and how I’d ended up with Brock Austin ,” I said, not calling him my dad to them.
He wasn’t that. He’d never be that.
“ Mom and Dad would be so stoked,” Nastya mused as she looked at her fingers. “ They never gave up. We uprooted our life to move closer to Gatlinburg … just in case. Every single day since you disappeared, they searched for you. Their trip out of the country was because a woman fitting your description had been spotted amongst some school teachers who hailed from America .”
I deflated.
“ I’m so sorry.”
Nastya looked at me then. “ You shouldn’t be. They never stopped fighting for you. That’s how one day I’ll be with my children. And now you’re here to help raise them, too.”
My heart pounded in my chest. “ I want to be a part of that.”
“ You are,” Dima said. “ The only question is, where the hell are we going to live when we’re visiting?”
I laughed. “ There’s a subdivision just right across the street waiting to be developed.”
Dima’s grin, so much like my own it hurt, turned feral. “ God help the Carters . They get us whether they want us or not.”
I had a feeling the Carters were more than willing to add my family into the mix.
“ They’ll enjoy every second of it.”
“ Your family is the best,” I said to Auden later that night.
He trailed his hand up the length of my bare back, fingers tickling along my spine.
He rolled over onto me, his mouth at my throat, making me giggle.
“ We’ll have to agree to disagree,” he drawled. “ I didn’t think they’d ever leave.”
They hadn’t wanted to go.
Neither had mine.
But I’d had the time of my life.
Each day that I’d spent with all of them over the last week had been the best.
And now, I was lying underneath Auden , and he was pressing against me with his thick erection, and I wanted to think nothing of either family.
I only wanted to focus on him.
“ Your focus needs more focus,” I quoted Karate Kid .
His grin turned lecherous as he forced my legs open wider to allow his hips to fall between.
My teeth sank into my bottom lip as he pressed upward, not quite entering me, but close.
So close.
“ My focus is legendary,” he teased. “ Let me show you.”
Then he sank that glorious cock all the way inside me and showed me.