Shakedown (Souls Chapel Revenants MC 8)

“Let’s go that way,” he said. “I don’t want to be predictable and come out the front way just in case.”

We would have to jump over the short fence, I’d learned.

How did I learn that?

When we got back there, Bruno handed me the computer and then easily hopped it to the other side.

Then, without a strain or a grunt leaving his lips, he wrapped his massive hands around my waist, his fingertips nearly spanning me from back to front, and then lifted me.

I went up, had a sense of ‘I’m flying’ and was put down just as fast.

I blinked at him, a smile forming on my face.

“Do you think you can lift me up again?” I asked him.

He frowned. “Yeah.”

I placed the computer onto the coffee table, then lifted my arms in the universal sign of ‘lift me up.’

He did, again not even straining, and hoisted me up in the air as if I weighed no more than a feather.

“Now what?” he asked curiously.

“Now spin me!” I snickered.

He rolled his eyes, but ultimately did what I wanted for a few seconds before placing me back down onto my feet.

I hit with a thud, laughing the whole way down.

“Thanks,” I said. “I haven’t been picked up like that since Daniella came along.”

“Daniella?” he asked.

I tilted my head. “My sister. You don’t know everything about me?”

He shrugged. “I had no reason to know everything about you. So I’m assuming she’s your younger sister.”

“You would assume correctly,” I confirmed. “There’s Bourne and Booth,” I took his hand in mine as we started walking. “They’re twins. Then there’s Priscilla. Garrett, Heath. Me. Then Daniella, the baby. There was another pregnancy between Priscilla and Heath, then me and Daniella, but my mom miscarried.”

“That sucks,” he grumbled, his hand squeezing mine lightly as he steered us toward the house he’d rented.

The place where it was located was downright cute. The neighborhood was nice, clean and tidy. The shops matched the cute houses.

And there was quite a bit of pedestrian life/foot traffic, making it a quaint little area of Reno.

I had a feeling that Bruno knew exactly what he was getting when he came here, too.

“It sucks,” I confirmed. “But it’s also life. When my mom delivered my little sister, there was a moment in time where they considered more kids. But then my mom got a uterine infection after the birth, and they suggested having a full hysterectomy.”

“That really fuckin’ sucks,” he said. “How many more would they have had had that not happened?” He paused. “You’re all Catholic? Don’t believe in birth control?”

He looked at me accusingly.

“We are. And, yes, I’m on birth control. I-I don’t know. I just… I don’t want kids before it’s time. I’ll welcome all that I can have once the time comes, but I want to make sure that it’s the right time. If that makes any sense whatsoever?” I blabbered.

His lips twitched. “When I was in prison, I shared a cell with a man that had seventeen kids, all with the same woman. They had each one naturally. All single births. In between kid fourteen and fifteen, he’d lost his job. Between sixteen and seventeen, his eldest tried to rob a liquor store because they couldn’t feed them all. Old man took the hit to save the kid from that life. They made it two and a half years without having any kids—the biggest gap between any kids. The moment that he was out, he got her pregnant with the eighteenth.”

“Wow,” I paused. “That’s a lot of kids.”