Carry You Home (Carry Your Heart #2) (10 page)

"Hey, Becs," I started warily. "Nice to see you too. Come on in. Make yourself at home."

But when Becca finally turned to face me, I didn't see the friend I'd known all my life. I didn't see the girl who'd always made sure I wasn't picked last for dodgeball at recess. I didn't see the girl who'd gotten in Melissa Sullivan's face when she made fun of my Hello Kitty T-shirt in seventh grade. I didn't see the girl who'd held my hand through every second of my mom's funeral.

I didn't recognize this girl staring back at me and that scared the hell out of me.

"How can you be joking around at a time like this?" Becca demanded, hitching a hand on her hip as she spoke. "Do you think he's—can you look, Belle? Can you look to see if he's still following me?"

I frowned back at her. While the dramatics weren't necessarily anything new for her, this downright, no-holds-barred panic definitely was.

"Who's following you?"

Becca just shook her head furiously, her eyes darting around the room.

Someone had written once—was it Shakespeare maybe?—that suspicion haunted the mind of the guilty. I had nothing to feel guilty about and I had nothing to hide. Becca, with her wild dark eyes and her trembling hands, looked like suspicion trailed after her like a demonic ghost.

Alarm bells were already going off in my head.

Still, I obliged her and glanced out the tiny window in my front door. There was another truck parked right behind where ZZ sat and I figured that could only be Becca's club escort/tail, whether she was aware of it or not. I didn't know why I felt the need to do it, maybe it was just the stress of the day or my own annoyance at being treated like a second-class citizen by the club, but I decided to just run with this and see where it went.

"No," I told her carefully. "I don't see anything."

Relief washed over her face and she took off through the living room to head right for the kitchen. She had the refrigerator open before I could even offer her something from it and she threw me a glance over her shoulder.

"Do you have anything harder than beer?" she asked.

I figured Caleb wouldn't necessarily be happy to share his beer with her, so I offered up the Jack he'd kept hidden away in our pantry for when he had 'shit days', as he'd so eloquently put it.

Becca didn't even hesitate. She just grabbed the glass from me and downed it. With her eyes squeezed shut to cut the after-effects of the alcohol, she held the glass out to me for a refill, which I reluctantly did. This wasn't normal for her. This wasn't normal for
anyone
. Not after the day we'd had and not for someone who had nothing to hide.

"Becca," I started slowly. "Are you alright?"

She wiped her mouth and set her glass down on the counter. "I think so. I'm just scared, Belle. Aren't you?"

"Well, yeah. Of course I am. The ATF aren't messing around and if they find something, Caleb could end up in prison. That's scary as shit to me, Becs."

Becca nodded like that wasn't really what she'd wanted to hear and then she was leaning in a little closer. "Aren't you scared of the club? Of what they could do?"

I frowned back at her. "What do you mean?"

"Don't you know?" her eyes blazed back at me and it was then, with her leaning in so close I could smell her breath, that I finally saw the dilated eyes, the manic, almost crazed glint staring back at me.

"What would they do?"

"They'd kill us, Belle. Maybe they wouldn't kill you right away because of, you know," she gestured to my stomach, "but they'd do it eventually. They wouldn't hesitate."

Caleb's words from earlier tonight swirled around me and a slow chill ran down my spine.

"No, they wouldn't do that," I told her, unable to hide the desperation in my voice.

Becca just huffed out a laugh and ran a shaking hand through her hair. "Bullshit they wouldn't. I don't believe that for a second. They'd put a bullet right between my eyes and they wouldn't think twice about it. Eli would probably do it himself if it came down to it."

Why was she so goddamn paranoid? Why had she even risked coming over here in the first place when she had to have known she was being followed by either the ATF or the club?

"The only reason anyone would even consider doing that is if one of us gave something up. We're never going to do that, so we don't have anything to worry about. Right?"

Suddenly, Becca's eyes darkened and she took an aggressive step forward. "If you had to choose, you'd choose your baby daddy over me, wouldn't you? You'd let them kill me, wouldn't you?"

I shook my head and just couldn't grasp what was happening here. At some point, this had devolved into a me-versus-them situation and Becca had suddenly shoved me right in the middle of some disaster I knew she wouldn't clue me in on anyway.

"What's going on, Becca?" I asked. "What happened today?"

Her eyes darted nervously from one end of the kitchen to the other, like she expected someone to walk in here at any second.

"Do you think they've been following you too?" she asked abruptly. "Have they been tailing you too?"

"I don't know," I shrugged. "Probably. I guess if they've been following you, they've been following me too."

She stared back at me like I'd just sprouted a second head. "How can you be so...cavalier about all this? Like it's no big deal? Like them showing up here today and asking all these scary questions is just nothing?"

"I never said that," I frowned again. "It's absolutely a big deal. I was mad as hell at Caleb for putting me in that position today, but there's nothing we can do about it now and there was nothing we could've done to stop it either. But I've got nothing to hide. I'm not scared of them. But you are..."

I trailed off and our eyes met from across the kitchen. She must've seen the awareness, the suspicion, and the disappointment in my expression because all the blood seemed to drain right out of her face. This was probably the moment I was always going to remember as the moment I lost my best friend—I just didn't know it yet.

"I have to..." she snapped her mouth shut and stared down at her feet.

"Have to what? What do you have to do?"

A sinking feeling, coupled by paralyzing dread, settled into my stomach and I swallowed hard when she just shook her head.

"I want to tell you, Belle. I really do. I wish I could tell you."

"Becca, I can't help you if you won't tell me what's going on."

"You can't help me," she whispered. "I wish you could, but you can't. I don't think you would even if you could."

After everything we'd been through, after all our history and all the years we'd spent together as best friends, it looked like it had all spiraled down to this. The father of my baby and my future husband over my oldest friend in the world.

"Are you asking me to choose, Becs?" I whispered. Tears stung my eyes because I knew where this was going. I knew how this was going to end. It was just a matter of time now.

"I shouldn't have to," she murmured back. "You're my best friend in the entire world. The only real friend I've ever had. I love you, Belle. You know that. But I guess if push comes to shove, I know where we stand now."

"Did you..." I didn't know if I could even bring myself to say the words out loud. "Did you tell them something today?"

Becca just stared back at me. Finally, she shook her head. Whether that meant she hadn't said anything or just wouldn't tell me, I had a feeling I might never get the chance to ask her.

With that, she slammed the glass on the counter, stalked out of the kitchen, and then slammed the front door behind her.

Nothing about this short argument, if that's what it really was, made sense to me.

Somewhere along the way, she'd changed and it hadn't been for the better. The hard-partying, the drinking, the way she'd gradually shown more skin every time I saw her, her involvement with the Horsemen and the clubhouse in the first place—I'd just chalked it up to her flirting with a little bit of recklessness.

Becca was a girl unhinged. Unstable. Someone I didn't recognize. Someone I didn't know.

She was also my oldest friend, someone who'd been there for me and been in my life since we were in kindergarten. If the club was Caleb's family, then Becca was my family too.

But at the end of the day, if Becca was going to do something reckless that could put my
new
family at risk, who would I choose?

I swept a tear from my eye and rubbed a hand over my face.

I knew what the right choice was. I just wished it didn't have to be so goddamned hard.

Caleb

"Here ya go," I handed Dom a cold beer as I dropped down on the bench and leaned my elbows all the way back on the picnic table, kicking my feet out in front of me. "Thought you could use this."

"Yeah," Dom huffed out a laugh and took a healthy pull from the bottle. "I'll probably need a few more of these before I feel normal again."

I shook my head and took another swig from my beer. "Amen to that."

"You know, I kept thinking to myself today,
there's no way this could possibly get any worse,
until it did. And it did again. And again. It was like one giant snowball of shit barreling down the highway, you know?"

"So now we just sit here and wait," I nodded ruefully. "This is gonna be a fun night, huh?"

Dom huffed out a laugh and that was probably the best either of us was going to be able to muster in this ridiculous scenario. I took a grateful gulp of my beer and thanked God I wasn't alone in my dorm to be tempted with that bottle of Jack.

It wasn't just the way the ATF had stirred the pot today. It was everything else too. Because for the first time in my entire life, I felt conflicted about my involvement with the club. For Isabelle, who was so good and honest and decent, to look at me with such horror, there was no stopping the knee-jerk guilt that shot up through my conscience. And for her to be almost understanding about this whole mess was almost just as bad, if not worse.

The fact that it was somehow worse for her to innately understand my commitment to the club in light of everything I'd told her made me want to tear my hair out. I'd never felt guilt like this over club business. Never questioned why we had to run guns in the first place. Never felt remorse over killing anyone for the sake of the club. I'd always just turned on auto-pilot and shut everything else off because I always knew that if I slowed down long enough to actually think about what I was doing, the guilt would eat me alive.

And now I was sitting here, wondering why I was even doing any of it in the first place. If it could land me in prison, if it could get me killed, if it could take me away from the things I wanted more than anything in my life, I just didn't know anymore.

That was it. I just didn't know.

Now, it was too quiet and my thoughts were too disturbing to sit with on my own.

"So, everything alright with Lex?" I asked Dom quietly.

Dom just shrugged. "She's not very happy. She had to drag our kid to the precinct where they pretty much told her she'd be living out of our car with Chloe if I get arrested, but I guess I can see where she's coming from with that one."

"Shit," I exhaled.

I hadn't even thought about how terrifying that must've been for Lex. I'd been so focused on taking care of my own old lady that I'd completely bypassed anything else that had happened today.

"Lex handled it okay though."

"They both did," Dom nodded to me quietly. "I think given the shit situation today, they both did pretty good, don't you think?"

I huffed out a laugh and shifted in my chair so I could dig my cigarettes out of my back pocket. Dom eyed the pack hungrily, and I put one in between my lips before holding out the pack to my drooling best friend.

"Now," I told him with a smirk. "I know I gotta quit, you know with the kid and all. Iz hasn't been on my ass about it yet, but—"

"She will be," Dom cut in warily. "Trust me, you got maybe a month. Tops. Then it's all over with."

"And until that day comes, I gotta enjoy every last one of these beautiful things while I still can. And since we've both had a shit day, probably the shittiest in a long-ass time, I think we should indulge while we still can."

Dom chewed on his bottom lip before begrudgingly sliding a cigarette out from my outstretched hand. With a knowing grin, I held out my lighter to Dom and then lit up my own. For a few moments, the difficulty of the day was almost completely behind us as Rage Against the Machine echoed from the speakers.

"Those assholes sure didn't hold anything back," I shook my head and took another long pull from my cigarette, letting the nicotine do its job. "I can only imagine the shit they're gonna try next when those agents bring them in again."

"When, not if?"

I just shook my head sadly. "You know that's exactly how it's gonna be. They're not gonna stop until they think they've found something," and then I let my thoughts get the better of me, "The worse part about all this shit is that they're kinda right, aren't they? I mean, if they ever got enough on us to put us away for awhile, everything they threatened Lex and Isabelle with isn't too far off from reality."