Carry You Home (Carry Your Heart #2) (34 page)

"I love you too," I whispered in between kisses, just letting him hold me tighter as my tears mingled with his.

He never asked.

And it was for the best. Love was never our problem and now, in spite of my moment of weakness, love just wasn't enough anymore.

So I let myself revel in his touch and his kiss one last time because now, this was goodbye.

.
     
.
     
.

Caleb

I turned my face into her hair and breathed in deeply, taking in everything about her while I still had the chance and burned this moment in my memory. Every soft rise and fall of her chest. How soft her skin was. Her warmth. Her beauty. Her everything.
 

I hadn't earned the right to keep her. I had to let her go instead.

Asking her to stay would be just like slapping shackles around her ankles.

But when she stepped into the hallway, panic leapt up into my throat.

"Iz! Wait!" I called out and desperately reached for her before she could make it to the door.

My hand closed around her elbow and gently turned her around, only to find her cheeks stained with freshly-shed tears and her shoulders trembling. Her head was buried in my shoulder before I had a chance to say anything else and I wrapped my arms around her, drawing her in closer, deeper while I still had the chance.

I took her face in my hands, brushing away her tears with my thumbs and gently pulled her chin up to look at me.

"I'll never love anyone else," I told her through my tears. "It'll
always
be you."

Her beautiful face crumbled as a new wave of tears tumbled down her cheeks and she covered her face with her hands. After I gently pried her fingers away from her face, I brushed these new tears away too.

"Please don't cry, Iz," I tried to smile through the wetness on my own cheeks but couldn't muster the strength. "You're gonna go to New York and you're gonna be famous. People are gonna be lining up just to get a glimpse of your work. I know it. They'll probably pay millions of dollars, too, just to be able to have a piece of it."

She laughed in spite of her tears and I swept my thumb across her cheek just so I could keep touching her for a little bit longer. She swallowed hard and with a tight nod, gingerly stepped backward, out of my grasp, and toward the door.

"I need to leave, Caleb."

"I know."

She backpedalled until our hands slipped away from each other and she was right at the front door. This was it and my heart thudded desperately in my chest just to prove it. She was really leaving now. And I had no one to blame for this but myself.

By the time the door opened, she turned back one last time with a devastated smile just barely touching her lips.

And as she sent me one last, soft smile, she stepped through the doorway and then she was gone.

I shuffled to the kitchen window to watch her rush to her car and tear out of the driveway. The blinds in the window slapped back down in place and I stumbled backward. My heart stuttered and then plummeted right into my stomach.

She was really gone. Just like that. Something that was never meant to last, but had irrevocably left its mark on me. I was forever altered. Forever scarred.

Things might've been different for us if I hadn't failed her so miserably. Because of my actions and my stupidity, the only woman I'd ever truly loved and would ever love, had just pulled out of my driveway for good.

I earned that.

It was that last dark thought that sent me digging in the pantry for the bottle of Jack I'd bought on impulse just a day before. I may have learned the hard way that booze and women didn't solve shit and didn't make that shit go away any faster, but because the blame rested solely on my shoulders here, I figured there was nothing wrong with torturing myself just a little more.

Before I could stop myself, my feet carried me back to the nursery and as I pushed open the door, I took another swig from the bottle for added liquid courage. I sunk down right across from the mural, half-finished and abandoned just like all my hopes and dreams. I shook my head at the irony and leaned my head back against the wall. This room was once filled with so much hope for our future, for our family...both of which, now, would never be.

She would've been such a good mom.
She was still going to be a good mom
, I thought bitterly. I'd just never get to see it. I'd never get to see any of it. Instead, I'd sentenced myself to a lifetime of unhappiness and emptiness.

My phone buzzed in my pocket and I scrambled to flip it open, irrational hope flooding me that maybe it was...nope. Just the club.

Church in 10.

I snapped my phone shut and slammed it down into the carpet. The clubhouse was the last place I wanted to be right now.

Church would go down just like every other time and the end result would always be the same. My life, my safety, and my freedom all at risk once again. Everything I'd ever done for the sake of the club ran through my mind—every bullet, every run, every crime, every day in prison. Always taking. Always wanting me to give more.

At this point, I didn't know what else there was to take.

Except the rest of my miserable life.

Hadn't I already given them enough? Every time they called, I was there. Anything they needed, I did it. And for what? So I could sit my sorry ass in prison for two years, so I could put my life on the line every single day, so I could lose the only real family I'd ever had all in the name of brotherhood.

Sure, they'd all paid their condolences when we lost the baby and promised to help us anyway they could, but the only time Marcus, Tiny, Casey, or anyone else had ever paid me a visit when I was inside was when they needed something. Whether it was inside information about a fellow inmate or to consult about new club business, they never showed up for visitation hours unless I could be of use somehow.

That's all I was. An instrument for their purposes and their plans. I had no real identity outside of the club. No other way to make money to support myself and my would-be family. And that was exactly the way they liked it. They needed me to be dependent on the club and all the while, they just poisoned my life with false promises of wealth, partying, and freedom.

I didn't care about any of that anymore. At the end of the day, the common denominator in all my problems was still me, but I'd shoved aside the other factor in the equation—the club. If the club had had their way, I'd still be in prison, but not just for something small-time like running guns. Nope. I would've wasted away sitting in a cell for murdering Becca and they all would've been completely fine with that if it meant their asses were safe.

I'd followed the club's orders blindly all my life up until that moment and in
this
moment, the fracture splintered deeper.

Somewhere along with the way, my priorities had shifted. Isabelle had always been an asset, but the club had become my weakness.

They didn't
really
care that I'd lost not just two years of my life, but the love of my life too. In fact, if circumstances had been different and Isabelle had made a deal with the ATF, they would've been chomping at the bit to get rid of her, just like Becca. And they would've expected me to pull the trigger, just like Eli, as part of my duty to protecting the club. They would've happily handed me the gun and helped me bury the body, too, if it meant they all stayed out of prison a little longer.

At the rate I was going, I'd be lucky if I made it to 30 before I ended up with a bullet in the head or another prison sentence.

Things would never change. I'd always be expected to stay on my leash, even if I ever did get that president patch. I didn't have it in me to want that anymore. The things I did want now? Those things were long gone and they were gone because of me and my involvement with the club. I'd lost myself in the club long ago and I didn't recognize this empty, broken person I'd become.

Then I heard Isabelle's voice:

"You're smart. You're resourceful. You could figure it out and I'd support you every step of the way."

I didn't know what other options I had two years ago because then, I was just another convicted criminal with a prison sentence hanging over my head. I was still just another ex-con trying to piece his life back together, but I had options now.

I might not have Isabelle or the family I thought we'd have together, but I didn't
have
to end up in prison again either. I didn't have to feed that endless cycle and fill my role as just another cog in the wheel. I didn't have to blindly follow orders. I didn't have to constantly put myself at risk, not if I'd get nothing but loss in return.

There had to be another currency besides bullets, guns, and violence.

My phone continued buzzing on the carpet next to me, but I ignored it.

And as my eyes memorized that half-finished mural, some hope finally began to take root. All my life I'd thought I was living on my own terms, but that couldn't have been further from the truth. Maybe there was still time to turn things around, maybe I could somehow earn back all the pieces of myself I'd lost, and maybe someday, Isabelle would come home to see it.

Part Two

Six Years Later

"Where thou art—that—is Home."

—Emily Dickinson

Isabelle

"Oh, come on," I muttered and rubbed my temples as I flipped through the next page.

Seriously.

How was someone this smart
this
freaking unorganized? My dad had years, and I mean
years,
worth of documents, all of it really important right about now, just crammed in file folders. Some of the folders were labeled, some just randomly shoved in equally random folders in no particular order. He couldn't have at least put them in chronological order? Even a little bit?

I needed a bottle of Tylenol to go along with this monstrosity.

Cooper lifted his giant head off my foot and glanced at me side-eyed, as if to remind me I only had about another hour or so to chip away at the mess in my dad's office until he woke up.
 

"I know, Coop," I sighed and reached down to scratch between his ears. "Just bear with me, alright?"

The only real man in my life, aside from my dad, swept his tongue over my open palm and resumed his quasi-protective position at my feet.

With another sigh, I glanced at the clock and squeezed my eyes shut. We'd fallen into this daily routine too quickly: meds, nap, some TV, maybe a walk if he was up to it, more meds, another nap, some more TV, a little bit of eating here and there, and finally, lights out for the night. And in between the many naps he took throughout the day, I sat here in his office, mostly to get all our ducks in a row before the inevitable, but also just to keep myself busy.

I couldn't exactly let him watch me prepare for his death when he was awake, so I opted to get my work done while he was sleeping.

After a long road of rehabs and relapses, my dad's body finally gave out on him. While he'd fought it with everything he had left, the damage was already done. When you have stage four liver cancer with an undetermined expiration date, you're not exactly an ideal candidate for a transplant. And now, as his illness advanced every day, his doctor was just trying to keep him comfortable via a hospice nurse who visited us once a day.

In a way, waiting for this parent to succumb to illness was a little bit easier than the first. With my mom, I'd always held onto the hope that something would sweep in and save the day, like some experimental, miracle treatment that would kick the cancer right in the ass. Even at the end, I'd had to believe there was a chance, especially when my mom outlived her initial expiration date.

My dad was a different story. There was no hope now. There would be no miracle treatment or eleventh-hour liver transplant. It was almost easier to accept that it was going to happen no matter what.

Maybe, when I was younger, optimism wasn't just wishful thinking. When I was 20, when my mom first got sick, I hadn't yet suffered any major tragedies in my life. The idea that anything bad or even potentially fatal could happen to one of my parents, or to me for that matter, was completely out of the realm of possibility. Tragedies only happened to other people in my 20-year-old mind. Not to my family. Not to me.

Now my 30-year-old self knew better.

So, after getting the phone call that his illness had moved to the end stages, I dropped everything and practically sprinted from my brownstone in Chelsea to the airport. My dad, of course, fought me every step of the way, insisting I stay in New York where my work and my life was. Since he had no interest in even meeting with any doctors in New York and because he wanted to, and I quote, "die in my own home", my hands were tied. There was no way I wasn't coming back to North Carolina.

Then there was just that little issue of the ghosts, one in particular, still lingering here in town. And now that I actually was here in Claremont, there were only so many places I could hide in a town this small. Eventually, we would cross paths. All I could really do was avoid it for as long as humanly possible and hope that ghost just kept his distance.