Carry You Home (Carry Your Heart #2) (35 page)

I'd spent the last six years trying to convince myself that the life I'd had here was nothing but a distant memory. Now the memories, the pain, and the bitterness I'd fought so persistently to erase nagged at me like a scab that just wouldn't heal. Of course, it didn't exactly help matters that the one day a year I dreaded more than anything was just two weeks away.

So when the doorbell rang, I jumped in my seat. Cooper leapt up at the same moment, but wisely obeyed my loud
shush.
My heart was racing at the possibility that my thoughts had somehow made the inevitable materialize at my dad's doorstep. No, he wouldn't be that stupid. I'd already been in town for a week and there'd been nothing but silence between us, just like the entire six years before. Why would he bother now?

Despite my better judgment, I trudged over to the front door and opened it only to find Skyler Sawyer on the stoop with a covered casserole dish in her hands.

Even though I hadn't really seen the woman the entire time I'd lived in New York, she still looked like she hadn't aged a day. Whatever her secret to eternal youth was—a cream, a serum, a certain kind of lease on life—it just didn't make sense given the environment she surrounded herself in. How could all the worry, the stress, and the danger
not
age you?

Now, Skyler stood in my dad's doorway with those same black-lined eyes I'd used to know so well fixed on me. Her dark eyes softened the moment I opened the door and...I didn't know what I'd been expecting. Just a little hint of bitterness maybe? Some standoffishness? False concern? After all, I never called. I never saw her on the rare occasions I actually visited Claremont. She had every right to feel slighted, but if she did, she didn't show it.

"Hey honey," she called out to me softly with a sad smile on her face. "It's good to see you."

"Hi," I murmured, suddenly overcome with the reality that I hadn't really seen this woman in six years.

Skyler's eyes fell to my black lab, who sat at my feet. Cooper stared right back at her, watching her every move, but perceptive enough to know she wasn't anything he needed to be worried about. As far as I was concerned, she wasn't wearing enough leather to be considered a potential threat.

"That's some guard dog you got there," Skyler laughed uneasily. "Wow. He's huge."

I swallowed back the lump in my throat, gestured for Cooper to go upstairs, and nodded to the dish in her hand.

She just shrugged. "I wanted to come over sooner, but I didn't want to impose. I figured you'd need some time to settle in and didn't need me rushing over here like a bat outta hell."

Since my voice still wasn't working properly, I just nodded and made way for her in the doorway, gesturing for her to come inside.

"Well," Skyler soldiered on as we walked through the hallway and headed for the kitchen. "I'd ask how you're doing, but I think I already know the answer to that question."

I wished that wasn't so true and I still couldn't, for the life of me, figure out the right thing to say to her after all this time.

"I was hoping you'd call," Skyler sent me a kind smile as she set the casserole dish on the counter. "But I get why you didn't. Lexie's hoping to hear from you, too."

Just hearing her name had me wincing from the impact. Lexie's friendship was just another casualty of my past and just another thing I hadn't been able to hang on to in all my vain efforts to really move on with my life. I'd needed to cut myself loose completely when I left for New York and that, as much as it stung, also meant breaking ties with the people I'd really come to love like family.

Finally, I found my voice. "I figured that and I'm sorry I didn't. I guess I've just had a lot going on since I've been back, you know?"

Skyler nodded sadly and turned just for a second to put the dish in the refrigerator for me. When she turned to face me again, that somber, regretful expression still hadn't dimmed on her face. I guess I hadn't realized just how much I'd missed her until she was finally standing right in front of me again.

"How's he doing?"

I just shrugged. "He's dying, so there's that. But for the most part, he's still pretty alert. Everything just moves a little slower now."

Skyler blew out a deep breath and pressed another pained smile on her face. "I'm so sorry, Isabelle. I know you're probably sick of hearing that, but I really do mean it. If there's anything you need, anything I can do or the club can do, you know you can ask, right? That's all you have to do and we'll be there for you."

I bristled at the mention of the club and she picked up on that immediately, her eyes clouding ever so slightly as a frown creased her forehead. The club was the last thing I wanted to talk about. They weren't my family and they weren't my friends. Other than Skyler, Lexie, and Dom, they never really had been in the first place. And judging by the sad awareness in Skyler's dark eyes, she knew it too.

"I know it's not my place to ask," she paused for a moment and I didn't know why she even bothered because I knew what question was coming next. "Have you seen him since you've been back?"

It wasn't lost on me that even just the mere mention of him, let alone the fact she couldn't even bring herself to say his
name
, shifted a wave of darkness and tension in the air. From the little I'd let my dad tell me, Skyler, understandably and predictably, hadn't handled her son's decision with any decorum or grace. Instead, she'd chosen to fight him tooth and nail until it was really final, until it was actually done, and I guess the final blowout hadn't been pretty. All the rest of the club had seemed to handle it with various stages of disgust, disappointment, and acceptance. Skyler, on the other hand, raged a war and then wrote off her only living family member for what, in her mind, was the ultimate betrayal.

On some level, and given everything I knew about the woman, I couldn't really blame her for feeling that way.

Finally, I managed to shake my head. I couldn't say his name either.

"No," I told her quietly. "I haven't."

"It's probably for the best you two just keep your distance," she nodded tightly. "Trust me, it's easier that way."

I inhaled sharply and started chewing on my bottom lip because I just didn't know what else to do.

Skyler blew out another deep sigh and leaned back against the counter. "Sorry. I shouldn't even be...it just never really gets any easier. No matter how hard I try to really wrap my head around his reasons, I just can't. I mean, if he'd followed you to New York to try to work things out, I might've been able to understand. But he didn't. I just can't understand why he didn't."

There was a part of me, a deep, ugly, and bitter part, that thought the exact same thing more times than I was willing to admit. But I wasn't going to go there now, especially not in front of Skyler.

"Sorry," she told me again and winced, like just the
thought
of him hurt. I knew the feeling. "I'll stop talking about him. It's stupid. Once I start, I can't stop, you know?"

I didn't know because I never talked about him, but I gave Skyler what she wanted and nodded.

She shot me a kind, reassuring smile and then squeezed my shoulder. "You know, honey, I know you and I both wish the circumstances were different, but I'm glad you're finally home."

I flinched at that particular word. Home wasn't something I had associated with Claremont in a long time. My studio at the gallery was home. My brownstone in New York was home. My dad was home. Cooper was home. I'd be hard-pressed to find much in town here that I could truly affiliate with that particular noun.

"Well," Skyler clapped her hands together as she pushed off the counter. "I should get going. I didn't come over here to commiserate or make all this harder on you. I just wanted to—"

"I know, Sky," I reassured her and surprised us both by stepping closer until my arms closed around her shoulders just long enough to appease her. "Thank you for stopping by. I really appreciate it."

I let myself have this one moment as the woman I'd once loved like a mother held me tight. The feel of her arms, comforting me, embracing me, loving me, it all felt so familiar, but the problem was that it took me back to a place I couldn't go and even if I could, I didn't want to. It wasn't Skyler's fault, at least not directly, but letting her back in my life would be letting myself fall back into old habits.

It was just as well that she left quietly and with only a promise to bring back more casseroles if I wanted them. We didn't need to pretend we were something to each other that we just weren't anymore.

After checking on my dad and leaving Cooper to dutifully keep watch over him, I padded back down to the office with an odd sense of foreboding snaking down my spine. My body was on high alert, fully aware that while I'd been able to run, I still had never really been able to hide.

So, when I started flipping through yet another unlabeled folder only to come across a piece of paper that made my blood run cold, I probably should've seen it coming.

"You've got to be freaking kidding me," I muttered through gritted teeth.

At first, it took me a moment to realize just what this paper really meant. But after the fog lifted, there was little I could do to convince myself otherwise. The evidence was right here in my hand.

The contract was simple, straight-forward, and easy to follow. Just an average payment schedule with standard dates and figures laid out on the chart. And right at the bottom were two signatures: Samuel Martin and Caleb Sawyer.

From the looks of it, Caleb had been helping my dad make payments on the house for nearly two years.

Right after I'd learned his diagnosis, I'd asked him point-blank about the house—specifically, what he wanted to do with it. He'd told me to sell the house and keep the money. Not one word about money problems. Nothing about having trouble making mortgage payments. And certainly not a single thing about having any kind of contact with the one person he knew I never wanted to see again.

Just when I thought I had everything worked out, just when I thought my dad and I had really set our past behind us, this bullshit happens. Did he not trust me enough? Or did he just think I couldn't handle his illness and the house all at once? And then another terrifying thought gripped me. It was very possible my dad had known about his illness much longer than he was letting on and it was even more likely Caleb had known about it while I sat obliviously in the dark.

I just...I just so
pissed
. I couldn't even see straight. My hands were shaking as everything went a little hazy around me. Alarm bells sounded off in my head, but I went on auto-pilot, taking off down the hallway and skidding to the garage with my dad's keys in hand before I could really take a moment to catch my breath.

This might be one of the worst ideas I'd had in a long time, but I was on the warpath now. God help the man who got in my way.

.
     
.
     
.

The parking lot of Sawyer Custom Builds, lined with rows of motorcycles, trucks, and pristine, fresh pavement, wasn't even half-full yet.

This wasn't the plan.

This was the exact
opposite
of the plan.

And something about this felt awfully familiar.

In another life, I'd sat in a parking lot not so different from this one clenching my hands around the steering wheel until they turned white just like I was doing right now. Even then, I'd known I was on the precipice of something. I couldn't have known what would follow the moment I stepped foot on that parking lot all those years ago, but I knew better now.

Being older should've made me wiser. If anything, I'd just become more reckless because I had no business being here right now.

I'd told myself that I would never, under any circumstances, find my way to this parking lot during the entire time I was in Claremont, however long that was. I'd only held out for a week. No good could possibly come of this and yet here I was, the careless moth floating helplessly towards its irresistible, seductive flame.

At least I had the foresight to pull down the visor to look in the mirror before I started my inevitable descent into self-destruction. Since I took off from my dad's like a bat out of hell, I hadn't really stopped to consider the fact that I was showing up here after six years in an old pair of yoga leggings, an oversized tank top, and a rat's nest head of hair without a stitch of makeup on. Why it mattered that I slightly resembled a walker from
The Walking Dead...
I shook my head at myself in the mirror.

Nope. Not going there. And I definitely wasn't going to ruminate on how I knew
exactly
where the shop was without needing to cue up maps on my phone, not to mention just how many times I'd pored over the website or the fact that I'd chosen to drop everything and drive over here first instead of waiting to talk to my dad like a rational person. Instead, I raked my hands through my short, messy hair and called it good. This was about getting answers, finding a quick and painless solution to the problem, and nothing more.

With a deep breath, I pushed all the warning bells going off in my head aside and stepped out of my dad's aging BMW. My eyes drank in the building's clean, red brick lines, the bright blue curls around the 'S' on the sign directly above the shop, and as I got closer, dared to let my eyes wander deeper inside the open garage, where business certainly looked to be booming.