Carry You Home (Carry Your Heart #2) (59 page)

He sucked in a hard breath and I knew we were coming to the part of the story he'd have to power through to tell.

"One night, I had a few too many drinks, got into my car anyway, and T-boned another car with a family in it. The kids were okay, I broke my leg, the dad broke his collarbone and an arm, but the mom didn't make it. Killed on impact. That's what they said at the scene. So I went to prison. And every day since, not a day goes by that I don't think about that family, that I don't think about that husband who has to raise his kids and live his life without his wife, those kids who have to grow up without a mother—I stole that from them. Ten years is a drop in the hat compared to the deficit I caused in their lives. Nothing can ever get that back for them either...that's the thing about life, you know? Every beat is precious, but we don't see it that way until it's too late. We should hold on to every moment we get, but we piss it away drinking, complaining, working a job we hate, living a life we hate, and just being all around miserable because we're too scared to find another path..."

He trailed off like he was gathering his thoughts, trying to figure out the best way to articulate his message.

"Anyway, I spent the first eight years of my sentence trying to figure out the best way to die and when I wasn't doing that, I spent the rest of my time wishing I was already dead. I tried to start some fights, but all that did was send my ass to the infirmary and made me even more miserable. I tried to hang myself twice. The first time I couldn't go through with it and the second time, the piss-poor rope I bought off a guy a few cells down from me broke."

Those words hung in the air and tears stung my eyes as Saul shot me a crooked grin that didn't quite reach his dark eyes. He ran a hand over his hair, smoothing the short salt and pepper edges before glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.

"Caleb doesn't know about that last part," he confided quietly. "Don't tell him, okay?"

It was right on the tip of my tongue to ask him why in the world he was telling me all this, especially if Caleb didn't even know, and somewhere, deep down, I knew where this was all headed. So, I gave Saul what he needed and nodded.

"There's just no escaping it," he went on, his voice thick and gravelly. "It eats you alive. Follows you around. Stabs you in the back. I think it must be what drowning feels like—there's no life preserver and you're flailing, just swallowing seawater until you sink deeper and deeper, until everything goes black. Your lungs just keep filling up with water over and over again, sucking the life out of you, and all you can do is let your misery pull you under."

My eyes watered, tears threatening to slip down my cheeks, and I still couldn't move.

"When you take the life of another person, the guilt swallows you whole. You wish you could trade places with them, but that's too easy. Nothing is ever that easy. So you start to retrace your every move, your every step, your every decision, trying to pinpoint that one wrong turn that got you where you are, where you deserve to be, but there's no undo button for life. So when I first met Caleb, I guess you could say I wasn't in a good place. I had my job in the library and that was pretty much the only distraction I had."

He laughed suddenly, shocking me right out of the deep melancholy I'd sunk into.

"I still remember that day. He saunters in the library with all that swagger, all pissed off with that huge chip on his shoulder, leans up against the desk, and goes, 'Hey, uh, can I get some help here?'"

I laughed in spite of everything and shook my head. "Yeah, that sounds like something he'd say."

"He really was a punk, wasn't he? What the hell did you ever see in him back then? Never mind, don't answer that. Anyway, let's just say that if I hadn't been lookin' for something to do that day, I might've told him to stick it where the sun don't shine. But I was bored, so I grabbed a few books for him, thinking I'd probably never see them again, and a week later, he was back. And then he came back again. And again until we finally got to talking about what he was really doing in that library and why."

Saul paused, gauging my reaction and trying to see if I knew.

"I think he might've written to you about that," he went on with a small smile and a not-so-subtle nudge, "I guess his counselor told him he needed to find a way to use his time productively instead of getting into fights and getting his ass killed. He got into a pretty nasty one within the first couple of months he was there—pissed off the wrong Aryan brother was what I heard—but I guess that's one of the hazards of being in an MC and being in prison at the same time."

My breath hitched in my throat at the thought of Caleb getting into fights, of putting himself in danger like that without even caring about what might happen to him, and I closed my eyes to force myself to wipe those images from my mind.

"I used to think it was just because he was mad at the world," Saul added. "And then one day,
I
was the one having a shit day. It was just one of those days where it was all I could to just get out of bed. I needed some absolution and a priest and I guess I got Caleb instead. And when he came in that day looking for another Stephen King book, asked me what was up my ass, it all came pouring out. Jesus, we must've talked for hours that day. I told him things I'd never told anyone before—all those deep, dark feelings of hate and self-loathing just fell out and then it was like the dam broke. We traded stories and I got it then. I got why I always managed to set aside his shit attitude and why he kept coming back: we saw something in each other we recognized. We just didn't know what it was until that day."

I sighed heavily and stared down at my toes. When he first started talking, I'd known this wasn't going to be easy to hear, but now that we'd come to this part of the story, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to handle hearing it.

"I've never seen anyone carry that kind of guilt, that kind of self-loathing—he completely owned everything too, all the missteps, all the piss-poor decisions, he knew none of that fell on anyone's shoulders but his. He just looked like every word, every move took something out of him and I felt like I was looking in a mirror. After that, things started to get a little better for both of us, I think. When he started workin' on that degree, it gave both of us a purpose, something to hope for, something to live for even if I was just sort of living vicariously through him with it. And when he came to see me a month after he got out and told me his plan to leave the club and that I'd have a job as soon as I got out, I believed him. He came to see me every week until he picked me up the day I got out and I've never looked back."

By this point, we were already sitting in the pharmacy's parking lot, but I couldn't move if I tried.

"The only time I ever saw any light in him, I mean
real
light," Saul glanced at me with a wistful smile, "was when he talked about you. I've never seen anyone so devoted to a woman...definitely never felt anything close to that for either of my wives, that's for sure. If he wasn't in the library reading or studying with me, he was telling me stories about you or he was writing to you. That's pretty much how he spent his time in prison."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "I appreciate you telling me all this, but how he spent his time in prison doesn't change our history."

Saul sighed and nodded sadly. "He'll probably try to murder me in my sleep for telling you this, but I'm gonna do it anyway. The last night he spent in that house he bought for you, he spent it in that third bedroom, the one that was supposed to be your nursery. I only know that 'cuz I saw the half-finished mural you painted in there and because the stupid son of a bitch left his pillow and blanket on the floor when I came to help him move. I'm not just telling you all this because I love that kid like he's my own son, Isabelle, I'm telling you all this because I figured you should know."

My chest heaved in and out, but I still couldn't find any words.

Saul cocked an eyebrow at me. "You wanna know what I think?"

I meant to shake my head, but found myself nodding numbly instead.

"I think life has a way of working itself out. Now, maybe you don't get there the way you thought you would and maybe you don't even end up where you expected, but you always get there at the right place and the right time because that's exactly where you're supposed to be."

The words hung in the air, heavy and almost suffocating. I couldn't breathe and the truck just seemed to grow smaller and smaller the longer I sat in here.

"I, um," I rubbed my hands on my jeans anxiously and sucked in a deep breath. "I should go inside."

Saul probably nodded, but I didn't stick around long enough to see. I got out of that truck as fast as my feet could carry me.

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The next morning, I just couldn't pull myself out of bed. I normally set an alarm for seven at the earliest just so I had plenty of time to check my emails, get some coffee going, and shower before my dad needed his meds and his breakfast. For reasons I wasn't ready to acknowledge, my body just wouldn't cooperate today.

Maybe part of it was because I knew Saul was still here, crashing on the couch, and that I had a little backup in case something happened. Maybe part of it, too, was because my body had finally succumbed to the stress, the pain, and the heartache. Maybe I just didn't want to face whatever waited for me today. Whatever it was, I probably wasn't going to like it.

And then I heard it.

That unmistakable roar of a lawn mower screamed through my window and I shot up in bed. It wasn't the roar I'd been expecting—from the sounds of it, there were no motorcycles around—but that wasn't my dad out there in the yard.

All my sleepiness shook out at that stupid sound and I leapt out of bed to skid down the stairs to the window right next to the front door. My eyes tore around the yard to take inventory of anything out of the ordinary. Saul's truck was long gone and my dad's BMW sat in its place. This wasn't a good sign. Finally, my gaze found what I'd been looking for and dreading at the same time. There, driving around the riding lawn mower like he owned the place, was the bane of my existence.

Some rustling to my left had me jumping practically two feet in the air.

"I guess he decided to get an early start, huh?"

My head snapped to my dad, who peered out of the window next to me.

"What?"

He just lifted a shoulder. "He called me this morning to see what needed to be done around the house. I gave him a whole list of things I've been meaning to get done for a long time, but for some reason, I just haven't gotten around to it, you know?"

There was a slight mischievous twinkle in his eye I hadn't seen in a long time and I might've cried, or at the very least, thrown my arms around him, if he wasn't such a backstabber.

But because my mind was still playing catch-up, I played along.

"Like what?"

"Oh, you know," he told me a little too easily. "Pretty much all the yard work, there's that old ATV in the shed. You remember that thing? He's gonna fix it up so you can get some money for it. The faucet in the upstairs bathroom is still leaky, all those boxes in my office need to go somewhere, the basement needs to be cleared out...there're a ton of things that need to be done before you can sell this place."

"Dad, we can
pay
someone to do all those things for us."

"Sure," he shrugged and gestured to the window. "But why spend your money when he's just going to do it for free? Besides, I don't see you doing any of it."

I narrowed my eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He was on pretty shaky ground with me right now and when he held his hands up in defense, he seemed to know it, too.

"Hey,
someone
has to do it. And you shouldn't have to, not with everything else you have on your plate right now. You're spending all your time and energy taking care of me, but who's taking care of you?"

And there it was.

"Dad," I huffed exasperatedly. "I love you, but I really don't like you right now."

He just lifted a shoulder, like all of this really wasn't a big deal, like Caleb being here was just a foregone conclusion. "Oh well. Hey, you want any coffee?"

I gaped at him. Then he just turned on his heel and headed back into the kitchen. No big deal. Nothing out of the ordinary happening here.

My eyes snapped back to the window to find Caleb spinning the lawn mower around some landscaping in the middle of the yard. He looked into the window at the exact right moment, or maybe the exact
wrong
moment, and shot me a cocky, shit-eating grin as he waved at me. Finally, something just snapped.

"Oh, hell no," I muttered to myself as I threw open the door and stalked across the yard to stand my ground right in the lawn mower's path.

Caleb shut off the mower just as quickly and leaned forward on the steering wheel, amusement quirking his lips. "Morning, Iz. I like the PJs."

My eyes shot down to my attire: a tiny pair of sleep shorts and a barely-there tank top. Right about now, I was really glad I'd thrown on a yoga bra last night. He didn't move from his perch on the lawn mower, his eyes trailing up and down my body, taking in every inch of bare skin I'd unwittingly put on display.

Who the hell did he think he was just barging into my life like this? Did he really think he could just show up uninvited, do some chores around the house and then,
poof,
I'd just forget everything?