Carry You Home (Carry Your Heart #2) (67 page)

My parents and Ava were waiting, but I wasn't ready yet.

God, Caleb. This was going to destroy him...

And then the pressure around my throat disappeared.

Air filled my lungs and I gasped, sputtering and heaving. My hands flew to my throat as I rolled onto my side, coughing and disoriented, and my eyes watered with tears. Caleb was here. He had to be. But when the haziness lifted, it wasn't Caleb I saw.

It was Theo Wallace.

Staggering backward with his chest heaving, his eyes flying alternately between his hands and my stomach as he mumbled something I couldn't hear. Horror filled his pale face and he shook his head at me, as if he couldn't believe he was standing here in this kitchen, scattered with blood and bodies at his feet.

He stumbled over Saul, finally seeming to grasp his surroundings and his current predicament, and he fumbled for his gun, still just out of Saul's reach, and tucked it behind his back. Then, he shot me one last look with torture in his dark eyes, murmuring, "I'm sorry."

A moment later, he disappeared through the back door of the kitchen and was gone.

Even though the cloudiness still hovered around me, I was still able to grasp the finality here: he may have won the physical battle, but I won the mental war.

Somehow, I managed to pull myself to my feet, sputtering through the pain in my throat and my head, and shuffled over to where Saul laid on the floor with wobbly legs to grab my phone.

Caleb

When the house finally came into view, my adrenaline spiked, raging furiously and coiling as my fears took on a more tangible shape. Dread and lethal fury raged through me for control, but neither one was an option for me right now. I had no idea what I was going to find in the house, but it didn't matter. If Isabelle was in there, I was going in there too.

I leapt out of my truck, sprinting up the walkway as I untucked my Glock from behind my jeans, and gently nudged the door open. If Wallace was still in there with them, startling him would only make things worse. I'd purposely taken my truck so he wouldn't hear me as easily when I pulled in the driveway, so bursting in here now would destroy any leverage I'd just gained.

Tilting my head to get a better angle, I peered down the hallway and found nothing. It was just too damn quiet. Cold panic spiked in my chest, tightening and choking me, but I had to push through it.

And then I heard it.

It was faint and barely above a whisper, but I still heard it: "It's okay, Saul. They're on their way. Just hang on, okay? I know it hurts."

My steps quickened into a frantic stumble toward the kitchen and I skidded into the tile at the sight of Isabelle hovering over Saul as she pressed two bloodied towels into both of his thighs. I almost couldn't believe what I was seeing. That dark, terrified part of me had fully expected to find two dead bodies and blood covering the kitchen. The fact that my worst fear
hadn't
come true, that she was living and breathing and still in one fucking piece...my knees buckled and I fell to the floor next to Isabelle, exhausted with relief.

Her face was streaked with tears, but she was still here. Thank God she was still here. I jerked her into my arms, clinging to her out of sheer desperation. And here I'd thought all my feelings of powerlessness and helplessness were behind me. All I'd been able to do was listen and scream into the phone, knowing full well I might not get there in time. Now the best I could do was hold her with everything I had.

"Iz," I murmured in her hair. "Just tell me you're okay."

"I'm okay," she nodded into my chest with a cracked voice and gripped the front of my shirt to pull me in even closer. "He left, Caleb. He just walked away."

I didn't understand what that meant and right now, I just didn't care. We could sort through the details later. My fingers found her chin and I brushed away her tears with my thumb. I needed to really
see
her, so I could really see for myself that everything was still intact and that my mistakes hadn't once again risen from the ashes to torment us.

And then I got a good look at the purple splotches smattered across her throat. My blood ran cold and for the life of me, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the bruising I found there. The pieces of what happened here began to click together and I clenched my hands around her face, willing myself to stay in control.

All I could see was red. Violent, murderous red. My lips curled into a snarl and my nostrils flared with rage. That motherfucker put his hands on her—almost fucking
killed
her. I couldn't even see straight. Slashes of black and red dotted my vision and I had to squeeze my eyes shut just to find a little bit of control. My right hand squeezed the gun in my palm, itching to pull the trigger, itching to chase after that sorry bastard, but then Isabelle's hands pressed against my chest to get my attention.

"Caleb," she whispered with wide eyes darting to me and the gun. "I called 911. You can't have that. If they find you with a gun, they can arrest you, can't they?"

Of course. A bitter laugh shook from my throat and I shook my head. Ex-cons weren't supposed to have firearms, regardless of how long they'd been out and what they'd been in for. And of course, Isabelle was thinking of me without giving any thought to herself and her own well-being. From what I could tell, she needed that ambulance almost as much as Saul did.

Oh shit, Saul.

My gaze jerked down to find him already watching me. Underneath the absolute agony was clear understanding as if he could read every single one of my thoughts. He nodded from the floor and waved to me with a bloody hand.

"Hey," he grunted. "What took you so long?"

I huffed out a laugh and reached down to grip his shoulder. "You okay? You look like you just got shot."

Saul jerked his middle finger up at me, wincing a little from the effort, and I just squeezed his shoulder.

"Thank you," my eyes drifted down to the two soiled towels covering his wounds and I swallowed tightly. "Whatever you did tonight, thank you."

"I didn't do shit," he hissed through clenched teeth, jerking his head toward Isabelle. "Your wife handled it."

My eyes flew to Isabelle, but she just shook her head and shocked the hell out of me when she gestured for the gun in my hand.

"You can't have that," she whispered again. "They'll be here any minute. Please, Caleb. Just give it to me."

I stared back at her for a moment before snapping out of it and flipped the safety on so I could hand it over. She slipped it from my hand and stood up on shaky legs, stumbling a little when she finally got her bearings.

"Take it easy, Iz," I told her, leaping up to support some of her weight.

"Just stay with Saul. They said to keep pressure on his legs," she threw over her shoulder as she shuffled down the hallway.

I swallowed hard watching her disappear up the stairs. Now, more than ever, I just wanted to be close to her. I just needed to touch her to remind myself she'd really survived this. Somehow, some way, she'd managed to survive. It was nothing short of a goddamn miracle. Saul's labored breathing yanked me out of my thoughts and I finally turned my attention back to him, taking Isabelle's place and putting as much pressure on those towels as he could handle.

"What happened?"

Saul chuckled a little and then grimaced in pain. "She told Wallace she was pregnant."

My eyes just about fell out of my head. "What?"

"Yeah," he laughed again. "You shoulda seen the look on his face. Looked a little like yours right now, too."

Now my head was swimming as I tried to pin down one coherent, logical explanation for everything that happened tonight. I knew she'd lied, but that still didn't explain the bruising on her throat.

"But what about—"

"He walked away, didn't he?" Saul shook his head. "That's all that matters. There aren't many men out there who'll knowingly kill a pregnant woman and I guess Wallace isn't one of them. He must've realized what he was doing before it was too late."

My hands clenched around the towels. That didn't mean shit. That didn't mean I wouldn't find him and make him bleed, make him feel every second of the pain and fear he'd caused her. Theo Wallace needed to die for what he'd done to her.

"Don't do anything stupid, you hear me?" Saul's quiet, pained voice called out to me even as the ambulance sirens roared from outside. "You keep your head and you take care of your wife."

I didn't have time to respond because Isabelle was already letting in the paramedics and gesturing toward the kitchen. How she was even able to move around, let alone talk, was beyond me.

The EMTs moved me aside and it was just as well because two squad cars had already parked out in the lawn. I pulled Isabelle to me and wrapped my arms around her, breathing her in and squeezing my eyes shut for just a moment as the battle raged inside me. I needed to hold her, but I needed to hunt Wallace down and beat him to bloody pulp just as much. I needed to stay calm and level-headed, but every time I looked at her, every time I saw those purple, finger-shaped bruises on her throat, the more what little control I had slipped away and fell into oblivion.

"I put it in my dad's room," she told me. "If anyone finds it, we can just say we didn't know it was there."

I nodded tightly, my eyes darting to the front door to make sure the cops approaching us were still out of earshot. "Tell the cops you didn't see him. Tell them he was wearing a mask or something, but you never saw his face."

Her lips parted in surprise, but that quickly gave way to the reaction I was expecting: disbelief and fear. She saw it in an instant—all the ways I wanted to mutilate Wallace's body, all the blood I wanted to drain from him, all the violence I always knew I was capable of. I could feel it bubbling up and rising to the surface, just begging to be untethered. All I needed was this lie.

"What are you going to do?" she whispered and I felt her tremble in my arms.

"Let me worry about that. Just do it, okay?"

Isabelle's lips curled into a deep frown and her worried eyes never left mine even as the cops approached us with their questions. Given the circumstances, I probably shouldn't have been surprised by what happened next.

She shook her head at me and murmured, "I'm telling them the truth. Deal with it."

All I could do was hold her. All I could do was kiss her hair as the EMTs wheeled Saul out of the house on a gurney. All I could do was listen as she gave the cops her statement, slow and hoarse from the attack she'd suffered, and I felt myself wither and coil at the same time with every word. I stood stiffly next to her, hanging onto every word as she described what happened in my absence—how Wallace was waiting for them, how he pointed a gun at them, how she tried to reason with him, how she fought back, how he almost killed her just five minutes before I got there, and finally, how he simply stood up and walked away.

I should've been there. I never should've let her leave the shop without me tonight. Better yet, I never should've let her leave at all. But then again, I knew Wallace still would've been waiting for us and I knew the outcome would've been very, very different.

In the end, there was no way I was leaving her just yet. Instead, I lifted her into an ambulance and slid in right next to her, never leaving her side as an EMT inspected her injuries all the way to the hospital.

When it was all said and done, after the ER doctor felt good about sending Isabelle home and after Saul safely made it through surgery, I finally pulled out my phone and called my mom.

We traded information and as each new piece of the puzzle slipped into place, my heart plummeted deeper and deeper into my stomach. God, I never imagined it would ever come to this and now, I was torn apart from the inside yet again. Nothing would ever make this right. Nothing would ever erase what happened. And with every passing moment, that low boil on my blood turned up to a simmer.

I shoved my phone in my back pocket and closed my hands over her shoulders.

"Iz," I told her hoarsely. "Lex was attacked tonight too. Two of them broke into the house and took turns beating her up. My mom said Chloe saw the whole thing."

Isabelle's hand flew up to cover her mouth and her eyes watered with fresh tears. She squeezed her eyes shut, sending a new trail of tears streaming down her face and I wiped them away as best as I could.

"Is she—"

I shook my head tightly. "She won't come to the hospital. Doc's been patching her up."

Those words hung in the air for a few long moments before I took a deep breath. What I had to tell her was something I never thought I'd ever say again, something I never thought I'd ever
want
again, but here we were.

My grip tightened on her shoulders for strength to finally say the words: "I think we need to go to the clubhouse."

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My hands curled around the steering wheel and I blew out a deep breath, my eyes darting to the building that loomed just a few yards in front of my truck. The last time I'd been on this property I'd thrown my patch down on the table and walked away for good. At least, at the time I'd thought it was for good. Being here right now was just a means to an end because I didn't exactly have the manpower behind me to go after Wallace on my own.