Carry You Home (Carry Your Heart #2) (9 page)

"You know I'd never say anything, right?" she pressed anxiously, needing me to understand that all of my secrets were safe with her. "Everything you've ever told me—I'd never say a word to anyone, not even if the person was holding a gun to my head."

I winced and scrubbed a hand over my face to wipe that image from my mind. "Don't say that, Iz."

"It's true though," she shrugged a little too easily. "It doesn't matter what you've done for the club or what you might do. If you tell me about it and honestly, I hope you do because we need to trust each other, but if you tell me, I don't care what it is. Drugs or—"

"We don't run drugs, Iz," I told her. "The club gets into enough bad shit as it is and we don't need that extra pressure. Besides, something like that could carry a life sentence, depending on how much you've got on you, and none of us are stupid enough to go down that road just for a paycheck."

She nodded slowly, but there was no relief on her face. I think I knew why as she opened her mouth again to speak.

"Have you ever—"

"Yes," I cut in quietly. I didn't want her to have to say it out loud anymore than I did, but if someone had to say it, I was going to be the one to do it. "I've killed for the club before."

At this point, all the blood drained out of her beautiful face and tears welled up in her eyes, but I had to keep going.

"If you wanna know who and when and why, I'll tell you."

I waited for something from her, but she just shook her head. All those faces flashed across my mind now—all six of them. Six lives I'd taken to save my brothers, to help my club. Six lives who would've shot Dom, who would've slit Tiny's throat, who would've beaten Casey into a coma, who would've stolen thousands of dollars from the club, who would've ratted on the club and sent us to prison if I hadn't stepped in and put them down first. It wasn't an excuse and it didn't justify my actions. All I'd done was my job.

"I can't apologize for protecting my club, Iz," I murmured and dared a step closer to see if she'd move away. She didn't. "I wouldn't hesitate to do it again if I had to. I'll always protect my family. The club, my mom, Lex and Chloe...you and our baby.
Especially
you and our baby. I wouldn't hesitate. You know that, right?"

Isabelle frowned back at me, even as my hand slid over her fingertips and squeezed. For someone like her, who'd never known what being connected to the club really meant on this most basic level, who'd never had to draw a gun to protect someone she cared about, I knew how hearing all this must feel for her. The shock. The disbelief. The disgust. It was all there, written across her pale face. I couldn't blame her.

"I didn't want to talk to you about all of this," I whispered hoarsely. "Because I knew I wouldn't be able to handle the way you're lookin' at me. I didn't want you to know, even though you deserved to."

She deserved to know who she was about to marry, have a kid with, and have a life with. And if it was really too much, if she really couldn't take it, maybe it was better that I just knew it now.

But instead of running away, instead of looking at me with the disgust I probably deserved, Isabelle just nodded soberly and reached out to touch my face. "I get it. I really do. I can't believe I'm saying this right now, but at the end of the day, I don't think I care what you've done as long as you're safe and you're coming home to me."

That acceptance, even if there was resignation attached to it too, was exactly what I needed from her. While all of this had shed new light on everything Isabelle probably thought she knew about the club, she wasn't running out the door screaming her head off and taking our kid with her.

But now, with the weight of the club's orders settling on my shoulders, I knew it was pretty much time for her to leave the clubhouse so she could prove to Marcus, for once and for all, that she was an old lady who could be trusted.

"Hey, Iz," I rested both hands around her face and brushed some hair out of her eyes. "I gotta ask you a question now and I'm sorry I have to ask it, but if there's anything I need to know, anything they might try to use against us, you need to tell me now."

That wasn't really a question, but it was mainly because I already knew the answer anyway. I just needed to be sure and cover all my bases before Eli and ZZ came back with their report.

"Right," Isabelle sighed and stepped out of my hands so she could settle back on the mattress. "You know what else that agent told me? He said that if the club ever had a reason to doubt me, if they were suspected I had said anything to him today I would need protection."

I crouched down so I could fold my arms over her knees and tilted her chin up with my thumb. "Look at me, Iz. Nothing is gonna happen to you. I swear on my life. Nobody will come anywhere near you while I'm standing next to you, okay?"

The thought of her scared of the club and what they could do did nothing but twist the churning in my stomach.

"It's just these shitty circumstances," I told her. She didn't need to see that I was almost as terrified as she was. "And it's no different than how the club's looking at Lex and Becca right now either."

"Fair enough," she nodded and a small smile crept up her lips. God, I hoped she was going to change the subject. "So if we're talking skeletons in the closet, do you mean that time I smoked weed, for the first and only time in my life, mind you, and went streaking through campus?"

My mouth dropped open.

"Wha...no," I laughed because that was the only reaction I could come up with. "That's not—you're messing with me, right?"

"Nope," she grinned as she leaned forward to kiss me. I was too stunned to really kiss her back. "Campus security chased me all the way from the library to the plaza, but they never caught me. Bet you didn't think I had it in me, did you?"

My eyebrows shot to my forehead. "Jesus, Iz. I had no idea you were such a wild child. Why the hell is this the first time I'm hearing about this?"

"You never asked," she shrugged, playfully throwing this whole messed-up situation back in my face. "So I never told you."

"Alright, smartass," I relented. "You know, I take back what I said this morning about me going grey before I'm 30 if our kid is a girl. I'm gonna be grey before I'm 25 'cuz both you ladies are gonna make me lose my mind."

"Oh," she laughed. "I see how it is. So you're finally admitting I'm right?"

"I ain't admittin' shit, Iz," I grinned back at her. "Man, now all I can see is you running bare-ass naked through Duke. I know exactly why campus security couldn't catch you—they were too busy drooling over the view."

She just laughed and gripped the front of my cut to pull me in between her legs. "Shut it. But all joking aside, I'm pretty sure that's the wildest thing I've ever done. I mean, besides that little show we put on at the patch-over party, but that's it. They're not gonna find anything in my past that could put us at risk."

"That's what I thought," I smirked as I leaned down until her back planted into the mattress and her legs wrapped around my waist. "Everything's gonna be okay. You don't have anything to worry about. They'll probably bring you in again at least a couple more times just to put some pressure on us, but that's it."

"Okay," she nodded tightly.

I wished I hadn't had to bring all that shit up again, especially now that we'd moved past it, but she needed to understand I was always going to do whatever she needed me to do, whatever kept her safe, and whatever kept her happy.

"Can you do something for me, Caleb?"

"Whatever you want."

"Can we finally sit down with my dad and tell him?"

I blew out a hard breath and scrubbed a hand over my face. Shit. The thought of being anywhere near that asshole, let alone have that asshole anywhere near Isabelle...rehab and some counseling sessions with his daughter did not mean he was suddenly a reformed man.

"I know you don't want anything to do with him," Isabelle told me quietly and I just huffed out a laugh. "But he's still my dad and whether you like it or not, he's gonna be our baby's grandpa, too. He's been trying and I don't think it's right for him to find out from anyone but us."

When I just exhaled again and tugged a hand through my hair, Isabelle pulled me a little closer.

"I'm not saying it has to be tomorrow or even this week, but I think we should talk to him soon before you know..." she gestured to her flat stomach, "she decides to make her presence a little more obvious."

My lips twitched a little and I just lifted my eyes to the ceiling, fighting that grin for as long as I could. I'd never be able to deny her, but that didn't mean I was happy about this particular development either.

"Ah, alright. I guess we have to tell him eventually," I allowed, even though I was pretty sure I was going to hate this upcoming sit-down more than that time Isabelle forced me to sit through two whole episodes of
Project Runway.
Sure, I'd gotten laid after it, but still...

"On that note," I leaned down to kiss her quick before murmuring against her lips, "I gotta stay here 'cuz of club bullshit, so Z's gonna take you home."

Her blue eyes went wide. "They don't even trust—"

"It's just protocol, Iz," I told her gently, not wanting to upset her any more than she already had been today. "It's nothin' personal and it's nothin' against either of us. It's just the way we do things when this kinda thing comes up."

"Okay. You're gonna come home later, right?"

"Of course. Don't wait up for me though. I don't know how long all this club shit is gonna take."

Tomorrow, when everything was in the clear and when Marcus choked on his words about Isabelle's trustworthiness and loyalty, I'd be able to tell her what was really going on. Until then, I just had to sit on my hands and wait.

It was going to be a long night.

Isabelle

I sighed heavily as I tossed my keys on the kitchen table and ducked down a little to peer through the blinds.

Yep, ZZ was still there.

He wasn't doing a very good job of hiding that he'd only moved down the street about four house-lengths. The truck was just sitting there in the darkness, waiting and watching with a diligence that was a little nerve-wracking, if not sort of impressive too.

ZZ would probably sit there all night, staring at my front door, if that's what the club wanted him to do. There was something about the whole thing that was honorable and completely idiotic at the same time. The kind of blind faith it took to just take orders like that, to literally do whatever the president said without question and without hesitation...it was hard to reconcile the dedication it took to live your life that way.

Everything they had to do from the runs, the meetings, the
killings
, all for the sake of the brotherhood, as Caleb would say, I wasn't sure I would ever completely understand. The average person just doesn't have a conversation with their fiancé like that every day and I needed some time not only to sift through everything I'd learned, but how I felt about it all too.

Before now, I'd turned a blind eye, unwilling to even consider what else the club did beyond the shop and running guns because I'd been too afraid of the answers to those lingering questions, but I couldn't afford to be ignorant anymore.

And while there were some things I knew I'd never be completely on board with, at the end of the day, none of that mattered. Could I live with myself, and Caleb, knowing what he might have done before coming home to me at night? Could I still look at him and feel the same way? Could I still marry him and have a family with him? God help me, but the answer to all those questions was an unequivocal yes.

I didn't know whether to feel happy or sad about that, especially since I was sitting here in my own home with a watchdog staring at my door and waiting for me to make a wrong move.

And with that unsettling thought, a distraction was in order. With my sketchbook and pencil in hand, I slid down the wall inside our nursery and settled in. In my mind's eye, I could already picture where everything would go and my pencil skimmed across the page to keep pace with my imagination.

My mind flew back to the sketch I'd done so long ago, the one I'd shown Caleb, the one that represented the ripped-out page from an ee cummings' poetry book that was framed on our nightstand.

Soon, the intertwined trees stretching out over the wall began to take shape with their branches reaching for each other. Each leaf took on the outline of an over-sized heart with some buds peppering the branches and the roots sweeping out underneath where the crib would sit on the carpet. I added a few birds and a cute little owl just for good measure and held the page up to the wall to survey my work.

Nodding to myself, I stepped up to the wall to begin the process of outlining my sketch onto the wall. It wasn't that different than a tattoo artist using tracing paper over their subject's skin and I didn't want to mess this up.

I was just finishing up the last strokes when a knock on the door jerked me out of work-mode. On instinct, I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and saw three missed calls from Becca that I'd been completely oblivious to as I worked.

When I opened the door, she didn't even wait to be invited in. She just barreled right through, almost knocking me over, and tossed her purse down on my couch.