Carry Your Heart

by K. Ryan

  So when Brandon finally left, I found myself sitting restlessly at the kitchen table, waiting for that inevitable phone call. I just needed something to take my mind off how dirty I felt, how guilt had led me to make a such a stupid decision.

  Sure, I was no virgin, but I'd also never had sex with anyone before and just felt nothing. There had always been some sort of feelings attached to the act, even if it was just drunken lust. But here, with Brandon, I'd just been plotting ways to get him out of my bed before he was even finished.

  I had to end it.

  I had to put him out of his misery. It wasn't fair to string him along like this and I couldn't keep up the charade that any of it mattered to me.

  Rock bottom. That's what this was. And it felt like complete crap.

  Brandon did nothing but try to take care of me and be a good boyfriend and I was a heartless bitch for going through the motions with him in return.

  How did I let this happen? Since when did I let someone have sex with me because I felt I owed it to him, because I felt guilty? This wasn't me and this wasn't the kind of person I wanted to be.

  This feeling...like I was stuck in reverse...it just was like when I first found out my mom wasn't going to get better. Everything was backwards and upended now and that was the opposite of the direction I wanted my life to be heading in. With the way things were going, I'd probably be better off back at Duke.

  This wasn't what I wanted. This wasn't how I wanted to be. Repeating the past wasn't going to help anything. I was just backpedalling now and I just couldn't get myself to move forward.

  It was only when a tear slipped down my cheek that I realized I was crying. Even that wet shakiness couldn't even bring me back from the brink. Wiping the tears away didn't help either because more just fell down in their place until I was hunched over on the kitchen table, sobbing into my hands.

  My phone buzzed with a new text message, yanking me from my self-inflicted misery.

  Pick me up at Sundown Saloon.

  That was all I got from my dad. Simple, to the point, no time for a thank you. Either he was just too lazy or too drunk to physically make the call, but either way, it was probably better that we didn't talk right now. With my state of my mind, I didn't know what I would do or what I would say.

  Ugh. The Sundown Saloon. Not a place I wanted to be anywhere near...ever, but at least he'd been smart enough not to go back to The Silver Spur.

  And then my fingers rested over Caleb's number. Right now, I just wanted to hear his voice. Even if he was pissed about what had happened at lunch today, and even if he was probably too busy burying himself in whiskey and some random girl to even care that I was calling, I wanted to hear his voice. Even if all I got was his voicemail, I wanted to hear his voice. Even though he'd probably sense that something else was off tonight in about a second, I still needed to hear his voice.

  Before I could stop myself, my fingers hit the send button and it was ringing. Sheer, irrational panic shot through my entire body and I scrambled to hit the end button before it was too late, but then I heard his smooth voice over the other end: "What's up, Iz?"

  And just like that, everything instantly felt better.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Hey Jealousy

  Earlier That Day

  Caleb

  All I wanted to do was lock myself in the clubhouse and down the first bottle of whiskey I could get my hands on. It didn't help matters that the garage was practically overflowing with customers all afternoon. The worst part was I'd thought I'd gotten past all this. But here my old habits were, rearing their ugly heads when the shit hit the fan.

  When Davis finally left, Isabelle quietly returned to her post in the office without so much as a glance my way. The rest of my shift just dragged by while I came up with excuse after excuse to avoid having to go within 10 feet of the office. Which, honestly, was no easy task given that I was supposed to physically bring in the keys to let Isabelle know when I was finished with a customer.

  I didn't mean to intentionally avoid her. I just couldn't face her.

  Davis showing up out of the blue like that and ruining my lunch break had my blood simmering on a low boil, so seeing the two of them all cozied up on my picnic table pretty much upped my blood to scalding.

  I really needed a drink. Or 10.

  A relapse back down the rabbit hole wasn't going to convince Marcus or anyone else in the club that I'd turned a corner. With another run to Pittsburgh scheduled in a few weeks, Marcus had already given me the heads up that I was on the rotation. A run, especially dealing with the Warlords in Pittsburgh, was really just business as usual for the club, but it was a place to start.

  That was good for me—a way to show the club I was committed and could keep a handle on everything long enough to get the job done. All I needed to do right now was keep my head in the game and drinking myself unconscious, even though I kinda needed it right now, was not the way to do it.

  But by the time my shift was over and I was standing in front of the bar in the clubhouse, I couldn't stop my fingers from closing around the first bottle of Jack I could find.

  I was allowed to have a good time and unwind every once in awhile, wasn't I?

  This wasn't about numbing any sort of pain or taking my mind off things—this was about just letting loose. When I felt a pair of feminine hands wrap themselves around my neck, all I saw was blonde hair and then I closed my eyes and just let it happen.

  But a few hours later, when the cloud cleared from my head and the blonde curled up next to me in my bed, slipping back into old habits wasn't the relief I'd been looking for.

  This girl didn't mean anything to me and that just made me feel even worse than before.

  Thankfully, the blonde, who I hadn't cared enough about to even ask her name, seemed to realize that our time together was over and she silently tip-toed around the room to find her discarded clothes.

  I couldn't even really remember taking her clothes off in the first place, like I'd completely shut my mind off the moment she'd started leading me back to my room. Everything just went blank and the Jack I'd forced myself to swallow down wasn't completely to blame for that either.

  Turning off my mind, just letting this just happen to me—the drinking and the women—it was all a dangerous, slippery slope. An occasional slip here and there wouldn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things, but that didn't make me feel any less like a damned failure.

  When the blonde silently shut the door behind her, all the darkness left the room. Air was coming in and out more easily now and the heavy weight on my chest dissolved completely.

  I almost called out to her, not to invite her back to bed, but I just had a sudden urge to apologize. If she didn't know what she was in for the second she stepped foot in the clubhouse, that was her problem. Odds were, she'd gotten exactly what she wanted from me, but there was still something about the whole thing that just made me feel like the scum of the earth.

  My legs swung over the edge of the bed like they had a mind of their own and I swept my jeans off the floor, digging into my back pocket for Isabelle's sketch. I found myself tracing every line in pure fascination.

  Short of sounding like a pathetic asshole, I'd almost told her no one had ever given me a gift like this before and I was still kicking myself for not being able to articulate what this meant to me.

  It wasn't the same as getting a gift from my mom for Christmas or my birthday. She had to give me gifts, whether she wanted to or not. This was different. No obligations attached to it. No expectations behind it. She just did it...because. I couldn't wrap my head around that. In my world, you didn't give people presents just because and you definitely didn't give presents that were so incredibly personal and intimate.

  Maybe that was what set me so off-balance. The intimacy. The time she'd spent working on it—I could practically see her hunched over, biting her bottom lip in thought as her pencil flowed expertly around the page, bringing my bike t
o life like I was sitting right next to her. The skill and the expertise she'd shared with me was something I didn't know how to reconcile.

  Finally, I secured the sketch right where I'd told her I would: right next to my bed. Taking a slight step back, I surveyed the sketch and then quickly readjusted the tacks so the paper hung a little bit straighter. Part of me hated to puncture it at all, but I knew tape would potentially do more damage to it anyways and I wanted to preserve this for as long as possible.

  A loud buzzing from across the room yanked me from my thoughts and I dove around to find my phone. One glance at the caller ID and I flipped it open immediately: "What's up, Iz?"

  "Hey, Caleb."

  My whole body tensed at the sound of that unmistakable hitch in her voice.

  "Iz? Are you okay? What's wrong?"

  "I'm okay. I am. I promise. My dad texted though and..." she trailed off, sniffling a little and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

  "Are you crying?" I practically barked and she just sniffed again. "Iz, you gotta tell me what's goin' on here."

  "I was out with Brandon," she tried again, but I was way ahead of her and already jumping to conclusions that made my blood boil over.

  "Did that asshole do somethin'?" I snarled. "I'll kill him if—"

  "No!" she cut in quickly. "He didn't do anything and he's gone now. Look, Caleb, I called you because my dad texted me and you told me I had to let you know, so...that's what I'm doing."

  I blew out a deep breath and tugged a hand through my hair, frustrated at this overwhelming feeling of helplessness.

  "Okay, fine," I pushed out roughly and jerked on my jeans as I spoke. "Where is he?"

  "The Sundown Saloon."

  Jesus Christ. Of all the bars in town, why the hell did Isabelle's dad have to pick the worst one? What kind of a father called his daughter in the middle of the night to pick him up from a place like that?

  "Please tell me you're not already there, Iz."

  "I'm not. I promise."

  "Good, 'cuz there's no way you're driving over there and sittin' in that parking lot by yourself. I'll be at your house as soon as I can, okay?"

  I snapped my phone shut as soon as I was sure Isabelle would actually wait for me to get to her house and threw an old Horsemen T-shirt so I could get the hell out of the clubhouse.

  Something was off with her and it had everything to do with that dipshit boyfriend.

  So, when she threw open her front door, my mind was on constant alert, sniffing out the clues for whatever had gone down between them tonight. Her movements were stiffer, her eyes more hollow, her voice colder and detached like she was trying and failing miserably to hide from me.

  It wasn't going to work.

  I wasn't going to let her pretend that everything was fine when it clearly wasn't, especially when she seemed to lean in more and hold on tighter when she got on the back of my bike. She needed me for more than just an extra set of hands to help her with her dad tonight. And hell if I didn't need her just a little bit too.

  Still, seeing her dad slumped over on a bar stool at The Sundown Saloon of all places, barely able to even hold his head up, let alone walk without leaning heavily on both Isabelle and me—I had a feeling this was never going to get any easier.

  I never should've touched that bottle of Jack tonight. Now, seeing up close what it could do to you, what it could do to your family, what it could do to your body, the way Isabelle's dad couldn't even form a coherent sentence...I never wanted to touch it again.

  That was over for me now. It had to be. The blackouts, the hangovers, the dirty hookups—I was done with all of it. I couldn't keep self-medicating with whiskey and hope that would magically solve all my problems. Because from where I was standing as I lifted Isabelle's dad into the backseat of his car, all whiskey did was make an already grim problem about a million times worse. I wasn't, however, in a position to let myself ruminate on why I'd suddenly switched to blondes instead of the brunettes I'd been prone to grab before.

  Luckily for me, once Isabelle's dad was safely back in their house and in his bed, I could shift the focus away from my own shit, which was as uncomfortable as hell, to this new, detached and aloof Isabelle, which concerned the hell out of me. I trailed after her down the stairs until we were standing at the bottom of the staircase, staring back at each other awkwardly.

  I shoved my hands into my pockets, rocking back on my heels a little and cleared my throat, fumbling for a way to stay here a little bit longer with her when she beat me to the punch.

  "So, do you have anything going on for the rest of the night?" she asked.

  "A whole lot of nothing," I shrugged and tilted my head to the side to shoot her a grin. Maybe that would ease the tension in the air a little. "Why?"

  "You could stay if you wanted to. I mean, you don't have to leave yet. We could watch a movie or something?"

  I chuckled. "Iz, I thought you would never ask."

  . . .

  I settled back against the couch cushions, waiting for Isabelle to come back with some popcorn. She'd run upstairs to change into some pajamas after I was officially sticking around tonight and when she came back down the stairs, my eyes just about popped out of my head.

  The tiny tank top skimmed over her smooth, creamy skin, leaving just a little bit of her flat stomach peeking out underneath it. Just one look at the top half of that tank top pretty much screwed me. Barely any cleavage. Just a peak. But it was there. It was there.

  Shit.

  And the shorts she was wearing...Jesus, did that even count as a piece of clothing? They were practically nonexistent, just barely covering up more than underwear or a swimming suit would, and still left way too much room for my imagination to run wild. All that toned leg. I couldn't remember ever seeing so much of her before.

  Shit.

  I was trying to be a good friend here. I was trying to figure out what the hell was up with her tonight and she was making it real difficult.

  "The movie's in the Blu-ray player already," she called from the kitchen. "You can start it up if you want."

  There was that hitch in her voice again and it just wasn't like her. Something happened with Davis. While it probably wasn't as bad as I thought, that didn't mean the asshole was completely off the hook either. All I knew at this point was that he was over at her house tonight and she'd called me after crying. Someone needed to explain this to me pretty quick or I'd be banging down Davis' door in the morning and that probably wouldn't end well for either of us.

  Even when she sat down next to me, careful to sit as far on the opposite side of the couch as possible, I didn't like this distance between us. I wanted her closer because I wanted to touch her just as badly as I wanted to know what happened with her tonight.

  Shit.

  After a few minutes of previews, the opening credits of Die Hard started and I let out a little whoop of excitement—my existing concern almost all but momentarily forgotten.

  "You know, Iz," I threw an arm over the top of the couch so I could turn towards her more. "I had a feelin' you were gonna pick this one. It's like you read my mind."

  "Well," she shrugged with an easy grin and popped a piece of popcorn in her mouth. "I figured I needed to see for myself if it was any good or not and who better to watch it with, right?"

  "Absolutely, Iz," I grinned back.

  Within two minutes of the movie, I found myself paying less attention to what was happening on the screen and more attention to what was happening with Isabelle. She kept shifting anxiously next to me and every time she moved, her shorts bunched up a little more by her hips. That was definitely not helping my concentration and I really, really didn't want to be that guy who could only think with that little head and completely lost my shit at the sight of just a little bit of skin.

  Okay, it wasn't just a little bit of skin. She was showing a lot of skin.

  That wasn't what this was about and my eyes searched anxiously for something to throw
over her legs to cover her the hell up. When I realized my arm was resting over an afghan, I slapped it down over her legs until the offending material was completely covered.

  Thank God. Her smooth legs looked so soft and if I let myself fantasize about them any longer, I'd be imagining what it would be like to feel those same legs wrapped around my waist.

  Shit.

  This wasn't helping me and it certainly wasn't helping me keep my head in the game here. What I needed to do was get her talking, but how exactly to go about making that happen was still a mystery.

  "Hey, Caleb? Can I ask you a question?"

  When I shifted my body to could face her, I nearly had a heart attack at the sight. She looked like she was ready to completely crumble in my lap and not in a good way. Her bloodshot eyes were brimming with fresh tears and I practically had to sit on my hands to keep them to myself.

  "Sure, Iz. You can ask me anything."

  My hoarse voice felt scratchy and foreign in my throat.

  "How do you do it? I mean, how do you sleep with so many women and just...feel nothing for them? How do you make it look so easy?"

  That was not what I was expecting. So I guess this was suddenly about me now...I was treading some seriously uncharted territory here and I didn't know the first thing about any of this.

  "What makes you think it's easy?" I replied finally. I honestly had no idea what else to say.

  "I don't know," she shrugged. "Because you seem to do it a lot. I don't mean to be rude or a bitch or anything. It's just that I wish there was a way I could be like that too. To just be able to turn it off and not feel like complete crap afterwards."

  My eyes narrowed at her words, but I knew I couldn't push her too hard. If I did, she could shut down on me completely and then I'd never get the full story. And then I'd probably have to kill Davis.