by K. Ryan
"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.
CHAPTER SIX
Haunted
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.
"Hey, Becs," I started warily. "Nice to see you too. Come on in. Make yourself at home."
But when Becca finally turned to face me, I didn't see the friend I'd known all my life. I didn't see the girl who'd always made sure I wasn't picked last for dodgeball at recess. I didn't see the girl who'd gotten in Melissa Sullivan's face when she made fun of my Hello Kitty T-shirt in seventh grade. I didn't see the girl who'd held my hand through every second of my mom's funeral.
I didn't recognize this girl staring back at me and that scared the hell out of me.
"How can you be joking around at a time like this?" Becca demanded, hitching a hand on her hip as she spoke. "Do you think he's—can you look, Belle? Can you look to see if he's still following me?"
I frowned back at her. While the dramatics weren't necessarily anything new for her, this downright, no-holds-barred panic definitely was.
"Who's following you?"
Becca just shook her head furiously, her eyes darting around the room.
Someone had written once—was it Shakespeare maybe?—that suspicion haunted the mind of the guilty. I had nothing to feel guilty about and I had nothing to hide. Becca, with her wild dark eyes and her trembling hands, looked like suspicion trailed after her like a demonic ghost.
Alarm bells were already going off in my head.
Still, I obliged her and glanced out the tiny window in my front door. There was another truck parked right behind where ZZ sat and I figured that could only be Becca's club escort/tail, whether she was aware of it or not. I didn't know why I felt the need to do it, maybe it was just the stress of the day or my own annoyance at being treated like a second-class citizen by the club, but I decided to just run with this and see where it went.
"No," I told her carefully. "I don't see anything."
Relief washed over her face and she took off through the living room to head right for the kitchen. She had the refrigerator open before I could even offer her something from it and she threw me a glance over her shoulder.
"Do you have anything harder than beer?" she asked.
I figured Caleb wouldn't necessarily be happy to share his beer with her, so I offered up the Jack he'd kept hidden away in our pantry for when he had 'shit days', as he'd so eloquently put it.
Becca didn't even hesitate. She just grabbed the glass from me and downed it. With her eyes squeezed shut to cut the after-effects of the alcohol, she held the glass out to me for a refill, which I reluctantly did. This wasn't normal for her. This wasn't normal for anyone. Not after the day we'd had and not for someone who had nothing to hide.
"Becca," I started slowly. "Are you alright?"
She wiped her mouth and set her glass down on the counter. "I think so. I'm just scared, Belle. Aren't you?"
"Well, yeah. Of course I am. The ATF aren't messing around and if they find something, Caleb could end up in prison. That's scary as shit to me, Becs."
Becca nodded like that wasn't really what she'd wanted to hear and then she was leaning in a little closer. "Aren't you scared of the club? Of what they could do?"
I frowned back at her. "What do you mean?"
"Don't you know?" her eyes blazed back at me and it was then, with her leaning in so close I could smell her breath, that I finally saw the dilated eyes, the manic, almost crazed glint staring back at me.
"What would they do?"
"They'd kill us, Belle. Maybe they wouldn't kill you right away because of, you know," she gestured to my stomach, "but they'd do it eventually. They wouldn't hesitate."
Caleb's words from earlier tonight swirled around me and a slow chill ran down my spine.
"No, they wouldn't do that," I told her, unable to hide the desperation in my voice.
Becca just huffed out a laugh and ran a shaking hand through her hair. "Bullshit they wouldn't. I don't believe that for a second. They'd put a bullet right between my eyes and they wouldn't think twice about it. Eli would probably do it himself if it came down to it."
Why was she so goddamn paranoid? Why had she even risked coming over here in the first place when she had to have known she was being followed by either the ATF or the club?
"The only reason anyone would even consider doing that is if one of us gave something up. We're never going to do that, so we don't have anything to worry about. Right?"
Suddenly, Becca's eyes darkened and she took an aggressive step forward. "If you had to choose, you'd choose your baby daddy over me, wouldn't you? You'd let them kill me, wouldn't you?"
I shook my head and just couldn't grasp what was happening here. At some point, this had devolved into a me-versus-them situation and Becca had suddenly shoved me right in the middle of some disaster I knew she wouldn't clue me in on anyway.
"What's going on, Becca?" I asked. "What happened today?"
Her eyes darted nervously from one end of the kitchen to the other, like she expected someone to walk in here at any second.
"Do you think they've been following you too?" she asked abruptly. "Have they been tailing you too?"
"I don't know," I shrugged. "Probably. I guess if they've been following you, they've been following me too."
She stared back at me like I'd just sprouted a second head. "How can you be so...cavalier about all this? Like it's no big deal? Like them showing up here today and asking all these scary questions is just nothing?"
"I never said that," I frowned again. "It's absolutely a big deal. I was mad as hell at Caleb for putting me in that position today, but there's nothing we can do about it now and there was nothing we could've done to stop it either. But I've got nothing to hide. I'm not scared of them. But you are..."
I trailed off and our eyes met from across the kitchen. She must've seen the awareness, the suspicion, and the disappointment in my expression because all the blood seemed to drain right out of her face. This was probably the moment I was always going to remember as the moment I lost my best friend—I just didn't know it yet.
"I have to..." she snapped her mouth shut and stared down at her feet.
"Have to what? What do you have to do?"
A sinking feeling, coupled by paralyzing dread, settled into my stomach and I swallowed hard when she just shook her head.
"I want to tell you, Belle. I really do. I wish I could tell you."
"Becca, I can't help you if you won't tell me what's going on."
"You can't help me," she whispered. "I wish you could, but you can't. I don't think you would even if you could."
After everything we'd been through, after all our history and all the years we'd spent together as best friends, it looked like it had all spiraled down to this. The father of my baby and my future husband over my oldest friend in the world.
"Are you asking me to choose, Becs?" I whispered. Tears stung my eyes because I knew where this was going. I knew how this was going to end. It was just a matter of time now.
"I shouldn't have to," she murmured back. "You're my best friend in the entire world. The only real friend I've ever had. I love you, Belle. You know that. But I guess if push comes to shove, I know where we
stand now."
"Did you..." I didn't know if I could even bring myself to say the words out loud. "Did you tell them something today?"
Becca just stared back at me. Finally, she shook her head. Whether that meant she hadn't said anything or just wouldn't tell me, I had a feeling I might never get the chance to ask her.
With that, she slammed the glass on the counter, stalked out of the kitchen, and then slammed the front door behind her.
Nothing about this short argument, if that's what it really was, made sense to me.
Somewhere along the way, she'd changed and it hadn't been for the better. The hard-partying, the drinking, the way she'd gradually shown more skin every time I saw her, her involvement with the Horsemen and the clubhouse in the first place—I'd just chalked it up to her flirting with a little bit of recklessness.
Becca was a girl unhinged. Unstable. Someone I didn't recognize. Someone I didn't know.
She was also my oldest friend, someone who'd been there for me and been in my life since we were in kindergarten. If the club was Caleb's family, then Becca was my family too.
But at the end of the day, if Becca was going to do something reckless that could put my new family at risk, who would I choose?
I swept a tear from my eye and rubbed a hand over my face.
I knew what the right choice was. I just wished it didn't have to be so goddamned hard.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Invasion
Caleb
"Here ya go," I handed Dom a cold beer as I dropped down on the bench and leaned my elbows all the way back on the picnic table, kicking my feet out in front of me. "Thought you could use this."
"Yeah," Dom huffed out a laugh and took a healthy pull from the bottle. "I'll probably need a few more of these before I feel normal again."
I shook my head and took another swig from my beer. "Amen to that."
"You know, I kept thinking to myself today, there's no way this could possibly get any worse, until it did. And it did again. And again. It was like one giant snowball of shit barreling down the highway, you know?"