by K. Ryan
"So that's it, Caleb? Just like that?"
He shook his head and leaned forward. This time, the steel had slipped back into his eyes.
"I know this isn't what you wanna hear right now," he charged on. "But I'm not gonna let you put your life on hold. I'm not gonna let you waste years sitting around waiting for me."
Now I had half a mind to wind up and punch him right in the face. Now I just wanted him to put on a stupid T-shirt already so I didn't have to look at my name written across his chest. I just couldn't reconcile that tattoo with everything he was telling me.
"That's bullshit," I pushed out through clenched teeth. "And I missed the part where you had any say over how I spend my time while you're in prison."
Resolve clouded his eyes and he sat up a little straighter. "I know you don't see it now, but this is for the best. If you're not tied to me, you're not missing out on anything. You won't be—"
"What happens when you get out?"
He swallowed tightly and folded his hands in front of him at the table. "I don't know."
"So you're telling me," I narrowed my eyes at him as I spoke, determined to make him squirm as much as possible. "That when you get out and I'm with some other guy halfway across the country and a kid on the way, you'll be completely fine with that?"
Pain flashed across his handsome face and disappeared just as quickly as his jaw clenched. "It's just like you said. I don't have any say in how you spend your time while I'm gone. If I get out and you've moved on just like I'm telling you to and you're happy...yeah, I'm good with that."
"Really."
He squeezed his eyes shut and ran a hand over his face. "Iz—"
"You don't get to sit here and tear everything apart and still call me that," I spat.
Because he didn't have a leg to stand on, he just shook his head and rubbed his eyes again. "Okay. Okay. I get it. We don't have to make it harder than it has to be."
I huffed out a bitter laugh and leveled a hard glare his way. "Let's do it the hard way, huh?"
A ghost of a smile flashed across his face, like this was exactly what he'd expected me to say. There was a hint of pride there, too, but it vanished a moment later.
"You always do this—you always do whatever you think is best without ever bothering to actually talk to me about it first," I raged on. "All that insurance crap, buying our house, going on that stupid run, not talking to me about money and conveniently forgetting to mention all the other times you've been arrested, hell—I would still be at school in Richmond if you had your way."
"I wish you had stayed in Richmond," he nodded firmly. There was no apology. No acknowledgment that I was right. He just kept his hands on the wheel, steering this train right off the track. "I wish you'd never started working at the shop. I wish you'd never started coming to the clubhouse last year. And I wish we'd never gotten together in the first place."
I knew what he was doing. He was breaking us apart, shattering whatever was left of us, rubbing salt in the open wound all so I would hate him. All so I would stay far away.
"You don't really mean that, Caleb," my voice was trembling now, but I couldn't fight it anymore.
"Yeah, I do," he murmured and scrubbed his face with his hands again. "Being with me, Iz—Isabelle, I feel like I ruined you. I'm the worst thing that's ever happened to you."
Tears pricked my eyes and no amount of willpower could keep them at bay. They flowed down my cheeks like a river, pouring out all the things I couldn't bring myself to face.
"That's not the way I see it," I whispered through my tears. "You're the best thing that's ever happened to me. I don't understand why you can't see that. You've given me—"
"What, Isabelle?" Caleb cut in abruptly, his voice steeled with resolve. "What exactly have I given you?"
He didn't give me a chance to respond.
"Look at everything that's already happened in the last year alone," he sucked in a ragged breath and swallowed hard.
I leaned forward, ready to reach out to him, to do something to keep this from happening. "It's not your—"
"Yes, it is," he cut me off yet again. "It is my fault. I know I couldn't control Padilla or the ATF or Becca or even the club, but at the end of the day, none of that would've ever been within miles of you if it weren't for me. And honestly? You never belonged around any of it in the first place. It's just not who you are. And you need to get out while you still can and before it gets worse."
"And what about you? Being around the club and everything that goes with it is too dangerous for me, but it's totally fine for you?"
A sad smile flashed across his face and his knuckles turned white. "This isn't about me. And you and I both know I'm never leaving the club. What else would I do? I don't know how to do anything else."
"That sounds like bullshit to me. You're smart. You're resourceful. You could figure it out and I'd support you every step of the way."
He lifted a shoulder and blew out a deep breath. "Look, none of that matters right now. The point is I'm going to prison in three days and I deserve to be there. I can do my time because I earned my punishment, but what I can't do—what I won't do—is force you into prison too. You don't deserve to be punished with me."
Caleb swallowed hard, as if he was summoning the strength he needed to carry on. "I know this isn't what you wanna hear, but when I'm gone and after some time has passed, you'll see I'm right. You'll move on and you'll forget about me, and it'll be like all this never happened. You'll meet some good guy—trust me, they'll be lining up at the door to have a chance with you—and he'll treat you right, keep you safe, give you a family and a life and all the things I just can't."
I was practically shaking with fury by the time he was done with his little speech and didn't even know if I wanted to find the strength to put him in his place. I wasn't sure I would even know where to start.
"You don't know what the hell you're talking about, Caleb," I pushed through gritted teeth. "I know what you're trying to do. You think you're protecting me, but this isn't your decision to make."
I'd been prepared to put everything on hold, to wait years if I had to because I loved him and because I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. He wasn't as convincing as he thought he was, but I couldn't deny that the angle he'd played hadn't hurt like a bitch. And somewhere, deep down, his argument really did carry some weight. I just wasn't interested in hearing it.
Caleb's jaw clenched tightly and he leaned forward a little. "I don't know what else you want me to say here."
"You're an asshole," I hissed hoarsely as another fresh round of tears slipped down my cheeks.
He just shrugged, his eyes betraying zero emotion. "Just go live your life, Isabelle. Move on, okay?"
Suddenly, I wanted to reach across the table and punch the son of a bitch. How dare he make assumptions about what I wanted and what was best for me? He wanted me to live my life? To just move on? Fine, asshole. That was just fine. The rage coursing through me made me tremble with an unadulterated need to slap the shit out of him. To shake him. To make him snap the hell out of it.
"Fuck you," I spat venomously as another traitorous tear fell down her cheek. "I love you and you're throwing it all away for nothing. My dad was right about you. I never wanted to believe it because the Caleb I know would never pull this kind of bullshit, but he was right. Because you know what he told me? He told me all you were going to do was get me pregnant and leave me. And you know what? He was right."
He remained silent across from me with his hands folded tightly in front of him, but for a split second, pain flashed through his eyes and his jaw clenched. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore. He'd taken the future I'd imagined for us, the life I'd wanted with him, and he'd burned it to a crisp for misguided, selfish reasons. And now, after everything that was said, after seeing the cold, detached expression in his dead eyes, I just wanted to leave.
With an abrupt, anguished breath, I pushed out of my chair and stumbled
backward, shifting on my heel just as quickly to get the hell out of there.
"Isabelle," Caleb called after me. "Wait—you don't have to leave right away."
I whirled around. He might as well have just slapped me in the face. "Are you kidding me? You really think I'm going to stay here with you?"
He was up on his feet in a flash, reaching out, and heading straight toward me. "Don't leave like this. Please, just—"
"Just what, Caleb?"
When his rough fingertips gripped my forearms to pull me closer, that was it. I'd officially reached my breaking point, not like I hadn't already been there for the last two weeks. I shoved him in the chest with all the strength I had left, letting adrenaline take the reins, and then when he still reached for me, my hand flew out to crack him right across the face.
I watched him rear back with a hand covering the red mark on his face. His chest was heaving and he squeezed his eyes shut, but didn't make the same mistake for a third time. He kept his damn hands to himself.
"You got what you wanted," I whispered as I backpedalled toward the front door. "Now you'll get to go to prison with a clear conscience, right? Congratulations."
I didn't turn back as I pushed through the front door, practically hitting him in the face with the screen door as he trailed behind me.
It wasn't until I backed my mom's Trans Am out of our driveway that I saw him. This was the last time I'd see him for years, probably, and this moment would forever be burned in my memory. His fists balled up at his sides, the way he slumped down on the patio steps to watch me leave, the torment striking across his face, the defeat in his eyes, and finally, his head falling into his hands and his shoulders heaving.
He wouldn't chase after me. I didn't want him to anyway. Instead, I forced myself to drive, furiously wiping away tears so I didn't die in a fiery car wreck on my way to God knows where. Every place I could think of to go was connected to Caleb and the life I'd had with him and I couldn't go to Lexie or Skyler. I didn't need their sympathy and as terrible as it was, I just didn't really want to see them either. Becca was gone. There was no one else, wasn't there? How pathetic was that?
And here I thought I'd never be the girl who got so wrapped up in a guy she had no friends or real family outside of him. I guessed the joke was on me.
So I pulled into the one driveway that didn't hold as many memories attached to Caleb and the life he'd just torn to pieces. I knocked on the door with tears still streaming down my face and winced at the shock on my dad's face. I could only imagine the mess he'd found on his doorstep.
This was the last place I ever expected to go, but I also never thought it was possible for the person I loved more than anything to hurt me this way.
"I'm sorry for just showing up like this without calling first," I murmured through my tears. "I don't have anywhere else to go."
My dad hesitated for just a moment and then whatever held him back disappeared just as quickly. He gathered me in his arms, ushered me inside, and quietly closed the door behind us.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Interstice
Caleb
Three Months Later
Time inside moved fast and just as slow. There were days where I felt the excruciating passing of each second until my mind went numb. And then there were days where my mind was moving so quickly I barely noticed any time had passed at all. As much as I hated to admit it, having Dom with me helped. Having someone to watch my back did wonders for my peace of mind, but of course, didn't really do much for my conscience, considering that Dom had had a hell of a lot to leave behind.
The first week was the hardest. All the goodbyes, the adjustment to life inside, figuring out which guard was on our side and which fellow inmates could be trusted, and hell, even the routine had been an adjustment. I was used to keeping my own schedule and doing shit on my own time, so my body had had a difficult time adjusting to 'inmate schedule'.
But none of that was the most difficult adjustment I'd had to endure. In the three months since I'd become a long-term ward of the North Carolina Department of Corrections, Isabelle had never strayed far from my thoughts. At first, I'd spent the better part of my time alternating between restraining myself from punching anything I could get my hands on and from sobbing like a baby.
Every time I closed my eyes, her face flashed across my mind. Her beautiful smile, so full of life, her vibrant blue eyes, the deepest blue I'd ever seen, the feel of her soft skin against mine, her warm, lean body curled up next to me, flowers and vanilla—all of it crashed over me in waves and I couldn't stop it even if I wanted to.
The problem was simple: I was a criminal who deserved to be exactly where I was and that would never be good enough for her.
My hands were tied—the club was all I knew and all I would ever know. Isabelle, on the other hand, had the potential for a wonderful future and staying with me would only turn it into an ugly nightmare.
So even though I didn't know how to get myself out, I had to see her safely into a lifeboat, away from this sinking ship, away from this chaos. With the club, there would always be something going on beneath the surface and behind closed doors, always some new threat, always some new business deal that could just as easily go awry, and always the potential that I might not come home that night in one piece. That was something I couldn't change.
But Isabelle's association with it? That was the only hand I'd had to play.
"Yo, Caleb!"
I turned my head at the voice and found Dom staring back at me expectantly.
"Is today the day?"
I blew out a deep breath and threw him a glance over my shoulder as we walked up to check in for visiting hours. "Does it really matter, Dom?"
"Sure it does," he shrugged nonchalantly. "'Cuz if it is, I'd like to make sure Lex and me are sitting as far away from you two as possible today."
"Well, maybe you'd better rethink your reserved table," I muttered over my shoulder. "Because this is gonna be ugly."
I shifted anxiously from side to side as we waited our turn to pass through and glanced at the clock directly above the visitors' entrance. Any moment now, I'd be face to face with her and I honestly didn't know how I felt about it. It didn't exactly help that she'd flatly refused to see me for the last three months and had only recently agreed to take my phone calls.
She was punishing me. And she was essentially telling me that it didn't matter if I still had 21 months left of my sentence or if I was suffering because she thought I was the dumbest, most insane, asshole bastard she'd ever met. And of course, she was right. I deserved to suffer. I deserved to spend every second in agony.
I barely slept, barely ate, and the only real reason I was surviving at all was because Dom had my back. If not for his intervention, my ass would've been shanked by now. I honestly just didn't really give a shit anymore. At this point, I couldn't care less if I ever got of prison.
So when my mom's icy, black-rimmed eyes focused sharply on me as she perched on the bench across from me, I was having a hard time feeling anything less than apathetic to her stare-down. She made no moves to hug or even touch me, but my mother's touch wasn't what I needed right now.
"Hi, Caleb," she bit out finally through clenched teeth.
"Hey, Mom," I sighed and stared down at the table in front of me.
The next few moments passed by with slow, steady beats and I wasn't looking forward to hearing the inevitable emotional beat-down she was about to lay on me. It wasn't that I didn't deserve it. I just didn't want to hear it.
"You look like shit," she stated quietly, her hawk-like eyes scanning over me.
"Yeah, well, I feel like shit, so I guess that sounds about right," I mumbled back and slid down a little lower on the table.
My mom nodded tightly. "Good."
My eyes lifted to the ceiling at that last comment. It wasn't like I expected her to be sympathetic.
Still, I had to ask. I had to know.
"How is she?"
&n
bsp; The words hung in the air like a plague, sinking deep inside my soul and poisoning me. But I had to know that she was surviving, that she was moving on, that she wasn't as broken by this as I was.
My mom's eyes narrowed dangerously and she leaned forward like a cat about to pounce on her prey. "You cut ties with her, Caleb. And now you wanna know how she's doing? You can't have it both ways."
"Mom," I pleaded, surprising both of us with my desperate tone. "Can you just give me something? Anything?"
She regarded me silently for a few moments, weighing whether or not this was a good idea and then she exhaled exasperatedly.
"Well," she pushed out slowly. "You shattered her heart into a million pieces and then stomped all over it. How do you think she's doing?"
I flinched and swallowed hard.
"Is she..." I murmured hoarsely. "Is she still at the house?"
"No, she's not," my mom answered simply and showed zero signs of offering any other information.
My mind immediately leapt to all the alternatives, of where she could be living or what she was doing. Part of me wouldn't be surprised if she'd just picked up and moved closer to campus. The truth was I'd been going a little crazy wondering if she was okay, if I'd been too cruel and impassive, if I'd done more damage than I'd intended and I just had to know. And although I'd pushed her away, I couldn't push away what I felt for her. That would always be there, trailing after me like a ghost until the day I died.
"Is she still in town?"
My mom eyed me carefully and leaned forward. "I'm not gonna tell you shit. I know what you want and right about now I'm not so sure you deserve it."
"Wow," I exhaled with a huff. "Thanks, Ma. Love you too."
"I never said I didn't love you," she shook her head ruefully. "You wanna know what I think?"
All I could do was stare. She was just going to tell me anyway.
"I get you didn't want to see her waiting for you, but I think you let your grief do your talking for you. It'd only been two weeks since you lost the baby," her voice caught on that last word and I pushed out a heavy sigh. "And neither of you had enough time to really process that, Caleb, to really deal with it together. That girl has done nothing but love you unconditionally and you bailed on her when she needed you the most. You walked away and left her to clean up your mess."