Carry You Home (Carry Your Heart #2) (52 page)

I fumbled with the T-shirt a little as I slipped it over my head and brought the material to my nose so I could inhale deeply. My eyes fluttered shut and I let myself get lost in his T-shirt for just a moment before pulling on the sweatpants he'd insisted I wear.

I just want you to be comfortable here,
he'd told me, but what he was really saying was,
I want you to be comfortable here and clothed as much as humanly possible.

Short of coming out of his bathroom decked out from head to toe in scuba gear, his T-shirt and sweatpants would have to do for tonight. He could handle it and I hoped I could, too.

I closed my eyes again as his words washed over me.
Please, Iz, just stay with me.
It was amazing how something so simple could be so complicated. I would've given anything to hear those words the day I left Claremont for good, but he let me leave instead. As much as every alarm bell in my head screamed,
Warning! Warning!
—as much as I wanted to hold out and ask him to drive me back to my dad's instead, one look, one kiss, one moment, and I was sunk.

Why did he make me feel so weak when all I wanted to be was strong?

I didn't really know what I just signed myself up for. Whether I stayed one night or any more after it, this would be a short-term stay. But when he looked at me with such vulnerability, such sincerity, such
love,
and finally saying the words I'd wanted to hear even if it was six years too late, any resolve I had to keep him at arm's length crumbled. And it just didn't feel all that wrong to be here with him right now, to want to be near him, to want to feel his arms around me.

So I shut out the rest of the noise and opened the bathroom door.

Caleb had his back to me as he rummaged around his tiny apartment, shoving some dishes in the sink, and turned on his heel to backpedal toward the bed, stopping only to straighten the comforter a little, none the wiser that I'd opened the door.

I took a few careful steps out of the bathroom and his head shot up at the movement. His lips curved and he rubbed the back of his neck anxiously as his eyes trailed up and down my body as if he wanted to memorize the way I looked right now in his T-shirt and sweatpants. I glanced down at my attire and tugged on my pant leg.

"They're a little big, huh?"

"Maybe just a little," he laughed lightly, still watching me as I bent down to roll up the sweatpants so I could move around easier.

I shuffled aimlessly deeper inside the apartment, so treacherously close to the bed, and fought the urge to wring my hands. Why the hell didn't he have any other furniture in here? I guess he didn't really need to considering the bed was just ten feet away from his TV, but right about now, I wished this apartment was just a little bit bigger so there could be just a little bit more space between us.

Screw it.

It was now or never.

I flopped down on Caleb's bed and mentally congratulated myself for only thinking about how many other women had been in this bed one time. That thought passed through the deep recesses of my mind and I rolled onto my back, testing the mattress a little with my elbow before folding my hands across my stomach.

Caleb hesitated. He stood at the foot of the bed, chewing on the inside of his cheek, scrubbed his face with both hands, and finally gave in, collapsing next to me, but careful to give me a good foot of much-needed space. I tried to stare up at the ceiling in peace until I felt his fingertips leave a light trail down the side of my neck, tracing the three stars underneath my ear.

"What does this mean, Iz?"

The truth wasn't something I wanted to admit out loud. I couldn't tell him I'd gotten it after one of the darkest days I'd ever had post-Claremont and post-Caleb. I couldn't tell him I'd cried in the chair and that my tears had nothing to do with the sting from the tattoo gun. And I definitely couldn't tell him the tattoo had been intended to form some sort of cosmic, ill-conceived connection with him in spite of all the distance between us.

My eyes fell to the upside-down compass on his left arm as he rested his forearm against his stomach where I had clear view of it, as if to taunt me into telling the truth, to admit that as much as I denied it until I was blue in the face, I knew as well as anybody that our connection had never faded away. And because I was either completely stupid or inherently strong, I couldn't give him that full truth.

"I was feeling lost," I whispered, my eyes still trained on the compass. "I guess I was just trying to find my way."

Caleb glanced down at the ink on his arm, the design I'd painstakingly created for him so long ago, and I knew he understood. Compasses and the stars: cosmic symbols of the literal and metaphorical search for direction. His fingertips continued their exploration, making me shiver with every inch of skin he grazed, until his thumb brushed my cheek.

I wanted to ask him if he still had my name inked right over his heart, but finding out for sure would require him to take his shirt off and I just wasn't mentally prepared for that tonight in light of everything else.

Instead, I reached out to let my fingers skim across those three letters written on the top of his left wrist.

"When did you get this?" I murmured.

"Awhile ago," he whispered hoarsely, echoing my vague answer from last night.

Tears stung my eyes. I'd put up a brave front all day, but I just didn't have the strength.

"How did we get here, Caleb?" I whispered.

He sighed heavily and his hand dropped back down to the mattress. "Shitty luck and even shittier decisions."

"Yeah," I laughed mirthlessly. "I guess that sounds about right. I mean, I know how it happened, but it still just doesn't make any sense. I just don't understand
why
it happened."

While on paper, my life was everything a well-adjusted, mature 30-year-old should want—professional success, stability, money, a tiny bit of fame, and a healed relationship with my dad—none of it felt real except for the part about my dad. The truth was I just wasn't all that well-adjusted. I just wasn't all that happy. And I probably wasn't as mature as I pretended to be either.

"I know what you mean," Caleb's thick voice called out to me. "I think about that everyday."

"Me too," I admitted.

Silence permeated the air between us before I finally found the words I wanted to say.

"I can't believe she'd be eight."

He winced and swallowed hard, rubbing his eyes with his hands. When his hand dropped back to the mattress again with his palm out to me, I knew what he was asking for. I slid my hand into his waiting palm and squeezed tight.

"You know," he murmured. "I always pictured her with your eyes. Your smile, too. She would've looked just like you. Would've driven me crazy, too, probably."

I smiled through my tears and finally wiped them away with the back of my free hand.

"Well, I always pictured her with
your
eyes. You know that crazy look you get sometimes when you're up to no good? She would've totally had that."

He laughed, but it was a pain-filled one, the kind of laugh that took as much as it gave.

"Sometimes when I take Coop for walks in the park, I purposefully avoid the playgrounds just because I can't handle seeing all the moms there with their kids. Part of me wants to scream at them because they don't know how lucky they are and part of me just wants to scream."

A strangled sound choked in his throat and he rubbed his mouth with his free hand, but I pressed on.

"I just never knew anything could
hurt
that much. The contractions felt like someone was stabbing me from the inside and I could feel it, Caleb. I could feel her leaving us. The doctor didn't even have to tell me because I already knew. And all the rest of it, seeing her, holding her, having to say goodbye to her..."

He shifted long enough to wrap his arm around my shoulders to pull me to his chest and I buried my face in his T-shirt.

"I've never felt so helpless in my entire life," he whispered in my hair.

"You were there," I told him. "That's what I needed."

His lips brushed against my forehead and I leaned into him, letting him envelope me as the memories of that day washed over us.

"I still feel like it's my fault," I exhaled, finally voicing what I'd never been able to say out loud before, not even in front of my therapist.

"Iz—"

"I felt those pains in my stomach for almost an hour before I did anything about it," I cut in abruptly. "I was too scared. I thought if maybe I pretended it wasn't happening then it would go away, but all that did was make it worse."

"You didn't do anything wrong," Caleb murmured. "And there wasn't anything we could do."

"I know that now," I nodded into his chest. "But I still keep thinking,
did I not take care of myself the way I was supposed to? Did I not eat enough? Sleep enough?"

For some reason, feeling his arms around me finally gave me the strength to say the words that always lingered below the surface of my guilt and my heartbreak.

"I'm so scared," I whispered and he tilted my head back to look at me, his blue eyes watering with unshed tears. "What if it happens again, Caleb? I'd never survive it."

His thumb ran across my cheek to catch a stray tear and then he leaned down to brush his lips against mine. It was exactly what I needed and all of my fears didn't seem quite so momentous as long as he was holding me like this.

"That doctor told me it happens a lot," Caleb swallowed tightly, brushing some hair out of my eyes. "He said plenty of women go on to have babies after and I believe that, Iz. When we're...when
you're
ready, things'll play out in that hospital differently."

I smiled at the gesture. There was no way either of us could possibly know for sure that it would, but now hope trampled through all that lingering fear. And here we were, talking about this like we were almost a real couple, making plans and getting ready to make more babies. Bittersweet irony, especially today.

"Do you regret any of it?" he asked me now.

"What do you mean?"

He lifted a shoulder and sighed into my hair. "Do you wish you hadn't—"

"No, not for a second. I don't regret that we got to hold her, that we got to see her. I'll never regret that as long as I live."

Caleb nodded somberly and kissed me again.

"I guess sometimes I think maybe we should've done
something
to acknowledge that she was real."

"She was real," Caleb told me hoarsely. "You gave birth to her. We held her. She was real, Iz."

"I know," I smiled again through my tears. "I just wish we'd had some sort of service or something like that. I'm not even all that religious, but I think it would've been nice."

It would've been closure, too, but neither of us were really in the right mindset at the time for that.

"I didn't know you..." he shook his head. "I never even thought of that. I'm sorry, Iz. Everything just happened so fast, you know? I could barely keep my head on straight, let alone keep up."

"We crashed and burned pretty epically, didn't we?"

"Yeah," he laughed sadly. "We did."

"I think we were just too young to handle all that at once."

He nodded and blew out a deep breath. "I'm sorry I couldn't give you all the things I wanted to back then. I just couldn't balance everything in a way that would've gotten us a different ending. I guess it's like you said—I was too young and too stupid to know that I didn't know everything."

The problem was that somewhere, deep down, I still wanted him to give me all those things we'd wanted when we were young and naive and hopelessly, recklessly in love. I just didn't trust myself to reach for it.

I nuzzled his chest a little more, pressing myself against him, and he sucked in a hard breath.

"Maybe I should sleep on the couch in my office," he chuckled. "That might be safer."

"No," I shook my head, just burying my face even deeper in his chest. "I want you right here."

He stilled against me and swallowed tight. "Iz, I'm gonna tell you something right now and I don't want you to say anything, okay? I'll just hold you for the rest of the night."

I almost didn't want to know. I almost didn't want to let myself hear. But what else was I supposed to do?

He must've taken my silence as his answer because he leaned forward, pressed his lips to my forehead, and whispered: "I should've married you when I had the chance."

I let him wrap his arms around me even tighter, drawing me closer, pressing me in deeper, and I buried my face in his chest, finally allowing tears, grief, and heartbreak to rest for the night. Wrapped up in Caleb, surrounded by his warmth, enveloped in the safety I always felt in his arms, it was almost too good to be true. Too real not to be a dream.

And that was enough to carry me away until it was too good to be true, until I jerked awake in the middle of the night to the sound of breaking glass.

Caleb

I shot up in bed, stiff and on high alert. Isabelle had already jerked out of my arms and stared back at me, wide-eyed and chest heaving. Everything seemed to rush around me in a blur—I leapt off my bed, dove underneath it for the handgun I kept hidden there for this very reason, and skidded over to the window overlooking the garage.