by K. Ryan
"Total food baby," she laughed. "But seriously, Belle, you look great. You have this glow. I know all pregnant women are supposed to get that, but it looks good on you. You look happy."
"I am."
Please don't do anything that could mess it up. Please don't be stupid, Becca.
"That's good," she smiled back, but the smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "So, um, what else is new?"
Was she fishing for something? Or was she just trying to make small talk to cut this awkwardness? I couldn't make heads or tails of it and all I could really do at this point was play along.
"Well, we set a date."
Becca's eyes lit up. "You did?"
She nodded quietly like she was mulling through all the details as I shared them with her and I had a bad feeling that the details she'd wanted me to share weren't ones about my upcoming wedding.
"That sounds like a good idea," Becca told me in that quiet, ghost-like whisper I was starting to loathe.
Then her hands shot up to cover her face and her shoulders shook. Her entire body seemed to convulse, completely overpowered by this guttural sobbing and before I could let myself consider the repercussions, I stepped forward until I could wrap my arms around her. She crumbled against me and just my touch alone had her body trembling with a fresh wave sobs.
"It's okay," I whispered to her. "Everything's gonna be okay, Becs. Just tell me what's going on. Please. I won't be mad."
"I'm just so sorry," she sobbed. "When I came over here last week, I was such a bitch. I didn't mean to be. I swear I didn't. I was just so scared. I'm still scared and I took it out on you."
I wanted to believe that was all this was about. I really did. But I also knew she'd gone to The Sundown Saloon right after she left my house to buy cocaine. Trusting anything she said right now would be a mistake. As much as it hurt, as much as I ached to help her, I couldn't believe a word she said. Our lines were drawn in the sand now and I couldn't step over that line.
"I know," I told her instead. "That was a really shitty day and neither of us were thinking clearly, you know? We were both scared. We were both emotional. It's okay, Becs. I get it."
She didn't respond and abruptly pulled herself out of my arms so she could brush away her tears with the heel of her hand. A long, harsh exhale blew out from her mouth and then she was staring up at me, trying her best to mold her lips into something that resembled a smile.
"I wish I could just hit rewind or something and do it differently," Becca murmured. "I shouldn't have said all that shit to you and I shouldn't have put you on the spot like that. It wasn't fair."
"Water under the bridge, okay?"
"Right," she laughed and wiped one last tear away from her face. "Can we just forget that ever happened?"
It would be nice if I could actually do that.
"Hey," I shifted gears and gestured with my head to where Eli's laptop still sat at the table. "You want to see this dress I like?"
And for the next half hour, it was like I'd gotten my best friend back. She ooo'd and ahhh'd over the dress and a few others we found on a different website, genuinely excited for my wedding, genuinely happy for the changes happening in my life. We didn't talk about the fact that I hadn't asked her to be my maid of honor because I wasn't sure I wanted her to have the title. We didn't talk about her drug use. We didn't talk about Caleb. We didn't talk about Eli. We didn't talk about the club.
My friendship with Becca had eventually led me to my future husband and the father of my baby. For that, I would always be grateful to her, but I just didn't trust her anymore.
So, when I left the table to take a bathroom break, I should've known better. But I wanted to believe she was still the girl I'd known since we were five-year-olds in matching backpacks and pigtails. I wanted to believe she would do the right thing because by betraying Eli, Caleb, and the rest of the club, she was betraying me too.
As it turned out, I was wrong. And stupid. And gullible.
Both of us closed doors at the exact same moment. Her eyes flew up to me, frozen like a burglar caught under a spotlight, her hand still on the doorknob to the garage. My body stilled, already on high alert, and I couldn't put one foot in front of the other because my feet were just rooted to the carpet.
"What are you doing, Becca?" I whispered.
I didn't even recognize the sound of my own voice. It was foreign even to my own ears. I think my ears might have been buzzing too much to even realize it. The TV suddenly went dead and Seth scrambled into the hallway, positioning himself directly in between me and this potential new threat.
"I'm so sorry," Becca pushed out roughly, tears already welling up in her eyes. "I didn't know what else to do."
"What were you doing in my garage?"
That must've been all Seth needed to hear to dig manically for his phone, but I rested my hand on his arm to stop him.
"Miss, I gotta call—"
"This is still my house, Seth," I instructed quietly. "I can handle this."
He looked terrified, but he backed down nonetheless, unearthing his hand from his pocket without his phone. I didn't even bother telling him to go back into the living room because for the first time in my life, I wanted this buffer between me and my former best friend.
"Becca," I turned my eyes back to her and everything just went cold. The hollowness and dark circles around Becca's eyes, her pale cheeks, the way she was nervously chewing on her bottom lip...guilt was written all over her face.
"You told them something, didn't you?"
Becca's eyes widened and another tear slipped down her cheeks as she shook her head furiously. "I didn't tell them anything, I swear. I have nothing to tell. Eli never talks to me about the club, never tells me anything. I just...I needed to give them something."
My body wrestled free of this shock-induced coma and I was shaking with anger now. "What the hell were you doing in my garage then?"
Becca's eyes darted down to the table as she whispered: "I'm not supposed to tell you anything."
My eyes narrowed dangerously.
"Let me guess," I spat furiously. "They offered you immunity and the drug charges are off the table now, right? All you had to do was what? Snoop through my house?"
Becca's eyes widened in alarm. "How did you know—"
"The ATF aren't the only ones who've been tailing you, Becca."
That did nothing but send her even further down the rabbit hole.
"It's...you...you don't understand, Belle," she stammered. "They said I was gonna go to prison. I can't go to prison! They said I could go away for the maximum sentence. That's 15 years! I can't..."
I felt my lips curl up into a snarl and fought back the urge to slap my former best friend right across her double-crossing, deceitful face.
"Oh, okay," I shot back icily. "Sure, because you're the only one with something to lose? Who cares about anyone else?"
"I'm so sorry," Becca whispered. "I didn't know what else to do. They knew everything, they followed me, they had pictures of me buying...you know. There was no other way out of it. I'm so sorry."
Becca's jaw trembled and as she sucked in a shaky, stunted breath, and I could barely even breathe, let alone understand what I was hearing.
"Why didn't you tell me? I would've tried to help you. God, if you would've just told somebody what the ATF wanted from you, if you'd been honest about it, Becca, I think they would've—"
"They would've killed me!" Becca cried. "I didn't think I had a choice."
"You had a choice," I shot back darkly. "And you chose wrong."
Becca nodded sadly and just squeezed her eyes shut as another tear fell down her cheek. I was suddenly aware there could be more happening here than I'd initially assumed. Becca could be wearing a wire and she was holding her cell phone in a death-grip, so who knew if she was taking pictures or recording, who knew what the terms of her deal were.
"Get out of my house," I whispered.
I hoped I never saw her again. I k
new I'd never see her again. Even if she got away, even if they whisked her away to witness protection, if she'd even still get it, Becca was already gone.
Now I had to watch my former best friend pass right by me down the hallway and walk out my front door for good.
I shuffled down the hallway toward the garage and stared numbly ahead of me, vaguely aware that Seth was on the phone in the living room. My hand crept down to protectively cover my stomach as I pushed open the door to step inside the garage. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of my mind, I was very aware I probably shouldn't have let Becca leave like that.
A split-decision ruled by my conscience and one I'd probably have to answer for later, but right now I didn't care. Becca would never get very far anyway. Maybe, whether it was subconscious or otherwise, all I'd done was give her a head-start.
Now, my hands were in everything, skimming across every surface, dipping into every box, every drawer, searching for whatever Becca had been looking for. On my hands and knees looking underneath Caleb's workbench. Digging into the consoles of my mom's Trans Am and Caleb's truck, sifting through the glove boxes, ducking to look underneath the seats...nothing. At least nothing that could even be a little incriminating. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing but old motorcycle manuals, tools, boxes of junk we didn't really need, a few rakes, two sprinklers, and a lawn mower.
What did she think she was going to find in here?
I popped up from underneath the driver's seat in Caleb's truck just as the garage door flung open to reveal Caleb, Dom, Eli, and pretty much every other member of the club crowding into my kitchen and gaping back at me. After a beat, Caleb bounded down the short steps from the kitchen into the garage to stalk over to his truck and pull open the door. I braced myself for malice, anger, something for what had happened in our house tonight, but instead, his forehead creased with worry and his hand reached for my shoulder.
"You okay, Iz?"
I shook my head, choosing to wave a hand around the truck instead. "I'm trying to figure out what the hell she was doing, what she was looking for."
My head snapped to the side at some shuffling to my right and I was met with a somber-faced Dom, an irate Marcus, and a pale, grief-stricken Eli. Caleb just nodded, ignoring the presence of the three Horsemen cuts behind him. He hitched both hands on his hips as he surveyed the space around him and all its contents.
"There's nothing," I told him. "I've looked everywhere. I just can't figure it out. Why would she come in here? She had her cell phone with her, so maybe she was taking some pictures or video? I just can't figure out why."
Caleb shot Dom a quick glance, his eyes squinting in thought and then he crouched down, dropping to the ground so he could slide his entire torso underneath the truck to sweep both hands along the inside of the frame. In reality it only took him a few minutes, but it felt like hours as the rest of us waited in various degrees of impatience, fury, and disbelief.
It wasn't until his long arm reached up inside the tire well directly above the passenger seat that I heard it.
"Shit," Caleb muttered under his breath. Then he slid back out from underneath the truck and held up a tiny rectangle-shaped black box.
A low string of curses erupted from the cuts around me and everything went a little hazy. It was like that scene in a movie where the main character has that moment, that moment of realization, that moment of absolute and complete terror when the frame around them zooms out in a flash—I was living that moment. That realization. That terror.
I went completely numb as Caleb strode around to the Trans Am, repeating the exact inspection he'd done to his truck, and reappeared minutes later with a second identical black box in his hand.
Even I knew what those black boxes were used for. GPS trackers. Put under both vehicles in my garage by my former best friend.
Somehow, I managed to slip out of the truck, shut the door, and find my way to Caleb, my eyes fixed on the two black boxes in his hands the entire time.
"I can't believe it," I whispered.
Now a pointed finger jabbed in my face.
"You wanna explain to me why you let that fucking rat just stroll out of your house?" Marcus spat in my face.
He was red in the face, practically foaming at the mouth with fury, and all that venom leveled right in my direction knocked the wind out of me, but Caleb was in between us in a flash, holding up both hands to force Marcus to step back.
"She didn't know what was going on," Caleb told him in a calm, even tone with just a hint of warning.
Marcus narrowed his eyes into tight slits. "I don't give a shit. There's a right way to do things and tonight, your woman did shit the wrong way."
"She didn't know," Caleb told him again, this time his voice cracked with more than just a warning. He took a small step forward, but it was enough to reinforce he wasn't backing down.
"I just wanted her out of my house," I interjected quietly, even though I felt Dom's mammoth-sized hands on my shoulders to hold me in place. "The only thing I could think of to stop her was to get her out of my house."
And because I couldn't stomach the sight of her.
And because I couldn't stomach watching them descend on her like the pack of wolves I knew they were.
Marcus leaned to the side to get a better look at me from over Caleb's shoulder, his eyes darkening with calculating appraisal. I knew what I'd done wrong, but I couldn't apologize for the knee-jerk reaction and for ultimately following my instincts.
I especially wouldn't apologize for something that had happened in my own house, but I also wasn't stupid enough to say that to his face.
The only reaction I got from Marcus was a grunt in my general direction and then that was it. Caleb's hand had replaced Dom's and then he was leading me up the steps to the kitchen. All the rest of the club members had packed into the space, filling the area from wall to wall as Marcus dropped down into a chair at the table.
"Hey, Blondie," Marcus called out to me, lifting a hand to wave me into the hallway. "Why don't you go to your room and find somethin' to watch on TV? We got some club business to take care of here in your kitchen."
His words might've been directed at me, but his eyes were squarely on Caleb the entire time as if he was challenging him, goading him to see how he would react. Caleb stood still next to me, a tight line ticking down his jaw and the hand on my shoulder clenched ever-so-slightly. It was right on the tip of my tongue to defend myself, to tell him he couldn't kick me out of my own kitchen, but then I remembered who I was dealing with. What I knew he wanted to do to Becca.
Lipping off to the club president seemed like a pretty poor choice right about now.
Everyone was just standing here, waiting for the next move, and since this whole pissing contest in the middle of my kitchen had gotten old after about a second, I was done with all this for the night. I'd already shut the door to my home studio before I heard any murmurs from the kitchen.
So, those moments I was looking for, those feelings I'd needed to create art?
It looked like I'd just stumbled on those in abundance tonight.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Clean-Up
Caleb
Everyone knew what needed to be done. Now, it was just a matter of making quick work of the details. But when Marcus slipped his cigarette pack out of his cut, I took that opportunity to remind him whose table he was currently at.
"You're not smokin' that in here," I told him as I dropped down into a chair across from him. "You need to smoke, you step outside."
He arched an eyebrow at me in challenge, but I shrugged it off.
"My house, my rules."
He shot me an exasperated glare, but I wasn't backing down on this one. Not after the way he'd spoken to Isabelle, the accusation in his voice, the harsh, aggressive tone, and the way he'd disrespected her.
Her instincts were different than anyone else's in this kitchen and she was a little more emotionally invested in keeping Becca in one piece than any
of us combined, including Eli. I never wanted her to lose the part of herself that was good, decent, and honest, especially not because of the club. All she'd done tonight was be the person I'd fallen head over ass for. All she'd done tonight was be a decent human being.
That was more than I could say for the rest of us.
"Now," Marcus pressed on. "Who's going with Eli on garbage duty? The longer we sit here, the longer it'll take us to send that trash where it belongs."
From the corner of my eye, I could see Eli grimace and run a hand over his face. Life as he knew it was over.
"I'll go," I volunteered quietly.
Becca had come into my house and planted two GPS trackers in my garage to set me up. Putting the tracker on Isabelle's car might as well have been the nail in her coffin for me. I didn't care who she was. As much as her connection to Isabelle would make putting this matter to bed uncomfortable and that much more difficult, she couldn't be allowed to just walk away. Clean-up duty wasn't something I relished, but we had no other choice.
Eli nodded to me, his face stony and expressionless and I had to give him credit for that. Maybe he wanted to make her look him in the eye, to force her to explain herself. If I were him, I think that's what I would need too.
Dom leaned down to me, "I can hang here with Isabelle until you get back."
I nodded to him and scrubbed a hand over my face as my gaze shifted to Eli. "They've obviously got nothin' 'cuz they wouldn't have had her doing this shit if they did. I doubt they'd give her any real protection now, so she's gonna be runnin' on her own. Any ideas where she would go?"
Eli blew out a deep breath. "I have no idea."
Marcus gestured with his head toward the hallway and catching his drift, I begrudgingly rose from my chair to go get the one person in this house that could actually help us, the same person Marcus had just dismissed from the kitchen like a house servant. After a pause, I pushed open the door to find her sitting on her stool with her back to me, earbuds lodged in her ears with her paintbrush sweeping furiously around the canvas.
