Free Carry You Home (Carry Your Heart #2) by K. Ryan Page A

wouldn't hesitate. You know that, right?"
    Isabelle frowned back at me, even as my hand slid over her fingertips and squeezed. For someone like her, who'd never known what being connected to the club really meant on this most basic level, who'd never had to draw a gun to protect someone she cared about, I knew how hearing all this must feel for her. The shock. The disbelief. The disgust. It was all there, written across her pale face. I couldn't blame her.
    "I didn't want to talk to you about all of this," I whispered hoarsely. "Because I knew I wouldn't be able to handle the way you're lookin' at me. I didn't want you to know, even though you deserved to."
    She deserved to know who she was about to marry, have a kid with, and have a life with. And if it was really too much, if she really couldn't take it, maybe it was better that I just knew it now.
    But instead of running away, instead of looking at me with the disgust I probably deserved, Isabelle just nodded soberly and reached out to touch my face. "I get it. I really do. I can't believe I'm saying this right now, but at the end of the day, I don't think I care what you've done as long as you're safe and you're coming home to me."
    That acceptance, even if there was resignation attached to it too, was exactly what I needed from her. While all of this had shed new light on everything Isabelle probably thought she knew about the club, she wasn't running out the door screaming her head off and taking our kid with her.
    But now, with the weight of the club's orders settling on my shoulders, I knew it was pretty much time for her to leave the clubhouse so she could prove to Marcus, for once and for all, that she was an old lady who could be trusted.
    "Hey, Iz," I rested both hands around her face and brushed some hair out of her eyes. "I gotta ask you a question now and I'm sorry I have to ask it, but if there's anything I need to know, anything they might try to use against us, you need to tell me now."
    That wasn't really a question, but it was mainly because I already knew the answer anyway. I just needed to be sure and cover all my bases before Eli and ZZ came back with their report.
    "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