ISAAC

 

Twelve fucking months.

Twelve months it’s taken to pull Shelly and me free of Doreen and the life we both signed up for. I thought I could drop out quietly. After that last job, I assumed my release was guaranteed. But yet again, to keep Via safe, I had no choice but to carry on.

When the lies and deceit went further than anyone expected, and we found the other Black Ops team on the wrong side of our fence, something had to be done. As Via and Helena were involved and almost killed, my hierarchy decided I had to choose. Bring the girls in and interrogate them until we knew there was nothing incriminating that they remembered. But I knew the type of interrogation they would use could scar them both for life, inside and out, and they’d been through enough. The other choice was getting them to sign a non-disclosure agreement and someone keeping a watch on them from afar. The only stipulation was that our team had to keep working. We were tasked with getting to the bottom of the internal problem, then bringing the whole structure down. Only then would we be granted our freedom. Only then would Via be truly free.

I spoke to my team, and they all had my back, thankfully.

Three weeks ago was our final mission. We cut down the entire operation, and both Shelly and I had our release forms signed. Kane doesn’t exist anymore, not that he has for a while now, not for me.

I’m officially back to being Isaac James. I hope that’s enough, it has to be enough.

“Did you talk to her?” Shelly asks coming out of the kitchen.

We both have a pretty hefty nest egg now, and Shelly wants to buy her own place, but she doesn’t know where she wants to settle, so I told her to stay here for a bit. There’s no family waiting anywhere for her. I’m lucky to have people who love me. The team was Shelly’s only family, and the rest of the guys wanted to stay on. Darwin took over leadership of the team, so they’re in good hands.

“I did.”

“And?” she asks, an apron on and flour over her hands and face.

“Are you becoming domesticated, Shelly?” I ask with a smirk.

“Fuck you, and answer my question,” she demands.

“I told her she doesn’t have a choice. I’ve given her a week.”

“Shit. So you didn’t go and explain anything then? You basically strong-armed your way in and told her how things were going to be?”

“Pretty much,” I answer, throwing my jacket over the back of the sofa.

“Isaac—”

“Stop,” I order cutting her off. “I know her, okay? I know what I did, what I kept from her, and I also know what I need to do. I know what Via responds to. Don’t stick your nose into this, Shelly. Don’t.”

She nods. “Sorry, it’s only that I want you to win her back, your whole life has been about her, and she has no fucking clue.”

Shelly walks back into the kitchen, and I follow her to the door looking around at the mess. Reaching up to the top of the doorframe, I stretch my body out. “What the fuck are you doing in here?” I ask, looking at the disaster before me. She shrugs and her cheeks start to pink. I’ve never, not once, seen Shelly embarrassed. “Shel?” I push.

“I’m making scones.”

Chuckling, I step inside the kitchen and reach out to touch one of the sticky blobs waiting to go into the oven.

Shelly slaps my hand. “Don’t touch!”

I grin. “You don’t eat cakes, and you definitely don’t bake. Who are these for?”

“No one.”

“Bullshit.”

“Just leave it, Isaac.”

“You poke your nose into my business, tell me who they’re for.”

“Toby… they’re for Toby,” she whispers, and her usual self-assured presence disappears.

“Hey, what’s up?” I question, moving closer to her.

Shelly looks up at me. “There’s so much uncertainty in my life, Isaac,” she spews the words out like a release. “I have no family. Only you. I liked Toby from the moment I first saw him. But I’m basing the next part of my life on the possibility of him and me, and that’s not who I am. The trouble is, I don’t know who I am without the team, without the missions.”

“Fuck,” I murmur and pull her into me. She clings on tight, and I do the same. “Shelly, you’re like a little sister to me, and before you hit me, I mean that earnestly. Toby would be lucky to have you. I’m pretty sure he knows that, and although the two of you are very new, I want you both to be happy, and for what it’s worth, I think it will work out.”

Shelly pulls away from me and goes back to the scones putting them in the oven. “We’ll see where it goes.” She shrugs like it’s all the same to her.

I leave her to it and head to the gym hitting my phone as I move.

“Isaac.”

“Toby.”

“What’s up?”

“This thing with Shelly, you invested?” I ask him.

My question is met with silence. “Toby?”

“Why are you asking?” his voice is laced with suspicion.

“Don’t get the wrong idea, Toby. Shelly has been part of my team for years. I know her, and I care about her like a little sister. You’re my brother, and I love you. I would love nothing more than for the two of you to live golden. I know where her head’s at, I’m asking where’s yours?”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know I like her. I’m aware she’s been through stuff I’ll never understand. I also know she has no one, so I’m not in this to fuck it up.”

“Good.”

“What about Liv? Where you at with her?” he returns, and I smile to myself.

“I’ve told her where we’re at, now she just needs to get her head on right,” I offer.

“So you didn’t speak soft, you didn’t go in calm and slow and ask for some of her time? You bulldozed your way in…”

“You think she’d expect anything different from me? You think if I pussyfooted around her she’d think I was serious?”

“Point made,” he concedes. “So what’s your plan?”

“Well, I need to make a statement to her. To the family. One week I said, so next Saturday at Mum’s birthday.”

“Is that really the place to do it?”

I shrug even though he can’t see it. “Our family loves us. If they see fit to be angry or go against this, then I don’t need them in my life. Mum and Dad know how I feel, they support us. Uncle Dane and Aunt Libby are gone now, no one’s looking to lose more family.”

“True.”

“Right, I have to go. When you see Shelly later, pretend you like scones, okay?”

“Erm, sure,” Toby answers confused.

“Later,” I return and cut the call.

I’m giving Via her week. I’m hoping she asks me any questions she wants answers to, but either way, next weekend I’m claiming her for good, forever.

 

 

LIV

 

“So, pizza?” Helena asks walking through the door.

“Mmm… smells lush,” I reply as my tummy groans in agreement.

We sit side by side on the sofa and scoff through the whole large Hawaiian pizza and obsess over two episodes of Sons of Anarchy before I can’t take the tension anymore.

“Okay, spill,” I spit out turning to face her.

“What?” she asks wincing.

“We both know you’re here to tell me something, you’re moving in with Noah, right?”

Helena crinkles up her nose. “Yeah,” she mutters.

I pull her body into mine giving her a hug. “It’s okay,” I whisper before pulling back.

“I thought you’d be pissed at me.”

“Why?”

“Because… I don’t know.” She shrugs

“You’re a nutcase.”

We both giggle, and the tension dissipates.

“You can afford this place by yourself? If not, I can stay until you find another roommate,” she offers.

“No. I can afford it.” I smile.

“Good.” Helena takes a sip of her lemonade and smiles. “So, what’s new in your life?”

“Isaac’s back,” I blurt out the words. Since his visit last night, or more precisely the early hours of this morning—after which I had little sleep—my brain has been on overdrive.

“What?” she exhales.

I nod. “Yeah.”

“How… what… explain!”

I grin, but it quickly drops off. “He wants me back, but I’m not sure I can ride that rollercoaster, not again.”

“Don’t dismiss him, babe. There may be plausible reasons for all of his behaviour.”

I purse my lips, but say nothing in response.

“More SOA?” she asks, and I nod.

I need to forget about him, at least for now.

 

 

The music swallows me up, and I close my eyes while Sia sings ‘Elastic Heart,’ the movements I make are emotion filled, and I want to cry. I want to believe him… but how can I? Spinning, I suddenly lose my footing and fall.

“Liv!” Toby shouts, rushing from the bench he was sitting on across the room. “Shit, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say standing up and brushing myself down.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he urges, grabbing my wrist.

“You know what,” I say ripping my arm free.

“Isaac?”

“Obviously,” I snark.

“You know he’s back for good, right?” he states.

My breath catches and my chest aches. “No, I didn’t.”

“Did you ask him?”

I shake my head looking away from the judgement shining in his eyes.

“Did you ask him anything?”

“No,” I groan.

“Oh, Liv. He told you to ask whatever you wanted and yet you’ve not had one question?”

I sink back down to the floor and cross my legs like a school child. “I didn’t want to wonder if he was going to be honest or not. He’s broken my heart twice now, Toby. I won’t survive a third time,” I admit.

“I get it,” he says, and I look up as he lowers himself to sit opposite me, his legs out straight in front of him. “I do, honestly.”

I smile sadly but say no more. Since I’ve seen Isaac, he’s been the only thing on my mind. This visit hasn’t left room in my head for processing much else, not even enough to text him one single damn question.

“Ask me.”

“Huh?” I rub my eyes, deflation making my body droop.

“What do you want to know? I’ll try and answer if I can. But I have to let you know that I will tell Isaac later. I’m not giving you answers to drop him in it. I’m giving them so you can hopefully see how much he loves you.”

“He loves me?”

“Oh, come on, Liv, you know he does.”

I nod. “Okay, what I mean is, he loves me enough?”

“Enough for what?” he questions, a frown appearing across his forehead.

“To be honest? With me, with our family… with himself?”

“Yep.”

“Okay.” I want to believe it to be true, but Isaac has never been keen to talk to our family about the two of us, and on top of that, it took him years to admit how he felt about me.

Toby sighs. “I can’t make you see the truth, you just have to have a little faith… you have to believe in him.”

His words hit home. I once believed his words. For years he could have told me the sky was animated—put there to convince us of our earthly existence—and I would have taken his words as gospel. He broke my faith and my trust, and now I don’t even know if I can even believe in myself.

“What’s really going on with Shelly and him?”

Toby’s face changes, jealousy clouds his eyes, and I frown. “He loves her like a little sister. She has no family, and she’s been one of his team members for years.”

“Team members,” I murmur, pinching my bottom lip between my finger and thumb.

“Yeah. You know he was Black Ops, right?” The confusion must be obvious because Toby sighs. “Okay, let me start from the beginning. I pray that Isaac doesn’t break my neck for this.”

Pulling my arms around myself, I hold my body, needing a little comfort.

“When Isaac beat up Charlie, your old boyfriend, he went to prison.”

I nod, knowing that story well.

“He was offered a place on a Black Ops team. It was a deal he was given.”

“A deal?” I question.

“That’s right. You see he came back for your birthday, but he was going to join Black Ops anyway. When he got charged and arrested, it put a spanner in the works. Your boyfriend, Charlie, the one going to the local university and seemingly living normally with three other guys in that house… yeah, not only was he a little prick, but he was the son of a bigger prick, some foreign dignitary.”

“Oh my God!” I gasp, my hand automatically shooting to cover my mouth. “He never talked about his family,” I mumble through my fingers.

Toby shrugs. “Isaac signed up like he had always planned, they had headhunted him so no matter what he had done, they still wanted him. But there were two conditions.”

“Which were?”

Toby rubs his forehead and sighs. “He had to go overseas, away from his family and commit completely to his team and his handler,” he pauses and stares at me, looking for something—a crack maybe?

“And two?” I push.

“He wasn’t allowed to have any contact with you. None.”

All the air leaves my lungs, and I choke and cough trying to breathe. It’s like someone has poked me with a cattle prod, and at the same time, I feel like I’m in a beautiful dream.

He never hated me.

He never hated me.

I can’t stop the tears as the swell of emotion attacks me.

“Why?” I brokenly ask.

“Charlie was a dick, even after Isaac nearly killed him. He was threatening to come back, to force himself into your life again. Isaac had only one demand of his own before joining the team, which was your safety. Charlie had to stay away, but in turn, Charlie insisted that the only way he would agree, was if Isaac had no contact with you either. It was spiteful, but I guess lying in traction unable to move can make a guy bitter. So he communicated that little nugget. His dad made it so.”

My shoulders shake as the rest of my body trembles.

“He wasn’t avoiding me?”

“No, sweetheart. He wasn’t avoiding you. He made me keep him up to date with everything that was you throughout all the years.”

“Toby...” my voice breaks as my heart shatters with my pain, Isaac’s pain, our love, and the resolution that’s just settled in my heart, “… he left again after he rescued me,” I say through the river of tears.

“Yeah, he wanted out of Black Ops. He wanted to give you a normal life, Liv, a good, clean life. The only way they would let him out after you were kidnapped was to take him away again. He had to do things, stuff he won’t talk to me about. But now he’s out, and he’s come back… for you.”

“For me.”

“For you, Liv. All for you.”

“He said I have a week to get my head straight. That was Saturday… it’s Wednesday now. I have to ask, did he send you Toby?”

“No, Liv. But I love you, and I love my brother. His love for you is bigger than everything else to him. You’re more important to Isaac than even his own life. I just want to help if I can,” he explains with an offhand shrug.

“You have… really. I need to go and think about everything,” I say standing and grabbing my bag.

“I understand. Go and do your thing, but Liv?” Toby says still sitting on the floor. I turn back to look at him. “Make the right decision.”

I turn and walk out, my mind a complete jumble.