LUST: A Bad Boy and Amish Girl Romance (The Brody Bunch Book 2)

by Valentine, Sienna

  No. No, that wasn’t fair. But it wasn’t exactly untrue, either. Ash had always made it very clear—to everyone—that he wasn’t the kind of guy who got attached. With me, he’d had little choice—he had a job to do. But he was probably itching for someone new. He probably wanted to fly, and was starting to see me and this apartment as his cage.

  What he actually said, though, was way worse.

  “Hannah… you have to go to the police.”

  “No.” The word was out of my mouth before I could stop it, a single syllable that was almost lost with how quickly I spat it. Just to clarify my position, I added, “Absolutely not.”

  “You have to,” Ash repeated. “Shit, Hannah, trust me when I say that under different circumstances, I’d be the last one to tell you to go to the cops. And… and I know the statistics on this kind of thing aren’t good.” I snorted. I was willing to bet he looked that up on his phone. “But it’s the best tool you have at your disposal to protect your sisters—not to mention the other girls in the village that might be preyed upon next.”

  “I told you,” I said coolly, “they don’t risk that kind of thing anymore.”

  “Do you know that?” he asked, his tone just as even as mine was. “Or do you just think it? Look at what happened with my apartment, Hannah. That was a pretty big risk for your father to take.”

  “If it even was him,” I muttered, even though my gut told me Ash was right. “Could be you pissed off someone else. You’re pretty good at that, you know?”

  “I know.” Ash let the words hang for a moment before he continued. “But this isn’t the first time your father has sent someone to bring what he perceives as ‘his’ back to him. You know that better than anyone. That’s why you asked me and my brothers to help protect you. Protect your sisters. You’ve got one hell of a gut instinct, Miller. Don’t sell yourself short on it now.”

  I sighed. “This is all speculation, Ash. There’s nothing to prove it was him or one of his lackeys.” I was doing exactly what he’d told me not to do; engaging in a struggle I seemed to constantly entertain. On one hand, I’d learned to trust my instincts over the years. On the other, the damage of being called crazy, of being made out to be a liar, of not being believed… it had done a number on me. I felt like I was right and wrong, simultaneously. I felt like I knew everything and nothing at all.

  Ash studied my face for a moment. Then he wet his lips and softly asked me, “What if you’re wrong?”

  I didn’t answer him. Turns out, that was all the answer he needed. He asked, “Even if you’re right… do you really think they’ve stopped forever?”

  I closed my eyes. Fuck.

  I knew the answer to that question. Knew it, even though I didn’t want to. No, of course they hadn’t stopped for good. They’d stopped only because they were worried I might come after them. Or hell, maybe Mom had been a little more suspicious than I’d given her credit for. Maybe she was keeping a closer eye on him, on the elders in general. Even though there was nothing she could actually do about it, even if she caught them red-handed, perhaps it made them nervous. Gave them performance anxiety.

  I sure as hell hoped so.

  “Hannah?” he asked me, and I looked up at him. “Do you really think—”

  “No,” I said before he could ask again. “No. One day, they’ll start up again. But you don’t understand. Filing a report won’t stop them.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because what are the cops gonna do?” I asked him, throwing my hands up in frustration. “It was over two years ago, Ash! There’s no rape kit. No evidence of any kind. There’s just my word against that of an upstanding Amish gentleman, who will tell the police the same story he told my mother. And they’ll believe him because I’m a promiscuous bartender who drinks to forget and owns too many band t-shirts.” I sighed, looking away. “There’s no point. I told you, even if the townspeople found out, they wouldn’t care. At absolute worst, they’d banish him, but knowing my father, he’d just find some new community to fuck up.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Ash said, sitting up and turning to face me, “maybe they won’t be able to arrest him. And maybe the town won’t do a damn thing to him. But your report… it could set a precedent, Hannah.” He paused and looked away, almost like he was embarrassed. “I’ve done a little reading. I dunno, I woke up early and… and I started to Google. And filing an official report, providing the police with all the information you can about what happened to you, it could help some other girl down the line. Some girl who runs away, just like you did, only she tells the police what happened to her. On her own, it’s her word against his, but with your report on file? With details that seem to match up? That’s a huge red flag, love. They’d have to do something about it then.” He moved to take my hand. “And that’s… that’s something, Hannah.”

  He wasn’t wrong. The logic was sound. But there was another aspect to this whole thing he wasn’t thinking about, and really, I couldn’t blame him. You just can’t understand what it’s like until it happens to you.

  “So you want me to retell the story of the worst years of my life to complete strangers—to open up that wound again and let them go poking around in it, probably while they sit there and tell me they don’t believe me?” I shook my head. “Gee, can’t think of a better way to spend my day. You were a fluke, Ash. The only person who ever accepted the truth about my father. These cops? They’re going to see a case they can’t close, and they’re going to beg me not to file a report so they don’t have to lay claim to something they can’t fix. Looks bad for their numbers.”

  “I don’t think you’re considering all the possibilities,” Ash began. “What if the next girl who wants to file a report is—”

  Something about his tone told me what he was going to say well before he said it.

  “Don’t, Ash,” I warned. “Don’t go there.” But he steamed right ahead. Full speed.

  “—one of your sisters?”

  I clenched my jaw and turned away from him again, taking a moment to just breathe. Deeply. My brain kept trying to put an image to that, and by God, I was not going to let it. I’d had nightmares about this very thing, terrors from which I woke up screaming, covered in sweat, and ready to vomit into the nearest toilet or bucket-like receptacle. It was a special torment I’d fought to subdue, and over the past three months, I’d managed to avoid a relapse.

  But now Ash was saying it out loud, making those horrible visions dance in front of my waking eyes. I wanted to beat him until candy came out.

  “They’re not going back,” I said slowly, making sure to measure my words so I didn’t bite his head off the way I wanted to. “They’re staying here. With me. The only reason he didn’t want them to even leave is because he sees them as property. They’re not even as valuable to him as the horses are.”

  “But what if they do?” Ash asked. His tone was much gentler now, but the subject was no less irritating. “Could you live with that, Hannah? Could you really say you did everything to protect your sisters if you don’t do this?”

  “This is what I tapped you for.” I looked over at him. “Remember?”

  “I know,” Ash said, almost apologetically. “But there really is only so much me and my brothers can do. If Sarah and Beth choose to leave… it’s not like we can force them to stay.”

  I sighed and lowered my face into my hands. “I know,” I muttered darkly.

  And he was right—obviously. Infuriatingly. I hated him for it in that moment. Hated him almost as much as I loved him for giving a shit about me and my sisters. For thinking of them and their safety above all things. He almost cared as much as I did, was willing to make things uncomfortable for the sake of their well-being. I had to admire that. I’d do the same thing.

  But it still hurt to even consider it. That process would be humiliating—I’d spoken to enough women to be sure of that fact. There would be all kinds of questions. Why didn’t I come forward sooner? Why did I wait over two
years to file the report? How many sexual partners had I been with? Had I been drinking? Was there anyone who could corroborate my story?

  Yeah, assholes. My rapists. But you won’t bother asking any of them these questions. Will you?

  For Sarah’s and Beth’s sakes, though… I had to do it. Even if I never saw justice myself, I had to make sure if anything ever happened to either of them, they had a tool at their disposal I did not. And in the bigger picture, if any other girl from the community found herself in the awful position of having to file a report, my experience could help her too. If it was part of an official record, it would be harder to ignore. I wasn’t sure that, emotionally, I was ready for it. But truthfully, I never would be.

  After a time, I looked back up at Ash. He regarded me with softly knit brows and creases at the corners of his eyes. He was worried about me. He didn’t relish this. He didn’t do this to tell me what to do, to instruct me on how to be a good and noble victim. He’d pushed me because it was his job—because that was the role I’d entrusted him with. I had to give credit where it was due: Ash hadn’t taken his task lightly.

  “I’ll do it,” I said before I found some way to talk myself out of it. “I’ll go and file a report. On one condition.”

  Ash turned on his side to face me, propping himself up on an elbow. “Name it.”

  I pulled my hair to one side, averting my gaze. “I don’t want to tell them. Sarah and Beth, I mean. I… I don’t ever want them to know.”

  Ash eyed me. “You don’t think they’ll believe you.” It wasn’t a question.

  I shrugged. “Even if they do… I couldn’t bear the way they’d look at me. The questions they’d have. I’ve been lying to them for a long time, Ash. And I left them behind, right in harm’s way.” I shook my head, disgusted with myself. “I know I had my reasons. But ever since I got them back, I’ve realized they weren’t very good ones.”

  It took him a while, but eventually, Ash nodded his consent to the terms of the deal. “You got it,” he said, reaching for my hand. “And I’ll protect your secret any way I can. You don’t have to keep it alone anymore.”

  I let him entwine our fingers. “You’ll go with me to file the report?” I asked.

  He nodded, eyes never leaving mine. “Yes.”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek. “And you’ll do one more thing for me? It’s… it’s a little thing. Not big or complicated. Just… selfish.”

  A wry smile quirked the corners of Ash’s beautiful lips. “Now I’m intrigued, Miller. What could you possibly want that I would consider selfish?”

  He smiled wider when I told him. He said it wasn’t selfish at all, and that he understood completely. He would want the same thing, in my position. He made me feel like it was okay.

  I knew, logically, that it wasn’t the worst thing in the world to want that kind of comfort at the moment. Especially with such a terrible task looming right ahead of me. I just hoped nothing ill would come of it. I couldn’t bear the thought of being responsible for any more pain.

  18

  Ash

  All the poor girl wanted was to see Beth.

  It seemed like such a simple thing to me. But then, Hannah was always assuming the worst. Now I knew why, though—it was because for years now, she’d been looking over her shoulder. Going to extraordinary lengths to protect her family, even from a distance. Paranoia had been her one constant companion, and not only had it kept her alive and well, but it was now the agent that kept her sisters safe too.

  She felt bad for pulling Beth away from Wyatt. But from what I understood, they weren’t up to anything terribly important. Well, nothing they couldn’t get back to at a later date, anyway. And Beth had been only too happy to receive an invitation to an impromptu barbeque. Even if Sarah wouldn’t be joining us—Hannah was even more hesitant to interrupt Sarah’s time with Reid, since the fact she hadn’t received any calls yet made her believe they might actually be having fun—it’d still be an opportunity for the rest of us to get together and breathe. Enjoy ourselves. Like real, actual couples.

  I kind of liked the idea of that. And judging by the way Wyatt talked about Beth over the phone, he wasn’t terribly opposed to the notion, either. Reid was the one we had to worry about. He made a bad habit of fucking things up—his ego really was out of control—and he was the only one of us who didn’t know about the bet being a ruse.

  I’d told Wyatt what was going on the same day I came home to find my apartment in shambles. I couldn’t keep him in the dark—not when I needed a serious favor from him. I’d needed him to take Beth out for an overnight trip so I could have time alone with Hannah to get answers from her, and that meant I needed a good excuse for why it might look like I was giving Wyatt a huge advantage, where our bet was concerned.

  At the time, coming up with a lie felt exhausting. So I’d come clean. The bet wasn’t real. It was only ever meant to get him and Reid interested enough in the girls to do as I said. Competition was the Brody way of things. It was no different with women.

  “What the fuck, dude?” Wyatt had hissed into the phone. “Why weren’t you just straight with me?”

  “Because you and Reid are dickbags with enormous egos,” I’d told him with a roll of my eyes. “I couldn’t think of a better way to make you stick to the girls like white on rice than to present you with a challenge. Something that would pit you against one another—and me. Tell me you weren’t just aching to show the both of us up.”

  “Actually, I wasn’t.” He sounded cold now, a prelude to a more explosive fury, I was sure. “About twenty minutes after I met Beth, I couldn’t have given one good goddamn about what you and Reid did with Hannah and Sarah. I was only ever in it for her. I get why you had to lie to Reid, Ash, but fuck you for lumping me in with him. We are nothing alike.”

  That wasn’t true. All of us, the Brody Bunch—we were peas in a goddamn pod, whether we wanted to admit it to ourselves or not. It was why we had trouble getting along. We were too much alike, in some ways.

  But I had to give Wyatt credit where credit was due, on this one. When he talked about his feelings for Beth, I could tell he meant it. Poor kid had fallen for her, hard, right from the start.

  “All right,” I told him. “You win. I was wrong. But there are way more important things we gotta talk about right now…”

  Okay, yes. The whole thing was irresponsible of me, I know. But I also knew Wyatt would understand, in time, why I’d done what I did. He’d continue seeing Beth because he had the hots for her, whereas Reid might drop Sarah like a bad habit just to spite me, and I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let Hannah down. And I sure as hell couldn’t let Reid break Sarah’s heart because he wanted to get into a pissing contest with me.

  Again. Over everything.

  Always.

  I didn’t bother inviting Reid to the cook-out. He’d made it pretty clear that he wanted alone-time with Sarah, and I figured I’d let him have his fun. Though I was convinced Sarah was too good for him—pretty much any woman, in my opinion, was—the fact remained that there was every possibility they were managing to have a good time. Hannah was of this opinion, as well. Beth and Wyatt weren’t too far out from the apartment, but calling Sarah home would’ve meant cutting her and Reid’s trip short, and she wasn’t about to do that.

  Hannah was so selfless. It absolutely boggled my mind that she could possibly believe otherwise. But I supposed that was a trait of the truly selfless—you got so used to giving of yourself that asking for anything in return seemed monumental.

  The barbeque wasn’t planned as a big deal. There was an outdoor common area right next to Hannah’s apartment, a disused space by the looks of it, with a few picnic-style tables and small grills that were perfect for our needs. All we needed were paper plates, condiments, and meat for the burgers and hot dogs, and those were easy enough to rustle up.

  While Hannah was at the store, I sat outside and thought about how much was changing, not just between
me and her, but between me and my brothers. I’d never imagined me and Wyatt hanging out with our girlfriends, together, sharing a meal. It just wasn’t something I thought was in the cards for us. We were the Brodys. We didn’t settle down. We didn’t end up with nice girls, having a nice time somewhere. Shit, even bikers had old ladies… but us?

  We were different. We weren’t worthy. Or at least, that’s what I’d thought before the Miller girls showed up.

  And now everything had changed. And I was… content. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was on my way to attaining something greater. To being something greater.

  But of course, as usual, Reid had to go fucking everything up.

  When Hannah returned from the store, her face was pale. I could tell by the look in her eyes—that dark, stormy glare—that something had happened. When she dropped the supplies off unceremoniously on one of the picnic tables, I got the impression that whatever it was, it was pretty bad.

  Something had happened to one of her sisters.

  And I could hazard a guess as to which one.

  “What happened?” I asked her, my hands already clenched at my sides. I could feel the muscles in the rest of my body tensing too, preparing for the worst.

  Hannah ran her hand through her hair, scowling as she pushed it away from her face. “It’s Sarah. I’ve gotta go get her. Something happened with Reid.”

  I closed my eyes. Of course it did. Something always happened with Reid. “Did she say what?”

  “No.” Hannah sighed, shaking her head. “Fuck. I feel awful. I told her it was going to be okay. You should have heard her, Ash. The way she was crying… I could barely understand her.”

  Fuck! Why was Reid such a fuck-up?! Why couldn’t he let the rest of us have nice things, just this once? Why did he have to be such a selfish prick, always putting himself before others, never thinking of the consequences the people around him would have to suffer because of his bullshit? And why did I feel so responsible?