Maybe it was because of the role I’d played in his life. He wasn’t all that much younger than I was, but he’d still been my ward back when Dad went to prison. I’d still been something of an authority figure in his life. I thought I’d done a pretty good job, given the circumstances, but somewhere along the line I must’ve done something seriously wrong for Reid to have turned out like this. Wyatt wasn’t exactly well-adjusted either, but at least he could be alone with a girl for twenty-four hours and she wouldn’t run away screaming.
Christ, what a mess. I scrubbed my face with my palms and Hannah reached over to touch my arm. “Ash… I gotta go get Sarah. I’m sorry—I know Beth and Wyatt will be here soon, and it was my idea, and the police station…”
I took her hand in mine. “It’s okay. I get it. You made a promise to her. And the police station isn’t exactly going anywhere. We’ll take care of that later. If need be, we’ll just tell Sarah and Beth we’re going on a date and they’ll have to make do on their own for a little while.” I put on my best reassuring smile for her. “I’ll hold the fort down until you make it back here. Okay? You’ve got your hands full with Sarah. You don’t need to worry about anything else.”
“I’m gonna kill your fuckin’ brother,” Hannah muttered in reply.
I kissed her. “Not if I get to him first.”
Hannah kissed me back. When she lightly nibbled at my lower lip, I groaned and pulled her nearer, taking a moment with her for myself. Our lives were goddamn crazy right now, but I made a silent vow that soon enough, we wouldn’t have to deal in stolen moments anymore. We could take all the time we needed with each other, once this mess with her father and sisters was sorted out. I was looking forward to that day more than I had the vocabulary to describe.
“Go,” I said, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Do what you need to do.”
Giving my hand one more squeeze, Hannah nodded and hurried back to her car. I watched her go, heaving a sigh.
And then I pulled out my phone and called Wyatt, hoping like hell the call would connect. Hannah had done a number on it when she’d thrown it at me last night. The screen was cracked, the battery seemed to drain way too fast, and I couldn’t access my text messages or my voicemail. I’d have to pick up a replacement later—good thing I’d bought the insurance.
The line was staticky and garbled when Wyatt picked up. “Yeah, man, we’re on our way.”
“I know,” I said, plugging one ear so I could hear Wyatt a little better. He sounded a million miles away. “That’s not why I’m calling—”
“Say what?” he interrupted. “Bro, I can barely hear you.”
I rolled my eyes skyward. Awesome. “How about now?” I said, speaking up.
“Ash? You there, man?”
For fuck’s sakes…
“Yeah!” I yelled. “Can you hear me, motherfucker?”
Wyatt laughed. “Oh, there you are. What’s up, dude?”
I wanted to strangle him. “You heard anything from Reid, man? He call or text you today?”
“He doesn’t call or text me ever,” Wyatt replied with a little snort. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“What about Beth? Has she heard from Sarah?”
“Um…” Static. Wyatt’s voice got real distant again, and I figured he was asking Beth if she’d gotten any calls from her sister. “…no, man, nothing. Is everything okay over there?”
I sighed. “No. No, it’s… Hannah’s on her way over to the cabin. Something happened between Sarah and Reid. We don’t know what. Whatever it was, she was crying.”
“Goddammit,” Wyatt muttered. Even though most of his voice was lost to an electric buzz, I still knew what he was saying. “Fuckin’ Reid, man.”
Finally, something we could agree upon. “Fuckin’ Reid.”
“Do you think, uh…” He paused, and I got the impression he was trying to choose his words very carefully since Beth was in the car. “Do you think he said something stupid?”
I scoffed. “Uh, yeah, that’s kind of what he does.” When Wyatt didn’t answer me, it sunk in what he’d actually meant. My stomach dropped to my knees. “Wait. Do you mean about the bet?”
Wyatt kept his tone as light and even as possible. “Yeah-huh.”
I closed my eyes. Shit. I was willing to bet Wyatt was right. He was the only one out of the three of us who hadn’t been clued in on the fact that the bet was a ruse. If he thought he’d won, he might’ve run off at the mouth a little. Or worse, if she’d denied him and he got angry enough to throw it in her face…
Was Reid really that much of a monster, though? I knew when his pride was wounded, he could be. I gave him a lot of shit, but the truth was if he’d learn to check his ego, he might have a shot of being manageable. That was damn near the same as asking a tiger to change its stripes, though.
With a long, heavy sigh, I realized that whatever had happened between Sarah and Reid, the fallout could be bad enough to ruin everything.
19
Hannah
“Did you use the condom I gave you, at least?”
I knew it was a stupid thing to ask the moment the words left my mouth. Sarah was in a fragile state. She hadn’t said so much as two words to me since we’d left the cabin, and even now that we were on the highway headed back to my apartment, she remained sullen and silent, tears glistening in her eyes.
I wanted to beat the ever-loving shit out of Reid. As angry as I was, I felt like I could very well pick up the whole cabin and drop it on him. But Sarah was my priority for now, and I needed to make sure that whatever had happened between them, there wouldn’t be a possibility of any more serious, lasting consequences.
Sarah didn’t answer me, but the look on her face spoke of utter disgust. I raised an eyebrow, waiting for her response. What the hell did this silence mean? That she had? That she hadn’t? I needed to know.
“Well?”
My heart sank as she began to grind her teeth. That was a nervous tic of Sarah’s, one I knew all too well. “No,” she said, her jaw clenched tight, “we did not.”
Fuck. This was the last thing Sarah needed—to end up carrying around some disease, or even a baby, in exchange for… what, a night of passion? With that douchebag? A frustrated groan escaped my lips. “Goddammit, Sarah…”
“He promised me he was ‘clean,’” she said, a term I’d taught her. “And he withdrew.” I side-eyed her, hating that she’d trusted Reid to tell her the truth about his sexual health—that she was essentially playing Russian roulette with the possibility of pregnancy as the bullet. Then again, it wasn’t as though I hadn’t done the same thing not so very long ago, with Ash—only worse, because I hadn’t made him pull out. At least I was on the pill, though. Dammit, what were these boys doing to our common sense? “It shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Well, you only have, like, an eighty-something percent chance of being right,” I muttered, shaking my head. I thought I’d taught her better than this. I mean, I’d tried so hard to cover the relevant information—to not overwhelm her. In doing so—in just hitting the highlights—had I put her at a disadvantage somehow?
Breathe, Hannah, I reminded myself. Even if worse came to worst, there were still options available to us, provided we got to them within the right timeframe.
“Okay, you’re not going back for another few weeks, at least,” I said, already beginning to suss out our plan of attack. “Not until we know if…”
I trailed off, unsure of how much I wanted to say. This was going to be a difficult discussion no matter what. Sarah was still highly religious, and I got the impression that bringing up the “A” word would only upset her—especially if I had to define what it meant. And then that other “A” word—adoption—I wasn’t sure what she’d think of that, either. I wished I could spare her this decision, but we needed to talk about it. Now, before it was too late.
“Sister,” she whispered in our native tongue, and I could hear the tension in her tone, “could you do me a favor and p
lease shut up?”
Sarah was on edge. I decided I’d let that one slide. “English while I’m driving, please,” I reminded her. “I can only focus on so many things at once.”
“Everything is English with you!” she cried, still speaking in Dutch. I grimaced, my attention now divided between translating her tirade and navigating the road. “Your world, your faith, your family, your morals—you traded them all for the English! What about them is so special to you, Hannah? What is it that appeals to you? The vices? The sin? How can you call this fresh hell home?”
This fresh hell? What did Sarah know of hell? She had no idea, not the first clue, about what hell looked like. Hell was not a place you could visit. It was a place you carried around inside you, a home for the demons you just couldn’t outrun. Demons you couldn’t drink away, either, because no matter how hard you tried to drown them, they just learned how to swim.
Sarah had it easy. She didn’t wake in the middle of the night, screaming, because her memories of being assaulted and humiliated had come to life in terrifying 3-D. She didn’t break into a cold sweat when a man bumped against her in a crowded venue, wondering—irrationally—if he was about to do to you what so many others before him had. Sarah’s “fresh hell” was a series of inconveniences she misconstrued for bigger problems. I bristled. How long was she going to act like such a baby?
“That’s not all there is to it,” I began, words coming harsh through my teeth, but before I could continue Sarah cut me off with a shrill, almost hysterical, bout of laughter.
“No? Are you sure about that, sister? Because everywhere I turn, it’s all I see.” Sarah shook her head, folding her arms over her chest, closing herself off to me. “Look at you. You’re in so deep you don’t even realize you’re wading through filth anymore. You can’t smell the polluted air. You don’t feel shame at the vast gulf between your throat and your neckline. You sully your reputation and your bed with English men as it suits you, letting them steal pieces of your soul in exchange for fleeting pleasure.”
Something dark and angry began smoldering inside me. All the shame the village elders had made me feel after they abused me—all the shame our own father had instilled in me to keep me quiet—came bubbling to the surface. It was a black, oily tar that turned my words biting and cold. “Careful, Sarah,” I said in our village’s brand of Dutch. “It sounds like you’re calling me a whore.”
Despite her gaze being aimed out the window, I could see the fires of fury blazing in my sister’s eyes. “I’m not,” she sneered at me. “I’m calling you a slut. You obviously don’t get paid for it, judging by your apartment—”
The rest of her sentence devolved into a scream as I hit the brakes, yanked the wheel, and pulled over on the shoulder of the road. It was a bumping landing, to say the least; the raised, grid-like texture of the pavement, meant to slow us down, made the car shake until I could feel my teeth rattle in my skull. I’d come off the highway too rough, too fast, but at that moment I couldn’t find the will inside me to care. Sarah had just leapt into some very dangerous waters. She turned to me, eyes wide, seatbelt jerked taut across her throat, as we finally came to a standstill.
“What are you doing?!” she screeched as I put us in park.
“Look,” I started, “I get it. Okay, Sarah? I do. The time you spent with Reid didn’t go as planned. He wasn’t the man you thought he was. You did something you regret.” I wet my suddenly dry lips. Regrets—I had more than a few of those. “And that sucks. But your grief doesn’t give you the right to make everybody else’s life a living hell. You don’t get to blame me for what he did, and you sure as hell don’t get to judge me because I’m comfortable with who I am and what I want. I don’t deserve it.”
“Don’t you?” Sarah sobbed, tears welling in her eyes once again. “You’re the one who pushed me to be with him, Hannah! You’re the one who not only told me everything was going to be okay, but that I could trust him—that he was a good man. You put a condom in my hands and speechified about how I shouldn’t be afraid to use it! You’re the one who pushed me and Beth toward these boys in the bar, and you’re the one who has been pushing us into their arms ever since.” She brought her hands up to her face, quickly, angrily wiping at her tears. “Why, Hannah? Why is it so important to you that we abandon our identities like you did? Why do we have to become you—is it so you won’t feel so alone? So you’ll have someone to share the misery of your choices with?”
My heart ached. My very soul felt like it was being torn asunder. Of course Sarah had no idea of what I’d been through—I specifically hadn’t told her—but her words cut deep all the same. They reminded me of out mother’s disbelief, of our father’s smug sneer as he said, You brought this on yourself, Hannah. If only you’d been more modest…
No. I couldn’t let myself fall into those memories. Gripping the steering wheel until it hurt, I said, “The only choice that ever made me miserable was staying in the village for as long as I did. You want me to mourn the loss of a place where I had no free will and no voice?” My sorrow and hurt was morphing into anger now, and my next, bitter words rolled off my tongue before I could stop them. “Fuck you, Sarah. I’m not doing that. Not even for you.”
“Fuck you, too!” she shouted, taking me by surprise. Christ, she hadn’t even missed a beat—the girl who had never uttered a foul word in her life had just dropped one of the filthiest, and she hadn’t even hesitated for a split second. “If you were so unhappy being with us, why did you send for me and Beth? Are you punishing us? Is this some kind of sick joke to you?”
I slumped, Sarah’s obvious anguish taking the wind out of my sails. “No. No, Sarah, it’s not like that at all.”
“Then what is it like?” she demanded. “Why did you do this to me, Hannah? Why did you set me up to lose my soul?”
I dropped one of my hands from the steering wheel and looked away, jaw clenched, as I tried to think of a way to tell her without telling her. A way to explain what kind of danger she was in, what kind of life might be in store for her, if she went back home. I wanted to come clean with her so badly, but after the way she’s just reacted, I wasn’t sure I could. I’d built these walls around my heart so solidly that even admitting to Ash what had happened back then hadn’t torn them down.
Would she believe me? I wondered. It was the same question I always asked myself, sometimes even of random people in the supermarket. It was a game I played, a morbid way to pass the time when the memories that haunted me became too much to ignore. Would anyone even care?
Then Sarah lowered her head. She placed her face in her hands. And she began to sob. And I realized that this was not the time for my story, if there ever was one. This was a time for Sarah’s grief and pain. It was not something we could share. And it was not something she deserved to have stolen from her.
“I’m sorry,” I said after a long moment. I knew those words were not enough, but they were all I had to give her.
I sat there, feeling woefully inadequate and devastatingly guilty. Sarah was right. I had pushed. I had prodded. I had trusted the Brodys almost implicitly with my sisters, without even really knowing them. I’d taken Ash at his word that he’d handle it, and yet here we were.
It seemed like the darkness of my past would always ensure there’d be distance between Sarah, Beth, and me. Maybe there was nothing I could do about it. Maybe the damage was irrevocable. Watching Sarah cry, I certainly felt like that was the case.
But we couldn’t stay on the shoulder of the road all day. So a few minutes later, when neither of us could come up with anything to say, I flipped my turn signal on and pulled back onto the highway, headed for my apartment.
The rest of our drive was deafeningly silent. It wasn’t until I pulled into the driveway in front of my apartment that Sarah even bothered to look up, coming out of her trace-like state with an expression so utterly lost and blank it physically pained me to see it. Worse was when she looked out the window and saw Wyatt, Beth, an
d Ash in the common area, working on grilling up some food. She wrung her hands in her lap and whispered, “Oh, God…”
The feebleness of her tone made me flinch. “Sorry,” I said again, feeling like such an asshole. “I didn’t know this was going to happen. You and Reid, I mean.” Anxiously, I chewed the inside of my cheek. “If you want, you can go inside. You don’t have to be out here with us.”
Sarah shifted just slightly on the passenger seat next to me. She was looking at Beth, undoubtedly making note of how happy she was. When I’d talked to Beth on the way to pick up Sarah and filled her in on what was going on, I’d asked her to tone down the hearts in her eyes for Sarah’s sake. But Beth had no idea she was being watched, and I knew the wide, toothy grin on her face was breaking Sarah’s heart.
“Did you know there was a bet?” she asked suddenly.
For a second, my breathing stopped. What?
I couldn’t process this information right away. It just didn’t seem to make much sense. A bet? What bet? What was Sarah talking about? What did a bet have to do with…
And then it hit me, all at once. Ash made a bet with his brothers so they’d hang around the girls. That was what he’d been alluding to when he said the boys might need some convincing. He’d meant that he’d concocted a competition, and for what? I felt sick as I realized it probably had something to do with their virginity.
Sarah was waiting on an answer. And once again, I didn’t have any good ones.
“No,” I said at last, “not exactly. But Sarah, it’s not what you think—”
She closed her eyes. “Does Beth know?”
I hesitated. What was I supposed to say? I hadn’t even known.
Before I could stop her, Sarah had unbuckled her seatbelt and clawed open the passenger side door. I knew what she was up to. I knew she was going to break the news to Beth in the worst possible way. “Sarah, wait!”
“No,” she said firmly. “Someone has to tell her. She deserves that.” And then she slammed the door, hurrying to Beth across the grass, leaving me to scramble to catch up with her.
LUST: A Bad Boy and Amish Girl Romance (The Brody Bunch Book 2) Page 17
