The Brody Bunch Collection: Bad Boy Romance

by Sienna Valentine

  “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 please 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, and 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.

  “Hey, Sarah,” I heard Ash say as she passed. “You okay?”

  She didn’t answer him. But she shot him a look that I could tell froze the blood in his veins.

  I struggled to gain ground behind her without looking suspicious, but I knew there was no point. She was already to Beth, grabbing her arm and hauling her off the picnic table where she sat. Beth looked confused and her gaze darted to Wyatt, who for a moment looked like he might try to stop Sarah. But a look from Ash kept him rooted in place, allowing Sarah to drag Beth into the nearby wooded area as I stood next to Ash, trying not to pull my hair out.

  “What the fuck did you do?!” I hissed once they were out of earshot.

  Ash’s face went a little pale. He exchanged glances with Wyatt again and I reached up, flicking Ash’s ear. Hard.

  “Don’t look at him. Look at me. What. Did. You. Do?!”

  Rubbing his ear, Ash frowned at me. “I can explain…”

  “You made a bet?” I asked him, point-black, locking him in my stare. “You made a bet with your brothers, about my sisters, and you didn’t think to tell me?!” I threw my arms up. “What the fuck, Ash?”

  “Look,” he said, taking my hands gently in his own, “I know you’re upset. I don’t blame you. It was a really, really bad idea. And I wish I could take it back. I really do. But my brothers… I’m sorry to say it, but they’re your typical alpha bros. They needed an incentive, and competition… it was a convenient one.”

  From the other side of me, Wyatt scoffed. “Hey, speak for yourself. Some of us would’ve been happy to do a good deed right from the get go. Nice to know what you think of us, though.”

  I shook my head at them both. “I can’t believe you did this. I mean, I can believe it, and that’s what’s pissing me off most—but shit, Ash, look what it’s done! Sarah is back there, right now, telling Beth everything. And if she finds out…”

  I trailed off, glancing again at Wyatt. His adorable face was way more somber now.

  “She won’t want anything to do with me,” he said, taking a sip from the beer in his hand. “Ever.”

  Shit. The poor kid really did have it bad. He seemed so genuinely smitten with Beth. I saw the flash of hurt in his eyes just before he covered it up with a stoic scowl, averting his attention to the tree line where the girls had disappeared.

  I looked up at Ash. “There’s gotta be something we can do.”

  “We can come clean,” he offered, folding his arms with a shrug. “Try to tell Beth the truth before Sarah does.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t even know how much Sarah knows. Did you ever get a hold of Reid?” Just saying the bastard’s name made me want to spit. “Did he have anything at all to say for himself?”

  “No,” Ash said, producing his phone. I flinched with shame. It looked horrible, and it was all my fault. “Battery’s dead. I can try calling him, though, as long as I can use yours.”

  I forked it over. It was only fair. “Hopefully he picks up. He didn’t even come outside to sit with Sarah or make sure she was okay. Can you believe that?”

  “I can,” Wyatt muttered. He sounded none too pleased about it.

  With a sigh, Ash dialed Reid’s number. He must have picked up, because a moment later, Ash hissed, “What the fuck, dude? What the hell happened between you and Sarah?” A pause, and then he huffed. “I would have, but my phone’s fucked.” A slight glance at me made me flush with embarrassment all over again. I mouthed sorry, and he continued. “This is Hannah’s. So you’re gonna have to tell me the story all over again: what the fuck, dude?”

  They went back and forth like that for a while. Ash was pacing, ripping Reid a new one with such ferocity it was downright glorious. He didn’t pull any punches. He didn’t tell any more lies. He went after Reid like a shark in bloody waters, and internally, I reveled in the knowledge that the douche wasn’t getting off easy.

  During one of the long pauses where Reid was, I assumed, doing his best to snipe right back at Ash, I let my gaze drift to the wooded area where Sarah and Beth were. I fidgeted with the neckline of my shirt, wondering what they were saying—wondering if maybe I should go in there and try to smooth things over. Wyatt certainly looked like he was ready to leap into action at any moment. There was a desperation that kept his expression taut, and I felt genuinely bad that he might lose everything he and Beth had shared over his older brothers’ pissing contest.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to him, “for what it’s worth. You and Beth… it really seems like you have something special.”

  Wyatt shifted his shoulders in the ghost of a shrug. “Had,” he corrected me. Then he took another pull of his beer.

  I looked away from him just in time to see movement in the underbrush, not far off. I stiffened, expecting to see an irate Beth come charging out of there like a rhino at any moment, headed right for us as she spewed a wave of expletives Wyatt had probably taught her during their time together. I knew from experience what a spitfire she was, and I was dreading her wrath almost as much as I was dreading the heartbreak that would undoubtedly come after it.

  As expected, Beth and Sarah did come out of the woods. But to my horror, they didn’t come
alone.

  I grabbed Ash hard, directing his attention to the trees. “Ash… look!”

  Following close behind my sisters were three men I didn’t recognize, all of them tatted up, stuffed full of muscle, and looking mean as a pack of wild dogs. And at the head of them was one man I did recognize. His face brought a nauseating wave of dread to wash over me, leaving clammy hands and hairs that stood on end in its wake.

  It was a man my father had hired before. Hired to track me down, and hired for way worse things than that.

  Revulsion nearly brought me to my knees. My biggest fear was coming true.

  20

  Ash

  “You sure you can’t fix it?” I asked.

  I’d spent the most infuriating couple minutes on the phone with Reid, trying to figure out just how much damage his stupid mouth had gotten us into now. He was already on his way back from the cabin as well, leaving shortly after the girls. Apparently, he’d been leaving me a voicemail telling me he was calling the bet off when Sarah walked in on him and heard everything. She’d been rightfully upset, Reid had acted like a jackass the way he always does, and now Sarah was on the warpath, determined to tell her little sister what giant fuck-ups the Brodys were.

  Right then, that was exactly how I felt. After all, I had orchestrated this. It was my idea to come up with some “clever” ruse rather than just tell my brothers I knew some girls who needed a little protection. It was my exceedingly low opinion of Reid that had brought us to this point. If I hadn’t been so interested in taking him down a peg—if our years-long rivalry hadn’t influenced me in the childish way it did—maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe we’d all have ended up better off.

  I had to take responsibility for my part in all this. Just… not right now. Not when Reid was, to my shock, so very close to a breakthrough of his own.