“No,” I said. “Nothing like that. Your instructions were clear. It’s just… being on our own in the city. And this place where you work! It’s all so….”
“Overwhelming,” Sarah interjected.
“Exciting,” I corrected her.
Hannah smiled. “If you think that’s exciting, just wait until you see everything else Bright Falls has to offer. Man, I remember when I first got here. I was just like you two. Well, more like Sarah, really. I was scared out of my mind. But in time, I grew to see that this was the world I was always meant to live in. Less rules. More freedom. It didn’t take long for me to realize I’d spent my whole life in a cage.”
I could believe that. Looking around, this entire room was filled with exciting and interesting things and it was only our first stop. As I scanned the crowd, something caught my attention. I looked around, unsure what it was and then I saw it again—a flash of green eyes looking away from me just as I went to meet their gaze.
There was a boy—no, a man, albeit a young one—sitting at a table at the other end of the bar from me, near one of the TVs on the wall. Two other men were with him, and he was clearly the youngest of the three, built just a little smaller than they were and with a mop of tawny hair that made him look roguish and mischievous, yet somewhat innocent all at the same time. There was a youthfulness to him that the other two, though they couldn’t have been much older than we were, seemed to lack. A certain irreverence, maybe, something devil-may-care. He was watching the fight on the TV with some interest, but when I went to look back at Hannah, I felt his eyes on me again.
Slower this time, I turned to look at him. His gaze was so hot. It felt like it might set my clothes alight if he lingered too long on me, but he never did. When I glanced at him again he looked away a second time, turning now to one of the others to answer a question he didn’t look particularly happy about being asked.
It gave me time to study the strong line of his jaw. The corded muscles in his shoulders, the height of his cheekbones and blaze of his eyes. The feral way he curled his lip at the tallest of the trio, baring gleaming white teeth. Scars on his knuckles, just visible from this distance, were lit pale when his grip tightened on his beer bottle.
I wondered about those scars. How did he get them? Was he a fighter too? Clearly he did something with his hands. I wondered if they’d be coarse and callused like so many Amish boys’ were, or if men in the city had softer, more pliable skin. I wondered if his touch would feel like silk or sandpaper. I wondered if those muscles could lift me off my feet, if they could crush me against him.
Hannah and Sarah were still talking. It was possible they’d even said something to me and were expecting me to respond. But I couldn’t hear them over the rush of blood in my ears, caused by the fierce pounding of my heart. I was looking at this man—this very handsome, intriguing man—and he was looking back at me. And he looked like he was just as curious as I felt.
Curiosity was said to kill cats. As I stared shamelessly at the boy with the golden brown hair, I wondered what curiosity might do to young Amish girls—and part of me ached to find out.
2
Wyatt
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: two Amish girls walk into a bar, and…
No, scratch that. Some jokes need a little bit of a setup to really be appreciated, and I’m getting ahead of myself.
It was a slow night at Trick Shots, a dive on the side of town I hardly ever came to if I could avoid it. There was nothing for me here. Everything I was interested in happened in the downtown metro area, not on the sleepy outskirts where even the Bright Falls Beasts motorcycle club didn’t feel particularly inclined to stake a claim. Things out here seemed to move in some kind of time vortex, at a pace that was slow enough to be called excruciating. It was like everyone and everything was covered in molasses, and it made me itch with the desire to get up, walk out the door, and haul ass in my pickup until I found the trouble I was looking for.
That was exactly why I was here, though, sitting between my older brother, Reid, and the eldest of our trio, Ash. I’d gotten myself into a bad spot—again—and apparently we needed to have a family meeting about it, like I was still in grade school.
Shit, who did Ash think he was? Our father? Granted, he’d managed to get custody of me and Reid when our old man ended up in the slammer, but that didn’t mean I owed him or anything. Not when it seemed like he only did it so he could lord it over me.
Ah, well. At least the fight was on.
It was Sweeney vs. Jarvis, the latter being a relative newcomer to the professional MMA circuit, but damn did that boy know how to land a punch. He knew how to take one, too—he was no glass jaw by any means—which made sense, considering rumor had it he’d started his career underground. I’d seen some of those fights myself, not ones Jarvis was in, but the ones that went on around here. It was a damn lucrative business, but if you got busted, your ass was in a sling. Shit like that wasn’t exactly legal.
Which was probably why I loved it.
But this was good, too—an honest match I could lose myself in while Ash and Reid did their level best to chew me out without sounding like absolute hypocrites themselves. I hadn’t been old enough to be active in our dad’s motorcycle club back in the day, but they had—albeit in a fairly limited way, given their ages. Still, they’d reaped the benefits of hanging with the biggest gang of badasses around for years. They, and our father, were the reason people trembled in the shadow of “the Brody Bunch.” And now they wanted to deny me the same opportunity, the same infamy, the same respect they’d earned in fear and blood.
That was the point of the night, after all: to give me a hard time about my life choices. I rolled my eyes and took another, longer pull off my beer, even as my eldest brother made a face at the fact that I was drinking a Pabst while he spilled the beans to Reid about how I’d been picked up for fighting the other day. Like Ash Brody was some kind of angel…
Now there was something none of us had ever been accused of. People around here called us more colorful things, like hooligans, bad seeds, and thugs. We were the Brody Bunch, a moniker that had started back when my dad was still a free man, heading up one of the most infamous motorcycle clubs in the west. He’d built a veritable empire from the Mexico border to Montana, and even Washington State. The only guys around with bigger balls were the cartels, and even they knew better than to come at my dad to his face. That was a suicide mission.
In some ways, those were damn good days. We’d had purpose back then. We’d had reputations that kept us safe, and kept everyone around us on their toes. We lived like kings, especially our old man. But it hadn’t lasted. Nothing ever does. And now here we were, no longer inspiring awe and fear, but revulsion. Well, maybe a little fear—bad reputations are hard to shake—but the days of being veritable gods were long gone.
Ash and I didn’t see eye-to-eye on that point. Hell, we didn’t see eye-to-eye on much at all. He’d worked hard to drag our names out of the gutter, but instead of making us a force to be reckoned with once more, he was trying to make us into some kind of Boy Scouts now. Not that I didn’t have a noble side, but fuck—I wasn’t exactly running for office here, and enough of the bad had stuck around that it wasn’t like any of us were ever going to be nine-to-fivers or some shit. We would always be different. We would always be outsiders. No reason we couldn’t use that to our advantage. No reason we couldn’t learn from Dad’s mistakes. The Bright Falls Beasts still existed, and from what I’d heard, they were in dire need of a good leader. Someone with Dad’s commanding presence and prowess. Nobody knew the ins and outs of that club like we did—Ash was always meant to inherit the throne. But if he didn’t want it… why couldn’t I give it a shot? I didn’t see the problem.
I sucked my teeth at him, ignoring the heat of Reid’s glare from the other side of the table. “Come on, you said you wouldn’t harp on this shit.”
“Why? What did you do now?” Reid asked.
&
nbsp; I said nothing, but that was all right. Leave it to Ash to fill the void. “Some of the Bright Falls Beasts’ prospects got busted a couple weeks ago for startin’ shit with one of their rival clubs—and in broad fuckin’ daylight, too. This genius…” He pointed at me, and it was all I could do not to slap his hand away. “…got picked up with the rest of them.”
“Fuck’s sakes, Wyatt,” Reid muttered. “Are you trying to put targets on all our backs again?”
I could feel my knuckles whitening around my beer. “I didn’t do nothin’ wrong,” I said, grinding my teeth. “I was just hangin’ around when shit happened to go south. That’s all. They’re not even gonna charge me with anything, okay? Lay off.”
And it was the truth—that night had been a case of wrong place, wrong time. Sure, I had friends in the Beasts, and sure, I was interested in the club in more than just a cursory way, but really, I hadn’t planned on getting into a fight that night. Trouble just seemed to find me that way. Everyone said I had a temper, one that was on a hair-trigger, and maybe they were right. Still, you’d think that’d make people stay out of my way. You’d think that’d make them less likely to disrespect me. But some nights, it was like assholes just lined up in front of my fists.
But the truth was, the night Ash was talking about, I did more to stop things from escalating than to help them along. The Beasts were a force once, but now they were a shadow of their former selves. Yet not all of them were ready to accept that fact. They picked a fight with a much bigger club, and if I hadn’t been around to calm shit down, things would have ended far worse than they had. Like I said, that club lacked smart leadership.
But there was no point in trying to explain any of that to my brother. He believed what he wanted to believe about me. He’d just turn shit around and make it all about how I shouldn’t have even been there in the first place.
Ash leaned forward, pointing a finger at me again, and a quick, furtive glance in Reid’s direction reminded me of our drinking game—the one we’d made up. Whenever Ash acted like he was our surrogate father, we took a long pull off our booze. And so we did, in tandem, while he huffed and puffed and prepared his lecture. He was so wrapped up in the act I don’t even think he noticed.
“I get it, Wyatt. It’s not exactly easy to get by in a shithole like Bright Falls. Especially if the living you’re trying to make is an honest one. I understand the allure of a job where you can make the kind of money Dad used to pull in, where if you keep your nose to the grindstone, you don’t have to answer to anyone but yourself.”
“When are you gonna get it through your head that Pops wasn’t some kind of outlaw hero?” Reid chimed in, and I sighed hard. “He was a goddamn drug dealer, Wyatt. A murderer. A psycho.”
“You talk about him like he worked some corner for some low-level gangbangers,” I hissed, trying to keep my voice low. Nobody needed to know our business. This shit should’ve been kept private in the first place—this whole song and dance could’ve been a group text. It didn’t have to be a public meeting. “He ran a fucking empire, Reid. Like Escobar, or…”
“Plenty of assholes have run empires,” Ash snapped. “Hitler, for example.”
I gritted my teeth. Ash was pushing it. “Dad was not Hitler,” I said, feeling my throat begin to close with rage.
Ash shrugged. “Stalin, then.”
I was just about to flip the goddamn table when Reid jumped into the fray. “Okay, okay. That’s enough hyperbole. Wyatt, I get what you’re saying. I do.” I doubted that, but in the interest of not getting picked up for yet another bar fight, I didn’t tell him that. “Pops worked hard to get where he did, and he was a powerful man, but he wasn’t a good man, and therein lies the problem. Look where he ended up. Is that what you want for your life?” Again, I declined to answer. Reid scowled. “Well, it’s sure as hell not what me and Ash want for you.”
“Whatever,” I muttered, glancing at the door behind Reid to see if my path was clear—if I could possibly find a way to get the fuck out of here and head off to… well, really, anywhere else.
Then I saw her. And all desire to leave abruptly fled my mind.
She was… beautiful. Hair the color of spun gold, eyes that shone like crystals, and an inner glow that made me want to smile despite everything I’d just gone through with Ash and Reid. She looked out of place here, not just because of how attractive she was—or how excited—but because the dress she wore looked… weird. It was black, with long sleeves and an even longer hemline that extended to her ankles, and over it was a white apron, like she was some kind of cook or something. She wore a matching white bonnet, and I thought that was a shame, because her hair—what I could see of it—was absolutely gorgeous, and I would have liked to have seen it down around her small shoulders, framing her smiling face.
I was hooked. And yet she had no idea I was even in the room. She was too busy talking to the girl beside her—same outfit, but reddish blond hair and freckles, looking mighty nervous—and the bartender, who had the same kind of impish smile that made me think they might be related.
I cracked my knuckles one by one, reluctant to let my gaze wander away from her just yet, but wondering if there was any point in approaching her. She just seemed so… innocent. So good, in a way I didn’t deserve.
“So, I see you two have finally noticed we’re not the only ones in the room,” Ash said, jerking my attention back to our table.
“Finally?” Reid said, and I did my best not to blush. Of course Ash had noticed me looking, and of course he’d noticed the girl. That was what he did best. He noticed women.
“Yeah,” I said, clearing my throat in an attempt not to sound pubescent. One look at this girl, and she had me all messed up. “Wonder what those clothes are all about. What’s their story?”
“ ‘Their’?” Reid said, scrunching his nose in confusion.
Ash cocked an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah, Reid. There’s three chicks over there. Didn’t you see ’em?”
Reid didn’t answer. He just turned his attention back to the women. I couldn’t blame him. They were all beautiful.
“I think they might be Amish,” Ash said in answer to my earlier question. “I’ve seen a few buggies on the outskirts of town. They’ve got a village there. Usually I only see men.”
“Wonder what the hell they’re doin’ here,” I murmured, even though I hardly cared. The important thing was she was here; any conjecture on Ash’s part wasn’t going to compare to her telling me her story herself.
But could I get it out of her? Would someone that pure go for someone like me? Shit, she hadn’t even looked my way yet. What the hell was that about?
“Yeah, thought they were, like… insular, or some shit. Isolationist,” Reid was saying.
“They are,” Ash replied. “Normally. But here they are.” He finished off his whiskey. “Why don’t we go ask them?”
Reid snorted. “What, just like that? Aren’t they über-religious, or something? They’re not gonna fall for some cheesy pick-up line like ‘What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?’ Do they even speak English?”
“Good question.” Ash rose. “I think I’m gonna find out.”
“You’re serious?” I said, turning to him. “Reid’s right. Girls like that, they’re… out of our league. Shit, they’re playing a whole different game.”
Reid glowered. “Speak for yourself.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I snapped. “But look at ’em. Except for the tall one, they look like goddamn nuns. We’d be barkin’ up the wrong tree.”
“Maybe you two losers would be,” Ash said, smoothing his hair. “But not me. I don’t strike out.”
“That’s because you don’t swing for the stands,” Reid sneered, “or the curve balls. You take the low, slow pitch every time.”
Ash grinned. “What’s wrong, Reid? You afraid of a little competition? Does it piss you off that I could walk over there, right now, and have all three girls eating out of the palm of
my hand, just like that?” He snapped his fingers in Reid’s face. Shit, if he’d done that to me, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop myself from breaking his hand.
“Fuck off,” Reid said, standing up so hard he almost knocked his chair over. “There’s a lot of words I’d use to describe you, Ash, but ‘competition’ isn’t one of them.”
Round two, I thought, rolling my eyes. Here we go again…
“Oh, really?” Ash said in his typical, cocky manner. And then he surprised me. “Don’t suppose you’d care to bet on it?”
I stared at him. A bet? What the hell did that mean? “On what?” I asked him, a little horrified by the idea. He wasn’t seriously suggesting we bet on the girls, was he? The way Ash treated women, it was hard to tell. “On all three of them?”
“Nah, that’d be way too hard for you two,” he answered. “We’ll go for one each. Whoever gets one of those three girls into bed first, wins.”
I felt my jaw drop. But before I could protest, predictably, Reid asked, “Wins what?”
Dear God. How was it possible we were related?
Ash shrugged. “Respect. Bragging rights. Shit, if it’s you, Reid, I won’t call you a pussy for a whole year. How’s that sound? If you don’t, though, it’s all I’m gonna call you. Same goes for if you don’t take the bet.”
“You can’t possibly be serious.” At least now, Reid seemed appropriately incredulous—if only just barely.
Ash leveled an even stare at him. “I’m dead serious. Pussy.”
Reid looked away then, back to the bar where all three girls were gathered. I followed his gaze, shaking my head. Why the hell did these two need to pull their dicks out at each other all the time? Why couldn’t it just be enough to see a pretty girl, want to meet the pretty girl, and then go over and talk to her? Why did absolutely everything have to be a goddamn competition?
The Brody Bunch Collection: Bad Boy Romance Page 40