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I shrugged. “It’s complicated,” I told him honestly. And it fucking was. Honestly, it was a hell of a lot more complicated than it was ever meant to be. Now my feelings were tied up in this shit. “This has all stopped being a game to me. I don’t know what exactly I want with her, but I want her safe. And I care about her.”
Ezra’s lips quirked up into a small, knowing smile before he shook his head, and the smile dropped from his face. “Knew you couldn’t hate her guts forever. She’s innocent in this, as much as you didn’t want her to be, Amadeus. Just look out for her, yeah?” I grunted, looking away from him for a moment. “Her dad was pretty pissed on Sunday when you took her out of the church.”
I clenched my jaw. I hadn’t had a chance to reach out to her yet. I hated that she didn’t have a goddamn phone, and while I wanted to at least get her a prepaid flip phone so I could check in on her, I was worried about what would happen to her if she got caught with it. She wasn’t exactly sneaky, and before me, I wasn’t sure if she’d ever lied before in her life. She washorribleat it.
What the fuck would her father do to her if he caught her with a phone when she sure as hell wasn’t supposed to have one?
I grimaced. I didn’t even want to think about it. I’d probably land jail time, and Lillian would suffer trauma—PTSD. Well, more than she already was. Fuck. I didn’t want that for her.
So, no matter how badly I wanted to go to every length I could to protect her, I had to rein in that side of me as much as I could. And I was doing my best to do so. It sure as fuck wasn’t easy.
“What was wrong with her?” Ezra asked me as the treadmill stopped. I silently handed him the spray and a paper towel so he could wipe down his machine.
“They starved her—been starving her for two days, apparently.” Ezra clenched his jaw. I barked out a humorless laugh, still feeling volatile when I thought of what the fuck they did to her. How pale she’d been. How fucking shaky. “She forgot an answer to something while they were studying the Bible, and since he can’t put his hands on her if he doesn’t want me to shun him from the community, he resorted to what he considers the next best thing to punish her.”
“Christ,” Ezra swore. He got off the treadmill and set the spray back on the windowsill where I’d grabbed it from. I followed him over to the trashcan, where he threw the paper towel away. “What thefuckis wrong people?”
“Too goddamn much, apparently,” I muttered. “But I need to work out before Solomon gets out of school, or I’m going to lose my mind. And I need to be on my best behavior because he’s staying at a friend’s house tonight.”
Ezra cut me a look. He was just as protective of Solomon as I was. Sometimes, I wondered if his feelings ran deeper for my little brother than he let on. I wouldn’t care what he and Solomon did so long as Solomon was eighteen and consented. And they didn’t hide it from me. I fuckinghatedsecrets when it came to my little brother.
I silently laughed at myself when the thought of someone hurting Solomon ran through my mind. Crazy how I might kill someone if they took my brother against his will, but I sexually assaulted Lillian without blinking a fucking eye.
Someone needed to call the mental hospital because I obviously needed some fucking help.
“Can this friend be trusted? His parents?” Ezra asked.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Like I’d let my little brother fucking go somewhere where he’d be unprotected,” I growled. Ezra held his hands up in a defensive gesture. “Yes, the friend can be trusted.”
Ezra nodded. “Good. Don’t mean to step on your toes, Amadeus. Just want the assurance he’s safe.”
I sighed. We were both on edge, and it wasn’t doing either of us a bit of good. At this rate, we were going to end up swinging on each other. And while it wouldn’t be the first time we did to get some aggression out, I couldn’t take Solomon to his friend’s house with a busted up face.
“Let’s get a good work out session in,” I grumbled. “Maybe we’ll feel better afterward.”
Ezra just snorted. He knew as well as I did that working out might take the edge off, but we wouldn’t feel better until we were out of this shit hole of a fucking town and out of this cult-like community that we’d been born into.
* * *
I lifted my head from my textbook, frowning when I heard the doors to the church open. No one ever came in here on Tuesday nights unless someone in the community was sick, and they thought praying might somehow bring about a miracle.
Hated to break it to them, but God created medicine for a fucking reason. And if medication and doctors didn’t help, they couldn’t be cured.
I quietly lowered my pen to my textbook. I came here to seek peace while I studied. Knowing me, I’d probably crash here on the couch in my father’s office, too. He knew not to expect me home when Solomon wasn’t there. When my little brother wasn’t home, I had no reason to be either. Father knew Solomon was the only thing holding me in this town. Otherwise, I would have already been long gone.
Standing up from the chair, I strained my ears, listening. No one was praying yet.
And then, I heard it. A whimper. A small cry of pain.
“You shouldn’t be lusting after a man that isn’t yours yet,” a familiar voice snarled. “You may be engaged, but you donotbelong to him yet.”
My blood pounded hard and fast in my veins, rage momentarily turning my vision red before I blinked it away, forcing myself to rein in my temper. Lillian’s safety was at stake, and I wouldn’t do something to possibly make that worse.
But that didn’t mean I still didn’t want to pummel his face into the ground.
“Father—” Lillian choked out.
“I saw the way you leaned into him, touching him inappropriately on Sunday,” he harshly whipped out at her, hatred for his daughter spilling into his tone. I clenched my hands into fists as I slowly made my way down the hall, my sock-covered feet silent on the carpet. Thankfully, I knew which parts of the floor to avoid so it wouldn’t creak beneath my weight and give me away.
