A Forbidden Rumspringa (Gay Amish Romance Book 1) (18 page)

“I can’t imagine having my own room.” Isaac sighed wistfully. “My own bed. It must be wonderful.”

“Mmm.” David looked over with a gleam. “I wish you could share it with me. At night I close my eyes and imagine you there with me, safe and warm under the quilt. Oh the things we’d do in that bed.”

Isaac tingled, pressing his thigh against David’s. “I want to be in a proper bed with you so much. It would be such a treat. Not just…being together. But just to sleep with you. Be close to you.”

David brushed his lips against Isaac’s. They were soft, and slightly chapped at the edges, and Isaac licked across them. As they kissed lightly, the leaden knowledge that they’d never share a bed as a husband and wife could blotted out everything else in Isaac’s mind.

“What?” Their hands were still joined, and David squeezed as he pulled back.

There was no sense in discussing the inescapable truth. Isaac felt unbearably heavy at the thought—especially here in the tree house, a place of dreams. He put on an exaggerated frown. “You don’t snore, do you? Because I’ve put up with Nathan’s nightly thunder for as long as I can, and I’m afraid I can’t take more of it.”

“I don’t think I do. Joshua never mentioned it. But perhaps
you
snore.” It was David’s turn to frown, although his eyes danced. “That would be very disruptive.”

“But you’d put up with it for me.” Isaac let go of David’s hand and tickled him lightly. “Say you would.”

“Yes, yes.” David squirmed and batted Isaac’s hand away. “I’d put up with anything to be with you.”

In the flap of a bird’s wings the sadness returned, and Isaac was desperate to think of anything else but their impossible future. “Which book?”

“Huh?”

Isaac swung his feet, watching his black boots appear and disappear. “The book your mother found in your room.”

“Oh. It was written by President Obama. She said I shouldn’t read such worldly things. That politics and Washington were no concern of ours.” He sighed. “That’s true enough. We don’t vote after all. Honestly I didn’t really understand a lot of it. We barely learned more in school than how to be obedient.”

“I can’t even remember the last time I read an actual book. All we have are religious stories, or the Bible itself, of course. We don’t even get
Family Life
anymore. Somehow an Amish magazine about Christian living and proper ways to discipline your children is too modern.”

David snorted. “Yes, too modern for my mother too. She loved it when we lived in Red Hills, but if Bishop Yoder doesn’t like something, she wouldn’t dare.”

“Where did you get the book? The one by the president.”

“June. She always gives me books she thinks I’ll like after she’s read them. I can give you some if you’re interested. I just don’t want you to get into trouble.” He shook his head. “God forbid we
learn
something. That’s the last thing Zebulon wants. The last thing any Amish community wants. Or else we’d actually be able to go to high school.”

Isaac pondered it. “But there’s so much work to do on the farms. If we went to high school, who would do it?”

David picked up a fallen twig and tossed it over the side. “I know, that’s part of it. But the bigger reason they don’t want us to go to high school is because they know the more we learn, the more we’ll question. The more we question and explore, the more children they’ll lose to the world.”

“I’ve never thought about it that way. I guess I’ve never thought about it much at all.” He shrugged. “It’s just the way it’s always been. Is that strange? That I never questioned leaving school after eighth grade?”

“No. But it’s not too late to question now. It’s never too late. I feel like all I have are questions these days.”

“Like what?” Isaac asked, shivering where David absently stroked his thigh with long fingers.

David’s pale eyes were intense. “If the modern world is so evil, why did God create it? If God made the Earth and people in a week, didn’t he plan all of this too? If we go back to when Jesus was born, the world was completely different. It grew and changed in so many ways. But for us, it’s like everything stopped in the eighteen hundreds.
Why?
What changed that made all the inventions and advancements after that sinful and wrong? Why are we stuck in the past, Isaac?”

“I don’t know.”

Licking his lips, David sat up straighter, his voice louder. “And every community has its own Ordnung. We think we’re better Amish than the Old Order, who look down on us for being too primitive. Then we all look down on Mennonites, let alone the English. But didn’t God create us equally?”

“I don’t know,” Isaac repeated. He felt hopelessly out of his depth. Why hadn’t he ever thought about this?

David sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to yell at you. It’s just that the more I consider it, the less it all makes sense. At least in Red Hills we were prosperous. We were never rich, but men could work in the factories if they didn’t want to farm. We did so much more business with the English. In Zebulon some families are practically starving. If I didn’t sell extra furniture with June, I don’t know how I’d feed my mother and sisters. But they say if we stay working at home we can make as much money as we can make, and that’s all we need. It’s up to God.” He rubbed his face. “But sometimes it feels like it’ll never be enough, no matter how hard I try. I know that’s wrong to say, but…”

“I know what you mean. In Ohio we had a lot more money. We had a generator and refrigerators in the barn for the milk. Father hired his own truck to deliver to the English. We used to pay a driver all the time to go to town. In Zebulon we hardly ever have any folks visiting from out of town. Not even for a wedding like today. In Red Hills we were Amish, but the world seemed a lot bigger.”

A vein throbbed by David’s temple. “Bishop Yoder’s convinced everyone that if a family doesn’t live in Zebulon, they’re a bad influence. Not proper Amish. Not the best kind of Amish.” He huffed out a laugh. “Pride and vanity are so sinful, yet somehow it’s okay to think ourselves better Amish than other communities.”

Isaac stared at the metal tracks in the distance, his mind a jumble. “I never thought about it that way—that modern things are God’s creation too. There’s so much out there I don’t even know about. Do you think…” He hesitated.

“What?” David took Isaac’s hand and squeezed gently.

He took a deep breath. “Do you think your brother would have left the way mine did?”

David’s small smile was sorrowful. “I don’t know. Maybe. Joshua was a lot of talk. He was running wild, but I never thought anything would come of it. Not really. I thought he’d sow his oats and settle in like most do. Join the church and marry. Do what we’re all supposed to do. I thought once he was baptized that would be the end of it.”

“It isn’t always. Aaron followed church. I remember how strange it was, to see him with a beard. It didn’t get very long before he was gone. Isn’t it weird that I barely remember how he looked near the end? When I think of him, it’s with a clean face, when he was so quick to smile. After he joined the church, it was like…everything that had been light about him was heavy.”

David’s grip on Isaac’s hand was fierce. “I keep praying that I’ll find the answer. That once I’m baptized, God will give me peace. That everything will fit together the way it’s supposed to, and I’ll see clearly.”

Isaac tugged his hand free as foolish hurt struck low in his gut. He whispered, “We fit together, don’t we?”

“Yes!” David wrapped an arm around Isaac, kissing him hard. “We do. I know this is supposed to be wrong, but it doesn’t feel wrong. Does it?” He cupped Isaac’s cheek.

Shaking his head, Isaac leaned into David’s touch, those calloused fingers somehow so soft on his face. “It feels so right, David. I think about what it would be like to live with you instead of a wife. To share a bed every night, and work side by side each day. I know it’s a terrible sin, but the thought of it makes my heart so glad.” He sucked in a breath, trying in vain to stop tears from forming. “I want to be with you forever.”

Swallowing thickly, David brushed back Isaac’s hair, despair written in the creases on his face. “I don’t know what to do. I’m trapped here—I can’t leave my family alone. Yet when I’m with you, I feel…
hope
. Peace. The peace I want so badly. I’ve wanted it for so long, Isaac.”

They came together in a tangle amid the dirt and stray leaves on the tree house floor as they crawled back from the edge. David clung to him, desperation in his kisses. Isaac wanted him as always, the craving like a hole inside him that could never be filled. But they only kissed, holding onto each other tightly until they trembled, gasping for breath.

Heads close, their eyes met. Isaac plucked a dead leaf from David’s hair and brushed their lips together. Their breath mingled. “I don’t know what to do, my David. I pray the Lord will show us the way.”

“I pray too.” David pressed kisses to Isaac’s face.

Burrowing close, Isaac rested his cheek to David’s chest. The wind rustled the straggling leaves left on the tree above, and he closed his eyes, listening to the thump of David’s heart as it slowed. After a time, he became aware of a low rumble. His eyes popped open and he bolted up. “A train!”

A smile played on David’s lips. “Yes.” He caressed Isaac’s hair and sat beside him. “I wish I could take a picture of your face right now.”

Chuckling, Isaac ducked his head. “It’s childish, I know. To be so excited by something like that.”

“Not childish.” David tipped up Isaac’s chin with his finger. “Beautiful.” He kissed him as his hand made quick work on the flap of Isaac’s pants. “Watch your train.”

Isaac did, peering into the distance for the first glimpse of that thundering metal as David’s mouth found his cock. Leaning back on one hand for fear he would collapse otherwise, Isaac held David’s head with the other, weaving his fingers into David’s thick, soft hair as sweet pleasure filled him.

Isaac’s moans filled the air, and a winter bird squawked nearby—one of the few that didn’t escape south, trapped in Zebulon too. As the engine chugged into sight, Isaac arched his hips, crying out. With the wet suction of David’s mouth sending forbidden electricity through him, Isaac watched the rusty red freight cars trundle along on their unknowable journey. The train’s whistle pierced the afternoon, and he gasped, his balls tightening before he came in a rush.

David swallowed each drop, drawing Isaac’s release from deep within as the train rolled on endlessly.

“Do you think there are other Amish who are…” Isaac paused, trying to think of how to put it. Just thinking the word
s
odomites
made him queasy.

David glanced up from the table leg he was finishing. “Gay?”

Frowning, Isaac gave the nail he was driving into a plank another whack with a hammer. “What do you mean?”

“It’s what the English call it.”

Isaac took off his gloves for a moment, blowing on his hands and rubbing them together. December had slinked in wet and gray, with a cold that burrowed deeply in the drafty barn. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” David smiled. “When I started going to the movies last year, one of the first ones I saw was about a bunch of couples who were having babies. They all took a class together and became friends. There were two men, and that’s what they called it.”

Gay.
Isaac rolled the word around in his mind. “Sounds kind of nice.”

David’s eyes lit up, and he came around the worktable to Isaac’s side. “That’s the great thing—it wasn’t an insult. It wasn’t negative. Everyone else in the movie was friends with them, and no one cared that they were together. No one thought it was bad.”

“Is that what it’s like in the world?” Isaac’s stomach somersaulted. Was it possible?

“In some places. No one in the movie minded. They acted like it was just…normal.”

“But wait, you said they were all having babies.”

“The gay couple had what they call a surrogate. English women who will have a baby for someone else.”

Isaac’s mind spun. “But…she just gave them the baby?”

“Uh-huh. They paid her. English people do it all the time, I guess. It wasn’t out of the ordinary to anyone in the movie.”

“It doesn’t seem right to me.” Isaac picked up a nail from the table and rolled it between his fingers. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. In the movie, the woman giving up her baby said it made her happy to help a new family begin. At the end, the men were so happy too. They never thought they could be fathers.”

Isaac had assumed his entire life that he’d be one, even though he’d never given it much thought at all. While he could never imagine a future with Mary or another wife, for a moment his mind was filled with pictures of him and David in ten years, children around them, their playful shrieks like music in the air. “If we were English, we could…”

“What?” David asked, standing up straighter.

“Nothing.” Isaac rubbed his face, banishing the ridiculous thought. “But if being…” He tried out the word. “If being
gay
is a sin, then God wouldn’t want us raising children.”