A Forbidden Rumspringa (Gay Amish Romance Book 1) (28 page)

The wind whistled by the window, and Isaac could almost imagine it was a train. The idea he’d only dared speak once filled his mind, pushing at the fear and guilt and hopelessness until it was the only thing left. He burrowed his face under the quilt and mouthed the words.

I’m leaving.

“Isaac.”

His belly flip-flopped as he looked at David in the entrance of the barn. He’d been sawing so intently he hadn’t even heard the door heave open. It was mid-afternoon, but gloomy and damp as January often was, although the lantern beside him on the worktable gave off not only light, but heat. He’d been working so hard he’d hung his hat and shoved up the sleeves of his coat. He wiped his brow before peeling off his gloves.

“I finished the bed frame for the Hooleys. This is the side table. And the new kitchen table for Bishop Yoder’s daughter is ready to be delivered. I’ll take it tomorrow. Then there’s the—”

“Isaac, stop. Please.”

No. Don’t say it.

David pulled the door shut behind him, and heat flowed through Isaac, his body humming as if it remembered the things they’d done behind that closed door. The urge to throw himself at David and finally touch him again had Isaac’s head spinning. But David didn’t pull the beam across, and the gulf between them felt like miles and not feet. There were dark circles under David’s eyes, and a weariness that made him smaller somehow.

David took off his hat and circled it in his hands, head down. “Isaac—”

“How is she settling in? Is the ramp okay? My father and Ephraim came over yesterday to help me with it.” Isaac fiddled with the tools spread out on the table, picking them up and putting them down.

“They didn’t have to do that. I was going to build it. But yes, it’s perfect. Thank you. And thank you for all the work you’ve done without me. I’ll find a way to pay you.”

Isaac shook his head. “I don’t care about that.” Before David could argue, he plowed on. “Your mother must be glad to be home. Must have been strange to be there for Christmas with all those bright decorations. Do they do that in the hospital? Put up all the sparkling lights? I remember in Red Hills there was this English house out by the highway that had the biggest tree in front of it, with so many lights. Once I asked Mother why we couldn’t decorate, and she said candles in the window were quite enough for Jesus, and anything else was prideful and that the English had forgotten the true meaning of Christmas. Although Mother and Father always give us a little something. Joseph got a yo-yo this year, and he can’t put it down.” Isaac ordered himself to stop babbling.

In the silence, David blew out a long breath and placed his hat carefully on the table. “Isaac, you can’t come here again.”

He gripped the side of the table, his head feeling as though it might pop off his shoulders. He forced himself to look at David, the wide table still between them.

“I told you I can’t pay you. And I told you that you need to stay away.”

Isaac swallowed hard. “You don’t really think the accident was God’s punishment, do you?”

David rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done. Either way, you know we can’t go back to the way things were. It’s impossible. We always knew it, even if we didn’t want to admit it. Now we have to be men, and face our responsibilities. We’ve had our rumspringa.”

Fury shot through Isaac. “It was more than that!” He slammed the hammer down, cracking a piece of oak. Kaffi startled in her stall, snorting and sidestepping, Silver whinnying nearby. Isaac flattened his palms on the table. “And you know it’s not impossible. You know there’s a way.”

David shook his head, defeated.

Isaac took a deep breath and said it out loud. “We can leave. We can go into the world, where there are other people like us. Where there are people who won’t judge us. I love you, David. More than anything. We can be together. We can be free.”

The bark of David’s bitter laugh echoed in the rafters. “I’ll never be free, Isaac. How could I walk away from them after all they’ve lost? Especially now? Mother will be in a wheelchair for months. We can’t even come close to paying the hospital bill. The community’s helping, but it’s not enough. They’re my responsibility.”

“What about Eli Helmuth? Surely he plans to ask your mother to marry him? Anna said he barely left her side.”

“Maybe, but even so, I can’t leave them. Not after Joshua.”

“So you’ll be trapped here in a life you don’t want, and for what? To atone for your brother’s sins?”

“And my own!” David shuddered. “You know all the things I’ve done. I have to make it right.”

“By being miserable?”

“By being holy. Living a plain life. By joining the church and devoting myself to God. If I pray hard enough…”

Isaac raised his hands before letting them fall to his sides. “If you pray hard enough? What will happen? You’ll stop being a…you’ll stop being gay?” The word still felt foreign on his tongue, but he knew he had to say it out loud.

“I don’t know. I have to try.” David’s chest rose and fell rapidly, and he peered at Isaac, imploring. “If we both try, we could be friends. After enough time.”

Fists clenched, Isaac choked down a scream. “
Friends
? So we’ll both join the church? Get married? Should I marry your sister, David? She loves me—we both know it. Then what? Would I lie with Mary the way I would with you? The way I
want
to with you?”

David flinched and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Would I touch her the way I touched you? The whole time closing my eyes and seeing your face. Hearing your voice in my ear. Tasting your cock in my mouth. Feeling you inside me. Being inside you. It would be only in my mind, but Mary would know it wasn’t her I really wanted, even if she never knew who it was. Is that what you want?”

Shuddering, David opened his eyes. “No,” he whispered.

As Isaac took a deep breath and said the words, he realized with a strange sense of calm that they were true. “I’m never joining the church, David. If you have to stay in Zebulon, I can’t stop you. But I can’t stay. I don’t know when I’m leaving, but I know I am.”

Pale eyes glistening, David nodded. He inhaled deeply and picked up a saw. “I should get to work.”

“You need help with this now more than ever.” Isaac waved his arm over the worktable and tools. “I don’t care if you can’t pay me. At least let me do this.”

David’s throat worked as he swallowed thickly. “I’m a weak man, Isaac. I can’t bear to be close to you without…” He shook his head. “You’ve done so much already. Thank you. But I don’t want you to come back here again.”

I’m leaving.

Isaac forced himself to stuff his hands into his gloves and put on his hat. He led Silver from her stall, rubbing her neck and saying a silent prayer that he wouldn’t be sick. To know that he’d kissed and touched David for the last time weeks ago—that he never would again—made him feel utterly hollow.

He passed within arm’s reach of David, but kept his fingers tight on the reins. At the door, Isaac stopped. His voice was reed thin, and he stared out at the last rays of light beyond the swaying branches on the barren horizon. “But you still want me? You still love me?”

David’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Always, Eechel.”

Isaac left him behind, not sure if that made it better, or all the worse.

Chicken and potatoes sat like a lump in Isaac’s stomach. Dinner conversation had fortunately been dominated by Katie’s detailed rendition of her school project on tadpoles and how they become frogs. More than any of them, Katie had always loved school. Now as Isaac settled himself on the wooden bench under the window in the living room, he watched her curled in Mother’s rocking chair, reading a textbook avidly. Katie’s black cap had fallen to her shoulder, and she twisted a long chunk of her blonde hair around her finger, her eyes darting left and right as she read.

They’d barely been taught any science in school, and Isaac had no doubt the text took a Christian approach. They’d mainly learned English, and to read and write. Practical math and some history—but Amish history, of course. School taught them enough to get by when they had to interact with the English world, and little else.

He remembered the first time he heard the word
evolution,
and Aaron’s shouts of protest as Father snatched the forbidden book from Aaron’s trunk and marched downstairs to throw it into the stove. Late into the night in their bed, Aaron had talked and talked, seething quietly and telling Isaac all sorts of things he didn’t understand. Isaac had nodded, but surely God had created the universe?

He reached into his pocket to feel the knife, watching his sister and listening to a log crack and sizzle in the stove. Though their beds were never quite warm enough in winter, the living room was too hot. Sweat gathered in the dip of Isaac’s lower back.

Father read his old black Bible in his rocker next to Katie, swaying gently with the odd tap of his bare foot. Nathan read his school book listlessly where he sprawled on another bench. In the corner, Joseph stood flicking his yo-yo up and down.

Ephraim flipped through the paper on a chair near the stove, flicking the pages loudly. Isaac wished he could ask Ephraim to come upstairs and talk with him, but of course if he did, everyone else’s interest would be piqued, and there would be questions to answer. If not today, then tomorrow, or the day after.

Katie turned another page. Before too long, she’d be finished with school. Her life would be raising children, cooking, cleaning, quilting and canning. Maybe she’d settle into it happily. Maybe not. Not that she had a choice. Isaac tugged at his collar. Not that any of them did. He loved carpentry, but what if he loved something more? How would he even know?

He must have sighed as he fidgeted, because Mother glanced up from the desk, the scratch of her pencil on a sheet of paper stopping.

“All right, Isaac? You’re very quiet tonight.”

He nodded, but she still gazed at him with a furrow between her brows. One of the strings from her bright white cap was twisted, and she straightened it absently. As she opened her mouth again, he asked her, “What are you writing?”

“An article for the paper about Mrs. Lantz.”

“I thought Marvin’s Adah already wrote about the accident.”

“Yes, but this is about the hospital bills. If everyone who reads the paper sends the Lantzes what they can, it will help. Even if it’s a dollar.” She turned back to her letter.

It was true
Die Botschaft
did go to thousands of homes. “Wouldn’t it be better to just have insurance like the English?”

Father’s hand froze where he’d been stroking his gray beard, and he laid a ribbon across his page. “Our insurance is our faith in the Lord, Isaac. In our community.” He closed the Bible. “What’s the matter today?”

There was no point in putting it off. “I won’t be working with David Lantz anymore.” In the silence that followed, Isaac could feel all eyes on him. He stared through the charred glass on the door of the stove and concentrated on keeping his voice steady. “You know he hasn’t been able to pay since the accident. He said not to come back.”

It stabbed at his gut to say the words aloud. To think that tomorrow morning he’d wake and not go anywhere. Back where he started. There were surely fences that needed fixing. He was good at that.

He thought of the acres of their farm, and for an awful moment was struck by the notion that he’d never leave again. That his whole life would be here in this house, Nathan snoring beside him at night, the trains rumbling by out of reach. He took a sharp breath, pain needling under his ribs.

“But he needs your help more than ever. Even if he can’t pay, you’re still learning from him,” Mother said.

More silence. Finally Isaac glanced to Father, who watched him with a speculative gaze Isaac couldn’t decipher.

“Did you have a falling out?” Father asked.

“No, nothing like that.” It was a half-truth, perhaps. “It’s only because David can’t pay, and he didn’t think it was fair. I told him we didn’t mind, but he’s decided. I can help around here again. There’s always more than enough milking, and we can get ready for planting.”