Faking Faith (15 page)

“Asher?” I said. I could feel heat pouring from his body. “What do you want to do?”

And without warning he leaned toward me, gathered my body in his arms, and began to kiss my lips and face. Great gasping kisses, like he was dying and I could save him.

“
Faith … Faith … Faith
,” he murmured into my mouth, holding me tighter, spinning me around and pushing me back against the side of the barn.

At first, all I wanted to do was kiss Asher back wildly, press my body against his and dig my fingers into his soft hair. But I was so shocked that he’d actually followed through that I didn’t move. I just stood in place and let it happen.

He kissed his way down my cheek and buried his face in my neck and I couldn’t help but moan a little, getting lost in the moment. Even though I knew what we were doing was against his beliefs, even though I knew he’d regret it later and I would feel bad and shameful.

His lips were so warm and insistent in the curve between my shoulder and throat. I pulled his face up from my neck and pressed my mouth to his, matching him kiss for kiss until we both became breathless. One of his hands went up to cup the back of my head, protecting me from the hard side of the barn. His other hand was on the small of my back, then moving lower and lower and pulling my body more firmly toward his …

Without warning, my brain yanked me violently back to the last time I’d been this close to someone. Blake. Who had turned my affection and desire around and tried to destroy me. Who had treated my body like something to be used. My stomach turned over sickeningly and my head went dizzy. I stopped kissing Asher back and put my hands against his chest to push him away.

“Asher—” was all I said, and he stopped immediately. His body went rigid under my hands.

He pulled away from me, breathing hard, his eyes wide. We stared at each other for a moment, and then he started pacing back and forth in front of me, running his hands through his hair.

“What did I do?” he whispered. “How could I have done that to you?”

“What? No, Asher, it’s okay!” I tried to catch one of his wrists in my hand. He shook me off. “No, really, it’s okay!” I insisted.

“How could I have done that to you?” he repeated, panicked. “What kind of an awful man am I?”

“Seriously, it’s really fine!” I said. I was only lying a little. I wanted to tell him so badly about who I was and what I’d been through. About how I was also completely confused about what was going on between us. And that I wanted to figure it all out together. I desperately wanted to simply
talk
, but there was so much in the way of being honest.

“It’s not fine!” he yelled back, his voice breaking. “I’m a sinner. I’m worthless! I just defrauded an innocent girl like … like some sort of … of fornicator! Dad would tell me I’m going to hell for this! He’d be right!”

“Shhh,
please!” I felt guilty tears come into my eyes. “You’re not going to hell for kissing!”

He whirled back around and came toward me, and then he was kneeling at my feet like a supplicant, holding onto my hand.

“Will you forgive me, Faith? P-Please say you’ll forgive me or I don’t know how I’ll live with myself.”

“Asher, you’re really freaking out way too much about this! It’s not like I didn’t have anything to do with it … I encouraged you! I kissed you back! Plus, you don’t even know—”

“I can’t believe it happened again,” he said, cutting me off. He wasn’t even listening to me. He was too caught up in his own trauma, and my words were making no impact.

I sighed.

“Okay! Listen! Okay, Asher, I forgive you!” I said to the top of his head. “Please, would you … please just let go of me.”

He reluctantly released my hand and I turned to hurry back to the house, trying not to cry.

“I’m so sorry, Faith!” he called softly after me.

NINETEEN

E
veryone was beginning to gather noisily in the living room for evening prayers when I got back into the house.

The prospect of listening to Mr. Dean drone on and on from the Bible made me feel ill, and I knew I had to make an excuse and get out of it.

I found Abigail, who was just taking off her apron to hang in the pantry. She gave me a small smile that didn’t meet her eyes, and I knew that she was still embarrassed about how her dad had yelled at all of them earlier. But making out with Asher had neatly divided everything in my life into a before and after, and the slide in the front yard seemed so far away.

“I’m sorry, Abigail. I’m not feeling well,” I told her. “Do you think it would be okay if I go lie down?”

“You do look flushed,” she said, ever the caretaker, her sad look turning worried. “Do you want anything? Water? Some ginger ale?”

“No, I don’t—” I stopped when the back door opened. It was Asher, looking tired and hunched over. He glanced at me once, his eyes distraught, and then walked toward the living room. I watched him go, wishing I could run over and tackle him and hold him down until I could convince him he wasn’t broken.

Abigail also watched him walk away, and then turned to look at me with an indecipherable expression on her face. “You’re sure you don’t want anything?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think maybe I just need to rest.”

“Of course,” she said, and put a hand on my arm. “I’ll tell the others and we’ll say a prayer for you. I hope you feel better … we’re having company again tomorrow.”

I looked at her. “Who?”

She pursed her lips for a moment and sighed. “Beau. I guess he’s … he’s coming to speak to my father before
dinner.”

I gasped involuntarily, putting a hand over my mouth.

“What does that—” I said through my fingers.

“I don’t know what it means,” she interrupted. “But I’m sure it will be lovely to see him again. The little kids really do like him.”

I searched her face, looking for any trace of disingenuousness, but she seemed to mean it. Or she was covering up her discomfort so well that it was impossible to detect.

“Right,” I said. “Lovely.”

I tried not to run up the stairs too quickly, and once I got into Abigail’s room, I literally collapsed face-first onto the homemade quilt.

I was completely exhausted and lost. The confusion had built up to almost unbearable levels.

It had become obvious that I had to make a decision. As I saw it, there were two choices. I could go on letting Abigail think her eventual engagement to Beau was a good idea. I could allow Asher to think that he had done a horrible thing and tarnished me forever. I could continue being a passive observer in the drama, playing the part of pure Faith while everyone crashed and burned around me.

Or I could tell the truth. And I could try to stand and fight for Abigail, and do for her what I hadn’t allowed anyone to do for me.

. . .

I dozed off as I was thinking things over and only woke up when Abigail turned the light off when she went to bed. I lay in the dark, listening to her breathe, until I was sure she had been fallen into a deep sleep. And then I quietly got up and wrapped myself in a robe.

The house was silent as I crept down the stairs. Only the ticking of a grandfather clock and the hum of the fridge in the kitchen were audible.

Asher’s room was in the basement. I’d seen the door when Abigail sent me downstairs to get something from storage. He was the only member of the family with his own room. Abigail told me it was because Mr. Dean thought he would be a bad influence on the younger boys, and it was a sort of punishment to be so far away from everyone else.

I didn’t see how getting your own room was a punishment, but Abigail seemed to feel sorry for him.

There was a dim sliver of light underneath his door, but no sounds from within.

I hesitated for a long moment, my knuckles poised to knock on the door. I almost turned around and tiptoed back upstairs. But then I thought of Abigail and how she’d cried as she described what Beau had done to her. And for a moment, I thought of Blake.

And I knocked.

After a few seconds, Asher opened the door and looked out at me. His eyes went wide.

“Faith! What do you think you’re doing?” he whispered.

“I have to talk to you,” I said.

He ran his hands through his hair, which was sticking up everywhere in that disturbingly attractive way. I tried to catch a glimpse of his room behind him, but he was blocking my view.

“You shouldn’t be down here! Did anyone see you? This is such a bad idea, especially after—”

“Listen, this isn’t really about what happened earlier.”

He paused for a moment.

“It’s not?”

“No. Well, we probably should talk about that at some point. But not now. This is about Abigail.”

“Abigail? What about her? Is she sick?”

“She’s okay right now. But can I please just come in so we can talk for a minute?”

He glanced all around him as if the floor or walls would provide an answer for what he was supposed to do. Then he looked at me, almost fearfully, like I was some sort of succubus.

“Look,” I said, tired of the whole purity business now that I had a mission. “I’m not going to let you corrupt me more or whatever, okay? You’re safe.”

For now, anyway.

His scared look broke, and he almost smiled. “Oh, I’m safe? You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Well, come in, I guess,” he said, opening the door a little wider. “But just for a minute.”

His room was painfully small and neat, like a monk’s cell. Just a twin bed and a desk and a dresser, in an unpainted drywalled space that was probably a large repurposed closet. There was a little window up near the ceiling that let in a shaft of pale moonlight. He had no posters or pictures on the bare gray walls, and no books except a Bible, sitting open on the middle of his desk. It was worn and the edges of the pages were frayed, as if it had been leafed through many times.

“What are you reading?” I asked, going over to look at the pages.

“Matthew,” he replied.

“Which part?” I asked, as if I would know.

Asher shut his eyes and recited from memory.

“ ‘But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’ ” He opened his eyes and looked at me sadly. “My father told me it was … it was applicable to my situation. I’m memorizing a big part of it.”

“Oh,” I said, stepping away from his desk like the book might bite me. “Right, that verse.”

“And, in terms of that verse, you being here is not particularly helpful,” Asher said. “Alone. In my room. In the middle of the night. What was it you wanted to talk about?”

I sat in his desk chair and looked at him, trying to figure out how to break it to him. But there was no way to go about this except straight through.

“Asher, Beau did something to Abigail.”

“Something? What do you mean, something?”

“He’s cornered her alone a couple of times,” I said, and took a deep breath. “And … and put his hands on her.”

Asher looked at me blankly for a minute, and I watched as a wave of comprehension crossed his face. He sat down heavily on his bed.

“Without her permission,” I added, just in case that needed to be clarified.

Asher nodded dully, his eyes looking at something far away. “Of course. Abigail’s a nice girl. She would never … ”

He trailed off, and we were both silent for a moment. I waited for him to get angry, to stand up and storm around the little room and swear revenge. But he just sat there, staring at nothing, looking more like a lost boy than a nineteen-year-old almost-man.

“I told her I wouldn’t tell anyone,” I finally said, to get the conversation going again. “But what Beau did is awful and wrong and I feel like someone in the family should know. I mean, it sounds like he’s probably going to ask to marry her, and he’s obviously a total ass—I mean, terrible person. You have to tell your dad, Asher. You can’t let it happen.”

Asher stayed quiet.

“Asher? You can’t let it happen!” I repeated.

“Right … ” he said slowly.

“So what are you going to do?” I asked, getting frustrated. “Are you going to tell your dad? Will you go beat Beau up? I’ll totally come with you.”

He blinked and looked at me, as if finally realizing I was there.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said, and stood up. “A-A-And you should go back upstairs.”

“Don’t you want to, I don’t know, talk it over or something?” I asked. “Don’t you have any questions or—”

“No,” he said, shortly. “I have to think.”

“Think?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Here I thought Asher was some honorable guy, so concerned with doing the right thing, and he was acting like his sister being assaulted was just something he had to quietly mull over for a while.

He nodded and I stood up. “Fine then,” I said, with some hostility. “You think for a while.”