Read Online Risk: A Military Stepbrother Bad Boy Romance by Helen Lucas - Free Book Online

immediately as the car dove deeper and deeper into the night.
     
    Finally, we exited the forest and came out onto a small clearing. I pulled up to the edge of it and Sarah gasped—the clearing turned into a cliff abruptly, with the town, glittering below, laid out before us.
     
    “Careful, Damien! Don’t drive off!” she cried. I just laughed.
     
    “We’re fine, we’re fine… Relax, kiddo,” I informed her, parking the car. I turned to her.
     
    “Okay. Let’s talk.”
     
    “What do you want to talk about?”
     
    “Us, obviously. And what… This is,” I said, knowing that this was precisely what she wanted to talk about too.
     
    “Is there anything to talk about?” Sarah grumbled, avoiding my eyes. “You’ve proven that I’m just a fuck to you. Do you want me to be your local squeeze here in Laramie?”
     
    I reached over, putting my arm around her, running my fingers through her hair. It was down up with scrunchies and I pulled them out, letting her hair cascade down over her shoulders. She shook her head, pulling out the kinks.
     
    “Jerk. I liked my hair like that.”
     
    “Well, I like it better like this.”
     
    “You’re not my boyfriend.”
     
    “But I’m your brother.”
     
    “Exactly. So, you can never be my boyfriend.”
     
    “You know that’s right, Sarah.”
     
    “I know! I know that’s right. I just don’t like it, okay? I don’t like that I can’t have you. It pissed me off. I don’t like not getting what I want.”
     
    “Let me tell you, kiddo…” I said with a laugh. “Part of being an adult is not always getting what you want.”
     
    “Don’t you think I know that? Living with my dad…”
     
    I raised an eyebrow.
     
    “What do you mean?”
     
    “Oh… Nothing…”
     
    “Sarah…”
     
    “Just take me home, okay?” she said finally, sighing and shaking her head. I caught her face by her chin and turned her to look at me.
     
    “What do you mean?” I asked, firmly, authority ringing out in my voice. She bit her lip adorably and I melted ever so slightly inside.
     
    “Dad beats me… I mean, he beats Dakota too. And he beat Christina. That’s why she doesn’t come around anymore.”
     
    My face hardened. I felt a cold, icy wrath building in my stomach, so much different from the hot rage that had seized me back at the dance.
     
    “Does he do it often? How? Why?”
     
    “When he’s drinking… And when no one else is around…Except for Dakota or Maria…” she said quietly.
     
    “I didn’t see any bruises,” I murmured, my rage still building.
     
    “What?” Sarah asked, eyes wide, confused. Beautiful. Those beautiful eyes and how much they must hurt… How much pain they must have borne. And here she was, bearing her soul to me.
     
    I remembered back to the way the children in Iraq looked: their scared eyes, their trembling lips, wanting something, anything—help, assistance, assurance… Love? And here was my sister, asking for the same thing from me—even if she couldn’t say so out loud. It made me mad that someone was doing this to her, to someone as sweet as her, but it hurt me even more to see her helpless, to see her asking for me—even if she wouldn’t say it.
     
    “I got you mostly naked,” I pointed out. “And I didn’t see any bruises. No marks. No scars. Abuse tends to leave marks.”
     
    She shrugged.
     
    “He hasn’t hit me for a few weeks—I don’t mean that it’s like an every day thing.”
     
    She paused, thoughtfully, looking down at her hands in her lap as she wringed them, twisting her fingers up into knots.
     
    “Well, sometimes it is.”
     
    “Like when?”
     
    “Oh, god, Damien, I don’t know…” Sarah said with a sigh, tears dripping down her cheeks. “When he’s made. When he’s stressed. Then, any little thing will set him off. And… He’ll come after me with a piece of rubber tubing.”
     
    I wrinkled my brow.
     
    “What? Rubber tubing?”
     
    “That’s right.