Free PRIDE: A Bad Boy and Amish Girl Romance (The Brody Bunch#1) by Sienna Valentine

away. “You wanna get out of here? I mean, not the fairgrounds, but… away from the noise? These people?”
    Slowly, Sarah raised her head to look up at me. When our gazes met, I could see the relief dancing in her beautiful eyes. She didn’t answer me—not with words—but I knew instantly what she wanted: a break from all this excitement.
    “Come on,” I told her, grabbing the penguin she’d wanted from the vendor. “I know just the place we can go to be alone.” And I held her hand, guiding her to the Ferris wheel as she clutched that penguin so tight her knuckles turned pale.

8
    Sarah
    W hen I was a little girl , I used to climb some of the big oak trees that grew on our property, and on our neighbors’ lots. All the children did, really. I wasn’t anything special. Except that, though I could hoist myself higher up than any other child dared, I wasn’t especially good at getting down. Father had to retrieve me on almost every occasion. It was one of the reasons I’d stopped climbing trees altogether, the other being that at a certain age, it became inappropriate for girls to go sitting in trees wearing skirts.
    I could remember, so vividly, that sensation of fear and apprehension as I would lift myself higher and higher into the ancient, gnarled boughs of those trees, my heart swelling with pride at how far I was willing to go, how I could leave everyone behind me so easily. I was brave, I told myself. I was strong. An adventurer. An example.
    That was how I’d felt trying to stop Reid Brody from assaulting the man who’d assaulted me. I’d felt, in those moments, I’d climbed to the very top of the tallest tree and everyone else was beneath me, looking up. I had to set an example.
    But then that man had hit him, and Reid had gotten hurt—because of me—and all at once, I remembered that fatal flaw of mine. The girl who climbed, but could not get down.
    I felt a little like that again as Reid took me to the Ferris wheel, an enormous, metal behemoth that sat square in the middle of the fairgrounds. We were surrounded on all sides by the hustle and bustle of the evening, cicadas singing from the fields, laughter and shouting and other noises all too human, all too much. Even this far away, I could still make out the ringing and dinging of the game booths, and each twinkling sound reminded me of the bruise along Reid’s jaw and how I had contributed to it.
    But I’d done the right thing, hadn’t I? Risen above temptation—encouraged others to do the same? If I was going to spend time in the English world, shouldn’t I be trying to make it a better place? A more Godly place?
    And how Godly was it for Reid to be harmed instead of that man? The latter had done something terribly wrong, the particulars of which I still couldn’t deduce. The former had only leapt to my defense. And yet, in my attempt to broker peace between them, I’d punished my defender and let the sinner get away. That wasn’t justice, Biblical or otherwise, and I felt like a fool.
    My awareness of my mistake only intensified as Reid boarded one of the Ferris wheel cars with me and lowered the lap bar. I clung to it tightly as the attendant next to us pulled a lever and up we went, into the clouds. I held my breath on our ascent, the rickety car swinging like a cradle over the carnival below. People began to look like ants, and I too began to feel very small.
    I glanced at Reid then. Purple splotches were beginning to spread beneath his beard, only partially hidden by the thickness of his facial hair. Every time I caught a glimpse, I felt awful. And yet somehow, beyond any reasoning I could conjure, that bruise made him even more attractive. Perhaps it reminded me that Reid was brave, too, and not in a childish way—in the way only a man like him could be.
    I found myself admiring him, lost in these thoughts as the stars grew closer and the Earth faded away. I was just beginning to forget how incredibly high up we were when there