Page 89 of Bittersweet & Strange

“Don’t do this, Lucien! Please!”

The word please tastes like humiliation.

I use it anyway.

My father is grabbed under both arms.

“No!” I lunge so quickly that one of the men holding me curses and nearly loses his footing. “Get your fucking hands off him!”

“Boone!” Dad shouts.

He tries to wrench himself free, but he isn’t strong enough to fight two men half his age, and his feet stumble when they force him toward the door. One of his knees buckles as they pull him forward. I nearly manage to tear one arm free trying to reach him.

“Stop! He can’t walk that fast. You’re hurting him!”

Lucien steps behind me until I can feel his breath against my ear. “I gave you time, Boone. You continuously reject me, and now you’ve left me with no choice.”

I jerk my head away from him so hard that my neck hurts. “I will never marry you.”

“Then your father becomes someone else’s responsibility.”

“He is my responsibility!” The grip around my arms tighten. “Gideon!” I gasp. “Please. You know me!”

Lucien walks around me until he’s standing directly in front of me, perfectly composed. Meanwhile, I’m fighting so hard against the men restraining me that my arms have begun to shake. “A responsibility you abandoned for months.”

“I didn’t abandon him!”

“That’s not what the village sees.”

Behind him, my father cries out when one of the men pulls him through the doorway.

Whatever control I still have disappears.

I throw my weight forward so violently that one of the men holding me loses his footing, and my right arm comes free. I reach toward my father immediately.

“Dad!”

My fingers catch nothing but air.

The second man grabs me around the chest before I can take another step, and the first recovers quickly enough to catch my arm again. They haul me backward while I kick at anything within reach, fighting to get enough leverage with my feet to drag them with me.

“Boone!” my father cries.

“I’m here!”

He disappears down the porch stairs.

“No!”

I fight harder.

There’s no thought behind it anymore, no strategy for getting free. I twist and kick and wrench against the hands holding me until my shoulder screams and every breath tears painfully through my throat. But none of it gets me any closer to him.

“Please!” I scream. “Please don’t hurt him!”

Lucien watches me.

He doesn’t even look angry.