"You can come out." My father's gentle voice calmed me. I brushed off the hay and moved the board.
My father reached a hand down to pull me out. His eyes weren't on me though. They were on a bloodied body across the barn.
"Thomas!" I barely looked at my father before running to my brother. He was cut up and swollen. I cursed silently as I carefully touched the imprint of a boot over his forehead. Thomas was only fifteen-far too young to be forced to play the part of protector.
"Oh, Thomas." I pulled him into my arms. Relief flooded me when he moved his hand to grab my skirt.
"It's okay, Kayla." He opened one of his grayish-blue eyes, and I cradled him against me.
The tears spilled down my face. How was it okay? There was nothing okay about grown men beating up a teenage boy in search of a girl, but it was the norm when you lived in a society of ninety-nine percent men.
I spent the entire night at Thomas' bedside. I couldn't bear to leave his side even though I knew the medicine my father had given him would keep him sound asleep all night.
"You have to eat." My father came to sit down next to me at the foot of the bed.
"I don't have an appetite." I placed a hand on Thomas' leg over the blanket. He looked so young lying there, but the welts and bruises on his face told a different story.
"Benjamin and I decided it isn't safe for Quinn to come see Thomas yet. We can't have you all in the same place." My father's eyes filled with unshed tears.
I nodded. "Quinn shouldn't see him this way. She has too much to worry about with Bailey." I thought about Quinn's little girl.
"Sometimes it sounds like you're the older sister."
I tried to smile, but it was a pitiful attempt. "I promised Mom I'd always be there for Quinn, and I will be."
"You also promised your mother you wouldn't cut your hair short-and I don't agree with that promise."
"She didn't want us to lose ourselves. She wanted us to resist."
"At what cost? It only makes you more of a target." His eyes reflected a mix of anger and hurt. He loved my mother as much as a man could love a woman, but he didn't like the legacy she left with us. It was more than her fairytales that filled Quinn's mind with dreams. She'd hated our life in hiding, and she'd told us every chance she had we needed to strive for more.
"I was a wearing a hood when I saw the boy." I looked away, too ashamed to face my father.
"This wasn't your fault." He put a gentle hand on my shoulder. Everything about him was gentle except when it came to protecting his girls.
"Yes it was. I should have been more careful. I shouldn't have left the farm during daylight."
"You were bringing medicine to your sick niece. It's not as though you were out gallivanting." He gestured wildly with his hands.
"Gallivanting? I don't think I've heard you use that one before." I closed my eyes, giving myself a single moment to recharge. I opened them right back up.
His lips twisted into just a hint of a smile. My father's face was wrinkled from years working the fields in the hot Georgia sun. He'd been a farmer his whole life. His parents had moved from the city right as the clubs took over. They were one of the few families reproducing like normal-therefore they were a target.
"If you won't eat, you should at least rest."
"I should. With Thomas in bed I'll need to help in the fields tomorrow." I smoothed the blue quilt again.
"Absolutely not! That's exactly what the traders are hoping for."
"I can't stay inside forever."
"I will not lose you." He pulled me into his arms. "I lost your mother; I won't lose you girls."
"You won't. I promise." It wasn't a promise I could keep, but it's what he needed to hear.
"Have you thought more about Jonathan?" His eyes pleaded with me to give him a particular answer.
I swallowed hard. My family came above my own desires even if the thought of marriage made me sick to my stomach. I never wanted to be at the mercy of someone else, and that was all a marriage in our world could be. We were a prisoner of whatever men protected us. I preferred my father to any other man. "I'll do anything you want me to do."
"He can keep you safe. He has the resources and the land. You know I'd only give you to someone I could trust." My father's voice sounded strained. He didn't want to be having the discussion any more than I did. He knew how I felt about the subject.