All of the Lights (20 page)

So, she takes his hand.

"I'm Jillian."

"ARE YOU SURE this is okay?" she asks, clinging desperately to his hand as he leads her through throngs of sweat, beer, and screams.

For the first time since she got into his car, she's beginning to rethink the most impulsive and reckless thing she's ever done in her life. The makeshift boxing ring in the center of the bar, where two guys pummel each other with spit and blood flying everywhere, says as much. But he asked her if she wanted to go somewhere with him and for the life of her, she couldn't tell him no.

"You'll be fine," he calls over his shoulder. "Nothing's gonna happen to you 'cause you're here with me."

This is so far out of her element it's not even funny. Not to mention the fact that if her parents ever got a whiff of where she was, let alone what kind of boy she was with, they'd never let her leave the house again. And maybe that's why she's here. After tonight, she'll probably never see him again, so why shouldn't she embrace recklessness for once instead of always focusing on what's appropriate? This
feels
right, even if it scares her. Even if it doesn't last.

He leads her to the other side of the bar and bumps fists with another guy, who has his other arm wrapped around a petite, painfully gorgeous girl with the most unusual grey eyes she's ever seen. The girl smiles at her as they approach and suddenly, she wants to turn and run. She doesn't fit in here. She'll never be as self-possessed and confident as the girl in front of her.

Almost as if he can sense her thoughts, Roark wraps his free arm around her shoulders and pulls her in closer as he gestures to the couple in front of them.

"This is my buddy, Shane Flynn, and his girl, Jess," he lifts his chin to each one. "This is Jillian Walker."

Shane's dark eyebrows lift into his forehead as he takes a long pull from his beer bottle. It's sort of a wonder he's even physically capable given the deep purple bruises coloring the left side of his face. "Walker? As in
Judge
Walker?"

Her cheeks flush with embarrassment because this was exactly what she'd wanted to avoid. No matter what she does or how hard she tries, she'll always be Judge Walker's daughter. The arm around her shoulder tightens protectively and then she hears his gruff voice above the roar of the crowd.

"Hey, she's with me, okay? Leave it alone."

Shane holds up the hand wrapped around his beer and she hopes that's all the mention her dad will get for the rest of the night. She didn't come here to talk about him. She came here to be with Roark.

Now he leans in and his warm breath in her ear sends a shiver down her spine. "Me and Shane? We're gonna own this whole place someday. We're gonna fix it up, rename it somethin' wicked cool—"

"And Irish!" Shane butts in and they fist bump again.

"And Irish," Roark whispers in her ear with a light laugh. "And then it'll be ours. We'll be the ones runnin' these fights and callin' the shots. No one will be able to take that away from us."

"You fight too?"

He gestures with his free hand toward his face. "You asked what happened to my face, right? Now you know."

Shane tilts his beer good-naturedly toward the ropes in the center of the bar. "Just yah wait 'til you see your boy in there."

She doesn't have to wait long.

A bell dings from behind them and Roark darts forward, presses a warm kiss on her cheek, and takes off with a wink. Time seems to pass in slow motion then: he swings a leg around the side of the ropes, ducks under, and unbuttons his shirt. Her cheeks are still hot from the feel of his mouth on her skin and the sight of his finely-tuned, sinewy muscles sets them aflame. He bounces up and down in place, tossing his neck from side to side, and pounds his bare knuckles together. When the bell goes off again, he circles his opponent as the crowd waits in silence for someone to make the first move.

Suddenly, Roark's opponent lunges forward, swinging his first around to connect right with his jaw. Roark's head snaps back violently and she jumps at the loud crack, her heart lodged in her throat. But he doesn't take long to retaliate—when his opponent swings again, he easily dodges the blow, leveling a one-two punch right into his jaw.

It was amazing—she'd known Roark had some brawn underneath all that flannel, but she'd had never guessed it would be like this. The way he moves around the ring...there's an athleticism there she hadn't expected and something predatory about it, too. And his sweat-sheened, rippling muscles are a sight to behold. She can't take her eyes off him.

After the victory march, they're back in Roark's beat-up Charger. Rain pelts the car on all sides, but he just turns the radio up a little to drown out the sound.

"So how'd you like your first fight?"

The way he says
first
, it almost sounds like he's implying there will be more. Just the thought of it shoots a wave of excitement all the way down to her toes.

"It was...interesting."

His lips curl up into a knowing smile and his free hand threads through hers. With only the music of the rain and the radio, they drive in silence, hand in hand, until the next song makes her smile.

"You like this song?" he murmurs.

Her shoulders swivel a little to the beat and she hums along, loving the way his hand tightens around hers. Suddenly, he breaks out into song: "
Every little thing she does is magic...everything she do just turns me on...
"

Every single syllable is off-tune, but that just makes her laugh even harder. He pounds a hand on the steering wheel and keeps right on singing. Now she's bouncing in her seat, bopping to the music, and even shaking her shoulders as she sings along with him.

"Hey," he calls out to her above the music. "You wanna dance?"

"What?" she laughs.

Not even a second later, he pulls over to the side of the road, leaps out of the car, throws her door open, and tugs on her arm to coax her out into the pouring rain. It only takes a little convincing, though, because the laughter in his eyes is too palpable to resist. With The Police blaring through the speakers, he twirls her around in the rain, spinning her around and around, lifting her up in his strong arms, and she raises her hands to the sky, high from the rain and drunk on him.

When he sets her back down, she slides down his body, but his hands never leaves hers. His thumb brushes her cheek and tilts her chin up. Even through the sheets of water, she can still see the question in his sky-blue eyes. Then he leans down and presses his warm lips against hers. His touch is everywhere, leaving trails of smoke and fire in its wake.

If she could just live in this moment for the rest of her life, she could die happy.

WHEN HER DAD catches her sneaking out of the house, he steals the truth from her in less than a minute. Lying has never come naturally to her, at least not until she met Roark, but she can't bring herself to look her dad in the eye and lie to him. It doesn't matter what she says, though, because he won't listen. It doesn't matter that being with Roark lights up her world, gives her something to live for, something to hope for. It doesn't matter that he feels the same way. Her father won't stand for it—won't see his daughter 'caught up with some street fighter'.

How would he explain why his daughter has chosen danger and lawlessness over stability and order? How would that look?
That boy is using you,
he tells her.
He'll take what he wants from you and then he'll throw you away like yesterday's trash.

"I don't know what to do," she sobs in Roark's arms. "He doesn't understand."

He strokes her hair and kisses her forehead. "I"ll figure something out. I promise."

"Please, Roark," her voice is thick and hoarse with tears. "You have to."

"I think I know someone who can help us."

AND SO THE postcards arrive. She makes the short trek every day to retrieve the next date they'll meet. The plan is simple enough: they'll take turns exchanging postcards to set the place and time. Her postcards are sent to St. Anthony's and his, to the PO box set up by Father Lindsay. Secrecy is a necessity. If anyone ever found out...no, she can't think about what would happen. Maybe they can't have a normal relationship, but this is the only way they can be together, even if all they have are stolen moments in a library.

She clutches the postcard to her chest, her cheeks flushed with excitement—it's been almost a week since they've been able to see each other and she's nearly scaled the walls going out of her mind. Proximity makes her feverish; distance makes her delirious. Her fingers trail along the call numbers until she finds the one she needs and she pulls a fraying copy of
The Age of Innocence
from the shelf.

Furiously flipping through the pages until she finds that faint pencil mark in the margins, her eager eyes skim the line: "
Each time you happen to me all over again."

Warm, familiar hands snake around her waist and his breath is in her ear.

"Do you like it?"

"Yes," she breathes and closes her eyes as his lips ghost along her neck. "It's beautiful."

"I thought of you the moment I read it," he murmurs.

She can only nod. His touch is too distracting and too heady to waste on words. How can this continue? How can they ever really be together if this is all they have? She wants a life with him—God, she isn't even finished with high school yet and that's all she can think about. A real life. A happy life filled with love, laughter, and dancing in the rain.

THEY MEET AS often as possible. Sometimes only a day passes before she's in his arms again. Sometimes it's more than a few days, but the postcards always come and she always sends one back. She reads Shakespeare, Bronte, Keats, Dickinson, Browning, and Yeats trying to find the perfect message and the perfect words. In turn, he shows her the world—or at least, the world that Boston will allow.

They duck into movies and chase away the darkness with their arms around each other. They dance and sing along to old jukebox songs. They walk around Castle Island hand in hand, breathing in the salt and the sand. They go to Sox games, eat cheap hot dogs, and he buys her stale beer. He drives her to the Cape after she tells her parents she's staying with a friend for the weekend. He wraps his arms around her as they lay in front of the fireplace and whispers, "I love you, Jillian."

She believes him. She's never believed in anything more.

She gives him everything she has and he takes it willingly.

And when he slides a simple gold band on her left hand and murmurs, "Marry me," she says yes.

"I DON'T CARE!" she cries even though her dad's hands shake her. "I love him. You can't tell me I can't be with him."

"Yes, I can," he practically spits in her face. "You're a child. I'm your father. You don't know what you want and you certainly don't want this boy."

She shakes her head furiously and looks to her mom, who's gone pale with grief as she observes from the sidelines. "Mom! Please...do something.
Anything.
Tell him he's wrong. Please!"

Her mom's mouth parts, but she doesn't speak. Instead, she turns on her heel and walks back into the kitchen, where she collapses at the table. She shifts her gaze back to her dad, whose iron-clad grip only tightens on her shoulders. The ground opens up, ready to swallow her whole, but there's still some fight left in her.

"Dad," she starts slowly. "I'm sorry I've disappointed you. I know you wanted something different for me, but I love him. I'm going to marry him whether you like it or not."

Her dad lifts an eyebrow and he moves them backward until her shoulders hit the wall behind her. "If you do this, Jillian, it will be the biggest mistake of your life. That boy can't give you anything but a one-bedroom apartment in Southie. He'll take everything from you if he hasn't already, and he'll give you nothing good in return. A boy like that will be lucky to hold down a job for weeks at a time, especially considering the way he makes the bulk of the little money he has. How will you survive, Jillian? Did you think of that?"

She opens her mouth to tell him it doesn't matter. None of it—the money, where they'd have to live, how they'd have to live...she'd do it if it meant being with Roark.

"And what about college?" he presses on, pushing her even deeper into the wall.

She's trapped. Pinned between the life she wants and the life her parents want. Cornered by a reality she fought to escape, the reality she didn't want to face. Because deep down, she already knows what he's about to say next.

"That money your mother and I have set aside to pay for Penn? You can forget it. You'll never see a cent of it if you marry that boy."

"It doesn't matter," her voice shakes, but she summons as much steel as she can find. "We'll figure something out. If I have to go to community college, then I will."

A rough laugh vibrates from her dad's throat and he shakes his head. "So you're willing to throw it all away for...what? A boy you haven't even known for six months?"

"I love him," she whispers. That's all she has. Her love for him. It has to be enough to see her through this.

"Well, then," he shakes his head again and runs a hand over his face. "You leave me no choice."

Fear coils down her spine and her throat closes. "What...what are you going to do?"