All of the Lights

by K. Ryan

  "Maybe he didn't think she was his kid," Brennan throws out in a desperate attempt at redeeming someone who can't be redeemed.

  Sean just barks out a laugh and grins at our brother. "You've seen Rae before right?"

  An image of Rae floods my mind—her shiny, auburn hair that kisses her shoulders, those wide, emerald eyes, the way her laugh seems to take over her entire body and light up the room, the way her lips curve up just enough to let you know she knew you were full of shit...

  My thoughts trailed off when Sean's voice breaks through my self-inflicted haze.

  "If you've ever seen a picture of Jillian Moretti, you know those two might as well be twins. But you take one good look at Rae, and you know there's no way she's Val Moretti's kid. Put her and Pop side by side and tell me different, Brennan. Tell me she's not his."

  Brennan's shoulders slump and he falls back against his chair. If that was his last hope that maybe there was some other explanation for all this shit, it's long gone. The problem now is that I can't stop my mind from putting Rae and my dad face to face and shoulder to shoulder.

  Her stubbornness, her fierce determination when she's set her mind to something—those are all things I can draw a line from her right to Roark Callahan. Her smile is nearly identical to his. The same as Brennan's. The same as Sean's. I'd been on the receiving end of that smile my whole life and it's amazing I didn't recognize it sooner. But her goodness, her generosity, her ability to admit when she's screwed up, her kindness...I don't know where that comes from. Maybe that's just all her.

  My hands suddenly feel clammy and I rub them absentmindedly against my jeans. I swallow hard, pushing back all those comparisons I just made in my head because they're so damn uncomfortable.

  There are so many things wrong with where my thoughts had been heading it's not even funny. Best not to think about that anymore.

  "I just can't believe it," Brennan murmurs next to me and scrubs his face with both hands. "I just can't feckin' believe it."

  "You're gonna have to," Sean leans forward on the table.

  When Brennan unearths his ashen face from his hands, his eyes dart between Sean and me. "Do you think Ma knows?"

  Sean and I speak at the exact same time:

  "I don't know."

  "Of course she does."

  That stings, even though I've heard it before, so I know exactly what Brennan's feeling right now, too. I know all about denial, about refusing to accept that the man you've grown up idolizing could be capable of this kind of deception, but at the end of the day, the facts are still the facts. Brennan's just going to have to find a way to make peace with it like the rest of us.

  Brennan's lips part to offer yet another denial, but Sean cuts him off with a sharp shake of his head.

  "He paid for Rae's college tuition. You know that. And you also know there's no way that kind of money ever leaves the house for four years straight without Ma at least being aware of it."

  There's nothing anyone else can say about that. He's right. Our mom has always watched our family's finances with eagle-eye precision and even if she doesn't do the books for the bar, she'd be very aware of such a large sum of money leaving my dad's bank account. Even if the bastard took a little at a time and tried to hide it away somewhere until he could write out a check for Rae, she'd still notice.

  "Shit," Brennan exhales and squeezes his eyes shut.

  Sean's gaze shifts to me and I know it's my turn to speak up.

  "I think Ma and Pop have been lying to us for years," I murmur. Admitting that out loud is harder than I thought it was going to be—the words stick in my throat, heavy with truth and edged with razor blades. They burn and sear all the way down.

  Sean nods in agreement, his face tight, but impassive.

  "And I think it's time we started figuring out all this on our own," I push on. "We wanted to tell you all this, Brennan, not just because you deserve to know, but because I've been working with Rae to get Sean out of here."

  I've set the timer and walked away. Now all I have to do is wait for the implosion.

  And...there it is. Right on schedule.

  Brennan's fists ball up into white-knuckled knots, crimson splashes his cheeks, and for a second there, I think he might flip this whole table over before turning into the Hulk. But he doesn't. His chest huffs and puffs, his eyes glaze over, but he stays right where he's at. I figured he'd at least be able to control himself here, of all places, for Sean's sake and I'm glad I was right.

  When he speaks again, there's menace in his voice. It's spiraled down his neck to his shoulders, and the ice there already has me on the defense.

  "She's the one who put you here, Sean."

  Sean doesn't miss a beat and folds his hands calmly on the table in front of him. "No, she didn't."

  "Wha—"

  I clamp a hand on Brennan's shoulder to keep him seated, but he just shoves me off, whipping around in his chair instead to glare at me.

  "And this feckin' guy. Working with her?" he shakes his head in disbelief as a mirthless laugh rumbles in his throat. "This is unbelievable. What the hell is wrong with you? Both of you?"

  "Look," I jump to ease the tension and shoot a quick glance over my shoulder at the CO standing about ten feet away. "I'll tell you everything we've found in the truck. I can't do it here. But we've been working together for over a month already—she showed up the night after the Gianottis blew holes through the bar and told me she knew it wasn't Sean."

  "Well, good for her," Brennan huffs hotly. "Seven years too late."

  "Yeah, that was pretty much what I said, too," I smile in spite of where I'm sitting now. Yet another image of Rae slips inside my mind—she's standing on the other side of the bar, red hair and green eyes distracting my senses, and refusing to back down no matter what I threw at her, no matter what names I called her, no matter how much I threatened her. She stood her ground and forced me to hear her out, even if I wasn't ready to listen yet.

  "The point is," I tell Brennan pointedly. "I believe her. I didn't at first, but I do now. She wants to see Sean out of here just as much as the rest of us, if not more, because she thinks she's responsible for it."

  "She is," Brennan growls.

  "Like I said," Sean adds quietly. "She's not. It doesn't matter if she ID'd me or not. Moretti wanted me in prison, so here I am. I confessed, so here I am."

  Brennan's eyes narrow. "Why did you confess?"

  "I wanted to rub it in Pop's face that I knew," Sean laughs bitterly and shakes his head. "I wanted to punish him. Guilt him into finally telling the truth. Guess we all know how that turned out."

  "Jesus Christ," Brennan sighs. "That was wicked stupid. You're a tool, you know that?"

  Sean just shrugs it off. He already knows all this anyway, so there's no point in rehashing it now.

  "I don't care of about any of this," Brennan's lips curl up with malice. "I don't care if she's really Pop's kid. She named you, Sean. She could've told the truth, but she didn't. She could've stopped it, but she didn't."

  I've seen hatred like this on Brennan's face before. Seen him riled up and ready to break open heads before too. Any other time toward any other person, I'd let him go wild.

  Not this time. Not toward her.

  "Let's think about this for a second," I twist around in my chair so I can look him right in the eye. "Someone took a tire iron and bashed her knee open. Think about the blood, how much that had to hurt. She's lucky she even knew her own name let alone what really happened to her. Then you've got Moretti—who's known Rae wasn't his daughter just as long as Pop—and he's feeding her lies. Telling her she didn't see what she thought she did. Manipulating her. Twisting her memory. And this whole time, she's lying on a hospital bed, drugged up, numb, in and out of surgery...what would you have done?"

  I let that hang in the air for a moment, let it sink in good and hard, before I barrel through.

  "From everything she's ever told me about Moretti, he's never done anything b
ut ignore her or manipulate her. All that shit we've heard about her? Drugs and alcohol and rehab? Some of it isn't even true and the parts that are true are true because Moretti made her that way. Made her feel like nobody gave two shits about her, which was probably true, too. She's gone through her whole life with a mom who killed herself when she was a month old and a dad who hated her. And us? Brennan, we should be thanking our lucky stars because we got to grow up in a household where we had two parents who loved us and never gave us a reason to doubt it. Your sister didn't."

  As my little speech hovers above us, both Sean and Brennan stare at me with with various degrees of stunned expressions. The longer I sit here with those words swimming in my head, the more the implication of everything I've just said slams home.

  Your sister.

  Not our sister.

  Sean clears his throat, snapping my attention back to the matter at hand, and glances at me with slightly narrowed eyes for a split second. "So, here's what's gonna happen. You and Jack are gonna leave in a little bit then you're gonna go to Jack's apartment and meet our sister."

  I swallow hard at his word choice, but luckily for me, that's not the reaction that receives the most attention here.

  "What?"

  Sean jabs a pointed finger in his face before Brennan can say or do much else. "She wants to meet you and whether you're willing to admit it yet or not, you want to meet her too. She's our sister. Our flesh and blood. If I can look past everything else and see this for what it really is, then so can you. Don't be an asshat."

  Our brother's lips part, but he seals them shut again just as quickly and Sean takes that opportunity to pounce.

  "You're gonna meet her. You're gonna shake her hand. Hug her if that's what she wants. You're gonna be nice. And you're gonna listen to what she has to say. And then when that's over, you're gonna tell her that you and Shannon want to invite her over for dinner."

  Brennan flinches at the mention of his wife, but that's not enough to stop the words that tumble out of his mouth next: "No suh."

  "Ya huh, big brother," Sean retorts with a cocky grin.

  Their Mexican standoff doesn't last too much longer because before long, Brennan's shoulders sag in defeat. Or at the very least, resignation.

  It's just in time, too, because the CO behind us signals that it's time to get going as all the other tables around us start saying their goodbyes. Brennan is silent when we leave, he's silent through the entire drive back even as I detail everything Rae and I have been able to dig up, he's silent when I tell him I've got another meeting with the Gianottis set up and that both him and Rae need to be there, and he's silent when I pull up to my apartment.

  I cut the engine and glance at him with one hand on the wheel. "She'll be here soon."

  Brennan's lips twitch. When his eyes close and a hard breath trails out of his nose, I know what's going to happen. He jerks out of the truck and stalks down the driveway before I have a chance to make a grab for him.

  "Hey!" I shout as I dart out of my truck and start after him. "What the hell do yah think you're doin'?"

  Brennan keeps his back to me, even though his shoulders are hunched like he's crumbling in on himself.

  "Don't walk away," I warn him. "She doesn't deserve that."

  I can hear him huff out a laugh despite the distance between us.

  "You know who you look like right now?" I call out to him, slowing my pace and readying myself to give up. "You look just like Pop."

  That's not enough to deter him even if his steps halt just enough to let me know he heard me.

  "Little bitch," I mutter under my breath.

  Like father, like son.

  All this needs to be set aside for now, though, because my priority is Rae. I fumble through my back pocket for my phone and hit her number. When I get nothing but a voicemail, the best I can do is hanging up, calling her again, yielding nothing but more static.

  She can't show up here, expecting something that might not ever happen. She can't get her hopes up only to have them squashed by Brennan's bullheadedness. She can't get hurt anymore than she already has.

  I want to protect her. I want to shield her from this. I want to hold her and tell her everything will be alright, even if it won't, even if I have no business getting anywhere near her. I just need to get to her.

  So, I take my next best option, hop back in my truck, and head toward Back Bay.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Rae

  I'm not paying attention when Jack breezes through the door. Because I'm dead-set now on prepping a plan to save Lucy's store—if she wants to save it—and I know I have to leave soon to meet Brennan, my mind fires on all cylinders, bouncing from one idea to the next. Even when the door chimes, I still don't look up. Although, honestly, the prospect of a customer in this store should've been enough to jerk my head right up.

  No, it isn't until two familiar, tattooed forearms fold down on the counter in front of me that I finally slip out of my haze.

  "Hey," Jack smiles, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

  And deep down, I know there's only one reason why he's here. The only reason why he'd ever come to this part of the city, to this store, and it certainly isn't just to see me.

  "Hi."

  That's about all I can muster. There are too many emotions attached to him to sift through all at once. On one hand, the tattoos, dark scruff—which he runs a hand over almost like he can read my thoughts—the searing gunmetal eyes that see right through me, the unkempt, messy dark hair, the muscles that stretch the cotton fabric of his T-shirt...I don't know how I even manage to form a coherent thought, let alone a verbal sentence. And there's the giant elephant in the room. The big, hulking, mean elephant that's here to smash all my hopes and dreams today.

  "Um, Rae?"

  My head snaps to the right and I find my sister standing a few feet away with her eyes as wide as basketballs and her mouth hanging open like a bass caught on a hook. Luckily, Jack jumps into action and shoots a hand out for her to shake. Lucy slips her hand into his and her eyes dart to me from around his shoulder as a slow, knowing smile spreads across her face.

  "Hey, I'm Jack Flynn," he tells her with a nod. "I'm guessing you're Rae's sister, Lucy. I've heard a lot about you."

  Just when I thought Lucy's eyes couldn't get any wider, they reach stadium-level expansion as they flick back to me. Now that smile on her face reaches all the way to her eyes, which flash a little too mischievously.

  "It's nice to finally meet you," she tells him with a grin. "I've been dying to see one of your fights for ages now. It's funny though...Rae hasn't really said much about you."

  When she winks at me from over Jack's shoulder, I just lift my eyes up to the ceiling. Jack responds by shoving both hands in the pockets of his army-print cargo shorts and glances at me from over his shoulder. Clearly, I'm the one who's supposed to do all the explaining here, but just what am I supposed to explain? I don't even know where to start.

  But, still, my lips part anyway, even if I have no idea what's going to come out of them, but Lucy sweeps in and saves the day.

  "You know, Rae, I don't see why you can't just take off now," she shrugs easily, but that shit-eating grin still hasn't slid off her face as she spreads her hands out into the empty space around her. "It's not like I won't be able to handle all the customers."

  Jack lifts an eyebrow at me and part of me waits for him to hold a hand out to me. He doesn't, just as he should. This isn't the time or the place for that—God, what am I even doing? Anticipating some sort of physical contact from him, wanting it, hoping for it...I've lost my mind.

  Finally, the cloud lifts and I find my voice again.

  "If you're sure you'll be okay, I guess we could go now."

  Of course, in doing that, I've basically just admitted Jack was the one I'd had plans with today. Not like Lucy hadn't already figured that out, even if the reason was so off-base I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Admitting it, though, and let
ting Lucy assume were two very different beasts.

  Jack waits patiently as I grab my purse and stuff my iPad inside before scrambling off my seat behind the counter. True to form, Lucy's eyes dart back and forth between us and I even catch her waggling her eyebrows in my direction. Oh well. She can think what she wants because I can't tell her the truth.

  But when I wave goodbye to my sister, my cheeks flushing hotly, Jack follows me toward the door, opens it for me, and puts his hand lightly on my lower back to see me outside. He even glances over his shoulder to give Lucy a smile and a soft nod goodbye. My entire body is warm from his touch and it's a welcome distraction.

  His appearance and my distraction because of it only temporarily fog what's about to happen next.

  "Can you leave your car here?"

  Tears sting my eyes as I nod. His lips are turned down and soft grey eyes watch me carefully, like he's worried I might bolt. I won't do that. Whatever he's about to tell me, I have to stand here and deal with it.

  "Where are we..." the words twist in my throat, but I force them out anyway. "Where are we going?"

  He blows out a deep breath as he walks me around the side of his truck and opens the door for me. "I was thinkin' my place. Somewhere quiet where we can talk."

  "My place is closer."

  "Yeah," he grins as he slides into the driver's seat, but it's more like a pained grimace than a smile. "But then I'd have to come face to face with that devil cat again. I think I'll pass if that's cool with you."

  "Devil cat?" I laugh, grateful to have yet another distraction from the tears threatening to slip down my cheeks. "Don't say that about my baby."

  He just shakes his head, a low rumble vibrating in his throat, but it never builds to a full-fledged laugh. Luckily, he spares me anymore unnecessary tension by cutting right to the chase.

  "Brennan won't be there."

  "I figured."