A Girl Like Lilac

by Victoria L. James

  It took one swing of thunder to put Chris on his back.

  That should have been enough. It wasn’t enough for Toby.

  One punch, two, three, four, and the sound of beating flesh made my hands fly to my ears before I screamed out for them to stop.

  The rest happened quickly.

  My family was soon outside, as were the police. I had to watch as Toby was handcuffed and pushed down into the back of a police car again, his eyes on mine for as long as they could be before he disappeared around the corner under the flashing blue lights above him.

  He was gone again… because of me.

  ELEVEN

  Toby

  I stretched my neck from side to side to loosen the knots of tension that had been growing there over the last few hours. They’d questioned me once already. Now I was waiting for the verdict from the policewoman who had disappeared over an hour ago.

  Eventually, the door creaked open and in walked Joel Atkin’s father looking like he'd won the lottery of juvenile delinquents.

  My hands were clasped together, resting on the table as I stared down at them instead of looking at him.

  “Mr Hunter,” he drew out as he sat down in front of me.

  I stared at my hands.

  “My colleague has filled me in on the details of what happened tonight on Crooked Mount outside a Miss Lilac Clarke’s residence.”

  I stared at my hands.

  Joel’s father sighed and drummed his fingers on the table between us. “And I think we both know that I already know who you are, don't we, Toby?”

  I stared at my hands.

  “Your right hook is getting a bit of a reputation in this old village. The kind of reputation that doesn't belong here.”

  I stared at my hands.

  “Lucky for you, your friend Christopher doesn't have any serious injuries, just a few scrapes and scratches, a bit of bruising. Lucky for you, he doesn't want to press charges… yet. But that may change, and if it does, we’re going to have to bring you back in here and charge you according to the injuries he sustained, which will be verified by the witness account, hospital reports, and the police reports my colleague will be passing my way.”

  Goddammit, I stared at my hands, even though the words ‘witness account’ rang alarm bells in my mind. There had only been one witness.

  Lilac.

  I had no idea what she'd said about me, and that was all I could think about. I wasn't concerned with what the police thought. I didn't give a damn about a possible criminal record following me around for the rest of my life. The only thing that bothered me was the haunting prospect of seeing horror and disgust on Lilac’s face when I returned home. I must have shown Joel’s Dad a flicker of emotion because I heard the sudden amusement in his voice when he spoke again. I felt his confidence and satisfaction in the way he leaned closer and lowered his head to try and catch my eye.

  “I was a teenage boy once, Mr Hunter. I know the way it burns in your fingertips, the way it rises to the surface and comes out as aggression. You’re a strong boy—full of muscle. Anyone can see that.”

  I blinked, my breathing getting heavier as I curled my fingers tighter together and stared down at my hands.

  “You want what you want, and you’ll hurt anyone in your way to get it. You feel invincible, don’t you?”

  My jaw ticked.

  “I know what it's like to struggle to control the newfound power you feel in that boy-to-man transition.”

  I exhaled as I peeked up at him through the heaviness of my lashes and met his gaze.

  He looked just like Joel—the same arrogance, certainty, and smug face.

  “But let me set one thing straight with you…” He leaned even closer, the smell of coffee on his breath tying my stomach up in knots. “If you ever end up in my station again for swinging those fists of yours around, I'll make damn sure I don't need anyone to press charges against you to bring you down. I will rain thunder on your life, and I will make sure you pay for disturbing my town. For hurting my son. For being the kind of disease that the good people of Southwold don't need around here. Do you understand me?”

  I stared into his eyes, swallowing down the threat like it was the chalkiest, bitterest pill to take.

  “Do. You. Understand me?”

  “Yes,” I croaked.

  He raised his brow and waited.

  “Sir. Yes, sir.”

  A mirror image of Joel’s smug smirk shone back at me, and I think it was at that exact moment when I began to realise how unjust the world could be.

  I wasn't offered the option of a ride home, although they did offer to call my parents. I refused. The thought of an official police caution and some ‘unofficial’ police warnings hanging around my neck were things I needed to come to terms with on my own for a while. There was no desire to head straight home. The hours had passed by in the police station, and the sun was due to rise at any moment.

  Pushing my arms into my hoodie, I zipped it up as far up to my chin as it would go and pulled my hood up over my head, sinking my fists into my pockets as I walked towards the beach.

  Apart from the lighthouse behind me, the white wooden pier to my left was Southwold’s most adored landmark. There was a cafe at the front of it, as well as an arcade museum and gift shop. Farther on the pier sat three smaller white cabins, running from one end to the other, each one selling different souvenirs and gifts to the thousands of people who flocked there during the summer season. I’d been up and down that pier a hundred times since we moved there, but that morning was the first time I studied it with any effort. I guess when you lived close to something and saw it every day, it became the norm. When you saw something so beautiful all the time, you forgot to appreciate just how special it truly was.

  Southwold pier was fucking beautiful.

  As was the girl standing beneath it, hidden in the shadows below, her toes dipping into the quiet hiss of the small waves that crashed around the rusty wooden beams that were holding the pier above her.

  It felt like a hallucination at first, but then Lilac turned around slowly and flashed me a weak smile.

  We stared at each other for a while before I began to walk towards the pier, tilting my head to one side, silently asking her to follow me.

  She did.

  I walked to the very end of the pier until all I could see from every angle was the ocean. Leaning my arms on the metal railing, I waited for Lilac to reach me. When she did, she shocked the hell out of me by wrapping her arms around my waist and laying her head on my back, squeezing me tight as a small squeak of relief left her.

  “What are you doing here at this time, Lilac?”

  Her fingers pressed into my waist, her arms circling tight. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “How did you know I’d be here?”

  “I didn’t,” she answered against my back, the warmth of her breath pouring on me.

  As sweet as that moment was, I had to see her.

  I spun around and lifted her chin, letting my eyes search hers up close and personal. She’d changed so much in all the time we’d been apart. It seemed like every time I saw her lately, I discovered something new. A sprinkle of freckles bridged her nose, trickling down either side until they floated sparsely into her rosy cheeks. Her amber eyes seemed brighter somehow—yet weary. Her lashes were impossibly long, the fluttering of them so soft and delicate, I could have lost myself in the repetition of the rise and fall for hours and hours. Her hair turned darker every year, meaning she was now a fiery red that only complimented her pale, ivory skin further. Why I’d allowed myself to miss her growth, I didn’t know. I hated the time we’d spent apart. I hated that Chris had been the one to hold her for so long when it should have been me.

  “Did Chris hurt you?”

  “You’ve just spent hours in a police station, your knuckles are still bloody, and you’re worried about me?”

  “I guess so.”

  “No. Chris didn’t hurt me. He just pissed me
off.”

  “Me too.” I smirked.

  “I figured that out for myself. Carry on like that, and you’re going to get yourself into a whole lot of trouble, Toby.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Maybe you should stay away from me from now on. Every time we’re together you end up in trouble.”

  “I think I’ll take my chances. You’re a bad habit I can’t seem to break.”

  “One that has gotten you arrested twice now.” Her face fell, her concern evident.

  “I’m secretly aiming for a hat-trick.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “Why not? It could be fun. I could destroy any guy who tries to get near you.”

  “Don’t even joke about it, Toby.” Lilac shook her head and let her smile fade again.

  I exhaled through my nose, staring down into her eyes. “Why not?”

  “Because.” She paused. “I’m not worth that kind of trouble.”

  “You’re worth a war, Lilac.”

  Her breath stuttered as she inhaled sharply, her body going rigid in places and melting in others. There was an unspoken thing between us that we’d been dancing around for almost a decade, and that amount of time when you’re only seventeen means that you can’t imagine your life without the unspoken thing being there at all.

  We’d both made mistakes. Kids did that a lot. We’d stayed away and tried hard to ruin something so quietly magical between us, yet here we were again, the two of us in our hour of need standing in each other’s arms while the world slept behind us.

  “You shouldn’t have ignored me after prom,” she whispered.

  I shook my head. “I know.”

  “You hurt me. A lot.”

  “I’m sorry. A lot.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I had my reasons. None of which make sense now.”

  “Was my mum in on this big secret with you?” Her scowl was so brief that I wasn’t sure I was meant to see it.

  “She didn’t want you to blame yourself for what Joel did to me. It wasn’t your fault. I invited the trouble. I brought it on myself.”

  “Why the hell would you do that, Toby?”

  My thumb ran over her hip. “Because I wanted it all to end for you, and Joel wasn’t going to let it go until he got his revenge. Rather my face than yours.”

  Lilac didn’t speak. Her face was stony as her body began to shake in my grip. I slid my hands up and down her arms to comfort her, reassure her that everything was fine. Everything was good. It was a long distant memory now that didn’t need revisiting.

  “One day I’ll kill that guy.”

  “Joel?” I huffed out a small laugh. “Of course you will.”

  “I mean it, Toby.”

  “He’s not worth the jail time, the blood stains, or the guilt on your conscience.”

  “Says the man who has just given Chris two black eyes and God knows what else.”

  I looked over her head, back at the pastel-coloured chalets lining the promenade above the sandy beach. I looked at the lighthouse towering over Southwold. I looked at the houses that got to wake up to see the ocean every day. I looked at the lives going on behind those closed doors and wondered if any of them were as screwed up as mine. As ours.

  “I have a temper when it comes to you,” I said, looking back down at her.

  “Should I be scared?”

  “You’re safe. It’s everyone else we should worry about.”

  Her slow smile turned into a huge grin before the laughter bubbled over from her chest and poured out into the sky. The two of us laughed together, a mixture of the tension, the relief, and the happiness of being reunited, I guessed. Everything bad that had happened didn’t matter right then because I was a kid standing at the end of Southwold Pier, with the most amazing girl on the planet in his arms.

  We turned to look back out at the ocean and the sunrise. The reds were turning to pinks and oranges, the half circle peeking out on the horizon like it didn’t quite want to get out of bed. A stretch and a yawn of brightness began to light up the whole world in front of us, the twinkling of the water’s surface now a private dance of sunshine only we could see.

  “Isn’t it weird,” Lilac began. “How a place like Southwold has everything you could ever want in it. The beaches. The sea. The open air. No pollution, no walls, no high-rise buildings or cages to keep us in.” She tilted her head to look up at me, narrowing her eyes as the first signs of light invaded her eyes. “Yet with all this freedom around, it can still feel like the most suffocating place on the planet.”

  “Anywhere can be whatever you want it to be,” I lied. Places like this were where we were dropped off and forced to make it work.

  “Not at our age. We’re bound by college drama, teenage hormones, forced allegiances to the hierarchies of popularity. We’re tied in by connections that don’t feel true, as well as forcing ourselves to bend to parents’ good wills and best wishes, all while trying to smile and remain upbeat. When actually, we’re just confused, naïve, and really fucking scared.”

  I nudged her shoulder with mine. “That isn’t the girl I remember who once told me to hunt for magic my whole life.”

  She turned her face to mine, our lips only inches apart.

  “I have an idea,” she whispered. “We should start a revolution against our adolescence. Let’s go back to being kids. Let’s revolt against our teenage tendencies to see everything that was once good and beautiful as bad and sinister.”

  “Keep talking,” I urged, watching the movements of her pretty bow lips.

  “We could go back to the beginning. We could start appreciating the most basic things in life.”

  “Like…?”

  “Just being alive.” Her breath washed over me as she exhaled slowly, and the heady intoxication of it ran through my blood and straight into the darkest depths of my stomach, awakening every teenage fantasy I’d ever had about her. And there’d been a lot. Too many to recall. Some soft and delicate, others violent and wild, filled with lust and the need to erase any time we’d spent apart.

  “Who cares if life isn’t perfect? At least it’s happening for us right now. At least we can feel it, right?”

  “Right.” I smiled softly.

  “It’s time to focus on nothing more than breathing.” Lilac closed her eyes, flared her nostrils and pulled in a breath. “See? Feels so good.”

  She let her eyes flutter open and stared down at my mouth just as I began to lick my bottom lip and drag it through my teeth.

  “There are a lot of things I want to appreciate with you, Toby.”

  “Any requests?” I whispered.

  Her eyes flickered up to mine, and her smile grew brighter as the two words that had come to begin all our interactions over the previous year lingered in the air.

  “If I were to ask you to play a song right now, it would be Sixpence None the Richer...” Her body slid impossibly closer to mine against the railing. “Kiss me.”

  She pushed her lips against mine with all the tender force she had, her squeak of pleasure hanging in the back of her throat as I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her under me, pinning her against the railing. Our hands were everywhere—hers in my hair, tugging at the ends and setting my fucking soul on fire, mine running up and down the curves of her waist and committing it to memory for life.

  It was special, long overdue, and it was the reunion to beat all reunions. And despite every natural thing I felt for Lilac, every bad boy thought, every good boy intention, every soulful lyric of a song that flickered through my mind to describe what I felt for her, one thing stood out above them all…

  Kissing Lilac was the most natural thing on the planet.

  TWELVE

  Lilac

  Twelve months I’d spent with Chris feeling numb and out of place.

  Twelve minutes I’d spent back with Toby, and there I was, devouring everything I’d been missing and craving for so long. I couldn’t connect the quiet boy w
ho used to hide behind his curtain to the almost-man whose muscles were now straining against my skin, whose hands had my body pinned as he growled into my mouth and circled his hips against mine.

  My spine began to hurt from the pressure of the railing, but before I could even make a sound, Toby slid his free arm around my back, propping me up to save me any pain.

  “Sorry,” he panted against my lips.

  “Don’t you dare apologise for that.”

  “Want me to stop?”

  “No.”

  But he did stop. His forehead fell to mine as his hips continued to circle. I could feel his excitement. He wasn’t hiding it, and I didn’t want him to. If Toby was getting me so riled up with all his clothes on, I could only imagine how he would move if we ever got naked together. God, I hoped we got naked together.

  “What is it about you that brings out this side of me?” he asked breathlessly.

  “If I knew I’d use it against you every single day.”

  He pressed his whole body to mine and brushed a few strands of hair away from my face.

  “Be careful what you wish for.”

  “I think it’s pretty obvious what I wish for.”

  The small smile that tugged at his lips, the desire that no doubt shone from my eyes—they were things I could never put into words.

  “Do you have any plans today?” He smiled.

  “Not a thing.”

  “Spend the day with me.”

  How did he make five words sound so exhilarating?

  We walked home together. Neither of us acting like one had just suffered a traumatic break-up while the other had spent half the night in the police station. If anyone was watching as we strolled through the streets, all they would have seen were two people in love.

  At least I was.

  To be seventeen and in love was an overwhelming feeling, but I’d never been scared of dragons who breathed fire when I was younger, so I wasn’t about to start being scared of my own heart now that I had grown.