“What the fuck are you doing?” I snarled when Gibsie and Hughie dragged me out of the lunch hall before I had a chance to get a second punch in on Cormac.
“Stopping you from doing something really stupid,” Gibsie explained calmly as he steered me out of the main building. “Again, bulldozer.”
“What were you thinking?” Hughie demanded when we reached the courtyard and were out of view of the office. “You know how much trouble you’d be in with The Academy if they knew you were fighting at school!
“Fuck The Academy,” I snarled, shaking their hands off. “I was trying to defend her.”
“Well, all you ended up doing was embarrassing the girl,” Hughie barked. “Congratulations, Cap. Like she doesn’t have enough shit to deal with. You just single handedly made her the target of every one of your little fangirls.”
Furious, I ran a hand through my hair to stop myself from swinging a punch at one of my buddies.
“You heard what she said back there,” I hissed, feeling my body vibrate with rage. “What did you expect me to do?”
“She didn’t want you to defend her, lad,” Gibsie added. “She told you that.”
“Well, she was wrong,” I spat.
“Well, now she’s gone,” Gibsie told me. “So calm your tits.
She was gone?
That gave me pause for thought.
Swinging around, I spotted Claire, the viper, and Kate all standing alongside us, but no Shannon.
“Yeah, she’s definitely gone,” Feely added as he strolled over to us with his hands shoved in his pockets.
“You with the new girl, Cap?” Pierce asked, joining the never-ending circle of fucking nuisance. “You kept that one on the quiet.”
“What – no,” I muttered, exhaling a weary sigh as the anger dissipated from my body. “I don’t know what I am anymore. I don’t know what the fuck is happening to me.”
“Well,” Lizzie piped up. “You just earned some major brownie points in my eyes.” She patted my arm. “And trust me, I don’t give those out often.”
“She doesn’t,” Pierce offered with a knowing grimace.
“Are we still heading to your gaff?” Feely asked. “Seems pointless going back in now.”
I shook my head, needing a damn minute to work through my thoughts.
What the hell just happened?
How did I allow myself to lose control like that?
And where the fuck did she go?
Was she okay?
I was going to kill someone.
I could feel the anger growing back up inside of me at the thought of Shannon’s resigned expression.
Yeah, she looked bleeding resigned.
She should have been furious.
Instead she just took it.
That might have been the way it worked for her in BCS, but that was not how it was going to go down at Tommen.
She was no one’s fucking target, and I was going to make damn sure of that.
“Johnny?”
The sound of my name being called stirred me from my thoughts.
“What?” I snapped my eyes up and looked around at my friends, feeling at a complete loss.
“Are we going?” Hughie asked, giving me a strange look.
“Going where?” I snapped, bristling, not liking this kind of attention one bleeding bit.
I felt like I was standing here naked with my fucked-up feelings on full display, giving all seven of them a glimpse into something I didn’t understand myself.
“I should find her,” I said to myself more than anyone else. Panicking, I swung around then, doing a full 360. “I should check on her.”
“No,” Hughie said calmly, “You should go home and cool off. She obviously doesn’t want to come with us, lad. That’s why she’s gone.”
I turned my glare on him. “The fuck would you know about what she wants?”
Hughie’s brows shot up in surprise.
“Give me your house keys, Cap,” Gibsie commanded then, stepping in front of me.
Without questioning him, I pulled my keys out of my pocket and handed them to him.
“We’ll catch you up,” Gibsie told our friends as he tossed my keys to Hughie and then slung an arm over my shoulder, leading me back towards the P.E. hall.
I went with him because my schoolbag was in the hall, and I had no clue of what else to do.
“Are you okay?” Gibsie asked when we walked into the empty changing room.
“No!” I roared. “I am so far from okay, I don’t know what the fucking word means anymore.”
“I know now isn’t the time to say it, but I’m going to say it anyway,” Gibsie said. “I told you so. I fucking told you back in fourth year when she started sniffing around that she was bad news.”
“I don’t need reminding,” I spat as I stalked over to the bench and grabbed my stuff. “I know I fucked up.”
“You did,” he agreed, not bothering to lie, as he grabbed his own bag. “You saw a pair of nice tits, an easy life, and you let your then-working dick do the thinking for ya.” Shrugging, he tossed his bag over his shoulder and said, “This is the result. Another clinger who won’t let the fuck go.”
“Well, my dick’s not doing the thinking anymore,” I bit out.
“Thank god. And for what it’s worth, I would have lost my shit, too,” he told me. “If some bitch talked about Claire like that, I would have blown ten head gaskets.”
“It’s my fault that happened to her,” I growled. “Bella’s on Shannon’s case because of me.”
“No,” Gibsie corrected and then shook his head. “Okay, yes, she’s on her case because of you, but that’s not your fault, lad.”
“She won’t leave me alone, Gibs.” Exhaling a ragged breath, I ran a hand through my hair and growled. “She won’t stop.”
“Could you talk to your Dad about getting, I don’t know, like a restraining order or something?”
“For what, Gibs?” I shot back, flustered. “Being annoying at school?”
“And following you around the pubs,” he interjected.
I shook my head. “No, the only restraining that should have been done was me restraining my dick.”
Gibsie laughed as we walked out of the changing room. “Restraining your dick.”
“It’s not funny,” I barked. “I haven’t had sex with her since Halloween. It’s March now, Gibs. Fucking March. You’d think she’d let it go by now.”
“You should have stopped things back then.” He opened the door to the hall and we both stepped out into the rare afternoon sunshine. “You let it slide into January, Johnny.”
“Yeah, well, I had a lot on my mind,” I huffed, descending the steps. “And she finished it, so I have no bleeding clue why she won’t just go away.”
“You know why she won’t go away, lad,” Gibsie replied, nudging my shoulder as we strolled into the carpark.
I sighed heavily.
Yeah, I knew.
Fucking rugby.
“Can you promise me something?” he said then, as he pulled out his car keys and unlocked his shiny new Ford Focus.
“Yeah, lad,” I sighed, slinging my bags into the boot of the car.
“Promise that you will never go back there, no matter how fucking tempting it is.”
I balked at him. “Gibs, I wouldn’t go back there if she was the last girl on the bleeding planet.”
He laughed at my response and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“I’m serious,” I told him, sinking into the passenger seat. “I wouldn’t touch that girl again if she was the only cure for my un-ejaculating dick –” I paused to fasten my seatbelt. “I would rather walk around for the rest of my life with blue balls and a shriveled cock than put my hands on her again. That’s how much she repulses me.”
“Well, good for you.” Gibsie cranked the engine. “Because that girl wants to tie your ass down so bad it’s scary.”
“There will be no tying me down to anyone,” I shot back. “And especially not her.”
He arched a brow. “You sure about that?”
“Just shut up and put your seatbelt on,” I instructed, looking around for anything he could hurt. “And check your mirrors.”
“Yes, Dad,” Gibsie muttered, complying with my commands.
“Okay, you can go now – nice and slow,” I told him when I was confident that he could pull out of his parking spot without causing grievous bodily harm – which he was quite capable of doing. “Slow, Gibs.”
“Binding thirteen,” Gibsie snickered as he tore off way too fucking fast for comfort. “Little Shannon blew that shit clean out of the water.”
“Slow your ass down,” I barked, resisting the urge to snatch the wheel. “And what the hell does binding thirteen mean?”
“You don’t know about that?”
I shook my head. “Obviously not since I’m asking you.”
“That’s what they say, lad,” Gibsie explained.
“Who?” I demanded as I grabbed ahold of the Oh Jesus handle and threw a few Hail Mary’s up to the man upstairs.
Don’t let this fucker kill me.
“The girls at school,” he chuckled, pulling onto the main road without checking both ways, and narrowly avoiding a milk van. “That’s what they say about you.”
Oh, Jesus.
I was going to die in this car.
He was going to take my bleeding life.
Sheepishly saluting the milkman who was shaking his fist at us, I turned to glare at Gibsie.
“They call me binding thirteen?” I shook my head. “Why? I don’t get it.”
“It’s not what they call you,” he corrected. “It’s what they want to do with you.”
“What?”
“You’re number 13,” he laughed. “And they want to bind with you.” He turned to waggle his brows at me. “Scrum style.”
“That is…so fucking creepy,” I grumbled, shuddering. “Put your eyes on the road!”
“One hundred percent,” Gibsie laughed, turning his attention back to the windscreen. “Claire told me about it last year. Said she overheard a bunch of sixth years talking about something called ‘Operation Binding Thirteen’ in the bathroom.”
“Jesus Christ,” I growled.
“Right around the time you started tapping Bella,” he filled in. “Do the maths.”
I didn’t have to.
I had already figured it out.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I groaned.
“Yep,” Gibsie agreed with a grimace. “Be glad you got out of that, Johnny. Be very fucking glad.”
I was.
More than words could express.
“What am I going to do, Gibs?”
“About Shannon?”
I nodded glumly.
“Give in,” he answered without hesitation.
“I can’t,” I croaked out.
“You can,” he assured me. “You’re just scared.”
Yeah, I was scared.
I was fucking terrified of my feelings for her.
“I don’t even feel like I have a choice anymore,” I confessed. “I am losing my bleeding mind, Gibs.”
“Nah, your mind’s still there,” Gibsie chuckled, patting my shoulder. “It’s your heart your losing, lad.”
“Fuck,” I choked out, biting down on my lip as sheer terror seized my chest.
“Yeppers,” he agreed. “Terribly inconvenient, isn’t it?”
“I’ll fucking say,” I mumbled.
