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I turned my attention to the road. “And what?”
“You look pissed.”
“I’m fine.” I needed to do something, put my foot down, hit the weight room, anything to expel the tension building inside my body.
“You sure, man?”
“Yep.” Tearing out of my parking spot, I shifted into second gear, and then third, ignoring the Caution Children Crossing signs in my bid to get onto the main road.
Sometimes we worked out in my converted garage at home, but right now, I thought the thirty-minute drive to the gym in the city might do me some good.
I knew I had stepped over a serious line by breaching her privacy like this, but I didn’t regret it.
Dammit, I knew she was vulnerable.
That feeling I had earlier today?
The pain I was so sure I’d seen in her eyes.
It was real, it was there, I recognized it, and now I could do something about it.
I could prevent anything like this from happening again.
It wouldn’t happen again.
Not on my goddamn watch.
6Awakened Hormones
SHANNON
I had a moderate concussion that resulted in an overnight stay at the hospital for observation, followed by the rest of the week off school. To be honest, I would have preferred to stay in the hospital the entire time or return to school immediately because the concept of spending the week at home with my father breathing down my neck was a special form of torture that no one deserved.
Miraculously, I managed to survive the week by holing myself up in my room all day, every day, and generally avoiding my father and his tumultuous mood swings like the plague.
When I returned to school the following week, I had been expecting a downpour of mocking and taunting to incur.
Shame was a problematic feeling for me, and sometimes it made it hard for me to function.
I spent the entire day in a sweaty, panic-ridden mess on high alert, waiting for something bad to happen. Something that never came.
Aside from a few curious stares and knowing smiles from the rugby team—as in, they knew what I looked like in my underwear—I had been left generally unscathed. I couldn’t comprehend how a humiliating event like that could go unspoken about.
It didn’t make sense to me.
No one brought up the incident on the pitch that day. It was as if it had never happened. Honestly, if it weren’t for the lingering headache, I would have doubted it happened at all.
Days turned into weeks but the silence remained.
Nothing was ever said to me. It was never brought up again. I wasn’t a target.
And I had peace.
Almost a month had passed since the incident on the pitch, and I found myself falling into a steady routine with Claire and Lizzie by my side.
I found myself beginning to look forward to going to school. It was the strangest turnabout of my life, considering for the majority of my life, I had loathed school, but Tommen had become almost like a safe place to be.
Instead of the usual feeling of dread when I stepped off the bus, all I felt was immense relief.
