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He must be raging.
Rubbing a hand over my face, I quickly swiped at my damp cheeks and battled to get a handle on my emotions.
I was annoyed with myself for being the kind of person who cried when angry. I wanted to be a shouter. A shouter was much better than a crier. I was disgusted with myself for freezing, too.
He had no right to put his hands on me and I did nothing to stop him.
Words didn’t seem enough for that boy, and instead of kicking him in the junk or slapping his hand away, I’d clammed up just like I always did. I should have learned by now that being a pushover didn’t do me any favors, and not fighting back wasn’t an option, either.
In situations like the one that had just happened, I had to fight back.
I needed to stop letting the fear take ahold of me. I was entitled to stick up for myself. It wasn’t rocking the boat to defend yourself. I knew this, but the problem was, every time I was faced with a confrontation or crisis, my body—and my mind—always reacted with the same broken instinct: freeze.
People talked about the fight-or-flight instinct. I had neither. Instead of fighting back or fleeing, I froze.
Every fucking time.
Dragging in a few steadying breaths, I exhaled long and slow, striving to steady my nerves and erratic heartbeat. It took three tries of shaking out my hand before I had the coordination to successfully undo the top buttons of my coat and retrieve my phone from my shirt pocket beneath my jumper. Trembling, I unlocked the screen only to release a fresh surge of panic into my bloodstream when my eyes landed on the digital clock on the top of the screen.
It was five forty-seven.
My bus left on the dot at half past five. I’d missed it. There wouldn’t be another one passing through the route I needed until 9:45 p.m. tonight.
“Shit,” I whisper-cried, quickly scrolling into my contacts lists to find my brother’s name.
Pressing Call, I held the phone to my ear, but instead of the typical ring-ring sound that came with placing a call, I was greeted with the prerecorded robotic voice letting me know that I didn’t have sufficient credit to place this call. “Dammit!”
Groaning, I quickly tapped in the code that allowed me to send a free call me text message to Joey. When I didn’t get an immediate response, I sent another, and then I sent three more for good measure. Mam was at work and wouldn’t have her phone on her, and I’d rather sleep right here in this toilet stall than call my father to come get me—not that he would even come if I asked.
Thirty minutes later and I had sent at least twenty more freebie call me messages to my brother, but to no avail. He obviously either didn’t have his phone with him, or it was switched to silent. My bet was it was on silent mode since Joey rarely left the house without it. He probably forgot to take it off silent mode when he left school.
I didn’t know what else to do other than just wait at the school until the next bus was due. I knew the school remained open until late for after-school programs and tutoring. It technically never closed, considering it was also a boarding school, but the main area would be open until at least 9:00 p.m.
My stomach rumbled loudly, breaking the silence.
Checking the time again, I noted that it was now 6:18 p.m.
I had those slices of bread tucked away in my lunch box. I could go and make some toast in the common area while I waited.
I would be in serious trouble when I got home, but there was no way on god’s given earth that I was going to walk the fifteen miles home. The walk, I was sure I could handle. It was who I might meet on the walk that troubled me.
Standing up, I tucked my phone back into my shirt pocket, redid the buttons on my coat, reached for my bag, and let myself out the stall, stopping to wash my hands before leaving the sanctitude of the bathroom.
I pressed my ear to the door and listened for a long moment. When no sounds of violence and shouting came from the other side, I opened the door and stepped out. Like a horrific case of déjà vu, I walked out of the bathroom and straight into a hard chest of muscle.
16Keep Your Hands Off
JOHNNY
My groin was on fire and my body was simmering with barely restrained anger. Taking a boot to my crotch while at the bottom of a ruck during training was not my idea of a productive practice session. It took me a solid five minutes of breathing through my nose as I lay in a heap on the pitch before I could trust the contents of my stomach to stay the fuck in there and stand up. Resisting the natural reaction to maim and kill the culprit, who just so happened to be a sheepish-looking Hughie, I blew off the last five minutes of training in favor of going in search of an ice pack.
We had the league final coming up, and my asshole teammates were going to take me out before we even got there. Letting loose last weekend was all well and good, and the Shield was a nice little victory for the team, but my sight was set on the cup and theirs needed to be, too—apparently not, though, if the sluggish training session yesterday and sloppy performance this evening was anything to go by.
I was walking out of the lunch hall with one ice pack strapped to my junk and another pressed to my thigh when Gibsie’s voice boomed through the air followed by the annoying voice of Ronan McGarry.
“What did the little bollox do now?” I barked when they came into focus, standing on either side of the glass entry door.
“Don’t lose your shit,” Gibsie said in a low tone. “I’ve got it under control.”
