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“It’s does matter, Gerard. You’ve been a wreck almost every night since.” Reaching up, she peeled my hands away from my face and entwined them with hers. “I’m worried about you.”
I didn’t have to force myself to look at the girl holding my hands; my eyes automatically sought her out, honing in on those blond curls and brown eyes like I had been programmed to seek them out since babyhood.
“Hey, hey, just talk to me,” she instructed softly, reaching up to cup my face. “Come on, Gerard. Tell me what’s happening in that head of yours.”
I couldn’t talk to her.
I couldn’t talk to anyone.
The ugly side of life I had been exposed to was something I would take to the grave with me.
Stop.
Don’t think about it.
Block it out.
The present was the safest place for my mind to reside because the past was horrific and the future terrified me.
“It’s okay.” I tried to appease her worrying, covering her hands with mine as I repressed the urge to shudder. “Don’t worry about me.”
“That’s what friends do, Gerard.” Never taking her big brown eyes off mine, she leaned in close to rest her forehead against mine. “They worry about each other.”
If I could sew this girl to my skin without causing her an ounce of harm, then I would do it in a heartbeat. That’s how vital she was to my life. How essential she was to my existence.
If drugs were to Joey Lynch what Claire Biggs was to me, then there was no amount of rehab that could sway me to kick the habit. Because she was the habit of my lifetime.
In a weird way, that’s why I helped Aoife Molloy all those months ago. I would have helped her anyway, but the utter helplessness I saw in her eyes that night as she stared down the gun of love and pain, I knew there was something in her that I could relate to. I knew what it felt like to be that helpless, and I never wanted anyone to experience it. I saw the look in her eyes. I knew that look. I only wished that someone could have stepped in and saved me from that pain. But money couldn’t soothe the pain of my past. From feeling that level of devastation and weakness. If giving the girl a few quid spared her from that ordeal, then I would gladly do it.
“You can talk to me,” Claire continued to knock down my walls by saying. “I’m always here for you.”
“Claire.” Closing my eyes, I dragged in a steadying breath and forced myself to remember why I needed to not do what my heart was strongly urging me to do.
Christ, I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to do all the things lads did with their girls. I wanted to make her mine, but what if I was wrong? Not us as a couple, but me as a man? What if it didn’t work? What if I didn’t work? Because I didn’t feel things with girls. I never felt anything. I was numb to the point of being dead, and if I didn’t feel things with Claire, then it would confirm that my past had truly broken me beyond repair.
I could still remember how it felt the first time she put her lips on mine. Years had passed and several lips had replaced hers since, but I never forgot the spark. The ping. The ignited buzz that throttled my chest and caused my skin to grow hot and cold and warm and tingly all at once. It had only happened one time with one girl. She did something to me that day, gave me a sort of comfort only a person in my position could understand. I felt something. I felt for her. I enjoyed it. Her touch was welcome and wanted and wonderful. After that, I tried to forget about it for the sake of my friendship with Hugh, but I never could. Forgetting Claire wasn’t something I was capable of doing and he knew it.
Any form of intimacy I could conjure up, I wanted to both give and have with her. Just her.
Because I cared about the girl. I cared to the point where she distracted my day. I cared when her cat was sick. I cared when she cried. I cared when her mam ran out of her favorite brand of cereal, and she had to eat porridge. I cared so fucking much it was hard to find where she started and I ended.
I knew her favorite song every year since August 7, 1989. I knew her secrets, her little habits, and traits that nobody else noticed. I wanted to waste my time on her. All of my time. All of the time.
She’d always been the curly-haired whirlwind across the street that made my heart go crackers, but after the accident, I projected a lot of my emotions onto her. Hell, maybe even into her.
Both sets of our parents had grown up together, and when they settled down and married, they decided to put down roots on the same street and raise their children together.
A little younger than Hugh and a little older than Claire, I had somehow slotted into the middle, destined to grow up alongside the Biggs siblings. I loved them both like they were my own flesh and blood, but it became very clear to me, at a young age, that the feelings I held for the youngest member of the Biggs family were not brotherly.
From as far back as I could remember, my mind had always been very clear about three things.
One: Hugh was my brother.
Two: Bethany was my sister.
Three: Claire was mine.
After the accident, once I learned how fickle life could be, how quickly a person you loved could be snatched away, it caused the feelings I had for Claire to deepen rapidly, growing wilder and stronger with every day that passed, spreading in intricate, permanent patterns around my heart like ivy.
