Binding 13 (Boys of Tommen, #1)

by Chloe Walsh

Navy jumper with the Tommen College crest on the breast with a white shirt and red tie. Gray skirt that stopped at the knee, revealing two scrawny, underdeveloped legs, and finishing with tan tights, navy socks, and two-inch, black court shoes.

My only consolation was the shoes that Mam bought me brought me up to the five-foot-two mark. I was ridiculously small for my age in every way.

Felttttt

My long brown hair was loose and flowing down the middle of my back, pushed back from my face with a plain red hair band. My face was free of makeup, making me look every bit as young and small as I felt. My eyes were too big for my face and a shocking shade of blue to boot.

The squinting only made me look constipated.

Lolol

What I lacked in the height and breast departments, I liked to think I made up for in maturity. I was levelheaded and an old soul.

I’d suffered relentless bullying in both primary and secondary school.

Claire and Lizzie were to attend Tommen College the following September; a lavish elite private school, with massive funding and top-of-the-range facilities—coming from the brown envelopes of wealthy parents who were hell-bent on making sure their children received the best education money could buy.

For the first month of first year, I was hounded by several groups of boys all demanding things from me that I was unwilling to give them. After that, I was labeled a frigit because I wouldn’t get off with the very boys that had made my life a living hell for years. The meaner ones labeled me crueler slurs, suggesting that the reason I was such a frigit was because I had boy parts under my skirt. No matter how cruel the boys were, the girls were far more inventive.

They spread vicious rumors about me, suggesting that I was anorexic and threw my lunch up in the toilets after lunch every day. I wasn’t anorexic—or bulimic, for that matter.

Life, for me, was a bitter disappointment, and at the time, I had wanted no further part in it.

My brother Joey said they targeted me because I was good-looking and called my tormenters jealous bitches. He told me that I was gorgeous and instructed me to rise above it.

My older brother was the polar opposite of me in every shape of the word. Where I was short, he was tall. I had blue eyes, he had green ones. I was dark-haired; he was fair. His skin was sun-kissed golden. I was pale. He was outspoken and loud, while I was quiet and kept to myself.

Joey and I had an older brother, Darren, and three younger brothers: Tadhg, Ollie, and Sean, but neither of us had spoken to Darren since he walked out of the house five years previous, following yet another infamous blowout with our father.

Tadhg and Ollie, who were eleven and nine, were only in primary school, and Sean, who was three, was barely out of nappies, so I wasn’t exactly flush with protectors to call on. It was days like this that I missed my eldest brother.

At twenty-three, Darren was seven years older than me. Big and fearless, he was the ultimate big brother fo...

Labeled a bastard baby because he was born out of wedlock in 1980s Catholic Ireland, life had always been a challenge for my brother.

Darren was gay and our father couldn’t cope with it. He blamed my brother’s sexual orientation on an incident in the past, and nothing anyone said could get it through to our father that being gay wasn’t a choice. Darren was born gay, the same way Joey was born straight and I was born empty.

He was who he was, and it broke my heart that he wasn’t accepted in his own home. Living with a homophobic father was torture for my brother.

But the bullying never stopped. Nothing stopped. Until one day, it did.

That day wasn’t just my breaking point; it was Joey’s, too. He’d followed me into the house with a week’s suspension under his belt for beating the living daylights out of the brother of Ciara Maloney, my main tormentor.

Besides, Claire Biggs and Lizzie Young, the two the girls I’d been friends with at primary school, would be in my class at Tommen College. The principal, Mr. Twomey, had assured me of that when my mother and I had met with him during the Christmas holidays to enroll.

“You can do this,” I whispered to myself. “You can absolutely do this, Shannon.”

“Lovely,” he said instead, pale-green eyes warm and full of unspoken worry. “The uniform suits you, Shan.”

Aww sweet brother comments

Joey nodded, then pulled me in for a hug. “You are going to be grand,” he whispered in my ear, hugging me so tight I wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince or console.

“If someone gives you even the hint of shit, then you text me and I will come over there and burn that fucking school to the ground and every posh little rugby-head fucker in it.” That was a sobering thought.

Yeah i love big bro joey

This was hard for my brother, I realized, as I watched him wave me off to school like an anxious parent would their firstborn. He was always fighting my battles, always jumping in to defend me and pull me to safety. I wanted him to be proud of me, to see me as more than a little girl that needed his constant protection. I needed that for myself.

It was pouring rain outside, and in any other circumstance, I might consider it a bad omen, but this was Ireland where it rained an average of 150 to 225 days out of the year.

It was a large bright room with floor-to-ceiling windows on one side that looked onto a courtyard of buildings. Plaques and photographs of previous students adorned the lemon-painted walls. Plush couches and comfy chairs filled the large space, along with a few round tables and matching oak chairs. There was a small kitchenette area in the corner with a kettle, toaster, and microwave.

Third year common area sounds bougee

I was exceptionally small for my age, dwarfed even further by my friend’s five-foot-nine frame. She was tall, athletically built, and exceptionally beautiful. It wasn’t a demure form of beauty, either. No, it shot out of her face like sunbeams. Claire was simply dazzling with big puppy-dog brown eyes and ringlets of light-blond curls. She had a sunny disposition and a smile that could warm the coldest of hearts.

She oozed a lazy sort of confidence with her long dark-blond swishing ponytail and makeup-free face, emphasizing those big blue eyes of hers. I also noted all through our classes that Lizzie received plenty of male attention regardless of the baggy trousers and messy hair she was sporting, proving the point that you don’t need to strip down and paint your face to attract the opposite sex.

Meanwhile, I was the tiny brunette who buddied up with the best-looking girls in class. Sigh…

With my head down and my heart hammering violently against my rib cage, I hurried through the empty fields, hesitating only when I reached the largest of the training pitches—the one filled with boys. Huge boys. Dirty boys. Angry-looking boys. Who were glaring at me.

Boy Wonder Captivates the Coaching Staff at the Academy—Young Johnny Kavanagh, 17, a native of Blackrock, Dublin, currently residing in Ballylaggin, County Cork, sailed through his medical evaluation to secure his position at the prestigious rugby academy in Cork.

To be honest, I’d been running on empty since last summer, having returned from an international campaign with the U18s, where I was playing alongside the best in Europe, only to head right into an intense six-week conditioning camp in Dublin.

My lifestyle and intense training regime required me to eat at regular allotted time frames. Every two hours was ideal for my body when I was consuming a 4,500-calorie-a-day diet. Leave my stomach waiting longer than four hours, and I was a moody, pissy bitch.

Club level was basic enough but schoolboy rugby was a fucking waste of my time. Especially this school.

For the millionth time in the past six years, I found myself resenting my parents’ move. Had we stayed in Dublin, I would be playing on a quality team with quality players and making some actual goddamn progression. But no, instead I was here, in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, picking up the slack for a less-than-adept trainer and busting my bollocks to keep our side in sights of the qualifiers.

I was perturbed beyond all rationality when a girl strolled across the pitch—fucking strolled right through the training grounds. Irritated, I glared at her, feeling a rage inside of me that bordered on manic.

Following Coach’s horrified gaze, I turned around and locked eyes on the crumpled ball on the edge of the pitch. “Oh shite,” I muttered when my mind made sense of what I was seeing. The girl. The fucking girl who’d been prancing around the pitch was laid out on her back on the grass. A ball lay on the grass beside her. Not just any ball. My bleeding ball!

When she reached me, she slapped the ball against my chest and hissed, “Is this your ball?” I was so struck down by the sight of this tiny mud-covered girl that I just nodded like a fucking eejit. Jesus Christ, who was this girl?

She was tiny, seriously fucking small, barely reaching my chest in height. “You owe me a skirt,” she growled, still clutching the fabric by her hip. “And a pair of tights,” she added, glancing down at the huge ladder in her skin-colored tights. Her gaze roamed over her body, then landed on my face, eyes narrowed. “Okay,” I replied with a nod, because in all honesty what the hell else was I supposed to say?

Lolol

She sniffled then, blue eyes watering, and something inside of me snapped. Ah, shite.

Reaching for the hem of my jersey, I pulled it over my head and ordered, “Put that on.” “It’s filthy,” she sobbed, but didn’t stop me when I pulled it down over her head. She slipped her hands into the sleeves and I felt an immense amount of relief when the hem fell to her knees, covering her up. Christ, she really was a tiny little thing.

She was in my jersey and it fell around her like a dress. I was freezing my tits off beside her in nothing but a pair of training shorts, socks, and studded football boots. Oh, and the pink fucking schoolbag slung on my back.

Lmao

My role in the rugby academy meant that I was given a lot of leeway in this school, a lot of preferential treatment that other students didn’t get, but I wasn’t going to push it on my first day back. Not when I’d used up my quota by maiming the new girl.

“Yes, well, tell that to her mother when she arrives,” Mr. Twomey huffed. “She was already pulled out of Ballylaggin Community School for being verbally and physically attacked. And what happens on her first day at Tommen? This!”

Shifting her under my arm, I glared at the so-called authority figure. “Hold up,” I snapped, registering his earlier words. “What do you mean she was attacked?”

I looked down at the tiny little female under my arm. Who could attack her? She was so small. And frail.

“Hey, hey!” I said louder now. “Look at me.” I shook her head. “Look at my face.” This time she did. She opened her eyes, and fuck me, I unintentionally sucked in a sharp breath. Jesus, this girl was beautiful.

I’d noticed it earlier of course. She had a striking look about her. But now, seeing her up close like this and being able to count the freckles on her face—eleven by the way—it was hitting home just how striking she was.