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Dear Jesus, save me. Please save me from this fucking woman…
“I’m going to need him to take my case when I go down for murder.”
I stopped bringing home animals a long time ago because I realized I didn’t want them to be caged with me—when I realized they were safer in the wild than with me.
“The girl you remember is gone, Darren. I’m not her anymore. Whatever I used to be, he beat it out of me a long time ago.”
“You don’t get to shut me out, Shannon. You don’t get to do that to me again, because I won’t go this time. Do you hear me? I’m here, I’m in, I care, and I’m not going the fuck away.”
“I care so fucking much I can hardly breathe.”
He didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. He didn’t offer more than he could give. He just stayed.
“I’ll always be careful with you, Shannon like the river.”
I fell in love with a girl who had more layers and complications attached to her life than a Rubik’s Cube. A Rubik’s Cube I could solve. Shannon Lynch’s life, not so much.
“You love his sister, and I love his sister’s best friend,”
“You’re one hell of a mother, Joey the hurler.”
One thing I knew for certain was that I could never untangle myself from this girl. And what’s more, I didn’t want to.
Oh god. My heart. These words. This boy.
“It’s like I’m watching the water rising, and it’s coming higher and higher. I can see it closing in on me, taking me under.”
“You show up and all the bad just…goes away for a little while.”
“Better. Alive. Free. Safe. Important. I feel like I can breathe for the first time in days, and that’s only because you’re here—because I’m with you.” She grimaced then, like a painful thought had just
The girl was the definition of fall down seven times and stand up eight. No matter what seemed to be thrown her way, she always dusted herself off, climbed back up on her feet, and tried again.
“But I never wanted to leave that bathroom, because I felt safe. I feel safe with you.”
“Don’t let go, okay?” “I won’t,” he promised, tightening his hold on me.
“And that feeling in the pit of my stomach, the dread—it’s the most familiar feeling I have. I almost feel like I’m not okay when I’m not worried. I’m not okay with feeling okay.”
“I don’t just like you. I fucking—” Shaking his head, Johnny rubbed his jaw before looking back at me. “Shannon, I love you.”
“No, I mean a girl as kind, and caring, and trustworthy, and loyal as you,” he countered gruffly. “And beautiful. Jesus Christ, you are so fucking beautiful that it’s painful to look at you. I’ve never seen anything like you in my life.”
I’m sticking around because I need you.”
“I need you, too, because you calm something inside of me. You make me feel good. Like I don’t have to…” His voice trailed off for a moment as he clearly pondered what he was trying to say. “You make me feel like I’m enough as I am,” he finally admitted. “Like if this is the furthest I go, if I don’t make the squad, then it’s okay.”
There she went asking for promises I wasn’t sure I could keep, and there I went making them anyway.
“Sometimes you have to be a bad bastard when you’re dealing with a bad bitch.”
“I’m a lot of trouble.” “I like your trouble,”
“You’re my girlfriend now, right?”
“And I’m yours.”
“That from the very first day you walked into my life, you changed me. That very first time I saw you? You sparked to life something inside of me.”
“I’m just so tired,” she whispered,
ignoring my words, drowning us both in her pain.
I hoped she never left me, because I was never going to get over this girl.
We spent the day doing absolutely nothing and that meant absolutely everything to me.
“I don’t want to be ordinary, Shannon. I want to be extraordinary. I want to excel. But all of it—the training and the fucking grafting—it means nothing if I don’t make it back on the pitch soon.”
He made me feel safe, and wanted, and I was sticking to that feeling like glue.
“You teach people how to treat you by setting boundaries, lad. If you let someone walk all over you, they’re going to think it’s okay.”
Every part of me was wholeheartedly in with this girl. It felt like she had been in my life forever. Like I’d never known anything other than Shannon. She was my first love, and she was scary as fuck to me. Being with her was an obsession that threatened to consume me daily. I had to work my ass off to keep my head in check, but remembering to keep my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds was easier said than done when I had a girl that knocked me on my ass with one glance. She wrapped me up in childish, illogical, irrational knots, with a new one attaching itself to my heart with
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“I’m not asking you to fix me,” she whispered, shivering. “I’m asking you to be with me.”
“I’m with you. All of you. Every part. Good and bad. I’m staying. So don’t hide this part from me.”
She happened to me when I least expected her.
“You have serious fucking issues with taking things that aren’t yours. You’re like a kleptomaniac but with humans!”
wanted to stand in front of this girl and shield her from all the horror she was exposed to. It wasn’t right, dammit, and I felt like I was drowning in the unfairness of her life. If I could lay her cuts and bruises over my skin, I would.
“You woke me up, Shan. Made me see things differently. Gave me a life outside of rugby. Something to look forward to.”
“I want you in my space, Shannon.”
“I want your trouble and your complications and everything else that comes with you.”
“You are home.”
I knew what I needed to do for me, but it wasn’t the same as what I needed to do for us.
“She gave me the second chance I desperately needed. She saw something in me, something I didn’t even see in myself at the time, and she nourished it. She was a wonderful woman, and when she was dying, I never hesitated about moving back to Cork to take care of her.”
“We’re all a little fractured, Shan.”
