Taming 7 (Boys of Tommen, #5)

by Chloe Walsh

Moments before the pain in my lungs exploded and everything went dark, I saw it. A halo of light. An orb of pure sunshine. Her. I saw her. And that’s when I knew. That’s when I knew…

Claire Biggs had a lot of things. My back. My attention. My heart. My soul. Yeah, she had all of me and that wasn’t an exaggeration.

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.

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.

Because love hurt.

My fear rested in my inability to love her the right way. In the potential I had to hurt her beyond repair or recourse. The same way he hurt me.

“Still taking my pill a day to keep the voices away.”

Do it. Tell him. Let him help you. Don’t you dare.

The sky was blue outside. The birds were out. The sun was shining. It was another blissful morning. And I wanted to scream.

Come to think about it, he was the only one she was willing to speak to for months. It was a pretty dark time in our lives that had followed us long into secondary school.

Over time, Lizzie’s grief had taken ahold of her in ways none of us were equipped or mature enough to handle, and by the start of second year, Lizzie and Hugh’s relationship, along with a lot of her relationships with other friends, had completely unraveled. I stuck in there with her, taking on her mood swings and erratic behavior because I loved her like a sister, but it wasn’t easy. Especially when she focused all of her pain on Gerard because of a rumor that involved his stepbrother. It sucked because Liz and Gerard used to be really good friends before that. We all were. We had this tight little circle that had been shattered after Caoimhe died.

To this day, we were completely oblivious as to the inside details of their breakup because Hugh and Liz could hardly bear to spend more than a few minutes in each other’s company, let alone talk about it.

Even though they’d been together since primary school, the breakup didn’t seem to affect Lizzie too deeply because she started seeing someone else within days of them calling it off. Hugh, on the other hand, spent several months moping around the house like a dark cloud until he collided with Katie in the hallways of Tommen and the sun started shining for him again. Deep down inside, I knew the reason Hugh tried to keep me away from Gerard was because he was projecting his own experience on me. When my brother said that he was afraid of me getting hurt, what he really meant was that he didn’t want me to get hurt like he had.

“Not this time. Not anymore. I can’t keep saving…”

slumped. “I have Katie now… I can’t do this with her again.”

I got that, but I was scared, and he was my big brother who always seemed to know what to do. After all, Hugh was the one who knew more about Lizzie than any of the rest of us. He’d been there, right there in the middle of her personal breakdown the last time. Before the shutters came down around her heart blocking all of us out, he was ...

Because this was pathetic. You are pathetic.

“Claire, you have nothing to feel guilty about. You didn’t know. Not really. I never told you anything. You had a feeling. And you did everything you could have done for me. Trust me, I know.” Pushing up onto her knees, Shannon grabbed a hair tie off her wrist and pulled her hair into a makeshift bun. “I’m still here. I made it. He didn’t beat me.” Smiling softly, she gestured to herself and then our surroundings. “And look at my life now.”