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…

Hugh said that Gerard’s daddy, Joe, was in the big brown one and his sister, Bethany, was in the little white one.

Daddy didn’t smile. He was too sad. Joe was his bestest friend in the whole world, and he was in the brown coffin, but Gerard was my bestest friend in the whole wide world, and I was happy because he didn’t get drowned with Joe and Bethany.

“You’re my favorite person in the whole wide world, and I would swap everyone for you. Even Hugh.”

“When they said someone had been saved from the water. I prayed for it to be you.”

“I think they wanted your dad to save Bethany.” “I didn’t,” I admitted honestly. “I wanted to keep you most of all.”

I opened my mouth to complain, but Gerard answered for me. “Please don’t take her away from me.”

“What about me?” he whispered as a lone tear trickled down his cheek. “Who’ll keep me safe?”

“But your hugs feel like sunshine.” “Like sunshine?” I frowned in confusion. “How?” “Because you are sunshine, silly,”

Hugh replied, keeping one arm wrapped around Gerard, while using the other to tuck Lizzie close to his side.

It always happened when Liz and Hugh were together. She was supposed to be my friend, but she always played with my brother when she came over, and I didn’t like it.

“What’s the hots?” I asked them. “It’s when two people want to hold hands with each other and spend all of lunchtime playing together. Just the two of them,”

“I mean it,” he urged, turning to look at me now. “I can’t lose another person I love.” “You love me?” He nodded sadly as another tear trickled down his check. “I love you most of all.”

“You can’t be my sister, Claire.” “Why not?” “Because you can’t have the hots for your sister.”

“I don’t see anyone.” His lips tipped up in the smallest of smiles before he added, “Except for you.”

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.

I was naturally self-deprecating, never purposefully cruel, and my attitude made people laugh. My mouth spurted shit at the expense of my own character, like a cloak of self-sabotaging protection.

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.

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.

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.

And there it was. His mask. The divide that separated the sensitive boy I adored from the humorous one all our other friends enjoyed.

“Fine. I need to go check on your nephew anyway.” “He’s not my nephew, you freak. He’s a hedgehog in hibernation in your mam’s hot press because you and my sister have issues with taking in strays.”

Brian, Best in Show 2005, First Place,

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

The faint scars that adorned her inner wrists had appeared in the months that followed her sister’s passing.

“It’ll happen. I can feel it in my bones.”

“Because I have the worst tickles known to mankind on my hole.” “Tickles.” I arched a brow. “On your ass?”

“‘In the Summertime’ by Mungo Jerry.”

Patrick Feely, for example. He was quiet and closed off, but that’s because you didn’t know Patrick until you knew Patrick. He didn’t suffer fools. He didn’t bend or break or submit to peer pressure. He wasn’t trying to fit in with anyone. If that made him uncool to our peers, it meant little to nothing to him. He had his secrets and his troubles, like the rest of us, but they were unspoken. In fact, I had known him since early childhood and still felt very closed off from him at times.

“Yeah, because stick and stones will break my bones and words will make me starve myself to death.”

“Fight me for it.” Johnny laughed. “By thumb wrestling you?” “Are you scared you’ll lose?” “Get ready to be a back-seat bitch, Gibs.” Assuming position, Johnny linked hands with Gerard and smirked. “One, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war.” “Five, six, seven, eight, I use this hand to masturbate.”

After all, he’d promised to marry me before we both died.

You know, since the academy frowns on rapists that drive teenage girls to suicide and all that jazz.

Seeing his best friends outnumbered three to two, Patrick Feely rewrapped his sandwich in tinfoil before rising to his feet. “Fuck my life,” he muttered before joining the rumble on the floor.

Too sensible to jump into the action, but too pumped to do nothing, I discreetly stamped on Robbie Mac’s hand when he rolled close to where I was standing. Ha. Served him right for calling me a cocktease.

“Call me fat one more time and I’ll sit on you,” I warned, outraged. “I mean it, Hugh. It’s called being big-boned. And yeah, so I’ve put on a few pounds over the summer. Big deal. I can lose the weight, but you can’t lose that face, lad.”

Our stories were entangled, and while I felt fucking terrible for all she’d been through, it wasn’t my fault. After the rumor went around about her sister’s suicide note, I used to hold my breath when I saw her, waiting for her to tell the world the truth. When it didn’t happen, I started to suspect that she didn’t know the full story.

I desperately wanted to silence her with the truth. About the real reason her sister was dead. About what really happened that night. But I couldn’t because aside from the fact that I had never verbalized the truth to anyone still living on earth, Lizzie would never relent.

It was a reckless sort of urgency that took ahold of me. A need to be touched and avoided all in one breath. It was complicated and I feared delving too deep inside my head, inside my memories, to find the root of the problem.

“I’m seventeen,” I snapped back, beyond pissed off that she was bringing Claire into the equation. “I’m not settling down with anything.” “You don’t look seventeen.” “Well, if you need a reminder of my age, then take a look at my birth certificate,” I tossed back. “It’s in my file.”

All smiles and laughter. Hiding his heartbreak. Hiding his pain. I wanted to save him from his past. I wanted to love him through it all. I just wanted him.

And that was how I spent the rest of the evening, on Gerard Gibson’s shoulders, painting his world just a little bit brighter.

“You’re so beautiful,” I admitted because one, I had a problem keeping my mouth shut, and second, it was the truth. I’d never seen anything like her. “I swear you shine even in the darkness.”

“We’ve all heard the rumors, lad.” Leaning against the island, he added, “Half the town thinks he raped her.”

“The sex talk, Aoife Molloy style.”

“You’re eighteen, apparently in a situationship with this Casey, the youngest brother of three sisters. Your birthday is in July, and you’re a closet musician with a voice better than anyone on the radio.”

“You, you’re seventeen, the oldest of two kids, your birthday’s on Halloween, same as Seany’s, you’ve been with Katie since forever, and she’s your first serious girlfriend.”

“And you, you’re the baby of the gang. Your birthday’s in March. You’ve never had a girlfriend because you’re in love with his sister since the beginning of time and have the attention span of a cr...

Remember when he snuck up on me in the shower and scratched my gooch? Or the time he bit my toe and I had to get a tetanus shot? He traumatized me, Claire. I can’t help it if every time I look at Tom and Harry, I’m triggered!”

“What am I going to do with the two of you?” Mam laughed from her perch on my bed. “You’re like an old married couple.”