Taming 7 (Boys of Tommen, #5)

by Chloe Walsh

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.

Any form of intimacy I could conjure up, I wanted to both give and have with her. Just her.

I cared so fucking much it was hard to find where she started and I ended.

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 w...

The girl was everything to me, and that wasn’t me being dramatic. It was a fact.

I would never cause harm to Claire Biggs. She was too important to me. She was everything to me.

Because I never wanted her to run from me. To be afraid of me, or for me to make her feel the way I felt. I never wanted her to experience that form of helplessness. I wanted the future I joked about with her. I wanted everything with her. Problem

was, I didn’t trust the person I was. I was too fucking scared of becoming what had ruined me. Of abusing her love and breaking her heart.

I could love her the right way. Because I loved this girl. With every fiber of my being. With every beat of my poor defective heart. I loved her fiercely, solely, wholeheartedly.

my comedic,

carefree mask into place. It covered me like a blanket of deceit and protection.

the version of me I could tolerate. The version that couldn’t be hurt.

“Now, come here and snuggle me. You know I hate sleeping without you.”

with only one goal in mind: to get as close as humanly possible to the only form of physical comfort I had found in my seventeen years on earth.

“Night, Gerard… Love you.” “I love you, too,”

That was the first of two things in life I was sure of, and I meant it right back. That was the second thing I was sure of. If I knew nothing else in this world, then I knew that I loved Claire Biggs.

Because love hurt. It burned like hell. I got that. I accepted the pain. The self-inflicted flesh wounds it took to love another human. I wasn’t afraid of that. Of being hurt. Of anything for myself. 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.

Dad’s holed up in the attic

“Snuggling my Claire-Bear equals a happy Gibsie. Running laps on the treadmill until I puke equals a very unhappy Gibsie.”

“It’s all about priorities, babe.” “And I’m yours?” I teased. “Always,” he confirmed sleepily, tightening his hold on my waist. Jesus.

he was the same boy I’d spent most of my life adoring,

It was fair to say that Gerard Gibson was all man now, and that piece of knowledge caused something to stir inside of me.

Like he was drowning. With them.

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

Gibsie belonged to the rest of the world. Gerard belonged just to me.

The move caused my duvet to slip downward, giving me a wonderful view of his naked chest.

He’s a hedgehog in hibernation in your mam’s hot press because you and my sister have issues with taking in strays.”

his warning would fall on deaf ears because I had a Gerard Gibson–sized blind spot on my heart.

“It’s not a ladder right now, babe,” he groaned, hands settling on the elastic waistband of his shorts. “The minute I saw you in those shorts, it turned into a full-blown fire-escape stairwell.” I grinned up at him. “It did?” His eyes widened in horror. “Focus, Claire!”

Mam thought she was a miracle worker and the reason I had come out of the other side of my father and sister’s deaths without having a mental breakdown. She wasn’t. I was just that fucking awesome at reinventing myself.

hyperactive dyslexic

Mam and Dad had been together since they were twelve and this was their end result: Mam shagging the prick laying down the new patio in our garden,

when I was little, I used to believe that Holy God had put her on earth just for me.

We went together like bacon and cabbage. It

aside from Claire, I’d never had a friend I could find peace with like him.

He was the protector.

Fucked in the head and getting progressively worse by the day.

“Are you feeling suffocated yet?” “Suffocated?” “Having so many people in your house.” “Gibs, I’d let my ma adopt the whole bleeding school if it meant that I got to keep that girl.”

she did three full lengths of the pool.” “She did?” “Without stopping,” he added. “I’m so bleeding proud of her, Gibs.”

The sky was blue outside. The birds were out. The sun was shining.

It was another blissful morning. And I wanted to scream.

“What the hell happened to you?” “I fell,” Lizzie explained,

I’d seen similar cuts on Lizzie’s body in the past, but not for a very long time. The faint scars that adorned her inner wrists had appeared in the months that followed her sister’s passing. After her parents put her in counseling, it seemed to stop. I thought she had it under control. Apparently not. “On what?” I demanded, gaping at the huge, jagged, freshly scabbed cut going the entire length of her thigh. “A chain saw?” “No, on a barbed-wire fence I was climbing over, actually.”

“Didn’t know you were working today,” she replied, folding her arms across her chest. “Wasn’t supposed to be,” Hugh replied, not taking his eyes off her thigh. “What happened?”

“She’s not okay, is she?” “How am I supposed to know?” my brother bit out, tone thick with emotion. “I’m hardly her confidante these days, am I?” “Yeah, but you used to be,”

Hugh and Lizzie’s fractured relationship was one that was stored in the memory vault labeled

Because Lizzie affected Hugh badly, and she always had. For some reason, my brother had been infatuated with my prickly bestie since the beginning of time. And for some even stranger reason, the feeling had been mutual for Lizzie.

By the time we’d made it to fifth class of primary school, their friendship title had been upgraded to that of boyfriend and girlfriend.