Shannon nodded.
"I've been through it already," I explained, desperately trying to keep my tone impassive and light. "If you need someone to go through the coursework with you, then just let me know."
"You would do that for me?" she asked, voice soft.
I would do pretty much anything for you.
"Yeah," I replied, unable to keep the gruffness out of my tone. "I would."
"But you're so busy."
"Doesn’t matter."
"Why are you always trying to help me, Johnny?" she whispered, blue eyes burning holes inside of me.
There was the million-dollar question.
And I had no fucking clue how to answer it.
"Because I want to," I finally said, deciding on the truth. "I want to help you, Shannon."
"You do?" she breathed.
"I do." Tearing my gaze off her before I did something stupid, I shifted around to get comfortable on her tiny ass bed and said, "Now, go get your books and you can show me where you're finding it difficult."
"Yeah, okay," Shannon replied as she scrambled off the bed and hurried to the door. "Are you sure?" she stopped in the doorway to ask me.
No.
"I'm always sure, Shannon."
Smiling, she nodded and then hurried back down stairs to get her bag.
"Fuck." Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I typed out a quick SOS message to Gibsie, only to delete it before sending it.
Exhaling a frustrated breath, I typed out another text, this one to Jason, letting him know I wouldn’t make this afternoon's hydro pool session and then quickly shut my phone off before he could call to give me a litany of abuse.
I already knew I was doing wrong.
I'd missed yesterday's session and two more a couple of weeks back.
Because of her.
Because when she jumped, I flew clean off the ledge after her.
Didn’t need my trainer to tell me something I already knew.
He'd tell me I needed to get my head back in the game.
He'd scream at me and tell me to focus on my future – on the upcoming fitness test I needed to pass more than I needed to breathe.
Problem was, I couldn’t focus.
Because my head was gone.
Shot to shite.
Lost inside the girl whose bedroom I was sitting in.
I was sliding my phone back into the pocket of my school trousers when Shannon returned with her bag.
"I think business wouldn’t be so hard if I could get a handle of the maths side of it," she said in a slightly breathless tone as she hauled her bag over to the bed.
Dropping it on the floor, she ran back to her door and quickly locked it before resuming her position on the bed, cross-legged and facing me.
"I had trouble concentrating at my old school," she added, while rummaging in her bag. "I managed to keep up with my language classes, but I let maths slide."
I knew this.
I'd read all about it in her file.
"That's understandable," I told her, nodding.
Shannon looked at me with a wary expression. "Why is that understandable?"
Shit.
Fuck.
"Because you have to take a crazy number of subjects for the junior cert," I bluffed. Shrugging, I added, "Can't be good at all of them."
"I bet you were," she replied, turning her attention back to her bag, disaster averted. She pulled her Maths book out and dropped it on the bed between us. "Let me guess, you took all higher-level subjects for your junior cert, too?"
"Give me that book," I grumbled, feeling embarrassed.
"All A's?" she teased.
"Nope," I shot back, flicking through the pages of her textbook. "I got a C in ordinary level science," I told her and then I sighed before admitting, "The rest were higher level A's."
"Really?"
I nodded, feeling hot and uncomfortable.
"You're smart?"
I just shrugged.
"Well, I got my only A in science," she mused. "It's my only higher-level subject."
"Well, I take my hat off to you," I muttered. "Because I fucking loathe science."
"Stop," she chuckled. "Science isn’t that bad."
I arched a brow. "Oh, like maths isn’t?"
She grimaced. "Okay, fair point."
"Come on," I said with a smirk, refocusing my attention on the book in my hands. "Get your copybook out and I'll school you."
"You'll school me?" She giggled and Christ, it was a lovely sound.
Shannon didn’t do enough laughing.
I racked my brain thinking of other things I could do to get a repeat of that sound.
I had a whole heap of ideas – terrible, awful ideas.
Concentrate, Kavanagh…
So I did.
For the next hour or so, I went through her work with her, watching carefully as she attempted each problem.
She wasn’t kidding when she said she found Maths hard.
Shannon was seriously struggling with the subject.
Seeing her struggle made me want to jump in and bulldoze, which was exactly what I seemed to be doing as I lay strewn out on my side, with my long legs hanging off the side of her bed, breaking down every sum, equation, fraction, and percentage that came our way.
One of her biggest issues was that she had no idea how to use her calculator efficiently.
Quickly on, I discovered that she had no clue about Sin, Cos, and Tan.
She was bluffing and pretending that she knew what she was doing when she clearly didn’t.
When she finally caved in and tossed the calculator on my lap and admitted that she didn’t have the foggiest clue of what she was doing, I ended up spending another forty-five minutes going through basic methods with her.
When she eventually starting solving the problems without me hovering over her copybook with an eraser, it felt like I'd scored a bleeding try, I was so proud of her.
It was ridiculous how much genuine satisfaction I got when those big, blue eyes lit up when she clicked onto a problem.
It was right around the time I was beginning to think Gibsie had a point, and that I could do this friend thing, when I faced a problem of my own.
I foolishly allowed my eyes to wander off the copybook Shannon was furiously scribbling on, where they then proceeded to trail over her body.
She was still sitting cross-legged and facing me, but she was leaning forward, working hard on a sum, which caused the string top she was wearing to droop, giving me a glorious view of her braless tits.
Sweet Jesus Christ.
I loved tits.
And tits that belonged to this girl were even more appealing.
They were small and perky with rosy-tipped, pebbled nipples.
She was just so fucking beautiful.
I was instantly hard.
"Are you okay?" Shannon asked, placing her small hand on my forearm.
"Huh?" I snapped my gaze to her face, totally fucking busted.
"Are you okay?" she repeated, blue eyes locked on mine, expression innocent.
I was about the furthest a person could get to okay.
But for her sake, I forced a small nod and said, "Yeah, I'm just getting a bit hungry."
What the actual fuck, Johnny?
"Can I get you something?" she quickly asked. "What would you like to eat?"
You.
I would like to eat you, Shannon.
"We should probably think about wrapping this up," I stated gruffly. "It's getting late."
I made a big deal of checking my watch only to frown when I realized it actually was getting late.
"Shite," I muttered. "It's half six."
We'd been up in her room for four hours?
Where the hell did the time go?
I never missed a meal.
I wasn’t even sore.
I couldn’t remember the last time I spent four hours sitting down.
It didn’t happen.
Jesus, this girl was making me lose track of everything.
"Um, yeah, sure – of course," Shannon mumbled, falling over her words in that adorable way she did when she was flustered.
Don’t worry, baby, I thought to myself, I'm flustered too.
"I really appreciate you helping me," she added, closing her books up and shoving them back in her schoolbag. "You helped me big time." She blew out a breath before adding, "Again."
"We can do this again," I offered. "If you want?"
Her face lit up and she shifted closer to me. "Really?"
I nodded slowly and resisted the urge to reach over and touch her.