"The truth?" Johnny hissed, clearly livid. "You wouldn’t know the truth if it smacked you across the face."
I had no idea what part of my body my sudden bravery erupted from, but it came hard and fast, and propelled my legs towards him.
"Johnny, don’t," I strangled out as I chased after him.
For once in my life, I was glad to be tiny.
It allowed me to slide into the tiny space between Johnny and the table he was leaning over.
"Johnny," I breathed, pressing hard on his chest. "Walk away."
He didn’t look at me.
"Johnny," I repeated, reaching up and touching his face.
He snapped his furious gaze on me.
"Walk away," I commanded, staring up at him with my heart in my mouth. "Please."
A vein ticked in Johnny's temple as he stared down at me, looking more enraged than I'd ever seen him.
I didn’t dare breathe while I watched him make his choice.
Finally, he released a furious growl and nodded stiffly.
I exhaled a ragged breath.
Thank god…
"Keep her name out of your fucking mouth," he snarled, chest heaving, as he allowed me to push him backwards away from the table.
"She's a dirty, council-house slut," Bella chimed evilly. "There's no lie in that."
"You better watch your fucking mouth," Johnny snarled, slipping past me.
My heart sank.
I tried and I failed.
"Why? What are you going to do if I don’t, Johnny?" Bella hissed, jumping out of her chair and slapping his chest. "Hit me?"
"No–" Johnny paused to drag who Lizzie had called Cormac Ryan out of his chair, "I'm going to hit him."
And then he smashed his fist into Cormac Ryan's face.
Unlike yesterday, I did not wait to see the outcome.
Instead, I turned on my heels and bolted out of the lunch hall.
Because I knew this could go one of two ways.
Either way it went, I would lose.
I'd witnessed incidents just like this one, where Joey would jump in to defend my honor.
It made no difference to girls like that one.
I always lost.
55
Calm your tits
Johnny
"What the fuck are you doing?" I snarled when Gibsie and Hughie dragged me out of the lunch hall before I had a chance to get a second punch in on Cormac.
"Stopping you from doing something really stupid," Gibsie explained calmly as he steered me out of the main building. "Again, bulldozer."
"What were you thinking?" Hughie demanded when we reached the courtyard and were out of view of the office. "You know how much trouble you'd be in with The Academy if they knew you were fighting at school!
"Fuck The Academy," I snarled, shaking their hands off. "I was trying to defend her."
"Well, all you ended up doing was embarrassing the girl," Hughie barked. "Congratulations, Cap. Like she doesn’t have enough shit to deal with. You just single handedly made her the target of every one of your little fangirls."
Furious, I ran a hand through my hair to stop myself from swinging a punch at one of my buddies.
"You heard what she said back there," I hissed, feeling my body vibrate with rage. "What did you expect me to do?"
"She didn’t want you to defend her, lad," Gibsie added. "She told you that."
"Well, she was wrong," I spat.
"Well, now she's gone," Gibsie told me. "So calm your tits."
She was gone?
That gave me pause for thought.
Swinging around, I spotted Claire, the viper, and Kate all standing alongside us, but no Shannon.
"Yeah, she's definitely gone," Feely added as he strolled over to us with his hands shoved in his pockets.
"You with the new girl, Cap?" Pierce asked, joining the never-ending circle of fucking nuisance. "You kept that one on the quiet."
"What – no," I muttered, exhaling a weary sigh as the anger dissipated from my body. "I don’t know what I am anymore. I don’t know what the fuck is happening to me."
"Well," Lizzie piped up. "You just earned some major brownie points in my eyes." She patted my arm. "And trust me, I don’t give those out often."
"She doesn’t," Pierce offered with a knowing grimace.
"Are we still heading to your gaff?" Feely asked. "Seems pointless going back in now."
I shook my head, needing a damn minute to work through my thoughts.
What the hell just happened?
How did I allow myself to lose control like that?
And where the fuck did she go?
Was she okay?
I was going to kill someone.
I could feel the anger growing back up inside of me at the thought of Shannon's resigned expression.
Yeah, she looked bleeding resigned.
She should have been furious.
Instead she just took it.
That might have been the way it worked for her in BCS, but that was not how it was going to go down at Tommen.
She was no one's fucking target, and I was going to make damn sure of that.
"Johnny?"
The sound of my name being called stirred me from my thoughts.
"What?" I snapped my eyes up and looked around at my friends, feeling at a complete loss.
"Are we going?" Hughie asked, giving me a strange look.
"Going where?" I snapped, bristling, not liking this kind of attention one bleeding bit.
I felt like I was standing here naked with my fucked-up feelings on full display, giving all seven of them a glimpse into something I didn’t understand myself.
"I should find her," I said to myself more than anyone else. Panicking, I swung around then, doing a full 360. "I should check on her."
"No," Hughie said calmly, "You should go home and cool off. She obviously doesn’t want to come with us, lad. That's why she's gone."
I turned my glare on him. "The fuck would you know about what she wants?"
Hughie's brows shot up in surprise.
"Give me your house keys, Cap," Gibsie commanded then, stepping in front of me.
Without questioning him, I pulled my keys out of my pocket and handed them to him.
"We'll catch you up," Gibsie told our friends as he tossed my keys to Hughie and then slung an arm over my shoulder, leading me back towards the P.E. hall.
I went with him because my schoolbag was in the hall, and I had no clue of what else to do.
"Are you okay?" Gibsie asked when we walked into the empty changing room.
"No!" I roared. "I am so far from okay, I don’t know what the fucking word means anymore."
"I know now isn’t the time to say it, but I'm going to say it anyway," Gibsie said. "I told you so. I fucking told you back in fourth year when she started sniffing around that she was bad news."
"I don’t need reminding," I spat as I stalked over to the bench and grabbed my stuff. "I know I fucked up."
"You did," he agreed, not bothering to lie, as he grabbed his own bag. "You saw a pair of nice tits, an easy life, and you let your then-working dick do the thinking for ya." Shrugging, he tossed his bag over his shoulder and said, "This is the result. Another clinger who won't let the fuck go."
"Well, my dick's not doing the thinking anymore," I bit out.
"Thank god. And for what it's worth, I would have lost my shit, too," he told me. "If some bitch talked about Claire like that, I would have blown ten head gaskets."
"It's my fault that happened to her," I growled. "Bella's on Shannon's case because of me."
"No," Gibsie corrected and then shook his head. "Okay, yes, she's on her case because of you, but that's not your fault, lad."
"She won't leave me alone, Gibs." Exhaling a ragged breath, I ran a hand through my hair and growled. "She won't stop."
"Could you talk to your Dad about getting, I don’t know, like a restraining order or something?"
"For what, Gibs?" I shot back, flustered. "Being annoying at school?"
"And following you around the pubs," he interjected.
I shook my head. "No, the only restraining that should have been done was me restraining my dick."
Gibsie laughed as we walked out of the changing room. "Restraining your dick."
"It's not funny," I barked. "I haven't had sex with her since Halloween. It's March now, Gibs. Fucking March. You'd think she'd let it go by now."