"Come on, Johnny!" Coach grumbled impatiently. "Think about how this looks."
"I don’t give a fuck how it looks," Johnny snarled. He jerked to his feet only to quickly stagger backwards and collapse on the bench with a pained grunt. "You don’t talk about her like that," he bit out, nostrils flaring. "No one talks about her like that."
"Look at yourself!" Coach demanded, pointing to Johnny's lower half. "Look at the condition you're in."
Johnny didn’t look, but I did.
I looked and let out a strangled gasp at the sight.
Blood was oozing from where the Royce player had ripped him open with his boot studs.
"Johnny," I croaked out, reaching for his hand again.
Oh god, his hand was shaking.
I turned to look at him.
Johnny's entire body was shaking.
His face was contorted in pain.
He was rattling from head to toe.
"You’re injured, kid," Coach snapped. "Do you hear me? Your body is falling apart and you're in here doing the fucking eejit with a girl!"
"Alright, everyone just calm down," the male paramedic ordered as he marched over to Johnny and knelt in front of him. "What have we got here, son?"
"I already told the doctor," Johnny bit out, shaking violently now.
"Humor me," the paramedic replied.
"Torn adductor." Exhaling a ragged breath, Johnny slumped back and closed his eyes. "I had surgery on the 20th of December," he explained, sounding thoroughly defeated. "It hasn’t healed."
"Because he hasn’t given his body a chance to heal," Coach interjected. "His teammate and friend told me that this has been an ongoing issue he's been hiding from us."
"Like you give a shite," Johnny snarled, eyes flashing with fury. "You have your trophies and your final secured, don’t ya?"
"Of course, I give a shit, you little bollox," Coach snapped. "I give a lot of shits about you, though why is beyond me!"
"We had a report that you were knocked unconscious for several minutes during a rugby match," the other paramedic asked, taking down notes.
"From pain," Johnny admitted gruffly. "There was no head injury."
"Yet," Coach bit out. "There's time for that, yet."
"Fucking try it," Johnny grumbled dejectedly. His head lolled slightly and he snapped his head back up, still trembling.
"Hey – hey, it's okay," I whispered, cupping his face to steady him. "You're okay."
He shook his head again, eyes looking slightly glazed before finding focus on my face.
"I'm sorry," he croaked out, voice slurring a little.
"For what?"
"For not –" He closed his eyes and exhaled a pained groan, "kissing you back that night."
"Don’t worry about it," I whispered, clutching his face with my hands. "Don’t even think about it right now, okay?"
"I wanted to," he grunted, clenching his eyes shut as a huge shiver rolled through his body. "I promise."
"Johnny, it's okay," I croaked out, blinking the tears away.
He looked like he was in so much pain, I could hardly take it.
"He needs everything checked over," Coach barked then, tone laced with concern. "Blood work. X-rays. Scans. Whatever he tells you, ignore it. He's a gobby little shit who won't tell you when there's a problem."
"Understood," the female paramedic with the clipboard mused.
"He's under contract with the Irish Rugby Academy," Coach added, scrubbing his face with his hand. "All of his notes are in Cork, but he needs to be wrapped in cotton wool –"
"Understood," the male paramedic replied. Turning to Johnny, he winked. "You're not the first academy pup I've treated."
"Maybe your girlfriend can step outside, Johnny," the female paramedic suggested.
Johnny's response to her request was to tighten his hold on my hand.
God, he was shaking so bad my whole body was vibrating from the contact.
"Yes." Coach nodded and turned his attention to me. "Miss Lynch, I suggest you go take your seat on the bus," Coach barked, dismissing me.
"Are you okay?" I asked, turning to look at Johnny.
He didn’t look okay.
He looked like a cornered animal.
Wounded and desperate.
He stared at me for the longest moment, blue eyes churning with anxiety, before nodding in resignation and releasing my hand.
"I can stay?" I whispered, unsure whether leaving him was the right thing to do. "Or wait outside?"
It didn’t feel okay or right to leave him.
It felt all wrong actually.
"I'll be okay," Johnny told me, giving me a wink before grunting in pain when the paramedic prodded his thigh. "Fuck!"
"Out, Miss Lynch," Coach barked, pushing me towards the door.
"Can I go with him?" I heard myself ask. "Please?"
"You can go back to the bus like I told you," he ordered. "Now out!"
Shame, guilt, and responsibility filled my body as I moved for the door.
"Bye, Johnny," I whispered, hovering in the doorway, fighting back the urge to run back to him.
His painfilled eyes landed on mine. "Bye, Shannon."
I love you.
I am so in love with you.
Please be okay.
64
Waiting Game
Shannon
"Shan?" Claire whispered in my ear. "Are you still awake?"
"I'm awake," I croaked out as I lay on my side, completely motionless, and stared out the window at the city lights of the capital.
I hadn't moved from this exact position since being thrust into the hotel room with Claire, Lizzie, Shelly, and Helen several hours ago, and told to stay put by a frazzled Mrs. Moore.
The girls had long since fallen asleep, with Lizzie in the single bed next to ours, and Shelly and Helen in the double bed on the opposite side of the room.
Not me, though.
I hadn't closed an eye.
I was drowning in my concern.
Every once in a while, I checked the time on the analogue clock on the nightstand.
05:38 was its most recent reading.
Johnny was out there somewhere, lying in one of those big, lit up hospitals, having god knows what done to his body.
I didn’t know what was happening.
No one would tell me anything.
I didn’t have his phone number, and even if I had, I didn’t have a phone to use.
My heart was frozen in my chest.
Fear unlike any I had experienced before was battering me.
I was terrified for him.
"Do you think he's out of surgery by now?" Claire asked.
I shrugged a shoulder, feeling numb to the bone.
Shifting onto her side in the tiny single bed we were sharing, Claire wrapped her arm around me. "They were taking him in around midnight – wasn’t that what Gerard said?"
Again, I shrugged helplessly.
I had no idea.
"He's going to be okay, Shan," she whispered, squeezing me tightly. "I'm sure of it."
"I feel like can't breathe," I confessed as teardrop after teardrop fell from my eyelashes. "Claire, I'm so scared for him, and my body is frozen."
"That's understandable," she replied, rubbing my arm soothingly.
"Is it?" I strangled out, fighting back the urge to scream. "Because I have no idea why I feel like I'm dying right now." Sniffling, I inhaled several shaky breaths, desperate to get my emotions under control. "I have never been so scared in my whole life."
"Shan," Claire sighed softly. "You're feeling like this because you care about Johnny."
Nodding, I clenched my eyes shut and tensed my body to stop the tremors from racking through me.
"And maybe because you love him?"
Exhaling a ragged breath, I rolled onto my back and turned my face to look at my best friend.
"I'm so in love with him, Claire," I confessed, and then I burst into tears. "I love him so much that the thought of him not being okay is killing me."
"Does Johnny know how you feel?"
I shook my head and cried harder.
"I shouldn’t have left him," I sobbed. "I should have stayed with him."
"You couldn’t," she said in a gentle tone. "Mr. Mulcahy would've never allowed you."
"He looked so scared, Claire," I strangled out as my body racked with sobs. "You didn’t see him, but he was so scared. And then they took him away in that ambulance. I watched him go. I watched them take him away. And now? Now I don’t know where he is or if he's alone –"