Binding 13

"Believe me, I wish I could call myself a swat," she replied with a grimace. "I love to read but I'm not academically smart."

I frowned at her in disbelief. "Bullshit."

"No, I'm really not," she replied, shaking her head. "I have to work so hard to keep up in my classes, and most of those are ordinary level subjects."

"What subjects give you the most trouble?" I asked, relaxing into the conversation.

This, I could handle.

Learning more about her fed the beast – and distracted the other beast.

"Business," Sha

"Those are my best subjects," I mused, scratching my jaw. "I’m taking Business and Accounting for the leaving cert next year."

"What else are you taking?" she asked, sounding genuinely interested.

"Irish, English, Maths, Accounting, Business –" I shifted until my back was resting against the wall before continuing, "History and French."

"Why French?"

Because there's a high chance I'll be moving there once I'm done with school.

"I need a language for university," I said instead. "French was a good fit for me."

"Higher level?" Sha

I nodded.

"Really?" Her eyes widened. "Which ones?"

"All of them."

"Why am I not surprised?" Sha

"School has never been an issue for me," I admitted with a frown.

"Lucky you," she whispered. "I barely scraped through the Pre's."

"I can give you a hand," I heard myself offer without thinking it through.

"What – like now?" she squeaked.

"Or later." I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. "Whenever you want."

"Is that something you do?" Sha

I'd tutor you.

"You have your junior cert coming up in June, right?" I asked instead.

Sha

"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, Joh

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, Sha

"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," Sha

No.

"I'm always sure, Sha

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 Sha

"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.

Sha

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.

Sha

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.

Sha

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.