Binding 13

"But you didn’t go back to Dublin?"

He shook his head. "Nah, the ‘rents decided they liked the quiet way of life down here, so they put the house in Dublin on the market and made the move a permanent one."

"How was it – moving at that age?"

I had no idea why I was asking these questions.

I couldn’t remember ever talking to a random person for this long before.

But this was nice and Joh

He was different.

I was stu

"It must have been hard."

"It was a pain in the hole," Joh

"Where?"

"Scoil Eoin," he offered with a grimace. "The all-boys, Catholic primary school."

My brows shot up. "Same as Hughie Biggs?"

He nodded, smiling. "Yeah, that's where I met Hughie, Gibs, and Feely."

"Those guys are your friends?"

He nodded, gri

"Did you mind?" I asked then. "Having to repeat sixth class at Scoil Eoin?"

"I was raging, Sha

"You were?" I asked, ignoring the way my insides shivered when he said my name.

In fact, I was desperately trying to ignore the electric current of heat pulsing through my veins.

"Yeah, I was really looking forward to going to Royce with my buddies and the lads from the club," he explained. "Christ, I was fuming with my folks when they pulled me out and enrolled me at Tommen." He let out a small laugh, then said, "Six years later and I'm still pissed about it."

"Well, you seem to be doing okay for yourself here," I offered, unsure of what to say. "You have lots of friends, and you're still playing rugby and stuff."

"And stuff," Joh

"No, why would you ask that?"

"I don’t know." Joh

My eyes widened. "You think I look like a ballerina?"

He nodded and a laugh tore from my lips.

"What?" He gri

"Well, I'm not a ballerina," I laughed. "Or any other dancer, for that matter. I'm just stunted."

Joh

"Have you seen me?" I gestured to myself. "I'm fifteen, barely five feet, and I weigh like 85 pounds."

"You're six stone?" he breathed, eyes widening in disbelief.

Meanwhile, my eyes widened in disbelief at how fast he was able to convert pounds to stones.

Whoa.

"Jaysus, I bench twice what you weigh in the gym." Joh

"If I stand really straight, I am."

"Christ, I'm 6'3." He shook his head. "You're so small."

"Exactly." I pulled a face. "Stunted."

"Jaysus, no wonder you folded like a lawn chair when the ball hit you," Joh

"That's one way to put it," I replied, scrunching my nose up at the analogy.

"Is your mother still raging with me?"

"My mother?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "She looked like she was two seconds away from ripping my head off that day."

"My mother just got a fright," I mumbled. "She saw that I was hurt and jumped to the first conclusion."

"And the first conclusion was that I battered you?"

I shrugged uncomfortably but gave nothing away. "It happens."

"Not from me, it doesn’t," he pointed out, tone a little thicker now, eyes locked on mine. "Never from me."

"Hey now, don’t be so quick to deny." I attempted humor. "I just witnessed you threaten to cut off Ronan's penis."

"That little eejit doesn’t count," was his grunted response. "I can't fucking stand that kid, but his uncle's the school trainer so I have no choice than to tolerate him. He's always pushing my buttons and acting out on the pitch, pulling reckless stunts, and causing u

I smirked. "So, you're not friends then?"

Joh

"Well, he's still young," I offered optimistically. "So maybe he'll mature with time."

"Like you?"

"Huh?"

"I mean you're in the same year as him," he hurried to explain. "But you don’t act like you're fifteen."

"I don’t?"

He shook his head. "You come across as a lot older."

"That's because I'm a ninety-year-old woman disguised as a teenager," I quipped.

"That's…" Joh

"Yep," I mumbled, embarrassed at my crappy banter. "It is."

"So, what do you do?" he surprised me by asking.

"What do I do?" I'd been half-expecting him to end the conversation there.

"Yeah." He nodded encouragingly. "In your free time."

I paused and thought about his question. "I don’t really do anything," I finally said. "I guess I watch television and listen to music in my free time – oh, and I read a lot." Shrugging, I added, "As you can tell, I'm not very interesting."

Joh

"Autobiographies. Fiction. Crime. Thrillers. Romance." I sighed, thinking of the pile of books in my room. "I'm not picky about genres. I just have to like the blurb. If the back of the book can suck me in, then I'm sold."

Joh

"You're a reader," he finally said.

It wasn’t a question, it sounded more like he was banking that piece of information away in his mind.

"That's really good."

"Do you read?" I asked him.

He grimaced. "Not as much as I should."

"So, not at all?" I teased.

"Honestly, no," he admitted with a lopsided grin. Shifting closer, he said, "The last book I read that wasn’t school ordered was about Chicken Licken and the sky falling down on all the little talking animals – do you know the one?"

"Yeah," I snickered, thinking about Joh

"Sean?"

"My youngest brother," I explained. "The three-year-old."

"You shouldn’t, " Joh

My mouth fell open. "Are you being serious right now?"

"Hell fucking yes, I'm being serious," Joh