Saving 6: Boys of Tommen #3

DECEMBER 10TH 2004

AOIFE

BEING in love with someone who was hell bent on self-destructing was such a lonely place to exist. I felt incredibly helpless, watching on as my boyfriend buried his secrets with lie upon countless lie.

I wanted to save him.

I felt like I was watching him drown. That I was desperately reaching my hand out, but his pride was so potent that it meant he would rather go under than let me pull him to safety.

I knew he wasn’t clean.

Hadn’t been since the day after Halloween when I had made the fatal decision of admitting to him that his father had made another pass at me.

I physically watched the light in his eyes leave that day, and nothing I’d been able to say or do since had been able to reignite that spark.

I could see it on his face every day.

He was slowly slipping back into old habits, and I was afraid to push back against his behavior, for fear that it would make it worse.

Make him worse.

I was so afraid of him ending up dead in a ditch somewhere, that I found myself, disgustingly, turning a blind eye when he came back from lunch with bloodshot eyes and a faraway look in his eyes.

But there were two things that I was absolutely sure about when it came to Joey.

The first; it wasn’t uncommon for him to skip a day or two of school.

The second; when it came to his job at the garage, he was the complete opposite,

Never mind being uncommon, when it came to his job, the boy’s rap sheet was virtually nonexistent.

It was for these reasons that I found myself incredibly concerned over the fact that he had missed almost two whole weeks of school and work.

To be fair, he had returned all of my text messages and phoned me for a chat every night, fobbing me off with the reason for his absence being family business, and nothing to worry about.

Of course I was worried.

All I seemed to do nowadays was to worry about him.

The fact that he had refused to meet up or let me come over had unsettled me to the point of blind panic.

Which was why, by the time the second Friday he missed school rolled around, I drove straight to his house after my shift at work. I needed to see with my own eyes what he had been assuring me nightly on the phone. That he hadn’t slipped up to the extent he had last September.

What I didn’t expect to find when I got there was a Garda car.

Panic immediately setting in, I hastily parked my car at the side of the road and jumped out of the car.

“What’s going on?” I asked a group of women, who were standing at the wall in their dressing gowns, smoking cigarettes. “What happened?”

“Domestic disturbance, apparently,” one of them said.

“What’s new in that house.”

“Sure god love them, the poor craters.”

“Marie’s young fella’s gone off the rails again,” the first one added. “Pity about it, too, because he’s a fine lad if he could only keep ahold of that temper of his.”

“Who?” My eyes widened in horror. “Joey?”

It was at that exact moment that the Gards walked out of the house with my boyfriend in handcuffs.

“Ah, that’s very sad,” one of the women said with a heavy sigh. “Poor old crater.”

“Joe!” Feeling like my windpipe had been severed, I bolted towards him. “Are you okay?”

He clearly wasn’t okay.

His entire face was swollen like a balloon, and there was blood flowing freely from his clearly broken nose. The knuckles of his handcuffed hands were torn open and dripping with even more blood.

“Molloy,” he said, when he noticed me running towards him. “What are you doing here?”

“Joe!” Dodging one Garda, and sidestepping another, I didn’t stop until I was flung against his chest, with my arms wrapped tightly around his neck. “Oh my god, Joe.”

“It’s grand,” he was quick to soothe. “It’s all good, baby.”

“Step away,” a Garda instructed, as she forcefully removed me from him.

“Don’t be worrying, Molloy,” Joey called over his shoulder, as he was ushered into the back seat of the squad car. “I’ll call you later.”

Reeling, I watched on helplessly for the second time as the Gards drove away with him in handcuffs.

“What the hell happened?” I shouted, furious when the remaining Gards completely ignored me, while they made their way out of the garden. “Well?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a familiar face, and my heart sank into my ass.

“Well, if it isn’t young Aoife,” Jerry Rice said, as he strolled towards me. “I haven’t seen you in a while.” He gestured around him before adding, “So, this is how you’re keeping yourself occupied these days.”

I knew it was a dig.

I also knew that if I opened my mouth and talked back, it would only harm Joey in the long run.

“That young fella you’re knocking around with is a bad type,” he continued to say. “Attacked his father, so he did. Made an awful job of the poor man.” He sighed heavily. “You’d do well to cut your losses with that toe-rag.”

Using an ornate amount of self-control, I smiled politely at my ex-boyfriend’s highly ranked Garda father, and turned on my heels, making a beeline for Joey’s front door.

I didn’t knock.

It was incredibly reckless of me, but I walked right inside without invitation.

I wasn’t sure what I had expected to see, but the sheer amount of blood on the sitting room floor was sobering.

“Aoife?” Sniffling, Shannon stumbled off the couch and barreled towards me.

“Hey,” I soothed, when her small arms came around me. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“He left,” she cried. “He was g-gone, for almost t-two weeks. Until tonight. He came b-back and they g-got into a huge f-fight…”

“Your father and Joey?”

Clenching her eyes shut, she nodded against me. “It was t-terrible. The worst I’ve ever s-seen them f-fight.”

I glanced around at the room taking in the sight of the broken coffee table and shattered glass and ornaments. There was a poleaxed Christmas tree strewn against the television unit, with festive baubles scattered everywhere.

“The neighbors must have h-heard them and called the Gards, because they showed up and arrested my b-brother.”

“Why?” I demanded. “Why’d they arrest Joey?”

“Because he w-won,” Shannon cried, holding onto me like I could somehow fix this. “He got the b-better of Dad for once.”

“Where’s your father now?”

“G-gone to the doctors.”

“And the boys and your mam?”

“The b-boys are in next door with Fran,” she sobbed. “And Mam… she went with D-dad.”

“She what?” My brows shot up in surprise. “What about Joey?”

Shannon shrugged and cried harder. “I don’t w-want him to g-go to prison, Aoife.”

“He’s not going to prison,” I was quick to reassure her. “I’m going to go down to the station right now and sort this whole mess out.”

“You c-can’t!” she cried, clutching me tighter. “You c-can’t t-tell them.”

“I’m not letting him get into trouble for something your father did.”

“No, no, no, please, please!” she practically screamed, and then jerked away hands moving to claw her hair. “Don’t tell!”

“Okay, okay,” I tried to soothe. “I won’t say a word until I talk to your brother.”

“Help him, Aoife,” she cried, clutching at her throat. “He’s all alone in t-the world.”

“No, he’s not,” I assured her in a shaky tone as I ran for door, with only one destination in mind. “He has me.”