Page 41 of Red Card (Prescott University #1)

“Cillian,” she murmurs, cutting him off. “I’m okay . I’m not going anywhere.”

In the panic to get here, I didn’t even stop to think… Their mom.

Oh God. Poor Cillian.

“I love you,” he whispers gruffly, emotion flickering in his dark eyes. “I’m so glad you’re okay, Ais.”

“Me too. Thank you for coming. Both of you.” When she turns her attention to me, I give her a small smile. “Did you read the book yet?”

Of course Aisling would bring up the smuttiest book imaginable when she’s bedridden. My cheeks flood with heat, and I roll my lips together. “Uh… Yes, well I started it. It’s…”

“Spicy.” She giggles.

I nod.

A second later, a nurse walks through the door, pushing a small cart. “Hi, everyone. Can I ask you to step out for a few? I need to get Aisling’s vitals, and the doctor will be coming by shortly to do a physical exam.”

Cillian looks panicked. Aisling asks, “And that means then I can leave, right?”

The nurse’s eyebrows raise, and she tuts.

“Now, you know that will all depend on what the doctor says. I wish I could bust you out of here, sweetheart, but we need to make sure that you’re okay.

It’s hard to tell with a head injury. There are a few tests I’m sure he’ll want to run.

And he’s going to want to monitor your sugar for a bit with the new monitor. ”

Aisling groans.

I can tell it’s the very last thing Cillian wants to do, but he slides off the bed and walks to stand beside me. “Ais, I’ll be just out in the waiting room. Text me when you’re done and I’ll come right back, okay?”

“Stop worrying. Everything’s okay. Okay?”

When he doesn’t respond she pins a look on me. “Rory, you’re up.”

I thread my fingers through Cillian’s tense ones, and squeeze. “You got it.”

Once we’re back out in the waiting room, surprisingly empty for the middle of the day, Cillian sinks down into the chair, propping his elbows on his knees and dropping his head into his hands.

“She’s going to be okay,” I say quietly.

Silence hangs heavily in the air between us until he finally lifts his head, and his expression nearly steals the breath from my lungs. His jaw tense and his eyes flickering with a hundred different emotions. Guilt, sadness… pain. He’s hurting, and I don’t know how to make it any better.

“Talk to me. Please, let me hold some of the weight, Cillian.”

“When my…” His voice cracks, and I reach for him, placing my hand on his arm and sweeping my fingers soothingly across his skin.

“When my mum died… no one would tell me anything until I got to the hospital. And today when I got the call about Ais, I just—I… I couldn’t stop thinking about that night.

About how I could lose her just like I lost Mum.

It felt like it was happening all over again, Rory. ”

“Oh, Cillian,” I whisper, my voice shaking with emotion as I slide my arm around his shoulders and pull him against me. He buries his head in my chest, and that’s when I feel him trembling. Those big, broad shoulders that have carried so much weight, for so long, shaking as he begins to cry.

“She’s all I have left. I…” The words break on a quiet sob.

I place my lips on the top of his head, stroking my fingers over his hair as I hold him.

It’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever physically ached for someone. To want to take their pain away, even if it means making it my own.

Seeing Cillian break down, when he’s so strong and steady, it… it’s brutal.

“I miss my mum so fucking much that I feel like I can’t breathe sometimes,” he murmurs against my chest. “And just when I think that I’m going to be okay, that someday I’ll stop just surviving and live again, it hits me with so much force that it nearly buries me alive.

Sometimes I wish that it would. Then it wouldn’t hurt so badly anymore. ”

I don’t know what to say, what to even begin to say, so I stay quiet, moving my fingers along his hair as he keeps speaking, the words spilling out of him.

As if he’s held this all in for so long now he can’t stop.

I can’t imagine that he’s ever broken down like this to Aisling, not when he’s always tried to be a pillar of strength for her.

“I’ve been so fucking lost for so long, Rory.

So fucking lost.” He laughs, but there’s not an ounce of humor in the sound.

It’s devoid of all emotion. “She was a nurse. She took care of these tiny little babies. Premature babies who sometimes were born at barely a pound. I’d never seen a person in my life who was as empathetic and compassionate as Mum.

She loved every baby she’d ever taken care of, and she’d even follow up with their parents after being with them for months and months.

They became like family to her. Everyone would call her an angel on Earth and they were right. ”

My heart squeezes with each word. It’s breaking for both him and Aisling. I can’t. I just can’t imagine the pain he’s been living with.

I nod against his hair. “I’m so sorry, Cillian. God, I’m so sorry.”

“It was pissing rain, like the sky had fucking opened up and dumped rain on London like we hadn’t seen in ages.

She was on her way home from the night shift.

” His shoulders tense in my arms, and I see his eyes squeeze shut, his breathing growing heavy as he recalls that night.

“There was a truck that crossed the center lane… Head-on collision. She lived for three hours. And I didn’t make it in time.

I didn’t fucking make it, Rory. You know the worst part?

The part that fucking haunts me every goddamn day of my life?

We’d gotten into some stupid fight that day.

She was nagging me about something, and I had already had a shit day at the pitch, disappointed in how I had played, and I just lost it.

We argued, and I said hateful shit that I will regret every day until I die.

Shit that I didn’t mean, that I could never really mean.

I was just angry and lashing out, and she was the one standing in the way.

And I never got the chance to say how sorry I was.

I never got the chance to take it back.”

Hot, wet tears slip down my cheeks, and I reach up, attempting to brush them away, but as soon as they’re gone, more fall.

I hate that I never knew how badly he was struggling. In silence. All alone.

And I’m heartbroken .

“She forgave you, Cillian. You’re her son, and that’s what a mother’s love is, it’s…

unconditional . She knew how much you loved her.

She knew ,” I whisper through the thick emotion tightening my throat.

“We all make mistakes, and we say or do things that we regret, but I know that she’s looking down on both you and Aisling, and she’s so proud of you. ”

For a moment he says nothing, completely still aside from the rhythmic rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathes. It feels like nothing I say could ever begin to touch the heartache that he’s experienced, but I hope even the smallest part of it brings him some type of comfort.

There’s no question that his mom would be proud of him. That she would’ve forgiven the things that were said in the heat of an argument. I believe it with everything inside me.

Cillian lifts off my chest, his eyes red rimmed and filled with unshed tears as he sits back in his chair, placing the heels of his palms over his eyes and exhaling shakily, attempting to regain his composure.

“You say she’d still love me, but you don’t even know the worst of it.

It didn’t just stop there, Rory. I was a bloody fucking mess.

An embarrassing mess. I barely made it through the funeral.

I honestly don’t even remember most of it.

Just that I held on to Aisling like she was the only thing keeping me alive, and that’s probably true.

” He sighs, dragging his palm over his face.

“I was on a mission to fuck the rest of my life up from that night on. I was so fucking selfish, so goddamn stupid. I had Aisling to look after, and I was so fucked-up that I barely could open my eyes every day. How was I supposed to be what she needed when I was alive but barely breathing? I gave up. I went out every night, drank until I couldn’t even think.

Did drugs until I was numb. Physically. Mentally.

Showed up late to practice, still fucked-up from the night before.

Nearly failed every one of my classes. Got caught cheating on a midterm.

Still, my coach put up with it because he knew I was a good player and that my mum had just died.

I made excuses, promised to do better knowing I couldn’t.

I made promises that I never had any intention of honoring.

I was a fucking disaster, Rory. When I think back to those days, I’m so ashamed of who I was.

Who I let myself become. Someone my mum would’ve been disgusted with. ”

I reach for his hand, threading my fingers in his and squeezing. “You were hurting, Cillian. You were a kid yourself, and your mom died.”

The tears in his eyes spill over as he sniffles.

He reaches up to quickly brush them away, pulling his gaze from mine and out to the empty waiting room.

“I pushed it all down. All of the pain, the guilt.

How much I missed her and how I left things.

I hated the world, but never as much as I hated myself.

Not only did I fail her I failed Aisling when I was all she had left.

“It all came to a head one day at a game. There was a bloke from the other team, known for talking shit and goading and I knew that, but fuck… my mind was splintered. Broken into irreparable pieces. He brought my mum up, said she deserved what happened to her, and I just… snapped. We had just begun the game and I beat the shit out of him so bad that he had to be hospitalized. Fractured his skull. I blacked out; I barely even remember what happened. But that was it, I was off the team. I got a red card that day not just from the game but my coach had all that he could take, and I don’t blame him.

Not after all of the shit I put him through.

I got arrested and my coach cut a deal to get me out, but that was it for him. He was done.”

I lift a hand to my lips, and Cillian swallows roughly, shaking his head.

“Aisling was the reason I woke the fuck up before I ended up in jail or worse… She cried, begging me to stop doing this to myself before it was too late. I’d never seen her so broken.

It saved my life because I never wanted to see her like that again, let alone be the reason behind it.

I could’ve died right then, when I was finally awake enough to see how much I was fucking up, how much of a mess I had made of my life.

It made me realize how badly my shit was affecting her.

Her health already wasn’t good, and it got worse because she was constantly worried about me and not taking care of herself.

She was fucking grieving alone , Rory. I wasn’t there to help her because I was so fucked-up.

She lost her mum too. Thankfully, my old coach…

he called a favor in. I ended up here. That’s all of it.

The entire fucking nightmare that I’ve been living for the last two years, and most of it was my own doing. ”

There’s so much of this I had no idea about. I knew he had been expelled, but I didn’t know why.

“You lost yourself for a while, but that doesn’t define you.

Scars aren’t always physical, Cillian. Sometimes the ones that are the deepest, the ones that hurt the most are the ones you can’t see from the outside.

They run like rivers inside of you, and sometimes they can make you someone that you’re not.

Because they have to heal, and when we put a temporary fix?

We’re just stitching them back together instead of really healing them.

Now you’re healing those parts of you and…

you don’t have to be strong all of the time, Cillian.

” My voice is barely above a whisper, but when I reach out and cup his jaw, he drops his hands and looks at me.

“You don’t have to carry it all alone. I’m here. ”

A dry laugh escapes him, the corner of his lip tugging up slightly. He slips an arm around my shoulder and pulls me against his side, dropping his lips to the top of my head. “You’re too good for me, Rory.”

He has no idea how much good he possesses. He’s too busy trying to fight the demons from his past to see the current version of himself and how far that person has come.

One who is strong, and courageous, and resilient.

“I think your mom would want you to be proud of who you are right now. She wouldn’t want you to be drowning in guilt.

She would want you to live your life, and to be happy.

To be proud that you fought like hell and came out on the other side.

No matter how hard you had to fight to get here.

Because it takes so much strength and courage to pick yourself back up off the bottom, Cillian.

And you don’t have to feel guilty because she knew how much you loved her.

No matter what. Give yourself the same love and compassion that you give Aisling.

That you’ve given me. You have to stop punishing yourself for something that wasn’t your fault. And I think now is the time to start.”