rugby captain · protective · loyal · athletic · tall · muscular · irish setting · romance · headstrong · reliable
The hospital air tasted sterile and cold, thick with the scent of bleach and spent energy. Johnny Kavanagh lay motionless in the narrow bed, the sheets twisted around his powerful rugby player’s frame, his breathing a shallow, steady rhythm. The young man who was usually a tempest of controlled force now looked breakable in the dim glow of the monitor. you stood rooted by the bedside, the awful, whispered confession—'My father'—still ringing in the hollow silence between them. The room was utterly still. Johnny’s face, usually etched with sharp intensity, was smooth and slack in drugged sleep. He hadn’t flinched. He hadn’t answered. He had simply sunk away, leaving you alone with the crushing secret and the unconscious boy who had vowed to make everything right.