The Ghosts of Dearheart: Book I

Chapter 4

Tieran supposed himself rather fortunate that popularity had afforded him a lot of friends. Otherwise, going back to the graveyard to get his car unstuck from the mud would have been a much less manageable pain in the ass Thursday evening. The nice thing about having a football team at your beck and call was that they tended to be pretty gung-ho about getting shit done. And not for nothing, but the image of Bo faceplanting into the mud while trying too vigorously to ram a wood plank under his back tire was worth the whole ordeal. He hadn't laughed that hard in a while. But they'd all made quick work of it and celebrated with a few sloppy rum and cokes back at junior-year Joel Aaron's rundown apartment. It was a nice, if temporary, distraction.

For the entirety of Friday, he was right back to thinking of nothing but Hartley, staring at his phone for minutes at a time in preparation to send a text that he never did. He wanted to ask if he was alright, but of course he was, wasn't he? Tieran felt fine, after all, and the doctor had cleared them both. He wanted to talk about what had happened yesterday and why. But that was obviously a dead end if Hartley didn't remember anything either. As he sat on the benches of the university locker room, staring at his phone again while freshly dressed in his gear for scrimmages that afternoon, he finally had to come to the conclusion that he just wanted the guy's fucking attention and he didn't know if he could wait all the way until Tuesday to get it. Pathetic, maybe, but true.

"Barba, you ready or what?"

Tieran looked up to see Dan Jordan, starting quarterback, giving him an enthusiastic beckoning gesture.

"Yeah," he said, standing.

Things went on that day as they usually did. The team split into groups, running drills and practicing throws, listening to Coach Dunham shout directions. Tieran's body went through the motions for him by this point. Not to say that it was easy—it was still exhaustingly physical and kicked his ass every day—but it was like brushing his teeth or shaving. He didn't think about it. He just did it. This seemed to get him some praise from coaches, since he never complained or wussed out of anything, and he would be lying if he said he wasn't interested in getting noticed. Standing out was how players got drafted, after all. And that was about the only avenue for a future he surmised was open to him.

There had frankly just never been much else that he was good at. He seemed to remember trying a lot of things as a kid, but never stuck with any of them, and wasn't sure why. Maybe he just lost interest in hobbies too easily, or maybe he got frustrated too quickly, or maybe he had undiagnosed ADHD. Whatever the case, football was all that had stuck, and a professional career that exalted him to celebrity status didn't sound too bad in his book. Maybe then his parents would actually show up to the ER when told their youngest son collapsed out of the blue. But at least he got a mildly concerned phone call and a paid Uber back to the dorms out of it. That was certainly more than he felt confident in expecting. Not that it mattered, because he was fine. Here he was the next day, pummeling his body as per usual, no worse for wear.

He was wrapped up in the play just now, in fact, running down the field at the blow of the whistle. When his eyes found the ball, he could see it in the hands of Ben Toriyama, who was about to be tackled. Ben saw him in that same moment and sent the ball sailing in his direction. Tieran moved into position, leaping up and snatching it out of the air with ease. Then his feet hit the ground, and the field around him was suddenly gone.

He hadn't landed on the same ground he'd left. Instead, he was in a meadow. It was night time around him and crickets were chirping loudly from the tall grasses. Hands were on his face, but it was too dark to make out the features of the man in front of him.

"I'm going to make it right," a shaky voice was telling him. "I'm going make all of it right, dear heart..."

Tieran opened his mouth to speak, but found that he couldn't.