28. Chapter 28
twenty-eight
“If anyone asks,” Lex panted, “this was all part of the plan.”
“It did smoke them out of their trees,” Rowan added helpfully, joining the stampede out of the clearing.
Isaiah caught up to us in no time, sprinting alongside us.
The two shooters who’d pinned us in dropped out of their trees, exposing the pink-splattered bodies and dresses belonging to Colt and Booker.
Like Isaiah, they didn’t bother trying to get the flag back anymore.
They ran with us, Colt checking up on Lex and Booker falling back to run alongside me and Rowan.
Annie craned her head around, not slowing or tripping on any roots like I would if I tried to do the same. “Where’s Hattie?”
Sweet and sour bacon , we lost Hattie?
“There, behind us!” Lex cried, using her gun hand that wasn’t swatting at wasps to gesture.
I risked a peek, swatting at my own pests as I nearly tripped on a rock.
Back in the clearing, Hattie walked calmly and smoothly away from the damaged wasp nest as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
McBride walked beside her, his agitation belied in the tightness of his movements as he angled his head towards her.
Surprisingly, the vast majority of the wasps didn’t bother the pair, instead opting to chase the more interesting prey: us. How she managed to walk so calmly away, I’ll never know. But this was Hattie. I swear the woman thrived on chaos.
When we were far enough away from the nest I’d apparently hit, the wasps slowly retreated, bobbing towards us just to show us who was boss before returning to their home.
Lex groaned, cringing at the welts and holes the wasps left in their wake. “I sure hope Hattie has some extra Advil. No one is deathly allergic to wasp stings, are they?”
Annie paced as if cooling down, flag hand resting on her hip. “I’ve got some Benadryl in my bag.”
Of course she did. She probably had a first aid kit and a nice selection of snacks, too, which I might just take advantage of.
I’d need something to tide me over until the hot tub oasis we’d booked for the girls after this.
And if it happened to help heal the ache in my, oh, everywhere , I’d take it.
Colt took inventory of everyone’s injuries. “Thankfully, it doesn’t seem like anyone is allergic.”
Booker freed a wasp from one of the multiple ruffles in his skirt, exchanging a look with Colt. “So, just to be clear, everyone is okay?” At our nods, he included Isaiah in his look, whatever it meant. “And so the game is still going, right?”
Oh hazelnuts .
All those with fast or even normal reflexes snapped back into action while I, graceful warrior that I was, spent that entire two seconds fumbling with my gun.
Lex and Colt faced off against each other, while Rowan took on Isaiah. This left me to fight Booker while Annie sprinted toward no man’s land.
Was it poor etiquette to shoot the man you’re going on a maybe-date with in a few days?
He didn’t give me the chance, instead chasing Annie.
I fired at him as I ran, trying to cut across to intercept him and Annie.
I missed, surprising no one. But, I hadn’t been shot by any of the boys yet, either, so I’d take it as a win.
I wasn’t sure my stung and bludgeoned body could withstand much more.
Annie grunted as two paint bullets burst across her back. She whipped behind a tree, spraying out a few shots at Booker until he was forced to take cover, too.
I’m not entirely sure what possessed me to keep running toward Annie, since I definitely didn’t have a plan, but I continued on my path either way. Maybe there would be strength in numbers? I knew better than to think I’d be her saving grace, but I wasn’t about to abandon her, either.
I fired haphazardly in Booker’s direction as I neared, hopefully at least deterring him enough for me to join Annie behind her tree. “Go! I’ll cover you.”
Ha! That was optimistic. But whatever.
“I’ve got a better idea.” Annie fired off another handful of shots, her voice barely discernible between her heavy breathing and the ruckus of guns shooting and paintballs biting into the trees and ground around us.
“I become the decoy and lead him away while you pretend to cover me. As soon as he chases me, you take the flag and run like crazy, okay?”
“Uh, you really trust me with that?” I sure didn’t.
She spared me a glance before returning to her quest to splatter Booker into oblivion. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
A couple reasons came to mind, one of which being “good judgment,” but I digress. If she chose to believe in me, that was her fault. I’d just have to try my hardest not to disappoint her.
No biggie.
When Booker ducked behind his tree to escape our barrage, Annie passed the flag over to me, careful to keep it concealed between me and the tree trunk. She nodded curtly at me and zipped away, a blur of lace and paint.
I continued my assault on Booker’s tree, sometimes even hitting it, until he noticed Annie’s escape. My heart leapt into my throat as he took off after her, dodging through trees to avoid my errant paintballs.
I shot a few more paintballs at him after he passed my latitude, sucked in a bracing breath, and ran for my life.
My stride ate up the ground as I tore through the forest. Not smoothly and efficiently, like a champion hotdog eater, mind you, but more like a toddler trying ice cream for the first time.
What I lacked in prowess I made up for in enthusiasm. Or in this case, desperation.
My arms pumped at my sides, my lungs heaving and breaths horribly loud in my mask.
Everything hurt. My legs burned, my bones ached, and my stings, well, stung .
Sprinting was arduous enough. Sprinting with a paintball gun, wedding dress, and a bedazzled flag whipping in the breeze? That was another matter entirely.
I hadn’t made it far before I heard a shout. Branches snapped around me as paintballs flew, the ground spitting up soil and leaves as the bullets impacted. I yelped, jumping and zigzagging.
I abandoned all hope of shooting back at whoever was pursuing me, focusing all my limited energy on getting to no man’s land. It was so close. So, so close.
“Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die,” I muttered, my voice high and panicked.
I jumped over a log, slid in some loose dirt, and readjusted my course as the paintballs didn’t let up.
My muttering morphed into a desperate mantra, tumbling out of my mouth at a higher and higher pitch. “Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die.”
I hurtled into no man’s land. All I had to do was make it across.
I made the mistake of looking behind me halfway across.
Booker had either incapacitated Annie or abandoned the chase sooner than she’d anticipated, since he was entirely too close behind me.
He raised his gun to shoot. I braced myself for the impact, just barely too far from the nearest tree to take cover.
Instead of the blossoming pain, I heard two grunts from behind me.
I glanced back, just in time to see Booker fall to his knees, two new paint splatters adorning his dress right over his gut.
Except these splotches weren’t bright pink like the others.
Nope. They were bright blue, just like the paint I sported on my hip and ribs.
I didn’t have much time to compute what had happened before I crashed into a tree.
The air left my lungs in a whoosh, though it didn’t hurt as badly as I’d expected. And why was I spinning? How had I even hit the tree? I could’ve sworn I’d been to the side of it for this exact reason.
I finally came to a stop, the world around me still spinning as a masked figure came into focus in front of me. His dress boasted five pink pops of color, his bronze skin and broad shoulders incredibly familiar.
“Max?” I wheezed, leaning my back against the tree we hid behind. Apparently I hadn’t hit the tree after all, but a certain FBI agent I had a knack for literally running into, who’d used my momentum to spin me behind a tree for cover. “Did you shoot Booker?”
“Oh, is that who that was?” he asked, not the least bit concerned. “It’s so hard to tell with these masks and dresses. Honest mistake.”
He completely shielded me with his body while watching his own territory with his gun at the ready. Our chests brushed with each of my heaving breaths. His heat added to the sticky late-May temperature until it became nearly unbearable. And yet, I didn’t want to move.
It took a few breaths before it finally dawned on me that there had to be a reason he was in no man’s land, too. Sure enough, pinned between his hand and his gun sat our flag in all its pink and white bedazzled glory.
I clutched their flag tighter, inching toward the side. “Well, this is awkward.”
He chuckled and looked away from his territory to meet my eyes. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to hand over our flag, huh?”
“With dessert on the line? Not a chance.”
I gulped. We stood so close. Flashes of memory from our kiss played behind my eyes, searing themselves into my brain.
It seemed almost fitting, stealing a moment just for us amidst the mayhem.
That was every stolen moment we had. A broken couch.
A whirring laundry room. A broken elevator and a fur suit.
No matter the circumstances around us, Max was my harbor in the storm, the sunshine breaking through the thunderstorm of my always-racing thoughts.
My safety. He created a haven where there was none.
Accepted me exactly as I was, no judgment passed.
Whether we ever became more than friends, the fact remained.
And I realized with alarming clarity just how badly I’d fallen for him. How completely gone for him I was.
“If you keep looking at me like that,” he warned, his voice husky as he leaned against the tree to cage me in more completely, “I’m going to lose what self-control I still have.”
Goosebumps pimpled over my skin. “Would that really be so bad?”