Chapter 25 Machine
TWENTY-FIVE
MACHINE
“Tool, where are you taking me?” Badger asked for the tenth time as she climbed into my SUV.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the shower from earlier that morning. I wanted to ride this high as long as I could. After I took Lucy out for a walk, I’d asked Badger if I could take her out tonight. She’d said yes with some hesitation, but I could tell that she was intrigued.
“Asking more isn’t going to make me tell you,” I said with a devious smirk, buckling my seatbelt.
Badger huffed and put hers on, looking at me expectantly. She crossed her arms over her chest, pushing her breasts up.
“You could be taking me somewhere to murder me,” she said.
“Well, it’s a good thing you know a thing or two about killing someone with your bare hands,” I quipped back.
She narrowed her eyes. “And don’t you ever forget that.”
“Oh, I’m fully aware of the things you can do with your hands.”
I didn’t miss the smile she was trying to hold back. I chuckled and put the SUV in drive. It only took about ten minutes to get to our destination.
Badger tilted her head in confusion as she took in the location. “Smash Room? What are we doing here?”
“I figured with everything going on with Ricci, the letters, your sister, and staying with me, you may have some pent-up rage. I like coming here to decompress,” I said with a smile.
She returned the smile and pressed a quick kiss to my lips before unbuckling and getting out of the vehicle. We walked inside hand in hand, surprising me. To others, we looked like an ordinary couple. But to us, it couldn’t be further from the truth.
We put on the protective gear, and an employee went over the safety rules before we entered the room. It was scattered with lamps, TVs, mirrors, windows, porcelain, and other breakable items.
I watched Badger as she took it all in. A huge smile blossomed on her face, and my heart swelled.
“You ready?” I asked her, fixing the grip on my bat.
“Fuck yes!” she squealed before heading for an ugly, old-fashioned lamp on one of the tables.
She grabbed the middle of the lamp and slammed it on the floor before taking her bat and brutally hitting the broken pieces.
It felt good to let loose and break shit. Typically, I enjoyed breaking faces, but this was a lot less clean-up for me.
After thirty minutes in the rage room, we took a quick water break and walked into the paint room.
Everything was covered in neon paint. Without skipping a beat, Badger walked over to one of the tables and immediately threw one of the paint-filled balloons at me.
It hit my stomach and exploded, covering me with a neon-green splatter.
“Well, that wasn’t very nice, Bunny!”
Badger let out a laugh and stuck her tongue out at me. “What are you going to do about it, Hammer?”
I loved our banter, our inside jokes, and the games we played with each other. It was the best foreplay, a high that I never wanted to lose.
I took a paintbrush, dipped it into the neon-pink paint, and started chasing Badger around the room. She squealed with delight as she ran away from me. I eventually caught her, pinning her to the ground, and spread the paint all over her face.
“Pink is your color,” I teased, giving her a smirk.
She took a paint bucket that was sitting next to her and dumped it over my head. Bright-blue paint went everywhere, seeping through my protective suit and onto my street clothes. I wiped the paint from my eyes. Blue paint covered her as well, making me laugh.
“We’re a mess,” Badger said with a laugh.
A beautiful mess, I thought.