CHAPTER 38
Eve
P OP!
POP!
You shouldn't have lied, asshole. I told you, I'm no one's doormat.
Shooting him feels good. I need to do it again.
Adam staggers back from the first of the impacts. He's surprised. He looks down at his chest and the red liquid that's there. He brings his hand to his chest, smearing red everywhere. I fire again and again.
POP!
POP!
Each time I take a step forward and he staggers backward. Vengeance feels pretty damn excellent.
People are talking outside. They're coming closer.
Hurry, take him down before they get here .
It's Cal and Cotton. They'll take the gun from me. Hurry. Quickly, I take aim again and fire off three more shots in quick succession.
POP!
POP!
POP!
Adam grunts and jerks back with every hit.
"What the fuck, Eve?"
Cal wrenches the gun from my grip, and Cotton wraps his arms around me immobilizing me in a bear hug.
"Adam! Adam! Fuck are you okay?" Cal's yelling at Adam, who is still standing and looking down at himself in shock.
"She shot me," Adam says to no one in particular. He's clearly dazed and his voice is barely audible. I haven't heard him like this before. In fairness, he's probably never been shot before.
"Wait, Cal, let me see that." Cotton sounds amused.
Cal looks back at him like he's lost his mind.
Cotton bursts out laughing and loosens his grip on me enough that I can break free. Now he's laughing so hard that he can't speak even though he's trying to explain.
"It's paint. She shot me with a fucking paintball gun."
"What?" Cal looks thoroughly lost now. He raises the gun to inspect it more closely. "Holy shit. It looks so real. Remarkable."
"Why the fuck did you shoot me, Eve?"
Using everyone's distracted state to my advantage, I rip the gun back out of Cal's hands and open fire on the three of them.
All over the room, I hear "Ouch!" and "What the fuck, Eve?" and "That shit hurts, damn it!" and "What did we do?" and my personal favorite, "Just shoot Adam, we're innocent!"
"None of you assholes are innocent. You were engaged! He was engaged and you both knew it! No one told me! Fucking assholes!"
"No, no wait! He wasn't! I swear!"
Shouts are coming from everywhere. I don't know who's saying what. I just fire anytime I see a body part peek out.
"Engaged? Who was engaged?"
"Eve, love she lied! There was never a relationship there! I swear!"
This gives me pause. It's perfectly plausible that bitch lied. That's what they've all been screaming. "He wasn't! I swear!" and "Who was engaged?".
Ohhh shit. She lied. They were never engaged. Oh, I am dead.
I sprint for the stairs and very nearly get caught by Adam as he lunges for me.
Keep running . Loud footsteps are right on my heels.
It's Cotton. Shit!! He's fast for a Yeti.
He stumbles midway up the stairs, gaining me some distance.
I get to the bedroom and slam the door shut, locking it as fast as I can.
One door isn't enough though, when you're dealing with men this size, so I go one further and lock myself inside the bathroom.
There's pounding on the bedroom door as soon as I click the lock on the bathroom. "Eve, you better open this damn door right now."
Adam. He's covered in dark red paint. Oh hell. It's literally covering his entire body. Not his face though. I didn't shoot him in the face. That should count for something, right?
"Eve!" They all bellow from the hall, and I realize that, no, it does not count for anything.
"I'm not opening shit!"
"You know I ripped this door off the hinges once. I can do it again."
"C'mon, dude. Don't do that. We had to replace the whole frame." Cal whines to Adam.
"Yeah, we can just unscrew the hinges." Cotton, the thinker, suggests.
"Yeah, well, you'll have to do the bathroom door too, because that's where I am!"
"She lied, Eve. We were never engaged. We weren't even in a relationship. There have been no relationships. Only you. I swear. Now open the door."
"Yeah, I know. I gathered all that downstairs."
Something hits the door hard again. Adam's fist, if I had to guess.
"Then why won't you open the damn door?"
"Because I shot all of you and now, you're all butt hurt about it."
"Butt hurt?" Cal asks incredulously. "You shot us for no reason, and now we're butt hurt?"
"I thought I had a reason. I thought you all kept something from me and..."
I stop talking, realizing that I'm about to reveal a weakness.
"And it hurt. You thought we betrayed you, and it hurt because you trusted us.
" That Cotton has got to be the most intuitive person I have ever met.
I say nothing. He knows he's right. They all know he's right.
I hear them talking amongst themselves in the hall, but I can't understand what they're saying.
I imagine one of them is going to get a drill to take down the hinges.
I'm like a caged rat in here. If I get naked in the shower, two of them will definitely back off.
That still leaves me dealing with Adam, but one is better than three, and if I'm already naked, I can possibly distract him long enough to escape again.
This feels like the trappings of a very solid plan.
"They're gone, Love. They went to take showers. Let me in, baby. I'm not mad."
"Liar. I shot you. Multiple times. At close range. I know you're mad. You're drenched in paint."
"Please. Let me in."
I'm momentarily stunned by the desperate pleading.
He's never said please before, and I don't know how to respond, so I say nothing.
Instead, I unlock the bathroom and walk out into the bedroom straight to the door and unlock it.
He opens it so quickly that I barely have time to get out of the way of the swinging door.
He grabs me pulling me, into his body as he buries his face into my neck. "You didn't leave me."
The relief in his voice is unmistakable. He thought that I had left again. I ran out to my Jeep to get the paintball gun. I promised to never leave him again, but he sometimes seems to make it his personal mission to piss me off, so I needed another option to even the score when he makes me mad.
I borrowed Eli's paintball gun so that the next time I felt like running out on him, I could light him up instead. Adam's clutching my body like he's afraid that I'll slip through his fingers.
"I love you so fucking much, Eve."
His words make me feel even worse. How could I believe that he would lie to me on the word of that jealous twat? He told me before that there had never been anyone serious before me and all it took for me to question that was one obviously bitter woman saying otherwise.
"Still? Even after I assumed you lied and shot you?" He pulls back to look at me. He's confused. "Eve, I could sooner pluck the sun from the sky, wrap it in ice, and gift it to you than I could stop loving you."
His words are like salve to all the broken pieces of my soul.
I feel wounds that I didn't even know I had begin to heal.
His intensity is overwhelming so much of the time, but it is always honest. I know that he means what he's saying to me.
A single tear escapes my eye and streams down my cheek.
Adam catches it with a kiss, and I have never felt as whole as I do in this moment.
"I got paint on your clothes."
"Well, in all fairness, I did shoot you."
"That's right. You shot me. Many times." There's a mischievous glint in his eyes, and his arms grow even tighter around me. "You planned that. You already had the gun here." He narrows his eyes, thinking through the events of the past hour.
"I uh, borrowed it...from Eli a while back.
I promised I'd never leave you again, but you piss me off all the time, and I just needed an outlet for my frustration.
I figured shooting a gun at you would alleviate some of that, and the physical harm from the paintball probably couldn't be that bad, so I thought," I shrug and turn my expression to innocence, "win-win".
"Win-win, huh?"
"Yeah." I feel something stirring in him, but I have no idea what it is, so I'm helpless to prepare for it.
He releases me from his hold so he can pull his shirt off over his head. He has six gnarly looking bruises in the beginning stages of purple. There are two on his chest, two on his chiseled abdomen, and one on each shoulder. Ouch. That definitely hurt.
That was no regular paintball gun. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it.
I think I remember Eli sending it out for customization just before he deployed.
I didn't know what customizations could be made to a paintball gun at the time, but I do now.
He obviously added power to the paintball ejection.
Of course he did, and I just shot my boyfriend and a couple of my best friends in the world with it.
Adam must sense my growing guilt because he says, "It's okay. Don't worry. We've all already forgiven you and we know why you did it. I'm just glad you didn't leave. If you need some kind of outlet for your anger, that's fine. Even when it's assault, it's fine. Just as long as you stay with me."
I look at this man. My man. My soulmate. The love of my life. My beginning and end. "You say the damnedest things and I love you for them."
"That's good love because it's about to be a very long night."
"Oh yeah? Why's that?" I ask hesitantly.
"Well because I'm going to fuck you in the shower. Then, I'm going to fuck you in this bed. After that, you're going to tell me what you whispered in Nadia's ear to make her skin turn gray, and finally I'm going to tell you how you can make up for shooting me."
"Do I have to tell you what I said to her?"
"All of that I just said and all you're worried about is telling me what you told her?" He laughs softly. "I can't wait. I think I need to know now."
"Ugh I was just mad and talking out of my ass."