Chapter 31
Maya
I wake slowly, immediately aware that Bash is gone. His side of the bed still carries the last traces of his body heat.
I don't move away from that warmth.
Instead, I lie there in the silence, pale gold light pressing at the edges of the blackout curtains, and let the morning exist around me.
I kissed him last night.
It wasn't because of my heat symptoms. I wanted to kiss him.
Even when he pulled back and told me not to rush, it didn't feel like rejection.
If anything, it felt like someone thinking beyond this moment. Beyond this week. Someone who didn't want to start whatever this becomes on the wrong foot.
I press my face into the pillow and breathe in his scent for a moment before sitting up. I go through my usual bathroom routine, change into a fresh set of clothes, and head for the door.
The smell of coffee reaches me before I even get to the bottom of the stairs.
When I reach the kitchen doorway, I pause.
Adrian is at the stove, and I can tell at a glance that something is different.
He looks up when I appear.
“Morning,” he says, then turns back to the stove without missing a beat. I pull out an island stool and sit. A coffee is already waiting for me with just the right amount of Oat milk. I still have no idea how he figured that out.
I wrap both hands around the mug and watch him.
He's almost smiling. Not quite. But the corner of his mouth keeps threatening to lift, and there's an energy to him that wasn't there yesterday.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Good morning to you too.”
“What are you up to?” I press.
“I’m making eggs.” He gestures toward the pan.
“You look like someone who has a plan.”
He immediately tries to make his face neutral. It isn't even slightly convincing.
“I often have plans,” he says. “I'm a very organized person.”
I drink my coffee and wait for him to crack.
He focuses on plating the eggs with suspicious intensity, then sets a plate in front of me and sits across the island from me.
Finally, finally, he gives up and lets himself smile.
He looks suspiciously pleased about something. “I made arrangements for today,” he says finally.
A knot of anxiety immediately begins forming in my stomach. I'm braced for an omega-related appointment. Some calm, thoughtful, reasonable plan that is undoubtedly good for me and requires me to spend several hours processing my designation in a clinical setting.
“Okay...” I say cautiously.
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” he says.
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
He gives me a look that says, very clearly, that he does. “I rented a paintball course.”
I stare at him.
“A private one,” he adds. “It’ll just be us.”
The word paintball is sitting in my brain, refusing to connect to anything else in the conversation. “I’m sorry?” I ask.
“Paintball. You shoot people. With paint.” He takes a bite of eggs with complete composure.
“I know what paintball is.”
“Great. We’re going at eleven.”
I look at him across the island.
He’s eating breakfast with the composure of a man who rented an entire paintball facility on a random weekday and sees absolutely nothing unusual about that.
“But why?”
He sets his fork down and looks at me. The lightness is still there, but beneath it is something more serious.
“Because you've spent too much time being scared lately,” he says.
“Always having to brace for the next bad thing. You deserve one day where none of that gets to be the center of your world.”
He picks his fork back up. “So, paintball it is.”
I try to find something reasonable to say. “Why a private session?” I ask.
He gives me a look. “Maya. As you may be aware, I am a somewhat recognizable face. The last time I went to a public paintball arena, someone tried to tackle me for a photo. I was twelve years old at the time.”
“Were you famous at twelve?” I ask.
"The important part is the attempted tackle."
I knew Adrian and Bash were famous, but I'd never really thought about what that meant. To me, they were just Adrian and Bash.
I set my coffee cup down. Something loosens in my chest.
The private course. The specific choice of activity. The fact that he'd thought about what I might actually enjoy instead of what my designation supposedly required.
All of it feels deliberate in a way that has nothing to do with my heat and everything to do with me.
“Okay,” I say.
He looks up. “Really ?”
“Yeah.” I reach for my eggs. “But I’m going to beat you.”
The corner of his mouth does the almost-smile thing again. “We’ll see.”
Noise from the doorway draws my attention. I turn to find Bash and Elias walking into the kitchen.
“Good morning,” I say.
“Morning,” they reply in perfect unison.
I laugh.
The surprised looks they exchange only make it worse.
Bash crosses the kitchen and presses a kiss to my forehead on his way past. My stomach immediately does an embarrassing little flip.
Elias stops beside me instead. His gaze moves over my face briefly, checking in the way he always does, making sure I'm okay without asking the question out loud.
“We have to go to set today, so you're stuck with Adrian, unfortunately,” Bash says as he fills a travel mug with coffee.
Adrian lets out an exaggerated gasp.
I laugh again, and even Elias cracks a smile.
Only then does it occur to me that I never actually asked how Adrian was planning to spend an entire day at a paintball course when he was supposed to be working.
After a little more conversation, Bash and Elias head out for the studio.
Not long after, Adrian and I leave as well.
Twenty minutes later, we're pulling into a parking lot.
The facility sits on the edge of the city, a plain commercial building with a small logo and very little else to distinguish it from the surrounding businesses.
Inside, it opens into a proper course. Barriers divide the space into winding lanes and choke points. Elevated platforms overlook sections of the floor. Everything appears arranged to create confusion on purpose.
It's empty except for us and a man in a company shirt who hands us our gear with the professional efficiency of someone who has given this orientation thousands of times.
The manager walks us through the safety rules, points out the boundaries of the course, and hands us our vests.
The vest sits slightly wrong on me. I adjust it twice. Adrian is already moving through the equipment check like someone who knows exactly what he's doing, which makes me immediately suspicious.
I look out at the course. The barriers cast clean shadows. The whole space smells like rubber padding, something slightly chemical, and the faint metallic edge of compressed air.
“Are you ready?” Adrian asks from beside me once he's finished strapping up for war.
“I’m ready,” I say, with considerably less confidence than I'd intended.
Adrian looks delighted and heads for the course before I can reconsider.
The first five minutes, I am objectively terrible.
I move through the course too slowly and hesitate at every corner, checking angles with a thoroughness that has more to do with anxiety than strategy. Adrian tags me twice before I manage a decent shot.
Then he rounds a barrier for the third time.
I turn and fire.
The paintball catches him square in the shoulder.
Blue paint bursts across his vest.
Something wakes up inside me that I've been missing for weeks.
I take off before he can recover.
“That’s very good,” he calls after me.
His voice carries across the course, and I can hear the laughter underneath it.
I don't look back.
I duck behind a low wall and crouch there listening to him move. My heart is racing, but for the first time in a long time it has nothing to do with fear.
The next forty minutes pass in a blur.
There is no polite word for what we do to each other on that course.
I dive behind a stack of padding. Adrian appears from the opposite direction, and we're both firing before either of us can stop ourselves. We both get hit and spend a full thirty seconds arguing about whether it counts as a draw.
Later, he catches me by the waist and pulls me behind a barricade when I'm fully exposed and seconds away from getting tagged by a ricochet off the side wall.
His grip is quick.
I'm laughing before I've even recovered my balance against his shoulder.
“You were going to get hit by your own paintball,” he says, not letting go of my waist until I've found my balance.
“I was fine,” I argue.
“You were completely exposed.”
“I had a plan.”
“The plan was about to fail.”
I pull free and take off into the course before he can say anything else. I hear him behind me, and I run harder. The sound of my feet on the padded floor, the sharp hiss of compressed air, the sheer ridiculous joy of this settles somewhere in my chest like pressure finally releasing.
He rounds a corner twenty feet ahead of me.
I see him.
He sees me.
I fire before he can raise his gun.
Point blank.
Center mass.
He goes down.
Not just down. He goes down theatrically, one hand clutching his chest, his gun dropping from his grip as his entire body folds toward the floor in slow motion while he makes a sound I cannot believe is coming from a professional actor.
“Adrian.” He's on the floor now, one arm thrown dramatically over his eyes.
“Adrian, are you actually—”
“It's too late for me,” he says to the ceiling. “Tell them.”
“Tell who?”
“Bash. Elias.” He lets out a heavy sigh. “Tell them I died doing what I loved.”
“Getting shot with a paintball gun?”
“Making you smile.”
I lower my gun and press a hand over my mouth, but it doesn't help. The laugh that bursts out of me comes from somewhere deep in my chest, strong enough that my shoulders shake and I end up leaning against the nearest barricade for support.
“I’m so glad,” Adrian says from the floor, “that my suffering is funny to you.”
“You’re so dramatic,” I manage between giggles.
He opens one eye. The paint on his chest is a vivid blue burst. “I have range,” he says, and the corner of his mouth is doing the thing again.