Page 98 of Oathbreaker

“You. When you’re focused on protecting yourself.”

I suppress a whimper.

“We’re going to shoot all these guns. The safety is on. Here’s how you turn it off.” He points to the lever. “You need to rack the gun, but you only need to do it once. That’s why they’re called semi-automatic.”

So that’s what that means.

“Pull the slide back to rack the gun,” he says. I struggle to pull it back and look at him with hopelessness.

“Pull hard, then let it go,” he says.

Using all my upper body strength, I slide it back and let it release. I hear the bullet slide into the chamber.

“You know you never want to point a gun at anyone, but you especially don’t want to point it at someone unless you’re ready to kill them. And if you’re shooting someone, you’re shooting to kill. You keep pulling that trigger until the gun goes click. Got it?”

“Got it,” I choke out.

“Good girl,” he says. He steps behind me and then situates the gun and the position of my fingers. He holds his hands over mine.

The paper target isn’t a bull’s eye like I expected from the movies. Instead, it’s a silhouette of a man’s body.

“We’re going to shoot now,” he whispers close to my ear.

My terror at this lesson starts to get edged out by want.

Jesus Christ, get a grip.

“You want to line up this point here,” he taps the ridge at the top of the gun, “with wherever you’re trying to shoot. Aim for the chest, as it’s the largest area. Keep both your eyes open. Understand?”

“Eyes open. Shoot for the chest. Line up the shot. Got it.”

“Turn the safety off, baby.”

I move my thumb to click the lever. His hands are warm, steady over mine. I feel him take a deep breath.

“Prepare for the recoil,” he says. “Fire on one.”

I put my finger over the trigger.

He counts slowly. “Three, two, one?—”

Even though he told me to prepare for the recoil, the force of it takes me off guard. If his hands weren’t holding mine steady, I would have one hundred percent knocked my front teeth out.

“Holy shit,” I say. My hand hurts, and I look at the target. I clipped the top edge of the paper, nowhere near where I was aiming.

“Well, fuck, that’s really bad,” I say.

He chuckles in my ear.

“For your first shot, you did pretty good. You hit the paper.” He rubs my forearms and then says, “Let’s try again.”

It goes on like that for two solid hours. We go through all the guns, unloading several clips from each weapon until I’m able to stand on my own and shoot with some accuracy.

The last ten rounds, I manage to hit the target dead center.

“Are we done yet?” I ask, petulance lacing each word.

“Let’s do a few more shots with the S&W.”

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