Page 65 of The Love Losers

Rosie starts laughing, her whole body shaking with it. Grinning, I press a finger to her lips, and she looks me in the eye and then parts her pretty lips and sucks in my finger, her mouth warm. The suction shoots straight to my dick.

A groan rips from my chest as I free my hand and grip the back of her ponytail, pink paint staining my fingers from the grenade spray. I kiss her, her lips opening for me as her body arcs into mine, her hands gripping the front of the disgusting jumpsuit to tug me to her. She still tastes like strawberry gum, and I decide she tastes like summer too—the first ripe strawberry, the sun on my face, the feeling of the ocean lapping at my feet. When I have my mouth on her, I feel this endless winter I’ve been in lifting. Even though we’re here in the middle of a shitty indoor paintball course that smells like unwashed feet, I would stay forever if it meant I could go on kissing her, feeling her body under mine. If it meant we didn’t have to ask each other the kind of questions that might end this…

But I hear Wilson’s clumsy footsteps getting closer, and Rosie pulls away, panting a little, her eyes bright with mischief. We both reposition our paintball guns, and she darts across the course as fast as a gazelle to a large rectangular foam structure that’s half-heartedly decorated to look like a high-rise building. Wilson’s footsteps shift, and I see him going after her, but I’ll be damned if I let him take her down. No one should take her down, ever.

So I shoot a round at his back. Red paint pocks his left arm—

He turns around to face me so rapidly he nearly trips over one of the mats on the floor. Two hits to any one limb is an out but not one. I line up again, but he darts behind a yellow sphere with a flattened bottom.

He takes a shot at me, and it hits the foam triangle in front of me. I glance beyond him and see Rosie gesturing to me from behind her building.

Come here.

So I dart to the right, behind a non-distinct square of foam that smells of mothballs and is covered in paint splashes, and earn a paintball to one leg. It’s green, and the point of contact feels like a hornet sting.

Wilson makes a crowing sound of victory, but we both know we’re in the same position—one hit to the limb. Still in it.

In it to win it,because suddenly that seems very important.

While he’s busy crowing about his victory, I make another mad dash forward and to the right, sliding behind a triangle decorated to look like a wedge of cheese.

Wilson gets off another paintball in my direction, but it splats harmlessly off the cheese. Then suddenly he’s howling, clutching his left thigh, pocked with a blue spot.

I don’t think. I use the distraction to dart toward the rectangle building. I’m on edge when my former friend gets off another shot at me, the paint ball whizzing past me and exploding on the floor like a dropped egg, and then Rosie’s grabbing the collar of my jumpsuit and dragging me behind the foam building with her. Her hand still gripping the suit, she pulls me down to her for another kiss, her lips sucking mine. The combination of adrenaline and need is pounding through me so powerfully I don’t know if I can keep my feet. I definitely can’t think, which is good, because it means I can’t overthink.

Our eye guards clink together, but I can’t stop. I suck in her bottom lip and back her into the foam building, anchored to the ground with God knows what, although I’m guessing it contains asbestos. Her body melds to mine as if we were two pieces fitted to each other. Being close to her feelsrightin an uncanny way that makes my skin prickle. I still don’t know if we could possibly be the answer to each other’s problems, but I know that I want this. I want her for myself.

She pulls her head back too soon. Her eyes glint at me from behind the protective glasses, and my world is so engulfed by her, I only dimly register Wilson approaching us.

“Bring him down for me, Mr. Darcy,” she whispers.

Feeling a surge of purpose, I nod and rub at a fleck of pink paint off her cheek. “You were right,” I admit, feeling charitable, like I’d give her anything she asked for, even the admission that I was wrong. “I feel like a teenager again.”

“And it’s fun, isn’t it?” she asks, obviously pleased.

“It’s always fun with you.”

There’s a look in her eyes I can’t read, but I hear Wilson creeping closer, so I brush a kiss on her lips and glance around the side of the foam building.

He’s out in the open, rushing toward the wedge of cheese, but I aim for one of his legs and launch the paintball.

Five seconds later, a shriek fills the air, and Wilson falls to the ground, both of his hands covering his balls.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

ROSIE

“You did this on purpose,” Nina shrieks at Anthony as Wilson presses an ice pack to his balls, groaning. He’s sitting up against the wall, banging the back of his head against it in small motions as if he’s trying to take away the pain below his belt with some love taps to the head. The teenage attendant is lingering close by, deathly pale, probably worried if he’s going to be the clerk who brings a lawsuit down on Balls of Fire.

Actually, it’s an indoor paintball court that looks like it hasn’t been updated in my lifespan. I’m guessing they face a new lawsuit every season.

“It’s just a name,” the kid mutters, whether to Anthony or Nina I have no clue. “It’s not…we encourage people not to take it literally.”

“Dying,” Wilson mutters as he squirms on the ground, his hands cupped around his balls. “I’m dying. Someone get a doctor. Actually, we may need a whole medical team. Possibly a helicopter for a medivac.”

It seems like an extreme reaction to getting tapped in the balls. I may not have balls, but I have two brothers, and I’ve witnessed enough ball shots to know it hurts but is hardly fatal.

“Dying,” Wilson says a third time. “There are stars in my vision. And stars within the stars.”

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