Maverick

EAST SHORE REMINDED me of the derelict industrial area on the edge of Wicked Bay. Except, this place ran down to the beach. But not the nicer public beach I’d spotted on the drive up here. We climbed out of Jamie’s car. No offense to the guy, but I wasn’t about to leave my Audi in some abandoned parking lot.

“Where is everyone?” Jamie asked, and I shrugged.

“Beats me.”

“Here are the other guys.” Darnell tipped his head toward the oncoming cars. Three of them housing the other players.

“Everyone came.” I counted as the guys got out and filed over to us.

“Of course they did. No one is brave enough to go against Lowell.” He gave me a pointed look. “At least, not yet.”

As per Zac’s orders, we were all in shorts, black t-shirts or tank tops, and sneakers.

“This is stupi—” The roar of a truck silenced me, and I watched as the Jeep Wrangler lifted off the ground and landed on its rims.

“Holy shit, he’s crazy,” someone said and then I spotted what the guys hanging out of the back were holding.

“Are those—”

“Yeah, run,” I yelled taking off toward the beach. Jamie and Darnell followed but from the grunts and groans of some of the other guys, it didn’t take much to guess the first wave of paintballs had hit.

“In just tanks those things are gonna hurt like a bitch. We don’t stand a chance.” Jamie rasped as we made for the beach. But I realized it was too open. We’d be ripe for the picking.

“We need to find cover.” I slowed down, scanning the beach for something—anything—that might provide us with half a chance against Lowell and his band of crazy fucking hitmen.

“Over there, there’s an old boardwalk.” I pointed to the structure just visible. “The tides out, we can hide out under there, they can’t bring the truck down there.”

“Let’s go.” Darnell flew past us and Jamie went next, but I was rooted to the spot, tracking the other guys as they tried to stay out of the path of Zac.

“Maverick, come on,” Darnell yelled just as one guy took a bullet straight to his chest. Red paint exploded over his black t-shirt and he doubled over, gasping for breath.

“Fuck,” I muttered. “Go,” I said to Darnell and Jamie. “I’ll be right behind you. Go!” They took off again, and I jogged over to the guy.

“Fuck it hurts.” He was still bent double. I kept one eye on the truck, but it was busy chasing down two guys running back toward the parking lot.

“Do you think you can make a run for it?”

He sucked in a breath and winced. “Y-yeah.”

“Come on then.” I motioned toward the old boardwalk, the outlines of Darnell and Jamie just visible in the inky night.

“I’m Maverick.”

“Jonas,” the guy confirmed as we hauled ass toward the boardwalk. The thing was old, but as I expected it was high enough for us to hide between the wooden posts underneath.

“Guys, meet Jonas,” I said as we reached Jamie and Darnell who had already positioned themselves behind the thick wooden posts.

“You okay?” Darnell asked. “That looked painful.”

Jonas lifted his t-shirt up, the paint oozing out of the sides, and Jamie whistled. “Jesus, that’s going to hurt tomorrow.”

“It fucking hurts now. These guys are brutal. They’re going to do some serious damage with those guns.”

“Yeah, well we need to hope they have a limited supply. We can’t stay out here all night.” I eyed the ocean and if I was right, the waves would roll in over the course of the next few hours.

“So what do we do?”

“Sit tight,” I said, “and hope they get bored.”

The four of us watched as Zac’s guys picked off our new teammates. They went down one-by-one, red splatters marking their bodies.

“I never did like this sport,” Jonas said after a while.

“Just be thankful those guns are loaded with paint bullets and not pellets.” Jamie shuddered, and I rose a brow.

“Let me guess,” I said. “A story for another day?”

“You got it.”

Thirty-minutes in and the Wrangler changed direction, moving deeper onto the beach, the sand no issue for its off-road tires.

“Okay, here they come.”

“What do we do?” Jonas sounded panicked, and I couldn’t blame the guy. The bruise on his chest was a mess and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d broken a rib somewhere in there. For his sake, I hoped I was wrong.

“Keep moving, use the posts as protection. They can’t get much closer in the truck.”

“No,” Darnell said. “But they can get out and chase us on foot.” I followed his line of sight and cussed under my breath.

“Okay, split up, run fast, and just pray to God they run out of paint balls before we run out of steam.”

Darnell and Jamie nodded and took off, but Jonas didn’t budge. “You okay?”

“I’m not sure I can run. Damn, I think it hit something major.”

I grabbed his shoulder and said, “You want them to fire more of those things at you?”

“No.”

“So start running and don’t stop.” The truck’s headlights beamed in our direction lighting up the whole of the boardwalk and I yelled, “Go. Go,” and took off toward the ocean.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” a familiar voice sang as I pressed up against one of the damp posts holding my breath.

“I saw you come down here, Prince. Your ass is mine.” It wasn’t Zac, but it sounded a helluva lot like Vinnie. And for reasons I couldn’t work out, it sounded personal. I figured Kyle was right, some guys felt threatened by the competition to the point of losing their fucking minds.

I tracked the sound of his boots in the wet sand. He was over to my right and I quietly moved around the post. A paint bullet zipped past my head and I clapped a hand over my mouth to avoid the string of expletives from escaping while my heart lurched.

Fuck.

I’d been in a ring with men twice my size gunning for my blood, and yet, this was ten times as intense. Blood pounded in my ears. My skull. The hum of adrenaline coursed through my veins.

“I know you’re down here, Prince. You might as well come out now and accept your fate, because one way or another, I will paint you red.”

It took everything in me not to reply, not to give him a piece of my mind. But I had to play the game. Just like Darnell said, I had to let them think they had the upper hand. Although, they kind of did, given the fact I had no protective gear, no paintball gun, and nowhere to run.

I tried to crane my head around the post to see if I could see the others, but the guy was closing in and I didn’t want to risk him getting trigger-happy and taking out my eye. A round of bullets found their way onto the post in front of me, turning the rotting wood red.

“I can smell your fear, Prince.” He was right behind me now, and I went dead still. I was trying to figure out a plan that didn’t involve trying to disarm him and then beating him with his own gun. But as I readied myself to do just that, someone yelled, “Time.”

“Fuck,” the guy muttered. “You might have survived this round, Prince, but there’s always next time.”

Next time?

I waited for his footsteps to grow quiet and peeked around the post. Zac Lowell was over by the truck where he’d rounded up the new recruits in all their red-splattered glory. A couple of guys were holding various parts of their body, the pain evident on their faces. Darnell had two splatter marks on his chest, but Jamie had escaped with just the one on his arm.

“Well, well, what’s this?” he said as I stepped out from under the boardwalk. “It would appear we have a winner.”

All eyes were on me as I walked toward them. “I just got lucky,” I said trying to play down the fact I was the last man standing.

“Was the boardwalk your idea?”

“It made sense.”

Zac scrubbed his jaw, irritation burning in his eyes. “You won’t be so lucky next time.”

There was that next time again, but I didn’t ask him to explain. It was obvious this was only the first hurdle in his game.

“Stand up,” he ordered, and those guys doubled over in pain tried to haul themselves up. “This was a test. You all passed. For now. Make sure you cover any bruises, and this never happened, we clear?”

A round of grumbles and nods and he seemed satisfied. “The next round is Saturday night. You’ll all receive a text with instructions.”

“We can go?” someone said, and Zac’s head shot up. “If by go, you mean you can crawl back to your dorm and cry like the little bitch you are, then yeah, you can go.”

“Zac.” Vinnie motioned to me. “What are we going to do about him?”

My spine went rigid and Zac rolled his shoulders. “I guess it does seem like I’m giving him preferential treatment if he’s the only one unmarked.”

I fought every instinct I had. My blood burned with the fight response. In any other situation, I would have been ready. Fists curled, and senses heightened. But this wasn’t any other situation, and I didn’t want to start something with the potential to end my basketball career before it got started, so I pressed my lips together and waited.

Zac made a show of pacing in front of me, considering what to do with me. I was too distracted by his hesitation, so I didn’t see his fist coming toward me until it was too late. His knuckles clipped the side of my face and I staggered back. Laughter filled our corner of the deserted beach, but barely penetrated the anger radiating off me.

“I knew he’d take it like a little bitch,” Zac smirked, high-fiving one of his guys. I shifted ready to show him exactly how I took it, but Darnell caught my eye and shook his head just enough for me to notice.

Forcing myself to stay put, I rubbed my cheekbone, the tender spot no doubt already bruising. Lo would lose her mind when she saw me. Kyle too. But it was better than the alternative, besides practice would start soon, and this shit would die down.

“Let’s head to Carey’s,” Zac said. “I need a beer.” They all climbed back in the truck and I imprinted each of their faces on my mind. There were only four of them which meant the rest of the team was unaccounted for. I wanted to know who I could trust on the court and who I needed to watch.

“That shit was crazy,” a guy said, rubbing the welt on his forearm.

“It could get worse before it gets better.” Darnell came over. “You good?”

“I’ll live.”

“You showed good restraint.”

“You don’t know how hard it was.”

“Don’t be so sure. Come on, let’s get out of here and get some ice on that.” I nodded, glancing round at our small group.

“Everyone should do the same and be discreet.” I hated to remind them of Zac’s warning, but they were all here to play basketball. We couldn’t do that with a hazing scandal surrounding us. “Jonas?”

“Yeah?”

“Get your ribs looked at. Off campus if you can.”

He nodded, and a couple of guys helped him to one of the cars. Me, Jamie, and Darnell, hung back waiting for them to clear out.

“You think he’ll be okay?”

“Hopefully nothing is broken.”

“Shit,” Jamie breathed out. “I knew Zac had a reputation, but that was brutal. I think I would have preferred naked Twister.”

Me and Darnell glared at him and he muttered, “What?”

“Dude, never say that to me again. At least it’s over.”

“For now,” I reminded Darnell.

“That was physical. I’d bet my money the next initiation will be mental.”

“You think anyone will break?” Jamie asked as we got in his car.

“My monies on the small guy, Sam,” Darnell replied.

“No one will break. We’re in this together. Whatever Zac throws at us, we’ll handle. Together.”

“They’re wrong about you, Prince,” Darnell said, finding me in the rear-view.

“I guess time will tell.”

Because while I was prepared to play Zac’s games, everyone had a breaking point.

I just had to hope I didn’t reach mine.