CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
“Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.”
- Oscar Wilde
Blake
Six weeks later…
“Okay everyone, listen up. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
“Who died and made you team captain?”
“No one needed to give me the title, it was assumed.”
I tuned out Clara and Liam’s bickering. Something they seemed to do a lot these days.
My eyes scanned the open areas of the large space for signs of CJ. Why had he wanted to be on opposite teams? When he and Liam declared themselves captains and started choosing teams, I couldn’t believe it when I was the last one picked. CJ wouldn’t even look at me the whole time. And when our teams split up to talk strategy, he walked away without looking back once.
He’d certainly picked the wrong time to piss me off. Making me his opponent when I was armed with a gun? Stupid. Just stupid.
Over a month since I’d come scarily close to dying, and CJ was making me insane. He went from being overprotective and controlling to distant and aloof. The only reason I’d let him get away with it for so long is because all of us had been affected by that night, and all of us were dealing with it in different ways. I spent nearly three weeks in a coma, then another week laid up in a hospital bed after I woke up. CJ never left my side, but something was off with him, I could feel it. It would have scared me to see him shutting me out like that, but every time he looked at me I saw it in his eyes that I hadn’t lost him. He was trying to get ahold of his emotions, and so I vowed to give him time before I started pestering him.
Once I was back home in my own bed, Michelle came to live with me. It was summer break and no matter how many times I tried to kick her out, she wouldn’t go away. It only took a few weeks for me to fully recover, something that surprised everyone. Not sure why. I was too stubborn to be confined to my bed while life passed me by. How did people not know this already?
I’d been going to therapy with Michelle. (Still pissed that she didn’t tell me she was already seeing a therapist, but that’s something we were working out.) Our parents had flown in twice to check on us both. I wasn’t there for it, being that I was in a medically induced coma and all that, but when Michelle finally told them what happened with Greg, it had been pretty emotional.
Speaking of Greg… He never showed up. They expanded their search for him and monitored every clinic and ER within a two-hundred mile radius and… nothing. CJ thinks he fell into a ditch and bled out and one day someone will stumble upon his body. Maybe it makes me evil, but I kind of hope he’s right.
The other crazy man in our lives was in rehab. Turned out, Dan had a bit of a gambling problem. Some scary loan sharks were after him and he panicked, hence the reason he showed up at my place all out of his mind and not thinking straight. In his sleep deprived, manic state, he thought I’d take him up on his marriage proposal and then pay off his debts. Idiot. I was glad he was getting treatment for his addiction, though. I wondered what would happen to him once he wasn’t at the facility anymore; if the men would continue to come after him. CJ assured me it wasn’t for me to worry about, which means he was already keeping an eye on things. Not because he worried for Dan’s safety, but he worried about mine. He didn’t want to risk Dan getting desperate and threatening me again.
Michelle was the only one not at paintball with us. She blamed school and every other excuse under the sun, but she was withdrawing more and more each day. Sometimes I hardly recognized her.
“Earth to Blakey-poo.” Liam waved his hand in front of my face.
He was watching me with curiosity. Clara and Sebastian’s expressions mirrored his as well. Just how long had I zoned out?
“Sorry. I was planning a mutiny in my head. Hearing you guys bitch at each other makes me think a change in leadership is in order.”
Clara held out her hand for me to fist bump but Liam knocked it away before I could react. He looked at Sebastian with utter exhaustion. “See? This is why letting chicks come to paintball with us was a bad idea. Hey, ow!” He yelped when Clara socked him in the shoulder.
“Quit being an ass.”
More bickering ensued, but then the whistle blew, signaling the start of the war.
I snickered. The way Liam was acting, you’d think it was actual warfare going on around us. Too bad all us girls were half drunk from the mimosas we’d had at brunch, which we’d dubbed a new pre-paintball tradition. If the guys let us tag along after today, that is.
My team scattered, ducking behind strategically placed bunkers. We were at an indoor field, so everything was fairly open and well-lit. Apparently the men usually did some elaborate outdoor game but everyone voted to do something less intense for our first time. In other words, everyone was still babying me but trying to lie about it. I’d be mad if I weren’t secretly so touched that they all cared so much.
I looked around, taking in the big pieces of plywood covered in splatters of paint. They were interspersed with big inflatable thingies all throughout the massive room. Liam whisper-yelled for me to take cover, but I was in no hurry to hide. Even if someone shot me, I wasn’t stopping until I found CJ. It was against the rules to shoot someone after you’d been shot. Screw that. I never followed the rules anyway. I’d thought I could make it through the game to talk to CJ, but each passing second only served to piss me off even more. We were going to talk this shit out, here and now, when I had a gun I could hold to his head in case he tried to refuse.
Liam thwarted that plan when he grabbed my arm and yanked me down next to him.
“What the hell, Blake? Are you trying to get yourself killed!?”
I rolled my eyes. “You need to chill the hell out. It’s just pretend.”
He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me a little. “The team that loses has to clean the bathrooms at work for a month.”
My mouth fell open. “I never agreed to that!”
They were out of their damn minds if they thought I was going anywhere near the men’s bathroom. I’d volunteer to clean the floor of a subway car with my bare hands before I’d clean that bathroom, even in a hazmat suit.
“Focus, woman! It’s too late for negotiations. The deal is done. All we can do now is make sure we win. That means not standing out in the open.”
My sarcastic retort was cut off by the sound of paint slamming against the flimsy wood protecting us. I turned in time to see Sebastian signaling something at Liam. It looked like he was trying to spell something in sign language. Clara and I shot each other an exasperated look. Then Liam jumped up and started firing like a mad man while Sebastian crept over a few feet.
“Shit!” I heard Malcolm yell.
Liam fell back down beside me. “One down. Three to go.”
The several minutes that followed were chaotic. Clara started to get into it, but was soon taken out. She pouted and tossed her gun to the ground before storming off in a huff. Liam grumbled something about her being a brat. I laughed. Clara acted like a drama queen but she was so laid back it was ridiculous.
I stayed behind my little hiding place with my ass planted firmly on the ground. Everyone was wearing themselves out trying to take each other down. I was saving my ammo for one person in particular. It didn’t take long before it was down to two people - CJ and myself. Everyone else had been eliminated.
No one would have shot me anyway. They still treated me like I could break in half at any second. That’s how I knew we’d won. Not a chance in hell was CJ going to actually try and shoot me. I’d stake my life on it.
“Alright, I’m coming out!” CJ said right on cue. “Blake?” He called out when I didn’t reply.
Slowly, I climbed to my feet. CJ was standing in the middle of the field, his hands held high in the air and his gun laying off to the side. Everyone had started to gather round. The game was ending and they were probably going to start packing up, but I wanted witnesses so I signaled for them to stay in place. They wound up making a big circle with me and CJ right in the center.
My gun was pointed at the sky, leaning against my shoulder. I slowly lowered it and pointed it at his chest. His eyes widened. I saw the fear flash in them. Good. He should be afraid.
“Why didn’t you want me on your team today?” I asked him calmly.
His eyebrows furrowed. He looked like a lost puppy. “What are you talking about?”
Avoiding my question with a question was the incorrect response. So I shot him. Once.
“What the fuck!”
CJ stared down at his chest like he couldn’t believe I’d actually shot him.
“Why have you been so distant?”
He looked back up at me. His expression was of sheer horror. “I don’t know what you’re talking ab-“
I cut him off with another shot, this time to his stomach.
“Fucking knock it off, Blake!”
I ignored his protests. “You’ve been acting weird since I woke up in the hospital. Tell me why.”
His eyes darted all around us, like he was expecting someone to jump in and save him. No one moved a muscle, though they did look on with clear amusement.
“Seriously, Blake. Stop messing around. I have something-“
He stopped mid-sentence when I nailed him for a third time. Only this time I didn’t stop. I kept pulling the trigger over and over until paint stopped coming out. CJ had curled into a ball on the ground, shielding his head with his hands. His entire body was covered head-to-toe in pink paint splatters. For a second I felt bad for drilling him like that. Then he looked up and glared at me and I remembered why the jerk deserved it.
He climbed to his feet, his shoulders heaving up and down with angry, harsh breaths. Oh, you’re mad now? Welcome to the club, buddy.
“Can you stop acting like a fucking lunatic for one goddamn second so I can ask you to fucking marry me!?”
It took him pulling a little blue box out of his jacket pocket for his words to register.
“This is why you’ve been acting weird? For weeks I’ve stressed, worried and been lonely when you’d disappear or shut me out. I tried being patient. I assumed you were trying to deal with the emotional aftermath of my almost dying. But seriously? This is the reason you’ve made me suffer for weeks?”
The air was so still. No one moved. No one made a sound. I wasn’t sure anyone was even breathing, but I could feel their eyes on us. I knew they were watching the same thing as me. They saw the tender way CJ looked at me, like I was the only thing in this world that mattered. All the frustration he’d been seething with moments ago had vanished. The only emotion that shone in his eyes was love. There was no denying this man loved me.
I already knew that, though. I never doubted his love. The problem was his inability to balance whatever he was struggling with internally. He wanted a lifetime with me? Then he needed to expect a lifetime of my backlash whenever he tried to shut me out.
Carefully, I put down my paintball gun, my eyes never leaving CJ. But instead of standing back up, I reached over and grabbed his discarded gun that was about a foot away. The guys snickered and the girls gasped when I pointed the gun at CJ, who only looked resigned to his fate.
“You want to marry me?” I asked with intentional skepticism.
CJ let out a tired breath and mumbled something to the sky. Probably praying for strength. I was a handful, I knew that, and it wouldn’t change so I needed to be sure he understood what a lifetime of dealing with my crazy meant.
Finally he looked away from the heavens and down at me. “I know wanting to marry you probably makes me as insane as you are, but I want it anyway because, God help me, I love you Blake. I love you so much it fucking hurts. I’m sorry I put you through all that. I didn’t realize, honestly. Our sisters all insisted I had to do a grand proposal,” he stopped to glare at Josi and Clara, who both looked embarrassed. Obviously they hadn’t expected me to ruin their plan by shooting up their brother.
“It took everything in me not to just slip this ring on your finger when you were sleeping. Or drop to one knee when you were burning - I mean cooking - dinner.”
Everyone laughed. I remained stoic. If I so much as blinked, I was going to fall apart. I wanted to stay mad, to keep punishing him, but what was the point?
CJ cleared his throat and stared at the ground, shifting his feet awkwardly. Clearly my lack of reaction was throwing him off.
“CJ?”
His head jerked up, like my voice startled him.
“No more schemes. No more grand gestures. No more pulling away because you don’t know how to handle something. You know me. I don’t need a grand gesture or a rehearsed speech full of pretty words. I just need you, as you are. Say what you feel, speak your mind, don’t hold back. Promise me that.”
CJ removed the distance between us, taking the gun out of my hand and setting it on the ground. Then he grabbed my hand and none-too-gently slipped the ring on my finger, tossing the box over his shoulder.
“You’re right. I never should have listened to my crazy sisters.”
“Hey!” They both protested in unison. CJ’s lips kicked up into a half smile.
“So I take it back. I’m not asking you to marry me.”
Everyone around us erupted in a chorus of confused shouts. I smiled so wide my cheeks hurt.
“I’m telling you,” CJ explained, though I already knew what he was doing.
“It’s cute when you try to pretend you’re the boss.”
He growled just before his arms encircled me, his mouth dipping to take mine in a bruising, possessive kiss. When he finally pulled back, I swayed, feeling a little dazed and a lot drunk with lust. CJ’s arms held me steady, so I let my body sink into him.
“Take me home,” I murmured into his chest, then squealed when he swung my legs into the air and took off in a quick stride while carrying me bridal style.
“Hey! What about the party?” Someone yelled after us. CJ stopped in his tracks and looked down at me.
“Shit. I forgot. Your parents flew in. They’re with my parents and Michelle, waiting for us to show up for some sort of party they all insisted was necessary.”
I scooped my arms around his neck and pulled his face down to meet mine. “We’re the guests of honor. We can be a little late.”
We didn’t end up being a little late. We were a lot late.
It was worth it.