Die For You: Catastrophe Series, Book 1 (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Rachel watched Adam as he walked over to reset their makeshift target range—a fence with a row of empty cans on top. Nothing fancy, but it did the job.

A warm afternoon breeze brushed strands of hair across her face. She tucked a curl behind her ear, cursed under her breath and kicked the nearest sturdy-looking post. “Ouch!” She bent over, toe throbbing inside her flimsy sneaker.

Adam sighed and shook his head. “Stop messing around and get your head in the game. That last shot was the closest yet. This next one could be the one you finally make, Rachel. Concentrate,” he ordered.

She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. “Easy for you to say, Mr. I Learned to Shoot at Marine Sniper School.”

Adam grinned. “Concentrate,” he repeated.

Adam had witnessed her feeble attempts to overcome her phobia during target practice, braving several of her humiliating meltdowns. He’d seen her at her rock-bottom worst and still stuck around. Because of him, she could at least fire a rifle and hit within a foot of her intended target. Not great, but light-years better than where she’d originally started—white knuckled, sweaty palmed, teary eyed.

Guns were akin to poisonous snakes in Rachel’s world, but when combined with bronzed skin and a hard body and Adam’s soothing voice—well, suddenly they were downgraded from deadly snake to annoying pest.

“I give up. I’m never going to be able to do this.”

“You’ve come a long way, baby,” he replied. Then he winked at her.

Winked.

Her heart melted like a candy bar left in a warm car.

What a darling man.

She liked this side of Adam, liked seeing his expertise, the easy way he handled her. Lieutenant Adam Sanchez was good at what he did.

“Come here, take the gun. Keep practicing.”

“Okay,” she grumbled.

“No, hold it like this.” Adam’s manly voice caressed her ear and his spectacular physique covered her back and draped over her arms like a cloak. A magic, sexy cloak. The top of her head tucked under his chin. Yum. This was better than sinking into a La-Z-Boy. She watched his large hands reposition her fingers correctly around the warm metal grip and onto the trigger. Her breath quickened and her mind wandered, remembering how those rough fingers had felt last night when they’d brushed along her naked back, across her stomach, sliding down and stretching into…

“Rachel? Are you paying attention?”

“Hmm?” Funny how she’d been paranoid of guns, never touching or going near one, yet here she was holding a weapon that looked straight out of a cop movie. And she wasn’t throwing up or passing out.

Three years of therapy—nothing. Three hours of target practice with Adam—progress.

“The answer to unraveling your trauma is to learn how to correctly handle and shoot a firearm. Gaining control over your weapon, instead of it controlling you,” he told her.

“Yes, Obi-Wan,” she said with a straight face.

He threw his head back and laughed.

She smiled, loving how he always got all of her jokes.

Then he backed away and Rachel pouted. “Hey, I need some help here.”

“You don’t need help. You need to stop playing around and focus.” He moved to her side, keeping a safe distance from the amateur with a gun. Adam crossed his arms and tilted his head in the direction of the target. “Go for it. Remember to watch the sights all the way through a smooth trigger. If you actually hit it this time, I’ll bring you a beer.”

A beer? She licked her lips. Normally she didn’t care much for beer, preferring wine, but… “Cold?”

“Ice cold. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.”

She smiled at him. “Okay, I’m on it.”

Adam stepped back.

Power and determination surged through her body and adrenaline pumped through her veins. Rachel turned her head, narrowed her eyes and aimed the MP 40 at the empty can tilting on the fence post. Both arms locked tight, legs in the stance Adam had drilled into her. Like an FBI agent, or policewoman Rachel Donnelly.

Murky thoughts flashed in her mind, a montage of frightening images and childish feelings that threatened to weaken her resolve. She held the gun tightly and crushed the subversive visions like a can of soda. Lately, it was getting easier and easier to sweep the terror away. Her adult brain cleared the dim reflections and her senses sharpened.

She let out a slow exhale and forced her eyes to remain open as she pulled the trigger with conviction. The crack of sound pierced her ears and the sharp recoil of the weapon in her hands vibrated up her arm. She heard a muffled yell and turned her head toward Adam and blinked.

“You got it! Hit it right off the fence.”

“I did?” she whispered as he jogged toward the target. She lowered the gun, slipped off her yellow goggles and noise-canceling gear, clicking the safety like he’d shown her.

Adam brought it to her like a prize stag. It never ceased to amaze her how fast he could move. “Check it out,” he said with a huge smile on his face. An empty twenty-eight-ounce can of diced tomatoes with a white and red wrapper had a bullet hole in the T for tomato. He placed it in her hands.

She looked up at him and swallowed against the lump in her throat.

“Rachel?” His hand kneaded her shoulder.

She gazed into irresistible brown eyes, sparkling with delight. He looked like a proud parent.

“I can’t believe I did it,” she whispered.

For the first time in her life, she’d actually shot a gun accurately. This was monumental. A wet snort of nervous laughter escaped through her nose.

Oh, that was attractive.

“You did it, baby.”

And his arms were around her and her face was against his chest. For a moment, just for one bright, shining moment, everything was right with the world.

Everything.

“You’re so good for me,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you for this, and thank you for last night too.” She thought about telling him then that she loved him. Because she did. She did. She loved this man deeply. But she found that she couldn’t. The words were locked up inside, hampered by her fear of loss and that deep-seated insecurity that wouldn’t go away. The words that repeatedly ran through her brain, telling her she wasn’t good enough. How could Adam love someone like her? Part of her brain rejected these old thoughts, but the new part wasn’t strong enough to stamp it all out. It was still there, poisoning her future.

“You’re welcome.” He smiled down at her.

She smiled back, her eyes and her heart filled with the love she felt, but her mouth locked up tight.

* * * * *

Adam took another pull of beer. A cool spring breeze blew past, bringing with it the clean scent of blossoming fruit trees and soil. He was comfortable as hell with his ass planted in a wooden bench on the back porch, cold beer in one hand and his woman’s hip cradled in the other. He could almost forget that the world had ended. And since he was in such a great mood, considering Rachel had just shot a gun for the first time accurately and without a mental breakdown, and he’d fucked her naked last night—with the lights on—he felt it was time to tell her something important. Something he’d never admitted to anyone before. Not to his buddies on base right after it happened. Not to a single living soul.

“My last girlfriend dumped me via Skype and moved in with my cousin,” he told her and took another sip of beer.

“What?” Rachel blinked, her head on his chest, body pressed against his. “What did you just say?”

“My last girlfriend dumped me via Skype and moved in with my cousin,” he repeated.

Rachel shot up, sitting upright on the bench next to him, her gaze meeting his, her brows knotted. “What?” she said again, with more emphasis.

He rubbed his hand along the center of her back. “You heard me.”

“No, I couldn’t have, because you’re just now telling me that before the apocalypse you had a girlfriend. I couldn’t possibly have heard you right because that’s important information you would not have kept from me.”

“Were you listening when I said she broke up with me?”

Rachel shook her head. “She broke up with you? When? How long had you two been together?”

“Yes. She dumped me a few months before the outbreak started. We’d been together for about a year.” Adam smiled as he said this, unable to keep a straight face despite the heavy subject matter, distracted by Rachel’s tits bouncing in her shirt when she sat up, her curvy ass, her silky auburn hair. Those bright, inquisitive blue eyes.

“We’ve spent every moment together since the end of the outbreak. We sleep together, share a bedroom, have sex, and not once did you think it might be important to let me know you were in a serious relationship a few months ago?”

“It isn’t something I was exactly burning to share with anyone.”

She bit her lip and exhaled, seemed to think about it for a second. “So she was your…ex-girlfriend? When she passed away, you two had already broken up?”

“Yes. She dumped
me
,” he repeated.

“But for you two to have been together so long, you had to have been in love with her, right?” She sucked in a breath. “Probably still in love now,” she said, almost to herself, as if he wasn’t there, working this through on her own. “How could you possibly have moved on in that short a time? Oh God, I’m your rebound person.”

“What the fuck?” he said.

“Adam.” She groaned and threw her hands up. “This changes everything. You’re in mourning, just like Christian. You needed to tell me this. I can’t believe you kept this from me.”

“Rachel, did you hear what I said? She fucking dumped my ass.”

She put down her beer. “You were together for a year. You had to have thought she was perfect for you. I’m certain she craved everything you did.” Her eyes widened and her hand went to her throat. “Have you been comparing me to her?” He could hear the strain in her voice. “This whole time, you were comparing me to her, weren’t you?”

Time for him to put a stop to this nonsense.

“Babe, Lori dumped me while I was stationed in Afghanistan. Then she immediately moved in with my cousin. That was so fucking brutal, any love I had for her is long gone. She let me know that she wasn’t into my kink and never had been. Turned out most of the life I had with her had been a lie. It makes me wonder what was real and what wasn’t.” It took away any trust he’d ever had in anyone. But she didn’t need to know that.

“She wasn’t into your kink?” Her face wore an exaggerated look of surprise. “She didn’t like having sex with you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. I thought she was into it like I was, that she wanted me to eventually bring someone else into our relationship, but I was wrong.”

“So you two weren’t perfect for each other, you’re not pining after her and I’m
not
the person you’re having sex with and wishing I was her?”

He laughed. “No. Fuck, no.”

She exhaled and gave him a tremulous smile. “Okay. So she left you for your cousin?” She picked up her beer and settled back down onto the bench. “Ouch. I’m sorry. That sounds terrible.”

He nodded. “He was my best friend, we grew up together.”

“Some friend.”

Adam smiled. “I thought so too.”

“Did you get to talk to them about it, find out what happened?”

He took another pull of beer and said, “Danny went behind my back and told Lori that I had a surprise for her. I’d bought the two of us a membership to an exclusive sex club. This was something I thought she’d enjoy, that we could go to together and fulfill our fantasies. But apparently, my surprise was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Lori told me I was a sexual deviant, and she couldn’t be with someone like that. That was her explanation.”

“Sexual deviant?” Rachel bit her lip, and looked away. He felt her shoulders shake.

His arms tightened around her and he pulled her in close. “Don’t laugh at my shame.”

She snorted, put a hand over her mouth and lost her battle to keep it inside. “I can’t help it! Oh my gosh. What does that make me then since I love everything you do? Everything you’ve suggested, even the idea of ménage is growing on me. You two were so wrong for each other, weren’t you?”

He stilled. She liked everything he did? Suggested? She wanted the ménage? An even wider smile spread across his face. “I didn’t think we were wrong for each other at the time, but looking back, yeah. Wrong, very wrong, and I should have seen it. She knew what I wanted, and I thought she wanted the same thing. But she didn’t. I didn’t lie to her about how I was, what I wanted sexually. I didn’t change a thing about myself. What she saw was what she got. And there’s the difference. She presented herself to me as someone she wasn’t, and instead of owning up to that, she started up something with my cousin.”

“That must have felt like a stab in the back.”

“Yeah, but the worst part was finding out the real reason she was leaving me was because she was pregnant with someone else’s child.”

Rachel sucked in a breath. “Oh my God, you’re kidding me?”

“She admitted she was pregnant and Daniel was the father.”

“Did you ever get to confront Daniel about this?”

“He sent me a letter.” He shrugged. “It said he was sorry, he loved her, and that when I got back we could meet so I could ‘have at him’. But when I got back, he was dead. They were both dead.” Adam’s last few words were rough, choked with emotion. No matter what happened, he’d cared about them. Coming home to San Diego and finding them both dead had been a cruel blow. He felt Rachel tighten her arms around him.

“Rachel?” he asked after a few minutes of quiet.

“Hmm?”

“Do you get why it’s important you’re in, all the way in and not pretending for my benefit? This thing with Trevor, I’m taking it slow, not pushing because it’s got to be real. If it’s not real, I don’t want it.”

“You’re making sure I’m not saying yes because I’m desperate and I’ve run out of choices, what with you being one of the last men on Earth?”

“Yeah.”

She smiled and shook her head. “Adam, this new Rachel doesn’t do anything she doesn’t want to do. And anyway, it turns out I’m a sexual deviant too.”