: Chapter 6

“SO YOU REALLY THINK GUNNAR AND this girl, Jess, were ” Riley asks as she checks her makeup for what must be the fifth time.

“It sure seems like it,” I sigh. “You should have seen them. They were flirting like they’d fucked for years. And she had a gun on her hip like she came from , you know?”

Riley shrugs. “Maybe he doesn’t want a girl from Maybe he wants a girl like you. The yin to his yang, so to speak.”

“Maybe…” I reply, not so convinced. “Or maybe he’s just another male pig fighter who wants to stick his dick in everything that moves, and I fell for it.”

Riley comes over and sits down on the couch next to me.

“You’re overthinking it. Just talk to him. You guys are miscommunicating like an old married couple and you’re not even a couple yet!”

“But we’re going to be?” I ask.

Riley smiles at me the way my mom smiles at me when I’m acting silly. “Look, I’ve got to go meet Tasha and the girls, but I’ll be back around eleven. We’ll talk more about it then, okay?”

“Okay. Have fun.”

“You sure you don’t want to come? Male strippers!”

“No.” I shake my head. “Gonna go to the library and get some work done.”

“That’s you.” Riley smiles. “Always the studious one.”

She gives me a friendly peck on the forehead and heads out, leaving me sprawled out like a bag of potatoes on the couch, feeling sorry for myself.

I can’t get the image of Jessica out of my head, standing there with her American flag hat and her navy green T-shirt and her gun holster on her hip, staring at Gunnar like she’s got some kind of possessive control over him or something.

And then seeing him march right up to him and throw his arms around her…

Instantly, I’m on my feet and tossing my bag over my shoulder.

It’s time to go to the library.

I take the stairs and head outside. It’s cool and cloudy out as I walk across campus, cutting across the quad, which is oddly quiet for this time of night. A group of guys pass me by, and one of them gives me a look over his shoulder. I’m pretty sure I hear him say, “There she is,” to the guy beside him, but maybe I’m being paranoid.

All the same, I cut to the side between one of the dorms and the dining hall, just to get away from them, and at that exact second, I feel a presence behind me.

I try to turn around, but before I can even react, a hand claps over my mouth and another seizes both my arms and pins them behind my back. My heartrate skyrockets, and I try to scream, but it’s no use.

The next thing I know, I’m being pinned to the ground, face first, completely unable to move, beneath the enormous weight of a man ten times stronger than me.

I struggle, but it’s hopeless. A knee in my back pins me down, holding me in place. Panic is one millisecond from flooding through me, when the man’s scent enters my nostrils.

Suddenly, my heart nearly leaps out of my chest.

“You see, Nina,” Gunnar whispers into my ear. “

is why you need to carry pepper spray on you at all times.”

He instantly lets go of me, and I roll over onto my back to see him standing over me grinning, extending a hand to help me to my feet. I slap it away and get up on my own.

“Seriously!?” I snap. “You almost gave me a heart attack, jerk!”

Gunnar laughs and reaches out to hand me something. I don’t take it right away, but he steps forward, grabs my right hand and places it in my palm.

“Here. Put this on your keychain, because as you can see, you can’t be walking around vulnerable for any crazy asshole rapist to come and attack you.”

I look down and see a clear plastic package holding some kind of little pink stick inside.

“What is it?”

“

, Nina, is pepper spray. Don’t you have friends who have it?”

“Actually yeah, I think Kat might,” I reply. “I can’t use this, though…I’ll end up like blinding myself or something.”

“Well come on then, I’ll show you how.” Gunnar takes my hand in his massive, callused grip and begins pulling me away back toward my dorm. “This way, right?”

“Um, yeah. How did you know that?”

“I dropped you off here, remember?”

“Oh, right,” I reply. My heart is still pounding–kind of shaking inside my chest really–as he leads me along behind him. He takes me out to an empty space in the parking lot and takes the pepper spray from me and tears the plastic open, releasing the little pink stick inside.

“So this little switch here?” he asks, showing me a slide on the top. “This is like the safety on a gun. You just slide this to the side and this sucker’s good to go. Then you just aim, keep your thumb back, and press down at the bastard you want to fuck up.”

Gunnar aims away from us at the bushes and presses down, and a stream that looks like a dog peeing comes out at very high speed. He only holds it down for a second at most before letting go and handing it to me.

“See? Now you try.”

“Oh gosh,” I mutter as I take it and aim it.

“Don’t be nervous. You had a gun in your hand earlier. This is nothing compared to that.”

I glance over at him, and although I really want to be mad at him still, there’s something so comforting about this interaction between us. I like him teaching me things, just like I liked him teaching me how to shoot at the gun range. I don’t know how to just ignore that feeling.

“I’m surprised you even came here. Wouldn’t you like to be back at the range, shooting with Jess?”

“What was that?” Gunnar asks.

“Oh, nothing.”

I take aim at the bushes and press the top of the pepper spray.

Gunnar made it look so easy, but of course I end up doing something wrong, and the spray catches the breeze or bounces back off my finger or something and wafts back slightly into my face, and I immediately drop the spray and start coughing my brains out.

My eyes start stinging, my mouth starts burning and my lungs feel like they’re on fire.

“Uh-oh,” Gunnar says behind me. “Yeah, you had your thumb too far forward. It bounced back on you. We gotta get you inside.”

Hacking and coughing, I instantly reach out for something to grab on to, which ends up being Gunnar as he takes my arm and starts to help me in the direction of the dorm.

“You got your key?”

“Y-yes,” I cough, handing it to him. He takes it and swipes it at the door. “Second floor. 204.”

My lips feel like they’re on fire, and I cannot open my eyes as Gunnar basically carries me up the steps. I can hear the voices of other students as we pass them, who must be wondering what in the world is going on and what Gunnar Jones is doing in their dormitory.

Hopefully no one ends up taking a TikTok of this.

“We need to get you some soap and water real fast,” he says, still using his strong arm to carry me over to the bathroom.

“I can’t…believe you…talked me into this…” I’m sputtering as he stops at the door.

“Hey, it’s not my fault you can aim a Glock but not a pepper spray canister!” He laughs. “Now get in there and wash off! Soap and water until it stops stinging!”

I stagger into the bathroom, go over to a sink, quickly tie my hair back, and immediately run the water and douse my hands with soap and start lathering them up until they’re covered with suds. Then I start to wash my face as quickly as possible–wash, rinse, repeat–over and over again until I feel the stinging start to fade away. I even rinse my mouth out with soapy water.

It honestly doesn’t take as long as I thought it would before I’m starting to recover.

“You doing all right in there?” Gunnar calls after me.

“Well, I’m not dead!” I yell back in reply.

“Yeah, you only got a tiny bit. Could have been way worse.”

“That’s comforting!” I shout, grabbing a handful of napkins.

I dry off and finally look at myself in the mirror. My face is very red, but the burning is mostly gone. My lips are swollen, but looking kind of nice actually–like I’ve had temporary lip-filler injections or whatever.

I dry off and go back out into the hallway, and he instantly glances at them and smirks.

“Oh, hey there, Khloe Kardashian!”

“Would you shut up?” I reply, brushing past him toward my room. “This is your fault!”

“My fault? Hey, I tried to show you how to use that stuff. It’s not my fault you’re a girl and you ignored my advice and ended up blasting yourself in the face.”

I twist the key in my lock and open the door to my room and step inside. “Yeah, well, maybe you should just go hang out with Jessica then. She’ll be happy to do everything how you say it, I’m sure.”

I go to slam the door in his face, but he stops it with his forearm.

“What was that?” he asks, cocking his head to the side. “Jessica? Why would I want to hang out with Jessica instead of you, Nina?”

“I dunno, you tell me.”

From the way Gunnar is frowning at me, it really looks like he has no idea what I’m insinuating, which really seems odd based on the way he was flirting with her only a few hours ago.

An awkward moment hangs between us while he processes what I’m getting at, and then he raises an index finger and points at me as a smile comes across his lips.

“Wait a second, I get it. You think I’ve got a thing for Jess, what’s going on here.”

I shrug. “Well. Based on how you two were acting back at the gun range–”

“No, no, no, no,” Gunnar laughs. “See –this is funny.”

“What’s funny?”

Gunnar moves right in and slips his arm around my waist and pulls me to him before I even have a chance to react.

“Jess is into girls, Nina.” He smiles. “She’s a lesbian, get it? Dating a girl named Chelsea last I heard.”

A major sense of relief swells through me, while at the same time making me feel like the world’s biggest doofus.

“Is that why you raced outta there so quickly?” Gunnar asks, slipping his hand up my shirt. I’m braless right now, and he cups my breast, sending a quiver through my body. “Because you thought she and I had together?”

“I mean…” I don’t even know what to say at this point. “Maybe…”

Gunnar laughs. “Listen, Nina. Even if Jess was straight, she’s like one of the guys, ya know?” He slips his other hand between my legs, and my whole body instantly lights up with heat. “And she can’t hold a candle to how sexy you are. Even if she might be able to outshoot you, and even that’s questionable after how I saw you firing that Glock.”

Every nerve ending in my body sparks with his words, and I feel myself getting wet from his touch. I thought I was angrier than I was at this man, but now standing here in his arms, I realize just how great of a hold he has on me–both physically and emotionally.

“Are your lips still stinging?” he asks me.

“Um…no, not really–”

“Good,” he replies, cutting me off with a kiss.