A Love that Endures

by Forrest, Bella

“Gauntlet?” Zeke whispered, his voice suddenly tense. “What is that?”

  “I don’t know,” David replied, wetting his lips. “But I think we should get these on.”

  Clutching the bundles, they separated, each moving behind a tree. David slipped off his trousers, still feeling paranoid about who was standing where, who might be watching. Tugging on the smaller pair over his boxers, he managed to get them up to his waist—though they looked ridiculous, the hems coming up several inches short around his ankles—then tore off his shirt and replaced it with the white one. Thankfully, it was made from slightly stretchy material, though he still felt like the Michelin Man.

  Conscious that their allotted three minutes must nearly be up, he ducked out from behind the tree to reunite with Zeke, who had also changed—into clothes that were clearly several sizes too big.

  David grimaced. Whoever had thrown the bundles had bollocksed it up.

  Before he could suggest switching clothes, something whooshed past his ear and splattered against the tree beside him. He turned to see a dark splotch.

  Then a barrage of tiny balls started shooting at them from all directions.

  “Oh, no,” Zeke said. “No, no, no—”

  David launched forward, grabbing Zeke by the arm and pulling him into motion. Paintball wasn’t something he knew much about by any stretch of the imagination, but he understood enough to know that people wore protective gear for a reason. He didn’t feel like discovering what it felt like to get hit.

  “Son of a—” Zeke staggered and swerved off course, coughing and wheezing. One quick glance over his shoulder told David he’d been caught in the ribs. The boy was on his knees, clutching at his sides.

  David slipped an arm beneath Zeke’s shoulder and hauled him back up. “We’ve got to keep moving.” He poured on the speed, dragging Zeke across the undergrowth as the boy struggled to recover from the hit.

  Then he heard the groan of stitching around his crotch and winced. Maybe tonight was going to be au naturel after all.

  Or close to it.

  He tried to do a better job of zigging and zagging through the forest, despite his physical constraints, to make them harder targets as Zeke recovered. But they were outnumbered, and their stark white clothes didn’t help.

  Several rapid heartbeats later, pain exploded in his right shoulder as a paintball found its mark, though he didn’t have time to pause and catch his bearings like Zeke had. He could hear footsteps approaching swiftly, and flickers of light started to break through the brush around them. Their attackers were gaining on them, and the closer they got, the harder the hits were going to land.

  “Are you okay, David?” Zeke huffed. He was on his own two feet now, darting along a couple yards away and clutching at his pants to keep them up.

  David merely grunted, not having the breath to respond, and ducked beneath a thick branch just as another ball came whizzing past his head. He was hit by a second ball two seconds later, and then by a third. He cursed, realizing his shirt was half soaked already. He was going to be black and blue by the time this was over.

  And he was going to have a flaming wedgie.

  “How long is this going to go on for?!” Zeke cried out, wincing as another paintball caught him in the leg.

  No response came back from the men behind them, other than a round of snickering.

  Until we somehow get out of here, David thought.

  He tried to stay focused on his breathing, rather than the discomfort radiating from his lower half (though he couldn’t help but think bitterly now that the outfit switch had been intentional). He had no idea how much farther they’d have to run, so he had to remain steady. David squinted, trying to see what was up ahead, whether there was any end in sight, or at least any sign of the trees thinning.

  Then his foot hit an unearthed root, and he almost tripped headfirst into a large pit. He caught his balance just in time and was about to continue darting ahead after Zeke when an idea struck him.

  “Zeke, stop!” he hissed.

  His friend halted and whirled around, and David immediately dropped into the hole, waving at Zeke to do the same. Zeke was quick to catch on and rushed back, leaping into the hole with David and hunkering down.

  David pressed a finger to his lips, trying to quiet his own heavy breathing. Their attackers were still a dozen feet or so behind and might not have been able to catch where David and Zeke had suddenly vanished to. If they could just lure a couple, or even one, this way . . .

  “Where did they go?” David heard one of the boys shout as the sound of cracking twigs grew closer.

  There was a brief pause before Max replied, “Spread out a bit. They might’ve ducked behind a bush or something.”

  David pushed his back harder against the damp soil as two sets of footsteps grew closer to their hole. He exchanged a glance with Zeke in the gloom, and they both nodded wordlessly, forming a silent understanding.

  They tucked their legs and feet as close as they could to their chests and waited until the footsteps reached the pit’s edge.

  They had the element of surprise, but only a split-second window to take advantage of it.

  David nudged Zeke in the arm. They sprang up as one, reaching for the two visible pairs of ankles and yanking them forward. The men and their weapons tumbled to the ground. They yelped and scrambled to sit up, but, leaping out from the pit, David and Zeke lunged for their weapons and managed to snatch them up first, pointing them straight at their former attackers. Dressed in black protective gear and masks with goggles, they weren’t exactly easy to identify, but it didn’t matter at this point. David was ready to make them pay.

  “Breathe a word, and we’ll fire,” David whispered tersely, tightening his grip around the gun. He cast a quick glance around to check whether the others had noticed them go down, but it sounded like they were still trudging on through the woods, unaware of the boys’ takeover. David and Zeke had the opening they needed.

  Keeping the gun poised threateningly, David backed away around the hole, motioning for Zeke to follow, then broke into a run.

  The second the guns were turned away, the boys behind them shouted for their cohorts. An explosion of paintballs came hurtling toward them, but now they could fire back. And fire they did.

  Before long, the offending projectiles had reduced significantly as the other boys were forced to duck and dart for cover, allowing David and Zeke to better focus on gaining ground.

  “Is it just me, or does it look like the trees are getting thinner?” Zeke panted after a long minute, gazing around wildly as he struggled to hike up his pants with one hand.

  “I think you’re right,” David breathed back. It was becoming easier to run, with fewer low-hanging branches and fat trunks to dodge. He realized he could also hear the low zooming of vehicles. “Keep going,” he said with renewed strength in his voice. “We’re almost out.”

  A couple minutes and a few more rogue paintballs later, they were out of the trees and standing on the edge of a busy, brightly lit road. David came to a halt, his chest heaving. He looked back into the forest, concerned the guys were going to follow them out and keep firing. But the trees behind them remained still. Their attackers seemed to have retreated.

  “Guess we passed the test,” David said, gingerly running a hand through his sticky hair. He glanced down at his trousers and was surprised to see they had survived the run. Mostly. Now he only hoped he hadn’t permanently injured himself.

  “And thank God for that.” Zeke gasped, reaching his side and bending over, hands on his knees.

  When he straightened, David finally got a proper look at his friend. Zeke’s short, black beard had turned fluorescent pink, courtesy of a ball that had exploded on his upper chest, and the rest of his face had been splattered a sickly green. His bowl-cut hair had tinges of both colors and was sticking up at all angles.

  “You look good,” David said.

  Zeke scoffed. “Oh. You are funny, David. For the rec
ord, I am sure I look just as good as you.”

  “Don’t give me the details,” David muttered, sliding a hand beneath his trousers to adjust his underwear.

  Then the memory of his upcoming exam came slamming into him like a sledgehammer. He had to get home—now.

  Looking left and right along the road, David realized he didn’t have a clue where they were. He hadn’t spent much time off campus since he’d arrived in Cambridge, and he certainly didn’t recognize this area.

  He cast another glance over his shoulder at the forest, half tempted to venture back in to try to negotiate a ride with the boys if they hadn’t buggered off already. But the risk of getting them all riled up and trigger-happy again didn’t sit well, so he discarded the idea.

  “We need to go that way,” Zeke suddenly said.

  David turned to face him, surprised at the confident tone. “How do you . . .” His voice trailed off as he followed Zeke’s gaze to the other side of the road.

  Signboard. Genius.

  “Okay. Let’s get moving.”

  David started striding forward but halted again after three steps. He looked down at Zeke, who had stalled alongside him, and they shared a glance.

  “We should change first,” David said.

  Zeke nodded sullenly.

  They moved back to the forest border and ducked behind a row of bushes, where they stripped to their underwear and exchanged clothes. As sodden and sticky as Zeke’s were, they were infinitely more comfortable in size, and David emerged from the bushes a happier man.

  Happier—but not exactly happy.

  “Any guesses how long it’ll take to walk?” David asked, his voice tight, as they resumed their brisk pace along the sidewalk.

  Zeke let out a long breath, looking equally, if not more, stressed. “Um. I-I don’t know.” He dug a hand into his disheveled hair. “I think I have passed this area on a bus before, but walking . . . perhaps an hour.”

  David increased his pace. “I need to be back in half an hour—or less if we can manage it.” He’d been pressed for time even before his housemates had snatched him. It killed him to think how much this was setting him back.

  “You’re not the only one who needs to get back,” Zeke replied, his voice suddenly pitchy. “All this socializing is going to mess up my midterms. And if that happens, I swear, my parents will literally disown me.” He cursed, his breath becoming sharp and uneven. “You have no idea how hard they worked to get me here. All the after-school tuition. Practically their life savings—” His voice choked up, and David turned to stare at his friend in surprise.

  He’d known Zeke was under a lot of pressure. The guy had a large and highly ambitious family back home, and he often griped about the lofty expectations they had of him. David was used to his mood swings, too, and his habit of looking mournful and depressed almost every time he sat down to work.

  But he’d never seen Zeke looking quite this . . . flustered. Judging from the glisten at the corners of his eyes and the slight tremor of his lower lip, he was close to tears.

  David reached out to grip his shoulder. “Hey, man. It’s okay. You’ll pull through this. We both will.”

  Zeke bit down hard on his lip, his eyes fixing stoically ahead, and David tried to think of what more he could say—or even if he should say more, at this point.

  David wasn’t exactly in the same boat as Zeke, performance-wise. Because he had no family pressure. No family at all, actually . . .

  He’d been adopted by a middle-aged British-Israeli couple when he was only a month old and raised by them until his late teens. His mother had passed away after a stroke when David was seventeen, and his father had died of lung cancer a couple of years later.

  And he didn’t know who his birth parents were, because it had been a closed adoption. The only thing his adoptive parents knew was that he’d been born in Boston, where they had been living at the time. They’d brought David back to London when he was two, and England had been his home for the rest of his childhood and adolescence.

  That was one of the reasons David had worked so hard to get a scholarship at Harvard. He’d wanted to get back to America. He’d planned to take economics as his major, anyway, and he had never been one to settle for second best when a bit more effort would get him to first. His adoptive father had always encouraged him to push for greatness, and David had worked hard to make him proud. But more than that, now that the parents who’d raised him were gone, the UK no longer held enough for him.

  Once he got a better handle on his classes, David wanted to try to pick up his birth parents’ trail. He was profoundly grateful for the parents who’d raised him and the incredible start to life they’d given him, but now, he just . . . wanted to know who he was.

  His mother had always said he was probably Jewish, but he knew it had been out of affection, that she didn’t have any solid reason for assuming it. He’d been brought up with an ethnic Jewish background, but was that his culture? Who was David Rosen, actually?

  He wanted to understand. He wanted to know whose ocean-blue eyes he had. Why his skin was a pale shade of olive. Why his hair was a dark mocha brown, and where he got his height from—his mother, his father, both? At six feet, he’d towered over Mr. and Mrs. Rosen. Did he share any personality traits with his birth parents? Or was every little part that made him him solely a product of his environment?

  Why had his parents given him away? Had they ever wanted him, or had he been a burden from the start?

  As uncomfortable as the answers might be, they were his story. His truth, which he’d been deprived of for the past twenty-one years.

  More than anything, he wanted to finally stop feeling secretly jealous of people like Zeke, who knew exactly where they came from and whose blood ran so clearly through their veins. And he wanted to fill the hole that had been growing steadily larger since he lost both his adoptive parents. They’d grounded him with a sense of belonging as a child, and while he’d never felt a true sense of identity, they’d loved him fiercely, and that had been enough.

  But now they were gone, and he felt like a bit of a drifter, honestly. He’d lost that grounding, and he wanted . . . needed . . . to find it again. Without knowing his roots, the people who had brought him into this world, he struggled to make sense of his place in it. A part of him would always be restless, forever wondering. Never feeling quite full.

  David rarely bothered to bring the subject up with anyone and kept things simple by sticking with the identity he’d inherited from his adoptive parents. It was hard to explain his conflicting feelings to someone who’d grown up surrounded by their birth family, knowing exactly who they were.

  Well, that, and he worried he’d sound melodramatic.

  “Maybe I’ll just drop out,” Zeke said after a long stretch of silence, his voice low and still a touch uneven. “It might be less painful for everyone than staying on and making a spectacle of myself.”

  David cast a glance at his friend, whose hands had clenched into balls of tension, and sighed. “Come on, Zeke. You’re not doing that badly. Like I said, we’ll both bitch about the stress, but we’ll get through it. Besides, you’ve got to stick around for Primal Scream. Nur would never forgive you if you didn’t.”

  Zeke slanted him a coy look. “Shut up. She doesn’t like me.”

  David grinned at the rising flush in Zeke’s cheeks, glad that this tactic seemed to be working. “How are you so sure of that?” he wondered aloud. “I saw her checking you out yesterday when we were in the lunch line.”

  Zeke groaned. “Oh, stop it. She was probably looking at somebody else.”

  David shrugged. “All right. If you insist. I’m just saying, there’s stuff to hang on for. Good times to come.”

  Zeke went quiet, once more turning his gaze to the road ahead, and after examining him for a couple more seconds, David took the opportunity to do the same. They’d made fairly good progress, and they were already back in familiar territory—which made it easier
to travel faster.

  Fifteen minutes of speed-walking later, and they were only a block away from home.

  As they reached the end of their road, Zeke cleared his throat, and David looked over at him again. His expression wasn’t quite as ashen as before, to David’s relief, and when he caught David’s eye, a smile slowly unfurled on his lips, brightening his round face.

  “Anyway,” he mumbled, “if I do stay, and I do pass, I won’t be waiting for Primal Scream to show my naked ass. I’ll go streaking around the dorm rooms—through the whole bloody house!”

  David let out a surprised laugh. “Sounds brilliant. Just remind me to check into a hotel.”

  Zeke chuckled. “Now come on—my whole family is probably already on the phone to Interpol or something.” He picked up his pace to a jog, and David smirked, glad the guy’s spirits seemed to have cheered.

  Though, he couldn’t fully shake how upset Zeke had seemed and made a mental note to try to keep an eye on him.

  For now, David ran to catch up, and the two boys sprinted the rest of the way, egged on by the promise of a warm shower.

  When they reached their destination, however, David’s face fell.

  Music was blaring from within the house, florescent strobes pulsing through the windows, and the lawn was packed with people holding red Solo cups.

  So much for a quiet night of recovery . . .

  It was a struggle even to reach the front door, and when they did step through, it was even more crowded inside.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t crowded enough to evade the notice of Max, who was hovering at the edge of the hallway, a pretty redheaded girl hanging from one arm.

  “Yo!” he roared above the deafening beat. “The cubs made it back!”

  He rushed over to David and Zeke, quickly joined by Sebastien and four other housemates whom David suspected had been involved in the kidnapping. They swarmed around, slapping the two boys on the back.

  “Congratulations, man!” Max yelled into David’s ear. “You survived the initiation.”

  “Yeah,” David said dryly, trying to shrug Max off, as well as all the other hands that were pounding his bruised skin. Though, he supposed he did feel a bit good about himself for surviving the ordeal. If he hadn’t had so much on his plate, he might even have been in the mood to celebrate. But as it stood . . .