10. THE REED LAND, NORTH CAROLINA
THE REED LAND, NORTH CAROLINA
Now playing: Sleep On The Floor - The Lumineers
The canvas floor of a professional wrestling ring was not exactly a mattress, but after the travel day from hell, my bruised body didn’t care.
With just a pile of flannel blankets that we dragged out of the building’s bonfire stash and two pillows we grabbed from the rental SUV, I was dead to the world.
Silas was tangled securely against my chest, breathing softly, and I was blissfully, deeply asleep.
Until a voice practically shook the corrugated metal walls of the building.
“What the fuck, you two?!”
My eyes snapped open as Silas gasped beside me, his survival instincts kicking in at the exact same second. We both jolted upright in the center of the ring.
Smack.
“Fuck!” I groaned, my hands rubbing at my forehead.
Silas yelped, clutching his own head as he fell back against the pillows. “Jesus Christ!” Our skulls had accidentally collided with the force of a stray superkick.
I blinked furiously, trying to clear the blurry, painful spots from my vision. As my eyes adjusted to the bright afternoon sunlight that streamed through the open garage doors, my brain registered two facts simultaneously.
First, I was wearing absolutely nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs. Silas, still rubbing his forehead beside me, was in a similar, pantsless state of undress. Second, we were no longer alone.
I scrambled backward, dragging the heavy flannel blanket up to my chest to cover my nearly naked body.
Standing on the concrete floor just outside the ring apron was a literal mob.
Scott was front and center, his arms waving frantically.
Beside him stood Maverick with a dark expression marring his features.
Then there was a sea of faces: the twins, Colin and Vega, Shannon, and Silas’s Aunt Jayme.
And of course, because why not add to the embarrassment, Evan was here, leaning against the barricade with Lena by his side, both wearing overly large, shit-eating grins.
“It is one o’clock in the afternoon!” Scott yelled as he pointed an accusing finger at us.
“We have been worried fucking sick! The last time you updated any of us, you said you would be landing late last night. Then nobody was at your house, and you parked the car completely behind the damn garage where nobody could see it!”
“We were about to call the highway patrol!” Shannon added, her hand pressed to her chest.
“What the hell were you two doing in here?!” Scott demanded, throwing his hands up.
The silence that followed was agonizing. I felt the heat rising up my neck, flushing my skin a deep red. My mind flashed back to the horizontal main event we’d put on in the early morning hours as my body gave a sharp, throbbing reminder of Silas’s handiwork, and I winced.
Evan, of course, chose that moment to strike.
“Oh please, Scott,” Evan drawled, his voice a masterclass of snide, dry humor.
He gestured vaguely at the two of us, huddled under a flannel blanket like a couple of shipwrecked survivors.
“Look at the state of them. The blankets are in a heap, the pillows are flattened, and Cal looks like he’s forgotten how to use his legs.
I’m pretty sure we all know exactly what they were doing here.
And I can guarantee you they weren’t reviewing videos from the San Juan show. ”
Evan leaned in, his eyes gleaming. “Unless ‘reviewing’ is what we’re calling it now when Silas spends four hours trying to see if Cal’s spine is actually flexible. Based on the fact Kincaid looks like he needs a wheelchair and a prayer, I’d say Silas won that match by submission.”
“GROSS!” Lena shrieked, spinning around to face the wall. “Evan, I will literally pay you to never speak again!”
“Ew, shut up! I don’t want to think about my brother being the ‘submission’ in this scenario! ”
My head snapped up so fast my neck cracked. Pushing their way to the front of the crowd were all three of my sisters.
What the hell were my sisters doing in North Carolina?
“Oh, dear God,” Maverick said as the realization hit him like a slow-moving train. His face went completely pale as he stared at the canvas we were sitting on before turning slowly to his brother. “Scott. We have to burn the canvas.”
Scott rubbed his temples. “I’ll get the gasoline,” he muttered.
“We’re sorry! We’re so sorry!” Silas babbled, his face flushed a violent, bright red. “Our flight got delayed in San Juan, and then we got diverted to Atlanta. We didn’t get to the gates until after one, and we were just so tired, and the blankets were right there in the storage bin, and we just—”
“Silas,” I interrupted, my voice still gravelly from sleep. I pointed toward the apron, entirely ignoring Maverick’s existential crisis. “Why are the Donovan women here?”
“Oh! Right.” Silas blinked, a massive, blindingly smug smile breaking across his face.
He shifted onto his knees, wrapping his own blanket around his waist like a makeshift toga.
“I flew them in yesterday morning as a surprise. Shannon and Jayme helped me coordinate it. They hid them at their houses until we got back. I’ve had this entire thing planned out for months! ”
I stared at him. “You planned a covert operation with my sisters, your aunt, and your stepmom?”
“Because I was proposing last night!” Silas beamed, practically vibrating. “And I did! Right here in the ring!”
A collective gasp swept through the women of the crowd.
“But…” Silas shook his head, laughing. “This asshole ruined my timeline, because he proposed to me, on a complete whim, in Puerto Rico on Monday!”
“Silas, you’re making my head spin,” Jayme called out with a laugh. “Are you engaged or not?!”
Without another word, Silas reached over, grabbed my left hand, and hoisted it up. The aged silver of his grandfather’s ring stood out against my finger, right next to the brand-new matte band on his.
“We’re double engaged!” Silas yelled.
The entire building went dead silent for exactly one second.
“Oh my God!” Sarah shrieked.
My sisters didn’t even use the ring stairs. April, Heather, and Sarah scrambled up the side of the apron, diving through the middle ropes in a flurry of flailing limbs with Lena right behind them.
“Wait, I don’t have pants on!” I tried scramble backward, but it was useless.
Before I could even brace myself, the four of them tackled me onto the mat in a massive, squealing dogpile.
I hit the canvas with a heavy thud, desperately clamping both hands down on the edge of the blanket to attempt to preserve my dignity while my sisters and pseudo-daughter completely crushed me.
“You’re engaged!” Heather screamed right in my ear, smacking my bare shoulder.
“To the guy you used to hate!” April added, laughing as she elbowed me in the ribs.
From the barricade, Evan let out a long-suffering sigh. “For once,” he said loudly, cutting through the squeals of my sisters, “I just want to see Cal in the morning with clothes on.”
Colin, leaning over the barricade next to Evan, blinked. “Wait. Why have you seen him in the morning without clothes?”
Evan didn’t even falter. He just shrugged. “I think everyone has at some point.”
“FUCK YOU, EVAN!” I roared from the bottom of the dogpile.
The next two hours felt like a weird daydream.
After a quick detour to our house to put on real damn clothes, we all funneled down to Scott’s.
Jayme and Shannon had announced they were going to cook lunch for everyone, our undeserving asses included.
Naturally, as soon as I got to the house, I headed straight into the kitchen to help.
As much as I loved the idea of being hounded by everyone in the room, I’d much rather stand in here with Shannon and Jayme.
“You got banished to the wifely duties?” Jayme asked as I walked over to help her.
I cut my eyes at her instantly. Her smirk grew wider, framed by her strawberry-blonde hair and a face scattered with freckles. It really was uncanny how much the twins looked just like her.
“No, I banished myself. I like to hear myself think, and my future husband hasn’t had coffee yet. Plus, he’s in the midst of a dozen people all talking at once.”
“He’s going to end up biting Evan,” Shannon laughed.
“Who’s going to bite Evan?” ISilas’s voice carried from the entryway. “Is there coffee, by the way?” he asked as he went straight for the fridge.
“Yes, Si. Your dad bought the cold one you like yesterday.”
I pulled a glass down from the cabinet above my head and handed it to him without a second thought.
“So, you plan on telling me how the hell you managed to get all three of my workaholic sisters here? Plus, your dumbass best friend and the firecracker who was supposed to be fighting in another state?” I joked as I watched him pour damn near the entire bottle of cold-brew into his glass.
Silas shrugged as he capped the bottle. “Well, I reached out to your sisters in June about this,” he said, taking a sip of the black liquid.
“Then I had Lena come down here early to meet up with them. Evan lied about Showdown, and took a different flight from us so you wouldn’t know, and…
yeah, that’s basically it.” He spoke as if he hadn’t just done the most endearing thing imaginable.
I snaked my arms around his waist. “How long is everyone here for?” “I tried to get everyone here for at least four days, but Lena and Evan have to leave tomorrow morning, and your sisters leave tomorrow afternoon.”
“Good. I don’t want to share you all week,” I said with a growl and kissed his neck.
“Nope. That’s it. You two are saying gross stuff in front of my tacos. Out,” Shannon said as she waved her hands at us.
“But, I didn't say—”
“You’re a bad liar. Out,” she insisted, her small body pushing Silas and me out the door.
“Come on, husband, your sisters were asking me to retrieve you anyway,” Silas said, taking my hand and pulling me toward the living room.
The chatter around us was insanely loud as we walked into the room.
With three women from Philadelphia, a brood of Southerners, and a single random dude from Florida, it felt nearly as chaotic as backstage on a Monday night, but that wasn’t the thing that stuck out to me.
What caught my eye was Evan’s obnoxious ass sitting next to my middle sister, Heather, making eyes at her.
Without a second thought, I walked straight over to where he sat and smacked the back of his head. Hard.
“Ouch! What the hell, Kincaid?!” Evan rubbed his bleached-blond hair, glaring at me. “I’m a guest! I’m a celebrated member of the wedding party!”
“You’re an annoying housefly,” I countered, sitting next to him. “Stop looking at my sister like she’s a target.”
“I’m a man of culture, Cal. I appreciate the Donovan wit,” Evan said, though he shifted a few inches out of my reach.
He rolled his eyes, but I didn’t miss the way they drifted right back toward Heather a moment later.
Heather, thankfully, was oblivious. Her attention was locked on Lena, who was in the middle of telling my sisters the exclusive version of how she found out Silas and I had been seeing each other.
“When the hell am I going to meet your other brother, Si? I feel like every time I come down, he’s never here. He’s a myth. Like Bigfoot, or a wrestler who doesn’t have knee problems,” Evan said, ignoring my glare.
“You never see him because you always come in the summer when he’s at a soccer camp. He’s enjoying his last couple of years of freedom,” Silas told him, draping his arm on the back of the couch behind me.
“Is he going to be the one Reed that breaks out of the cycle? Maybe become an accountant? A florist? Something with a lower chance of a broken neck?”
Silas let out a dry, short laugh. It was a sound that carried a lot of weight, the kind of laugh that said: a Reed son being anything but a wrestler was a nice dream, but a dream nonetheless.
Looking around the room, seeing the twins and the younger boys, I realized they were never really given a choice.
The squared-circle was their inheritance.
“Nope! That’ll be me, because I’m going to be a firefighter,” Colin said as he slid across the hardwood floor and planted his ass between me and Silas. “Taylor’s going to end up in jail for selling vapes to freshmen, so I’m the only hope for the family name.”
Without missing a beat, Silas reached down and kicked Colin in the hip.
“Shut up, Colin. I already told him to quit with that shit.” He leaned down, his voice dropping into his big-brother tone.
“Do you seriously want Mav to know? Because Mav will kick your ass into next Tuesday, and your mom will hold the door open for him while he does it.”
Colin huffed, crossing his arms. “Whatever. You’re just covering for him so you don’t get bitched out for not being a good influence.”
“No, I’m covering for your ass, too.” Silas’s voice was terrifyingly calm while Evan and I shared an awkward look. “Do you want to do burpees in the garage until you puke or pass out? Because that’s exactly what’ll happen if Dad finds out you knew and didn’t say anything. Don’t test me today, Col.”
“Alright, boys! Enough with the scary voices!” April’s voice cut through the tension as she clapped her hands together. “How are we celebrating this? I didn’t fly down here to talk about burpees.”
“Uh, we can do something here?” I suggested with a shrug.
“Nope, you two get no say. The grooms are being relieved of duty.” Evan stood up and stretched. “We’re going to the beach. The boardwalk. I want fries that have been fried in oil that hasn’t been changed since the nineties.”
Silas groaned, his head hitting the back of the couch. “Evan, no. That’s like an hour from here with the bridge traffic, and it’s going to be hellish. It’s hot, it’s crowded, and people will recognize us.”
I chuckled at his misery. It was ironic how our entire job description was to be in front of crowds, yet Silas hated driving in North Carolina traffic.
“Don’t care. The Donovan ladies deserve to try the donuts on the boardwalk,” Evan insisted. “It’s a rite of passage. If you don’t eat a Britt’s donut, you haven’t actually been to North Carolina.”
“Oh! I could use some sun!” Sarah added as she leaned on Lena’s shoulder. “I’m Philly-pale. My skin is practically translucent.”
“Can we come, too?!” the twins shouted, rounding the corner and nearly flying over the back of the couch.
Within seconds, the room had exploded into debates about carpools and sunscreen.
Silas looked completely overwhelmed, while I just leaned back and sighed, watching the chaos with a small smile.
As long as I got to take him home at the end of the night, the traffic could be as hellish as it wanted to be.
“Fine. But if I get a sunburn Evan, I’m drowning you in the ocean.”
“Promise?” Evan winked.
I stood up, pulling Silas with me. “Alright, let’s go. Before I change my mind and lock the gate.”