Chapter 22
“Where do you think you’re going?” I ask when the tour bus door opens and my girlfriend heaves one bag over her shoulder, then sets a suitcase on the ground.
“I’m leaving.”
“Leaving?” I scoff. If she thinks she is going to walk away without explaining what just happened, she has another thing coming.
That was not part of the plan. Hell, she wasn’t even supposed to be out there tonight.
It was supposed to be a normal match between me and Drake, and I was supposed to retain the fucking title.
But that didn’t happen because she turned on me again.
And when I asked Noah about it, he shook his head and said I needed to talk to Savannah. “Can’t we talk about this first?”
She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t make a move to leave, either.
“I am so confused, and rightfully so, don’t you think? You just cost me my match, Savannah. Without warning. Please, can we go inside and talk?”
She still doesn’t move, but after a moment, I urge her back inside, and she gives in.
I close the door and take a deep breath before facing her.
Normally, this is when we’d share a quick meal, then shower, and afterwards get lost in the sheets.
Instead, Savannah stands in front of the sink in the dimly lit kitchen, arms crossed over her chest. She’s changed from the white cropped shirt she wore in the arena into a vintage Brooks Taylor shirt—black with a white design of an eagle and Built for this written beneath it—and it makes me think that, despite whatever this is about, there’s still hope.
My gaze travels over the interior of the bus, and everything looks in place, except it doesn’t at the same time.
Wait, where is that stack of books that was on the table earlier?
She packed all of her shit and was really about to leave without saying a damn word. What is going on?
“Were you going to leave without saying something?” I ask. “If you want to end things, Savannah, you’re going to do it to my fucking face.”
Her eyes lift from the floor, slightly narrowed.
“You’ve barely spoken to me all week. Barely looked at me.
I knew something was wrong, but I guess I assumed you were trying to get over the shit with the Drake story.
So, I let it go, but now I realize maybe letting you cool off on your own was a mistake.
Then you come out there and do that, and now…
” I scoff. “Now, I come out here to talk about all of this, and I find you leaving?”
She doesn’t say anything.
“Savannah, please talk to me!” I step forward, grasping her arms, pleading with her.
She takes a deep breath and a small step back. “Why did you want to be with me, John?”
The question takes me aback. “What do you mean? I-I’ve always wanted to be with you. We—”
“But why?” If she asked me this question any other time, I could give her a million reasons, but right now, my mind goes blank.
“You were—are—different. You’re you. I don’t—I don’t know what you want me to say here, Sav. If I’m being honest, I’m a little caught off guard.”
“The truth.”
“That is the truth!”
“It wasn’t because of a bet?” Savannah asks.
It feels like a black hole opens inside my chest. The emptiness grows, threatening to swallow me whole, as her expression morphs in the moments that follow.
Her mask of indifference falls, and I can see the hurt behind her eyes.
Not just hurt…there’s anger, too. So much anger.
I wonder how long she has been holding onto this.
“When you asked me on a date four years ago, was it because you wanted to or because you had to?”
“I wanted to.” The answer comes instantly. Of course, I wanted to ask her. I wanted to date her from the second I saw her again at NextGen.
“Not because you had to?” she asks again, but the more I think about it, I’m not sure I can rightfully deny it. Not when the push to do it had come from some connived version of chivalry to protect her from the assholes we work with. “Answer the question, John.”
“Yes.” I sigh, and my tongue pokes out to wet dry lips. “There was a bet that Drake made, but Sweetheart—”
Savannah scoffs. “Unbelievable.”
“Savannah, it’s not like that!” I grasp for her when she tries to push by me. “I wanted to, and I would have regardless of that damn bet—”
“When?”
“Eventually!”
“Eventually.” She repeats it with such utter disbelief and disgust, shaking her head. “I can’t believe this.”
“It was me or them, Sav,” I say. That doesn’t make it right, but that doesn’t make it any less true. “I didn’t want you to get hurt. None of them cared about you. They were talking like you were some doll to be passed around. I couldn’t just sit by and—”
“You should’ve told me!”
“Told you what? ‘Hey, Sav, just so you know, Drake just made an outrageous bet, and I have to get in your pants before Wrestlefest to win. You want to go on a date?’”
“You’re disgusting.” Her beautiful face contorts, and the look in her eyes is one I’ve never seen before. One I never want to see again.
“That’s not what happened, though, is it?
” I don’t mean to yell, and I take a deep breath to try to calm myself before I speak again.
“Did it ever occur to you, when Drake—I assume, it was Drake who told you this, right?” She doesn’t answer.
“Did it occur to you when he was telling you all of this that maybe, just maybe, I was looking out for you?” I ask, and after a moment, Savannah rolls her lips between her teeth, looking away from me.
Something in her refusal to answer tells me that she had considered it, so why wasn’t she willing to accept it?
“Tell me something, Savannah, did we sleep together before Wrestlefest?”
Her gaze rises to meet mine again, but she refuses to answer, crossing her arms again.
“No,” I say. “We didn’t. You want to know why?
Because despite how desperate I was for you, how badly I wanted you…
I wasn’t going to let him win. I wasn’t going to let that be the reason I got to be intimate with you again.
And sure, I could’ve told him we didn’t, even if we did, but I never wanted him to have that over me. ”
“I’m supposed to just be okay with this? Because you were ‘doing it for me?’” Savannah adds air quotes to the words for emphasis.
“No! I’m not saying that. Be mad. Be upset. Be whatever you need to be, but don’t just leave.”
Her face falls, and she lets her tongue run over her lips. I notice a wetness coating her eyes. “You paid him, John. You fucking paid—”
“Because I had to, Savannah. If I hadn’t, it never would’ve stopped. He would’ve never stopped. I did what I had to do to put a stop to things once and for all.”
“You should’ve told me!”
“Would you have agreed to go on that date?”
“I-I don’t know,” Savannah stutters. “Can you say that it’s not the only reason you finally chose to ask me?”
“You didn’t want me to, Sav.” For so long, she stuck to her guns about not dating a coworker, even me. I never knew when the right time would be without seeming pushy. “You didn’t want anyone to. You said—”
“And yet, I said yes to you!” Savannah scoffs.
“You want to know why? Because I realized that I would always want more, John. There would always be more—always be some new opportunity, some title to chase—but I realized I didn’t have to do it alone.
I didn’t want to do it alone; I wanted to do it with you.
And I thought that’s what you wanted, too, but y-you didn’t want that, you didn’t even want to ask me out—”
“I love you, Savannah,” I say, taking a step closer to her. Wiping away one of the tears in the corner of her eye, I fight the urge to kiss her. “I am in love with you and despite what you might think—”
“Don’t say that.” Savannah shakes her head, stepping back.
“Don’t you dare say that.” She rakes a hand through her long hair as she paces.
“You don’t love me. That’s not love, John.
You don’t do this to someone you love. You don’t lie to them for years.
You don’t hide things. I thought I knew you, but it’s obvious I don’t know you at all.
” She pulls back when I reach for her. “First, you don’t even trust me to be in a simple storyline—”
“I don’t trust him, Savannah. Look what he’s done already.”
“What he’s done?” She scoffs. “You interfered in my business, in my work. I’ve never done that to you. No matter what it was. I always let you do what needed to be done.”
I knew it was wrong, but the thought of them working together didn’t sit right with me. Or maybe it was my self-consciousness—fear that if they worked together, what was happening right now would have happened. Guess that didn’t work out so well, huh?
“You want to know something, Brooks?” Savannah asks, and the use of Brooks cuts me to my core.
“I could’ve lived with that…With you getting involved and sticking your nose in my business.
I could have gotten past it, but what I can’t get past is learning the only reason you ever gave a damn about me is because of some bet. ”
There are so many things I want to say, but I can’t get the words to come out.
“I’m going home. I need some time…to think.”
“Savannah—” I reach for her, but she pulls away and pushes out the door without another word.
It’s been two days since Savannah walked off the bus.
I’m supposed to be on a plane to Europe for the holiday tour overseas, but so is she.
After she rejected my phone calls yesterday and ignored all my text messages, I decided to put some distance between myself and the Orlando airport…
on a plane in the opposite direction I should be heading.