Chapter 23
There’s a loud knock on the front door, followed by, “Wolf, you here? It’s us!”
“Sure, come on in.” I sigh from my spot on the couch, pausing the show I only started ten minutes ago. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Evansville?”
“No shows until Monday this week, remember?” Brody says, walking into the kitchen first, followed by Brooks.
They look like they just left the gym, and the thought makes me jealous.
I haven’t been allowed anywhere near a gym since Sunday morning.
For now, I can only do things at home—and only inside, which means no swimming in my own backyard.
Doc said I’m free to go back next week, but I can only do upper-body workouts.
Brooks was kind enough to offer me the home gym at his house, thank God, because that means I can get a real workout in without any lurking eyes.
At least Sloane can come and go as she pleases…
If I want to leave, I have to get on those fucking crutches, put my foot in a boot, and pretend to be in pain with every step.
Okay, so maybe I didn’t totally consider the repercussions of this little stunt.
Said yes without thinking about what it would mean to be stuck on crutches for four weeks.
When Noah first talked me through the idea, it sounded like a good plan—a good story.
It was like I’d forgotten how post-op felt the last time, when I actually ruptured my Achilles and was off the road for nine months.
“Where’s Sloane?” Brooks asks, leaning over the island.
“Boston,” I say, meeting them in the kitchen. I take one of the beers Brody pulls from the case he brought. At least they came prepared. “Went back for a few days. She needed to take care of a few things and check on her place, considering she hasn’t been home recently.”
“Everything going okay? She seems to handle being on the road okay.”
“Except when you lie to her,” Brody adds, smirking behind his beer.
I roll my eyes. “I didn’t lie to her.”
“No?” His brow quirks. "So, you did tell her about the injury before—”
“No,” I draw out. “But that wasn’t a lie.”
“Oh, right, you conveniently forgot to mention you were going to be faking a major injury to your girlfriend.” He looks over at Brooks. “What does that sound like to you?”
“Kind of sounds like a lie of omission,” Brooks says.
“You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, John?
” I smirk, and his face falls. John Brooks is one of my best friends and one of the best men I know, but it doesn’t change the fact that the only reason he and Savannah went on their first date was because of a lie—a bet.
Yeah, you heard me. Years ago, one of our former colleagues made a wager with Brooks centered around getting into Savannah’s pants.
Brooks convinced himself that going along with it was some act of chivalry because it meant one of the other knuckleheads we work with wouldn’t harass the woman he was in love with.
Long story short, Savannah eventually found out, and as you can imagine, that didn’t go over well…
I had no idea. He and Brody kept me in the dark, which was probably for the best. Brooks came clean to me a few years after Savannah ended things.
Part of me understood why he did it, even if I disagreed.
He thought he was doing the right thing—protecting her.
If only he’d been honest from the beginning, they wouldn’t have wasted almost three years apart.
So, is John Brooks really one to lecture me about lies of omission?
Brody chuckles under his breath, taking a sip of beer to attempt to cover it up. “Got you there, man.”
“Fuck off, Wilder,” Brooks says. “How’s that shoulder of yours doing? You told your wife it’s been bugging you recently?” He waits for an answer, but Brody’s face falls, gaze narrowed. “Look, this isn’t why we’re here—”
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“We wanted to check on you,” Brody says. “Between getting pulled from the road before Paradise City and now this story, we wanted to make sure you’re doing okay. All jokes aside, how are things going with Sloane?”
My mouth opens, ready to tell them everything is great, because it is, but nothing comes out. Everything is fine. Great, even. At least I thought it was. Now I’m not so sure.
“Wolf, what’s up?” Brooks asks, taking a sip of beer.
Do I tell them what happened the other night? I should, because they can tell me I’m overthinking it. Tell me I’m being paranoid because of Harper and my past relationships. That’s what I need them to tell me, anyway, because I don’t think I can handle the alternative.
“Something else happen?”
My head whips toward him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, she was pretty upset on Sunday. I saw her in the hallway, and—”
“You talked to her?” I ask. He saw her on Sunday? That must have been after she stormed out of Doc’s office. Is that why she came back in a better mood? “She didn’t tell me that.”
Brooks shrugs. “Nothing to tell. She was upset about being left out of the loop, and I told her it happens. I also told her you’re a stubborn ass who needs to get used to letting someone in again. Harper fucked you up.”
I roll my eyes. “Gee, thanks.”
“Look, you’re better off without her, but it doesn’t change the fact that what went down between the two of you did a little damage.”
“You handled it better than I would have,” Brody says, lifting the bottle to his lips, brows raised. “If I found out that the woman I’d spent the last ten years with was cheating on me—”
“Brody,” Brooks hisses. “Stop talking.” He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, while Brody offers me a tight-lipped smile. “We’re getting off topic. What is going on with Sloane? Things seemed fine on Wednesday when we were all together.”
My beer skates across the countertop between my hands while I try to come up with the best way to say what’s been on my mind…
“I think Sloane is lying about the story she’s working on.
” I don’t look up from my hands. I can’t see the look on their faces, because I’m scared to know what they might think when I say what comes next.
“She says she’s been working on a story about hormone treatments and menopause, but I think…
I think she’s really writing one about EWE. ”
When I finally lift my gaze, they both stare back with completely different expressions. Brody, wide-eyed and confused, Brooks, narrowed and unreadable.
“What makes you say that?” Brody finally asks.
Since Monday evening, Sloane had been practically holed up in the guest room she had claimed as her office.
At first, I assumed it was part of her writing process, needing alone time to think and write, and I didn’t think anything about it.
I can’t imagine being a writer—putting pen to paper and spewing out thousands of words about a topic you may or may not be interested in…
That sounds terrible. But between the hushed conversations through the door and the text messages stopped mid-sentence when I walked into a room, I started to question what she’s really working on.
What kind of story requires so much time and secrecy?
Certainly not one about hormone treatment and menopause. Then again, what do I know?
When I opened the bedroom door Tuesday night, Sloane ended her latest call without warning. A tight smile on her lips, she glanced down at the papers spread across the bed she’d designated as her desk, before meeting my stare.
“Who was that?” I asked, crossing my arms as I leaned against the doorframe.
“Oh, it was someone I needed clarification from.”
“What’s all that?” I motioned to the papers as she scooped up most of them, organizing and tucking them into a file.
“Just some numbers that I needed help understanding,” she said, and reached for the rest. One flew off the bed and landed near my feet.
Her gaze flickered between the paper and me, panic flashing across her features as I bent down to pick it up.
The whole thing was covered in line after line of numbers, and I couldn’t make sense of it without taking more time to read than I had in that brief moment.
I can’t say for sure if she’s lying, but the bright pink Post-it note attached to the top corner didn’t seem like it had anything to do with numbers. The name CALLUM was written in her perfect penmanship, underlined and circled.
Sloane took the paper from my hands. “Everything okay?”
Clearing my throat, I crossed my arms. “Fine, I wanted to see if you were hungry, but if you’re busy—”
“Starving!” She stuffed the paper into the same file and turned on her heel, ushering me out of the room. “I need a change of scenery before I spend the next three days doing this nonstop. I could use the break.”
The rest of the night went by like normal, except for the text messages that seemed to light up her phone every five minutes. I told myself not to do it, but one time I checked to see who it was. Chase Mulligan.
“Chase, as in her best friend’s boyfriend? The guy who came with them to the Fourth of July?” Brody asks, and I nod. “What’s so weird about that? Maybe they’re planning something for…what’s his name—Gabe?”
“Maybe, but I can’t get past the name on that note—Callum. What is that? I looked it up, and it has nothing to do with hormone therapy.”
“How do you know it’s a name?” Brody asks.
Brooks sighs, scratching his thumb along the label on his beer. “Are you sure Sloane is who she says she is?” he asks, finally looking up. “Because the only Callum I know of is Amos Rafferty’s son.”
Brody chokes, and my stomach sinks. “I’m sorry, it sounded like you just said Amos has another son named—”
“I did.”
“Why do you know that? How do you know that?”
I think the better question is: why are we shocked he knows? Brooks knows more than most people in our company. But when you’re the face of the industry, and as close to Amos as he is, you need to know everything.
“I may have accidentally run into him once when I was trying to catch up with Amos at headquarters, and let’s just say, it would be hard to deny,” Brooks says.
“Where was this? Where was I? Why didn’t you tell me?” Brody continues to ask him the same questions I have, but not the most important one.
“Why would Sloane know about Callum?” I ask.
“You tell me,” Brooks says, taking a sip of his beer.
Surely, this is a misunderstanding. There must be other Callums out there. Having the name written on a piece of paper doesn’t automatically mean she’s writing a story about Elite Wrestling Entertainment, and certainly not about Amos Rafferty. Right?
“I don’t know. I didn’t…If I had known—”
“If you had known…what?” Brooks cuts me off with a slight scoff. “You wouldn’t have brought her around? Wouldn’t have introduced her to us? Wolf, you had no idea, and you don’t even know if that’s what is going on. This could be a complete misunderstanding and coincidence.”
Brody chuckles. “Says the man who doesn’t believe in coincidences.”
“All I’m saying is talk to her. Maybe not at the anniversary party, but after. There’s nothing wrong with asking questions.”
I sigh, scrubbing a hand down my face. “Who knows, maybe there’s a perfectly good explanation.”
“Don’t sweep this under the rug, man,” Brooks says. “You have dealt with enough bullshit for one life; we don’t want to see it happen again.”
“Sloane isn’t Harper.”
“We’re not saying she is,” Brody says.
“Look, I get it,” Brooks says with a shrug. “I knew I’d marry Savannah from the moment I met her. She’s my person, and I would have done anything to stay in that bubble we’d created.”
Brooks glares at Brody, who has a response locked and loaded, no doubt something along the lines of: Too bad you went and popped it. Brody laughs, bringing the bottle to his lips instead.
Brooks rolls his eyes. “All I’m saying is you’ve only been with this girl for a few weeks, and you’re already picking up on red flags.
Harper was a walking red flag that you ignored because you were in love with her.
And I’m not saying Sloane is like Harper—the opposite, actually.
I like Sloane, and from what I’ve seen the last few weeks, I can tell she cares about you in a way Harper never did. ”
“She loves you,” Brody says, and the knots in my stomach unravel just a little. “And you love her, don’t you?”
I swallow hard, but nod. “I don’t understand it, but—”
“There’s nothing to understand, Wolf,” Brody interrupts me.
“When you find the person you’re supposed to be with, everything just…clicks,” Brooks says. “But you can’t let this go. You are one of the most tolerant people on the face of this planet—”
Brody scoffs. “You’d have to be to stay with Harper for ten years.”
Brooks shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose before releasing a long exhale. “Look, just talk to Sloane. Go to the party, have a good time, and then when you get back, have the conversation so you can go into this new chapter of your life without any hesitation.”
“And what if she is…writing about us?” I ask.
“What if she is?”
My stomach sinks at the possibility. “Then this whole thing would’ve been a lie.”
“You sure about that?” Brody asks. “People grow and change, and how something starts isn’t always how it’s going to end.”