Chapter 1 #2
Two weeks had passed since Callum Kincaid walked through the Performance Center doors, and the trajectory of my career had seemed to shift in just the right direction, the direction I had been busting my ass to get to. The road to the main roster. The road to one of the flagship shows for the UWF.
Callum and I were informed a few days ago that he’d be debuting on the developmental show, UWF’s Thursday Night Aftershock, against me. We were told this wasn’t going to be something the program had seen before. The GMs of the flagship shows would be watching us closely.
UWF had three television programs that aired every week. Their flagship shows, the big leagues: Monday Night Showdown and Friday Night Demolition. And their developmental show that aired on a smaller network, Thursday Night Aftershock.
Unlike the main roster shows that traveled all across the world wrestling live events, Aftershock was a weekly house show that happened every Thursday at the Performance Center.
The crowds were small, maybe four hundred people max, but to us down here, it felt like everything, knowing fans wanted to watch us just as much as they wanted to watch the main roster.
The thing about Aftershock was that the GMs didn’t watch us all the time.
Only a few times a year did the GMs from the main roster look down into developmental: once in the winter, right after our last pay per view, and once in the spring, right before the first pay per view of the year.
So to have the GMs watching Callum and me now, before their official spring scouting even started, was a big fucking deal.
We trained every day.
Every session sharpened something between us. Not resentment. Not friendship. Something else. A pressure. A challenge that demanded everything we had and then some.
I caught Callum watching me when he thought I wasn’t looking, not with jealousy, but with calculation. I did the same.
He was arrogant, sure, but it was earned. He backed it up every single time he stepped into the ring, and beneath it was respect. He never went half speed with me. Never pulled a strike. Never took the easy way out.
Evan cornered me after our first round of drills, shaking his head. “You’re screwed.”
I raised a brow. “Excuse me?”
“I’ve never seen you like this,” he said. “You two… it’s like you’re daring each other to be better every time.”
“It’s respect,” I said.
He snorted. “Yeah. Sure.”
Maybe Evan was right. Maybe it was something more dangerous than respect. Maybe it was rivalry building to an ungodly level. All I knew for certain was this: a fire had been lit. And I don’t think Callum, or myself, were scared of throwing ourselves into the flames.
Wednesday came around in a blur. We were less than twenty-four hours away from our match on Aftershock. A match nobody knew about, because nobody knew Callum was debuting tomorrow night.
In a way, I was jealous of him. I had been here since the day I turned eighteen and could sign the damn contract, busting my ass like my life depended on it. I had only been on Aftershock for seven months, and here was Callum, waltzing in, and within weeks, being pushed onto the roster.
Night settled slowly over the Performance Center, the kind of quiet that only came once the last group had filtered out and the trainers had stopped pretending they were going to lock the doors on time.
The overhead lights dimmed automatically, not dark, just softer than normal, enough to make the ring feel more private than it ever did during the day.
I hadn’t planned on staying late. I rarely did. Being here at night was bad for me. The silence forced me to confront the ghosts of my father and uncle, and the anger I had struggled so hard to keep from the light.
I glanced up from redoing my tape. Callum was still inside the ring, methodically running drills like the building belonged to him.
Something in me resisted leaving. He wasn’t showboating now.
No audience. No trainers watching. Just repetition.
Precision. Correction. He moved like a man trying to sharpen something already lethal.
I stepped back onto the apron without saying anything. He noticed immediately. Didn’t look surprised, just nodded once, like he expected it.
We fell into rhythm without discussion. Chain wrestling sequences we were given for tomorrow night, counters layered over more counters, resetting and running them again when something didn’t land clean enough.
He adjusted his grip without asking, altered my footwork instinctively. Every correction was silent.
Mutual.
It felt… natural.
Callum watched me the way a good wrestler watched the tapes of the legends, not with awe, not with jealousy, but with intent.
He tracked how I shifted my weight before a leap, how my shoulders dipped just enough to telegraph a move if someone knew what to look for.
And instead of exploiting it, he compensated for it. Matched me. Forced me to tighten it.
That alone should’ve told me something. Most guys would’ve gone for the advantage.
Callum never did.
“You don’t wrestle like them,” he said eventually, leaning against the ropes, breathless and covered in sweat.
I looked up slowly, flopping down onto the mat, trying my hardest to catch my breath. “Like who?”
“Your family.”
My breathing stopped.
“Your uncle was my favorite as a kid,” he added. “You’re better.”
It wasn’t praise.
It was a verdict.
“They taught me what not to be,” I said, with snark I didn’t mean to have.
Callum studied me for longer than necessary. There was something different in his eyes now, not softer, exactly, but more deliberate. Like he’d just confirmed something he’d suspected.
“Good,” he said.
Silence stretched between us, comfortable and charged all at once. The hum of the lights filled the space where words didn’t belong.
“Philadelphia really that bad?” I asked.
He shrugged, rolling his shoulders. “Depends what you call bad.”
“Hard,” I said.
“Honest,” he corrected.
I nodded.
We went again. Drills turned heavier. Slower. More intentional. Callum adjusted pressure mid-move, testing my balance, my reactions. I countered, not aggressively, but seamlessly. Conserving motion. Keeping things clean.
I didn’t notice the way his focus sharpened.
I didn’t notice how he tracked my breathing.
I didn’t notice the way his gaze lingered when I climbed the ropes, how his jaw set just slightly every time I landed clean.
Callum noticed everything.
He noticed the scar on my ribcage, faint, old.
He noticed how my hands flexed between sequences like I was grounding myself.
He noticed the discipline in my movements. The absence of panic. The way I never rushed, even when the pace increased.
It wasn’t admiration.
It was recognition, in a way I’d never been given.
I knew Callum had been around wrestlers who burned hot and fast, men who treated their bodies like collateral damage, who chased moments instead of careers. He’d learned early that talent meant nothing without control.
And Callum noticing these pieces of myself, pieces I had carefully curated, unsettled me more than the arrogance ever could.
“Run it again,” Callum said with a huff.
I did.
And again.
And again.
Each time he adjusted, not to dominate, not to overpower, but to match. To meet me exactly where I was and see if I could hold.
Most guys will break you.
But Callum tries to understand you.
By the time we finally stopped, sweat soaked through our gear, breath heavy in the quiet surrounding, the space between us felt different tonight. Charged. Loaded.
“You can call me Cal, by the way,” he said as he grabbed his hoodie and tugged it on.
We walked out together, no rush, our shoulders nearly brushing, neither of us acknowledging it.
“Tomorrow?” Cal said. Not a question.
“Yeah,” I replied with a nod..