Chapter 7
MARCH - SHOWDOWN U.S. TOUR
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I woke up the morning after Man Overboard with a mouth that tasted like chlorine and a mark on the side of my neck that looked like a violent crime.
It was a bruise. A sprawling, violet-red galaxy blooming right over my pulse point, just below the jawline where my beard stubble ended. I stood in the hotel bathroom mirror that morning in Miami, staring at it, my hands gripping the porcelain of the sink until my knuckles turned white.
It’s unprofessional, my brain screamed, the voice of my father echoing in the tile. It’s a breach of the brand. It’s evidence.
I braced myself against the counter, leaning in until my nose nearly touched the glass. I should be furious. I should be scrubbing at it with a washcloth until my skin was raw. I should be searching for a hoodie or a way to spin a story to the producers about a botched spot in the battle royale.
But as I traced the dark, jagged edges of the mark with my thumb, the panic didn’t come.
Instead, a dark, heavy heat settled low in my gut, coiling tight.
It didn’t look like an accident. It looked like a claim.
It looked like a receipt for the fact that I had completely surrendered control to Callum Kincaid, and he had taken it without hesitation.
The sight of it, my skin, usually so pristine, now marred by his teeth, didn’t make me feel ashamed. It made me feel owned.
And god help me, I liked it.
When I finally walked out of the bathroom, I didn’t cover it. I didn’t put on a high collared shirt. I walked out shirtless, letting the mark scream in the fluorescent lights of the hotel room.
Cal was sitting on the edge of the bed, packing his bag. He looked up. His eyes locked onto the bruise instantly.
For a second, the air left the room. I waited for him to apologize. I waited for him to look worried about what management would say, or to make a joke to deflect the tension.
But he didn’t. He just smirked. It was a slow, arrogant curl of his lip, his eyes darkening as he admired his handiwork. He didn’t look sorry; he looked satisfied. He looked like a man who knew exactly what he’d done and would do it again in a heartbeat.
“Looks good on you,” was all he said.
That was sixty-two days ago.
I knew it was sixty-two days because I counted.
I counted every morning I woke up alone.
I counted every flight we took where his knee brushed mine, sending a phantom jolt of electricity up my thigh.
I counted every time I caught him looking at my neck, checking to see if the mark had faded, and the disappointment that flashed in his eyes when it finally did.
We didn’t talk about it. We minimized it. That was the strategy. We were two high performance athletes living in a pressure cooker; the night in the pool was a pressure valve release. It was adrenaline. It was a fluke. It was a one-time lapse in judgment fueled by a pay per view high.
At least, that’s what I told myself as I sat in the rental car in downtown Chicago, watching the snow mix with the rain, waiting for Cal to come out of the gas station.
I had it under control. I was the strategist. I was the one that thought ahead.
But sixty-two days was a long time to starve.
Chicago in March was brutal. The wind coming off Lake Michigan cut through layers of wool like a knife, rattling the windows of the dive bar we were currently standing in.
We hadn’t planned on going out. We had just finished a grueling tag match on Showdown, and all I wanted was ice for my shoulder and a bed. But Jonathan Rockwell, one of the vets we were currently feuding with on TV, had extended the invite.
“Come on, rookies,” Rockwell had said, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “Whole crew is going. Don’t be antisocial.”
In the wrestling business, when a legend invites you out, you don’t say no. You show up, you pay your respects, and you pretend you aren’t exhausted.
It was nearly midnight now. We’d been there for just over an hour. The place was packed with a dozen guys from the roster, loud, and smelled of deep-dish pizza, wet wool, and stale beer. The heat inside was suffocating, a stark contrast to the freezing alleyway outside.
I stood at a sticky high top table near the back, nursing a club soda with a lime that I had been babysitting for forty minutes.
“You boys are boring,” Rockwell grunted, walking past with a whiskey sour in hand. He looked different out of his gear, older, tired, but still built like a tank. “Don’t you drink?”
“Not during the season,” I said automatically. It was the polite lie. The truth was simpler and uglier: I had spent my childhood dragging my father out of bars just like this one. I knew what alcohol did to a Reed, and I wasn’t ever going to let it do that to me.
“Not ever,” Cal corrected from beside me, raising his own glass of soda water in a mock toast.
Rockwell stopped, looking between us. He laughed, a gravelly sound, shaking his head. “Straight edge. God, you kids and your discipline. It’s unnatural.”
He wandered off toward the pool tables where Dante Andrews was losing twenty bucks to Carlos Manta, leaving us alone in the crowd. With so many loud personalities filling the room, nobody was paying attention to the two rookies in the corner.
Well, mostly nobody.
Cal had walked up to the bar, leaning against the counter, looking entirely too comfortable. He was wearing a leather jacket over a grey hoodie, looking like the kind of trouble parents warned their daughters about. And apparently, the warning signs were working.
A woman, a redhead with wild, curly hair that reminded me faintly of the ring announcer, was leaning into his space. She was laughing at something he said, her hand resting casually on his forearm. Her fingers were pale against the black leather, tapping a rhythm that made my teeth ache.
Cal wasn’t pulling away. He wasn’t giving the polite nod. He was smiling. A real one.
My hand tightened around my glass until I felt the plastic warp under my grip.
She’s touching an asset, I told myself, the logic center of my brain scrambling for a professional excuse. It’s unprofessional. We have an early call time.
But I knew that wasn’t it.
I knew nothing about Cal’s life before this, not really. I knew he had a dad he hated. I knew he had adopted sisters. I knew he was good in a ring. But I didn’t know what he looked like when he was actually interested in someone.
She whispered something in his ear. Cal tilted his head, listening, his eyes dropping to her lips.
That was it. The fuse lit.
I moved before I thought. I slammed my half full soda onto the table, splashing water over the rim, and cut through the crowd. I ignored the glare of a guy I bumped into. I didn’t care. I walked right up to them, looming like a thunderhead.
I didn’t look at the girl. I looked directly at Cal.
“We’re leaving,” I said.
Cal blinked, looking at me with lazy amusement. He didn’t look startled. He looked like he’d been waiting for this.
“We’re leaving? Rockwell just ordered wings.”
“Flight’s early,” I lied. Our flight wasn’t until noon. “Let’s go.”
I grabbed his arm, hard, my fingers digging into the leather of his jacket. I dragged him toward the back exit, not waiting for him to say goodbye to his new friend.
He didn’t fight me, but he didn’t hurry either. He let me shove him out into the freezing alleyway, the heavy metal door slamming shut behind us and cutting off the music instantly.
The silence was ringing. The cold air burned my lungs, shocking my system, but it didn’t cool the heat raging under my skin.
“What was that?” I snapped, pacing a tight circle in the snow-dusted alley.
“Socializing,” Cal said, leaning back against the brick wall, completely unfazed. He crossed his arms, watching me unravel. “You should try it sometime.”
“You seemed pretty interested,” I accused, the words tasting bitter on my tongue. “I didn’t know redheads were your type.”
Cal tilted his head, studying me. The single streetlight above the door cast shadows over his sharp features, making his eyes look black.
“Is that what this is?” he asked, his voice low. “You’re vetting my dating profile now?”
“I’m just asking,” I gritted out, feeling frantic. My chest felt tight, like the panic attack in NYC, but this was sharper. Angry. “I mean… are they?”
“Are what?”
“Women,” I demanded, stepping closer. “Is that what you’re into? Is that who you usually go home with?”
Cal let out a short, dry laugh. He stepped off the wall, invading my personal space until I could smell the faint scent of his cologne mixed with the bar’s smoke.
“I’m bi, Silas,” he said. His voice was matter of fact. Casual. Like he was telling me his coffee order.
The admission hit me in the chest.
“Oh,” I breathed out, the fight draining out of me for a split second, replaced by a sudden, overwhelming realization of just how many options he actually had.
“Yeah. Oh.” Cal smirked, stepping closer until our chests were inches apart. I could see the condensation of his breath in the cold air. “So if you’re done doing a demographic survey, tell me what your actual problem is.”
“My problem,” I hissed, the anger flaring back up to cover the insecurity, “is that she was all over you.”
“She was asking for a lighter.”
“She was looking at your mouth.”
Cal’s eyes dropped to my lips. Dark. Heavy. Possessive.
“So are you.”
I froze. He saw it. He saw everything. He saw the way I tracked him in the ring, the way I watched him change in the locker room, the way I had been staring at his mouth for the last ten minutes.
“Shut up,” I whispered, my voice trembling.
“Make me,” Cal challenged softly.
I snapped. I crashed my mouth onto his.
I grabbed the lapels of his leather jacket and yanked him up, kissing him with sixty-two days of repressed hunger, anger, and jealousy.