Chapter 18 November - Charlotte, North Carolina / Orlando, Florida
NOVEMBER - CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA / ORLANDO, FLORIDA
Now playing: making the bed - Olivia Rodrigo
The darkness wasn’t peaceful. It was heavy, suffocating, a thick black tar that trapped me in a loop of falling.
Over and over again, I was on the ladder. I was looking down. I saw the ring canvas, a miles away square of white. I saw the bodies scattered like broken toys. And then the fall. The stomach-churning drop. The wind rushing past my ears. The impact that didn’t just break bone, but shattered reality.
My eyes fluttered open, but there was no relief.
Pain.
It was the first thing that greeted me, a symphony of it. It wasn’t localized; it was systemic. My head throbbed with a dull, sickening rhythm that matched the beeping of a machine somewhere to my right. My shoulder felt like it had been filled with broken glass and set on fire.
The light was too bright, searing through my eyelids, forcing me to squint against the assault. The smell hit me next, antiseptic, floor wax, and the metallic tang of blood.
Hospital?
Where am I?
Panic flared in my chest, a cold spike of adrenaline that warred with the lethargy in my limbs. I tried to push myself up, to orient myself, but my left arm wouldn’t move. It was dead weight, numb and heavy, strapped down or simply refusing to obey commands.
Julian. Camden.
Cal.
The names floated to the surface of my concussed brain like debris in a shipwreck.
“Oh shit, Si?”
The voice was muffled, coming from somewhere to my right. It still sounded like I was underwater.
I groaned, the sound tearing at my raw throat. My tongue felt too big for my mouth, dry like sandpaper. “Ca—Cal?” I choked out.
The face that came into focus wasn’t Cal.
It was Evan.
He looked wrecked. Pale, his usually perfectly styled hair messy, eyes rimmed red with dark circles underneath them that spoke of hours spent in a waiting room chair. He looked beyond scared; he looked relieved, but underneath that, there was a horror I didn’t understand.
“It’s Evan, Si,” he said softly, leaning forward from the plastic chair next to the bed. His hand hovered over the railing, like he wanted to touch me but didn’t know where it wouldn’t hurt.
The door opened. Footsteps. Heavy, confident, familiar footsteps.
“He’s awake?”
It was Maverick.
His voice didn’t have its usual booming confidence, the tone that commanded locker rooms and arenas. It was thin, edged with something I didn’t recognize. Fear? Or maybe just the inconvenience of a crisis.
“I’m going to get the doctor,” Scott’s voice chimed in, breathless and anxious, followed by the sound of rushing feet exiting the room.
“What happened?” I whispered. My vision was still swimming, the room tilting on its axis every time I blinked. I felt nauseous.
Evan’s face crumpled with remorse. Guilt? Why did he look guilty?
“You didn’t land right when you came off the ladder,” Evan said, his voice quiet, refusing to meet my eyes. He picked at a loose thread on his jeans.
My eyes widened. The memory was there, lurking in the dark corners of my mind, but it was murky. I remembered the climb. I remembered the sweat making the rungs slick. I remembered the fear, not of the fall, but of what I was leaving behind.
“Did I hit my head?” I asked. The throbbing behind my eyes was blinding.
“You hit your head and tore your labrum in your shoulder. You’ve got a concussion, kid.”
Maverick sat down in the chair Scott had vacated. He looked older under the harsh fluorescent lights. The lines around his mouth were deeper. He didn’t look like “Maverick Reed.” He looked like a tired man watching his investment crumble.
“Do you remember what happened?” Maverick asked, his eyes sharp, assessing.
Cal.
That was the only clear image.
I remembered looking down from the top of the ladder. The chaos of the match below me had faded into a blur, and the only thing in focus was him. Cal. Looking up at me. His eyes weren’t filled with the rage of “Deadlock” or the competition of the match. They were pleading. They were heartbroken.
I remembered the split second where I froze because I didn’t want to jump. I didn’t want to fly. I just wanted to climb down and go home with him.
“I just remember looking down at Cal in the ring,” I admitted, the words tasting like ash.
Evan’s face fell. He knew what it meant. He knew why I hesitated. He knew that split second delay was the difference between a highlight reel and a tragedy. I didn’t want to think about it. My dad was none the wiser.
“That’s all you remember?” my dad pressed.
I nodded, instantly regretting the movement as the room spun.
“Did I hit the ground?” I asked, praying that’s what happened. Praying I just missed the spot and ate concrete. Bones heal. Concrete doesn’t have a family. Concrete doesn’t have a career.
Evan and Maverick exchanged a look. A heavy, loaded look that passed between them like a physical object.
My stomach dropped through the floor.
“Is Coranto okay?” Panic rose in my voice, pitching it higher.
“Coranto will be,” Maverick said, his tone shifting into that forced, fatherly reassurance he was so bad at. It sounded rehearsed. “He’s got some broken ribs. Leg’s banged up.”
My eyes shot to Evan. I knew they were leaving out details. I could see the lie sitting heavy on Evan’s tongue. I knew I’d fucked up.
Julian. Where was Julian?
“Martinez?”
“We’ll discuss this later,” Maverick said, waving a hand dismissively, as if waving away a waiter.
“No!” I tried to sit up, but the pain in my head spiked, a white-hot lance of agony that forced me back against the pillows with a gasp. “What the fuck happened!”
Maverick sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. He looked at Evan, nodding for him to speak. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t deliver the bad news.
“When you came down… you landed on Julian,” Evan said, his voice shaking. He looked sick. “You didn’t clear the air like we thought you would. You came down on top of him. He was basically stuck under you and Camden.”
My mind swirled. The walls of the small room felt like they were closing in, shrinking until they were pressing against my chest. I couldn’t breathe. The beep of the heart monitor sped up, betraying my panic.
I landed on him.
“Camden’s leg took the brunt. He’s fine, but… it’s going to need time. A lot of it,” Evan continued, his voice barely a whisper. “Julian… it was spinal.”
The word hung in the air. Spinal.
“No word on if he can return to the ring as of now.”
The air left my lungs.
Tears filled my eyes instantly, hot and stinging. I ruined it. Everything. I was worse than my dad. Worse than Scott. I was supposed to be the technician. The safe one. The one who could work around the chaos. Instead, I had become the disaster. I ruined my life, and I ruined others.
“Cal?” I choked out.
Why did I fucking care? I knew he wasn’t hurt. He was nowhere near the crash zone. At least, I didn’t remember him being there. I couldn’t remember anything.
Evan saw it. The flash of pain in his eyes confirmed it. I hated it. I was sitting here in a hospital bed, broken and guilty, a destroyer of careers, and all my mind could think about was him.
I just wanted him.
I didn’t want my dad, standing there calculating the PR fallout. I didn’t want Evan, looking at me with pity. I didn’t want Scott, fluttering around with doctors.
I wanted Cal.
I wanted him sitting in this chair, holding my good hand. I wanted him telling me it was okay, even if it wasn’t. I wanted to see his face. I wanted to tell him I loved him. I wanted to crawl into his arms and hide from the monster I had become.
But that wasn’t my reality. It would never be my reality. I had ensured that.
“That kid is a fucking beast,” Maverick said, shaking his head in disbelief, unaware that he was twisting the knife in my gut.
“He was the lone survivor. He wrestled by himself against Demolition’s guys for the full hour and continued with the outcome.
I’ve never seen a guy in all my years do that. ”
I closed my eyes, and the image assaulted me.
Cal. Alone in the ring. Sweating, bleeding, exhausted. Fighting off multiple men. No partner. No Silas.
I had left him.
I had left him in the hotel room emotionally, and I had left him in the ring physically. He had to carry the entire main event on his back because I couldn’t do my job.
Because I was too busy breaking my own heart to focus on the match.
Sixty minutes. He fought for Sixty minutes alone.
I nodded, the sob building in my throat. I tried to stop it, to swallow it down, but I couldn’t. I leaned my head back, the tears flowing freely down my temples into my hair.
Fuck this. Crying was one thing, but crying in front of my dad? That was admitting defeat. That was admitting that I was no better than the legacy I tried to outrun. That all I was ever going to do was add to the destruction.
The door clicked open. Scott was there with a doctor, a middle-aged woman with kind eyes and a clipboard that held my fate.
Scott’s gaze locked with mine, and he didn’t hesitate.
He ran to the bed, nudging Evan out of the way, and wrapped me into a hug, something Maverick probably hadn’t even considered doing.
I sobbed into Scott’s shoulder. It was all I could do. I clutched the back of his shirt with my good hand, burying my face in the fabric that smelled like stale coffee and airport lounges.
Fuck the doctors. Fuck my body. Fuck wrestling. It was all for nothing. I didn’t rewrite the mistakes. I didn’t make my own legacy.
I didn’t get the guy.
I didn’t get the fucking guy.
They kept me for three days for observation because of the severity of the concussion. During the day, Scott or Maverick would sit with me, distracting me with mindless chatter or silence. But at night, it was just me and the hum of the machines.