19. November - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania #2
Callum dropped the title belt. It hit the floor with a heavy thud the second I was in reach. Before I could blink, he shoved me with everything he had, driving me backward into the concrete wall.
My head cracked against the cinderblock, pain shooting down my spine like a lightning bolt. Callum had his forearm crushed across my chest, pinning me in place, his face inches from mine.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he snarled, spit flying from his lips.
My eyes blew wide. In all the time Cal and I should have hated each other, back when this behavior was expected of us in the locker room, it never happened. But now, here we were.
“I signed this morning,” I choked out, struggling against the pressure on my sternum.
“Like fuck you did!” he yelled.
That surely got everyone’s attention. The chatter in Gorilla died instantly.
But nobody rushed to stop it. Everyone just watched.
Maybe my thought was right, maybe there was a target painted across my back, and nobody gave a damn what type of hell was created for me in coming back. They wanted to see the car crash.
“Callum—”
“No, fuck you, Silas!” he screamed.
His voice screamed rage, but his eyes… God, his eyes. Those painfully beautiful seas of hazel were swallowing me whole. They weren’t just angry or cold. They were hurt. That was nearly a decade of hurt, hurt I’d inflicted, spilling across us both, and we both knew it.
Before I could even speak again, Callum pressed harder, getting right in my face.
“You ended a man’s fucking career and severely altered another’s, and for what? Because you were in your fucking head that night? Because of shit you caused? Fuck you! You shouldn’t be here!”
I clenched my jaw, the concrete biting into my scalp. He wasn’t wrong. I knew that.
“I fucked up my own career that night too, you asshole!” I finally screamed back, the adrenaline spiking.
And yeah, this time, people started slowly making moves. A few refs stepped forward.
“You ruined your career because you did something fucking stupid!” he snapped back, his voice cracking.
Faintly, in the back, I could hear Presley Murran barking orders. The boss was coming, and he was about to fucking shred us to pieces for this. We were making a scene in the one place that was supposed to be professional.
“Callum. Stop. Get off of me,” I mumbled, my voice dropping, sincere and exhausted.
I didn’t expect him to listen. Not with this much adrenaline coursing through him.
But he did.
Like a time machine, like a goddamn light switch, Cal’s eyes locked with mine. The rage was still there, vibrating under his skin, but the programming was deeper. Like he always said he would, he stopped.
He let me go. He stepped back, chest heaving, hands curling into fists at his sides. Even in a full-on rage fest like this, Callum kept his word.
The moment I said stop, everything would.
“Whoa! Hey!”
Evan plowed through the sea of people to get to us, throwing himself between me and Cal. He turned to me first, his eyes blazing.
“We will talk about what the fuck you’re doing here later,” Evan hissed at me, before spinning around to face Cal, shoving him back.
“The fuck are you two doing!” Evan yelled as he looked between us both.
“None of your fucking business, Wilder!” Cal said through gritted teeth.
Before I could interject, Evan snapped, getting right in Cal’s face, his voice low enough only the three of us could hear it.
“When you’ve got your hands on your fucking ex like you want to swing, it is my goddamn business, you dumb fuck,” Evan snarled.
Cal froze. The shock of Evan knowing. The realization of what just happened. Everything. His eyes locked with me, a ping of pain. This was almost a decade swirling around us, and Jesus fuck, it felt like we were dying in it.
“I’d never hit him outside of a match,” Cal said through gritted teeth, his words sincere, pained.
I guess I was off limits.
“You two! Now!” Presley’s voice screamed over the sea of people.
He was absolutely furious with us, we knew that much.
We didn’t speak. We both just put our heads down and cut through the crowd of wide-eyed staff and wrestlers, like two kids that just got in trouble at school.
Callum’s limp wasn’t getting any better, if anything, the adrenaline dump was making it worse, and I couldn’t help but want to ask him if he was okay.
I bit my tongue.
The second we reached Presley, he led us into some random office around the corner, slamming the door behind us. Clearly, he wanted to scream at us both in private.
“In all the years I have known you two, that my father knew you two… not once, even as kids in this business, did you two ever cause shit in backstage,” Presley snapped, pacing the small room.
We stood silently next to each other, staring at the wall or Presley’s shoes, not daring to look at one another.
“Cal, I expect far more from you,” Presley pointed a finger at his chest. “You’re our Champ. You’re the face of everything we do. Fucking behave like it. I shouldn’t be having to scold two grown ass men for cat fights at work.”
“I apologize,” Cal said flatly. He halfheartedly meant it, mostly just wanting this to be over.
“I’m sorry, Presley. Truly,” I said, my voice low. “My intention wasn’t to come back here and cause trouble.”
Presley stopped pacing and looked between Cal and me, studying us both with a critical eye.
“Look, I understand there’s probably a lot of feelings about this, Kincaid,” Presley said, his tone shifting from anger to something more pragmatic.
“You guys had a hell of a last match together. A match that went wrong on many technical levels. Things could have been prevented, and they weren’t.
You were both young, and needed far more training than you guys were given back then.
I can assure you, and the rest of the locker room, my father would have never agreed to sign Reed again if he felt we could possibly have a repeat performance like that. ”
Cal scoffed, a sharp, bitter sound. I felt like I wasn’t even here in this moment; I was just a ghost in the room while they discussed my failures.
“You think you can convince this entire locker room that going against him won’t end in flames?” Cal challenged.
“Let me ask you this,” Presley countered, stepping closer to him. “You trained with Silas. You guys were travel partners. Do you think what happened is because he was a sloppy in ring guy?”
Callum’s jaw clenched so tightly I swear I heard his teeth crack from the force. Clearly, Presley didn’t know the weight of everything that led up to that night. Nobody did. But I felt it, the shrapnel hitting Cal and me both in a deadly blow. It wasn’t about skill. It was about the breakdown.
“No,” Cal finally gritted out.
“Exactly,” Presley began. “I know I’m going to catch shit from others about him, probably even when it comes to training. I don’t need you fighting against me on it too.”
Cal let out an annoyed, snark fueled laugh, rolling his eyes. “So what? You want me to fucking babysit him?”
That only annoyed Presley more. And it made me wish I could dissolve into the floorboards and disappear entirely.
“You know what, Callum? That’s exactly what I expect now,” Presley said, his voice dropping to a dangerous calm.
“Thank yourself for it. Starting immediately, you’ll be training together.
You two are neither slated for a match for a while, just appearing on Showdown.
So, if you’re so concerned with Silas and his technical abilities, then you can help him fix them. ”
I finally chimed in, panic rising in my chest. “I don’t think that’s going to really solve anything—”
Presley shot me a look that withered me instantly. I knew I’d just fucked up even more.
“Oh, look.” Presley pulled out his phone, tapping the screen for dramatic effect. He glanced at it, then back at us with a sharklike grin. “Looks like Silas wasn’t assigned a rental car tonight. Guess he’s riding with you, Kincaid.”
“Are you fucking serious right now?” Callum snapped, his composure finally breaking. I wasn’t sure if he was yelling at me, or at Presley.
“Both of you get the fuck out of my face,” Presley ordered, pointing to the door. “And so help me, if you two aren’t in a somewhat civil working manner next week… I can assure you both, there’s going to be far worse hell to pay than a fucking car ride and trainings.”