Chapter 32
APRIL - THE REED LAND, NORTH CAROLINA / THE ROAD TO SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
Now playing: Out Of The Woods - Taylor Swift
I rolled over in bed, reaching across the mattress for Cal, expecting to feel his large frame resting behind me and instinctively pull me closer to him in his sleep like he always did. Except I was met with an empty side of the bed and cold sheets.
I sat up immediately, looking for him. The sunlight was barely there, but the fire hues of sunrise were beginning to peek through the curtains. And… coffee? Already?
I pulled myself from the mattress with a sleepy groan, grabbing a pair of my, or maybe Cal’s, pajama pants and slipping them on, then snagging a long sleeve shirt out of the top of my dresser.
My body felt heavy, hardly under my control as I walked down the hallway, trying my hardest to shake away the sleep.
I made my way into the kitchen, half expecting to find Cal in there, or at the very least in the living room.
But to my surprise, he wasn’t. The front door was wide open, and he was out there, sitting on the steps of the porch, his back to me, a coffee mug next to him.
I went into the kitchen and made a cup of my own, then went out the old screen door. The early morning chill hit me in a vicious wake up call, sending a shiver down my spine as I clung to the warmth of the mug.
Cal turned around as I stepped through the door.
His eyes caught mine immediately. The sun was starting to come up more now, illuminating us with just enough light to reveal it: he’d been crying.
Even if he wouldn’t admit to it, his eyes gave it away, and so did the faint pink color at the tip of his nose.
He wiped at his eyes quickly with the sleeves of his old hoodie, trying to play it all off as if he was just sitting there, but I knew better. I knew him better than that.
“Morning,” I said with a smile as I sat on the stair just above him.
“Morning,” Cal said back, tilting his head up to me, asking for a kiss.
Of course, I leaned down to kiss him, but this wasn’t just a quick peck.
Not for Cal. When I leaned in and our lips met, he pulled me closer to him, deepening the kiss.
But not in the hungry, sinful way these kisses usually felt.
This was gentle. This was more than words could have been for him right now, and I felt it all.
“You okay?” I asked him as we pulled apart, my thumb running across his cheek as I looked into his eyes. The beautiful hazel pools were illuminated by the pinkish colors in the sky above us; they looked more green right now than brown. They always did in the light.
Tears filled Cal’s eyes again, and he didn’t even answer me. He just pulled me into a hug. My nerves jumped. I held him tightly, trying to play it cool, but the anxiety built in my chest. Was he okay? Had I done something? Had Cal maybe decided this wasn’t what he wanted after all?
He held onto me tightly for a moment, and I held him back, planting a gentle kiss to the side of his neck.
“I just can’t believe this is all real,” he said as he pulled back from me, looking into my eyes again.
I smiled softly, realizing the feeling hadn’t truly hit me yet, but I guess for Cal, it just did.
I couldn’t really believe it either. None of this felt real. The last week, the acceptance we were met with in a place I felt like would surely be a war zone… we’d survived. In fact, we’d more than survived. We’d conquered this.
“We did it,” I said as tears of my own threatened to spill out.
I realized as we sat here that I really hadn’t allowed myself to accept the new reality Cal and I had created for ourselves.
I couldn’t, because accepting it meant I could lose it, and losing him wasn’t something I could handle a second time.
But right here, right now, it was standing at the forefront for me and Cal to see.
Here we were, at sunrise, on our front porch, coffee in hand, together.
This was it. This was our dream. The dream we’d created together as two twenty-something-year-olds ridiculously in love with each other, praying that maybe one day, our love for one another would be accepted in our world.
And here we were, living that dream. I think twenty-something-year-old Silas and Cal would be proud of us.
“We did,” Cal said, leaning in to kiss me again.
He pulled back, his hand resting on my knee, his gaze drifting out toward the tree line where the sun was breaking.
“You know,” Cal whispered, his voice thick with emotion.
“When I started getting my push… I convinced myself that was it. I told myself, ‘You don’t get the love story. You get the gold. That’s the trade.
’ And for seven years, I made myself believe that the roar of the crowd was enough to fill the silence in my house. ”
He looked back at me, a single tear tracking through the stubble on his cheek.
“But it wasn’t. It never was. I spent every night in those hotel rooms staring at the ceiling, wondering if you were okay. Wondering if you ever thought about the house we talked about.” He shook his head, laughing wetly. “And the whole time, you were building it. You were building us.”
I looked at him, really looked at him, standing there in the early morning light on the porch I built for a ghost that had finally come home. The realization hit me so hard it nearly knocked the wind out of me.
I reached out, lacing my fingers through his, gripping him tight.
“I got the guy,” I whispered, the words trembling as they left my lips. “I finally got the fucking guy. I got the house. I got the porch. I got the family. I have everything I ever dreamt of, right here in my hands.”
I squeezed his hand, my eyes burning with intensity as I looked at the man who had been my only wish for a decade.
“Everything I went through, the loneliness, the anger, the empty nights, it was all worth it. I’d do it all again, every second of it, if it meant ending up right here on these steps with you.”
We sat on the porch in silence, close, watching the sunrise together, something we’d neglected to do the entire time we were home. I found that fact kind of ironic, given this was the dream all along.
We never said it out loud, but the fact was so obvious: neither one of us was ready to leave the safety of this place, of my family land, of everything this week together had given us.
It felt like agony to me, knowing that in just a couple of hours, this bubble would burst. No more being with Cal in the daylight, kissing him while making breakfast, or just simply being together without fear.
In just a few hours we’d be back in the airport, back to pretending to just be coworkers, friends at best. We’d be back to sneaking into each other’s hotel rooms in the early hours of the morning, stealing glances in locker rooms, and pretending not to notice every little thing about one another.
I hated it. I hated it with everything in me right now.
I loved wrestling, sure, it was the only thing in my life I ever knew was certain.
But right now, wrestling had become my fucking enemy, and in this very moment, I wanted to call Presley Murran and tell him to fuck off and keep me and Cal here forever.
But that isn’t the world we get to live in.
We took our time packing our bags, time we didn’t necessarily have, but didn’t want to rush through in any way, shape, or form.
I was folding a hoodie when I noticed Cal reach for the nightstand. He picked up the cream-colored Polaroid camera, turning it over in his large hands.
For years, that camera had been a symbol of our secrets. It was the only witness to the love we were too terrified to name. Looking at it usually made my chest ache, a physical reminder of a time when we existed only in the dark.
Cal didn’t hesitate. He unzipped the front pocket of his carry on and tucked the camera inside, right next to his passport and wallet.
“You’re bringing it?” I asked, my voice quiet.
“Yeah,” Cal said, zipping the pocket closed. He looked up at me, his expression soft but determined. “I figured… we shouldn’t leave it behind. It’s got way more memories to catch now.”
He patted the bag gently.
“Si, the biggest moment of our careers is about to happen. This thing started it all with us. It deserves to come along for the ride.”
My throat closed up. The ache was still there, but it wasn’t pain anymore. It was relief.
“But remember,” Cal added, pointing a finger at me, shifting the mood. “You promised I could take phone pictures now, too. That wasn’t a one-time offer.”
I laughed, a wet, shaky sound. “I remember.”
Cal picked up his phone to check the time. The screen lit up, and there it was, the photo he’d taken the other morning. Me curled into his side, lips pressed against his neck, with Cal looking at the camera with the softest, most genuine smile I’d ever seen on him.
It was undeniable. It was intimate. It was us.
“You’re going to change that before we get to the airport, right?” I asked, nodding at the screen. “If a fan sees that over your shoulder…”
“Let them see,” Cal shrugged, dropping the phone into his pocket without changing a thing.
“Cal, seriously,” I pressed. “The internet will melt.”
“I don’t give a fuck,” he said, his voice dropping to that serious, immovable tone he used when he made up his mind. “If someone asks, I’ll tell them it’s none of their business. But I’m not changing it. I like looking at it.”
He paused, leaning against the dresser, looking down at his hands.
“You know I don’t have any pictures of myself from before I was sixteen,” he said quietly.
I froze. I knew he was a runaway, but I hadn’t thought about the artifacts he left behind.
“I left in the middle of the night,” Cal continued, his hazel eyes distant. “I didn’t grab anything. I just ran. So that whole part of my life? It’s just gone. I have photos with the Donovans, and I cherish those. They’re my family. But this…”
He gestured between us.