23. BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS #2
Dropping the tape, I walked over to the couch and knelt down on the carpet between his knees.
He looked up, and I was right. His brown eyes were apprehensive, tired, but also deeply focused.
Without a word, he extended his foot, letting me take the heavy leather boot into my lap.
I began tightening the laces for him, pulling the strings with a slow precision that didn’t usually belong in a wrestling arena.
“You okay?” I whispered while I worked.
“Yeah,” he murmured as he brought his large hand to rest against the side of my neck. His thumb moved back and forth, gently caressing the white bandage that covered his name. “The muscles in my back are a little tight, but my head is mostly clear.”
“I’ve got you out there,” I promised, tying a tight double knot around his ankle. “The second that bell rings, it’s you and me. Just like it’s always been.”
Silas leaned forward, his forehead dropping to rest against mine, his breath hot against my lips. “I love you.”
“Love you more, Si,” I breathed, my fingers fiddling with the stitched padlock logo on his hip.
It was a beautiful and terrifying contrast. A quiet, sweet moment of domesticity between two men who were about to step into a wrestling ring.
Who would fight against six other powerhouses in a match designed for absolute carnage.
I watched him, feeling the shift in my own mind as I prepared to put the armor back on.
In minutes, I had to stop being his husband, bury this soft, quiet version of myself, and become the fast, lethal veteran who would orchestrate the mayhem around him.
It was now ten minutes before the War Zone match was scheduled to start, and Silas and I were heading toward the Gorilla position.
The air grew louder with every step. The distant, muffled roar of sixty thousand fans in the arena bowl vibrated the cinderblock walls.
When we pushed through the heavy curtains into the backstage command center, our team was already waiting for us.
Evan was leaning against a production desk, looking ridiculous in his neon pink gear, while the three rookies were nervously jumping up and down, pacing the small space to clear their adrenaline.
The six-man team we were facing from the Demolition brand, stood on the opposite side of the room.
They looked like a wall of dark leather, chains, and bad intentions.
When Silas and I stepped into the light, everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at us. A collective, amused smirk broke out across every single one of their faces.
Rosa had completely outdone herself; the white, black, and gold unified us. Its brightness stood out like a spotlight against the dark gear of everyone else. Si and I were also the only ones who matched, a detail which she’d done entirely on purpose. A silent defiance from the wardrobe department.
As I looked at our attires, a sudden, reckless, and completely evil idea popped into my head. If Presley wanted to punish us for being a couple, the least I could do was to make sure he had a front-row seat to the fallout.
At the timekeeper’s desk, Jim sat in front of the primary monitors with a thick black Sharpie tucked behind his ear.
“Hey, Jim!” I yelled over the roar of the crowd. “Can I borrow that marker?”
Jim looked up, touched his ear as if to check it was still there, and gave me a single, slow nod. With a quick toss, I caught it and turned back to Si, a wicked grin spreading across my face.
“Take off the robe.”
He blinked, his brow furrowing in total bewilderment. We were running out of time before his music was scheduled to hit, the countdown clock ticking down rapidly. “What? Why? My entrance is in three minutes.”
“Just take it off, husband,” I commanded.
Silas let out a confused huff, but he didn’t argue. He shrugged off the sleeveless white robe and draped it over the back of a production chair. The movement exposed the thick strips of white KT tape the trainers had plastered across his left shoulder to reinforce the joint.
I popped the cap off the marker with my teeth, spitting it into my palm and stepped directly into his space.
With my left hand bracing firmly against his collarbone, I went straight for the widest and most prominent strip of tape that ran across the front of his shoulder.
In thick block letters, I wrote one word:
CALLUM
Silas’s eyes went impossibly wide as he watched. A mixture of shock and bright-red embarrassment coloring his cheeks. “What the fuck are you doing?!”
I capped the marker with a sharp click and tossed it back to Jim. Leaning in close, my lips brushed against his ear as I whispered. “Now you match me entirely, champion. Let the boss try to script that off his screen.”
A loud groan ripped through the Gorilla position before Evan was practically suffocating from laughter. “He’s labeling you like a piece of luggage!”
Silas buried his face in his hands for a split second, but when he pulled them away, his eyes were burning with a fierce, hopelessly-endearing heat.
When his music finally began to rumble through the area speakers, our trance broke, and he threw his white robe back on quickly before setting his jaw.
As Silas’s theme song played, a wall of forty-six thousand voices screamed in unison. Silas stepped through the heavy black curtain first, followed closely by Evan, then the rookies.
I stood by the primary monitor in Gorilla, my arms crossed over my chest. Silas was magnificent.
He walked the few steps to the edge of the stage with the Championship belt buckled securely around his waist. Every step had the gold plates catching the blinding glare of the spotlights, bathing my husband in a radiant glow.
There was pride splayed across his face, which made him look exactly like the generational icon he was born to be.
Someone who was completely comfortable in his skin and his position as the top star of the business.
When he made it to the beginning of the ramp, the music stayed on, maintaining the high-octane bass, but the massive titan tron video package switched. The graphics flipped from the Timeless’s gold, to the gritty black and crimson of my own package.
DEADLOCK flashed across the screen.
The pop that followed didn’t just shake the arena; it felt like a physical explosion.
The crowd let out a deafening roar that was noticeably and undeniably louder than the one they gave Silas.
The arena was a sea of bodies that all jumped to their feet, cameras flashing like strobe lights.
They had been demanding my return for weeks, and this surprise reveal was the match that lit the powder keg.
I pushed through the curtain and stepped right up to Silas.
We stood toe-to-toe at the front of the stage, our chests almost touching, the contrasting white and gold outfits making us look like twin gods of the industry.
Deadly serious smirks were plastered on our faces, and our eyes were locked onto each other. The primary ringside cameraman sprinted up the ramp, dropped to one knee beside us, panning the lens close to capture our expressions.
In perfect synchronization, we turned our heads, looked at the ring, and began our march down the ramp, side-by-side. We looked completely lethal.
The crowd noise hit a deafening volume as we reached the apron, and I instinctively stepped up the stairs first. Without much thought to Presley’s threats, I grabbed the middle rope and held it open for Silas.
He stepped through the cables with an effortless grace, turning back to wink at me as I vaulted over the top rope to join him.
We had officially stolen the show before the bell had even rung.
Now on the turnbuckle as I threw my arms out for the crowd, I saw it. My eyes scanned the crowd, the arena was completely flooded with handmade signs. Signs supporting us. Both of us.
“TIMELOCK IS REAL.”
“THE WRESTLING HUSBANDS.”
“POWER COUPLE.”
“NO ONE LIKE THEM.”
There were hundreds of signs, stretching all the way up into the rafters.
The fans were devouring the reality of our relationship, obsessed with the truth behind the curtain.
And seeing their devotion to us, how they supported us…
it made me furious. We’d been shoved into a separate locker room, told we couldn’t touch each other, and been under near constant threat from the office.
It was as clear as a summer's day: the fans didn’t have an issue with our love. Presley was the only one who had a problem, and it wasn’t because we were two men, it was because our love was a narrative he couldn’t control.
War Zone was an absolute marathon of pure destruction.
It lasted for nearly forty-five minutes and was a brutal, grueling spectacle that pushed our bodies to their absolute limit. On top of the physical endurance, our bodies were being hurled against the steel until our skin was scraped and bleeding.
Our developmental rookies took a massive, twenty-foot bump off the top of a ladder and through a stack of tables on the floor, courtesy of the Demolition’s captain. The medical crew was called in, and they had to be carried out on a stretcher.
Running on pure spite and adrenaline, Evan hit his finisher on the youngest Demolition member, securing our team’s first elimination.
That was, of course, before Evan was violently blindsided by a chair shot to the lower back from their captain.
Since Evan was now pinned, it left me and Silas alone in the ring, taking on the remaining three powerhouses.
I led the charge to clear the floor, tackling the massive Demolition enforcer through the timekeeper’s barricade.
We fought our way up the ramp, where I managed to lift his 280-pound frame and powerbomb him directly through one of the announcer tables.
It completely obliterated the structure, sending plastic monitors and splintered wood shooting out in every direction.
Another elimination.