24. BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS #3
I knew telling Silas about my talks with Tate and Jim right now would only spark more anxious calculations in his head.
He needed rest, not more strategy. I wasn’t going down without a fight, and Presley Murran was about to learn exactly how lethal Deadlock could be when he was backed into a corner.
The initial shock of the suspension had faded, leaving behind a thick, heavy lake of profound depression that seemed to completely submerge our home.
Silas was hurting. He was deeply, visibly depressed to be back on the property under these circumstances.
He refused to leave the house. He spent most of his days staring blankly out the windows at the marsh, moving
around the rooms like a shadow of himself. He didn’t want to train, he really didn’t want to do much of anything at all.
Even my attempts to entice him with sex had completely failed.
That broke my heart more than any corporate suspension ever could. In our entire relationship, sex had been our primary language, the one connection that never failed. For him to reject it meant the darkness in his skull was suffocating him.
It was dawn when my eyes fluttered open. The light bled through the bedroom blinds in a soft, pale pinkish-orange while casting long, cinematic shadows across the carpet. I rolled onto my side, and my hand reached out automatically for Silas’s warmth, but the sheets were frostily cold.
My heart skipped a beat, hyper-vigilant adrenaline instantly booting my system.
I sat up fully to check over the room. The bathroom door was wide open, but the lights were off.
I dragged myself out of bed, pulled on a pair of soft grey sweatpants, and walked quietly through the house.
As I rounded the hallway, I noticed the front door was unlatched.
When I pushed it open and stepped out onto the massive wooden porch, I saw him.
Silas was sitting on the top step of the porch, his massive frame completely wrapped in a faded flannel blanket.
His knees were pulled in tight to his chest as his head rested against his arms. The morning air was crisp, a heavy dew clinging to the tall grass of the yard.
The fog rose off the marsh in thick blankets.
As I walked silently closer, tiny puffs of breath blew out in front of Si’s face, followed in turn by a jagged hitch. He’s been crying.
His eyes were puffy and red-rimmed, his face colored with a pink hue that glistened from the trails of his tears. He was watching the brilliant pink-orange sunrise that painted the North Carolina sky, seeming entirely lost in his own skin.
I didn’t say a word. I just walked over to him and sat down, letting the wood creak softly to let him know I was there.
We sat in silence as the light changed. Morphing from a warm-toned dawn into a cool blue.
Silas didn’t look at me. His gaze remained fixed on the distant pines at the edge of the property.
When his voice finally broke the muted scene, it was a quiet, small, cracked, and entirely devastating sound which split the morning air.
“We really need to start thinking about it,” he whispered as his voice trembled.
“Thinking about what, baby?”
“What the hell we’re going to do,” he replied, finally turning his head to look at me.
His brown orbs filled with a hopeless sorrow.
“If we can’t go back. If Presley wins, and they blacklist us from the UWF permanently, what the hell do we do with our lives?
” “If that happens, Si…” I started, my voice surprisingly steady.
“I don’t want to go back to the indies. I don’t think I want to go back to the professional wrestling world at all, for that matter. ”
Silas blinked, his jaw dropping slightly as he stared at me. “What?”
I met his gaze. “I’m serious. I’ve spent my life bleeding for that canvas.
I broke my body, sacrificed my privacy, and gave everything I had to a business that just threw us away like garbage the second we spoke our truth.
I’m thirty-two, baby. My knees hurt when it rains, and my back can’t take much more.
If the UWF is done with me, I’m done with the ring.
” I paused, looking back out at the massive yard, a sudden vision of our future clearing away the remaining bitterness.
“I’d want to just stay home,” I confessed, a soft smile finally breaking across my face. “Right here, on this land. We could really start to talk about it, adoption, I mean. And if we’re done with the road, we could actually do it. We could build our own little family.
“I could stay home, take care of the kids, and manage the house. Feed those freaky dinosaur chickens… I’d want a life so boring, it would be the most perfect thing to exist.”
Silas stared at me, the hollow look in his eyes instantly fracturing and a small but no less brilliant smile broke through his tears. His face lit up with a sudden and desperate kind of hope.
“You’d do that? You’d stay home with me?” he whispered as more tears began to fall.
“In a heartbeat. If that’s what it takes to keep you safe and happy, I’d never look at a pair of wrestling boots again.”