Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
CALEB
SALISBURY, MARYLAND
Wednesday afternoon finds Caleb holing up in yet another hotel room. This time, it’s a nondescript Holiday Inn in Maryland, where a slew of press conferences has been lined up. What once felt novel began, around his five-year mark in the business, to blur into the same dull thing.
He prods his phone. Nothing, obviously. Sighing, he swivels around to stare out the window, stands there and thinks, I should head to the gym.
My repertoire needs work. But his legs feel like lead.
There’s a breakfast buffet in the lobby.
He could do that. Or he could do quite literally anything else.
He skims through the room service menu instead.
Soon the doorbell rings and a BLT is shoved into his hands.
He waits for the housekeeper to return to her trolley and leave, but instead, she blinks up at him.
“You’re Caleb Knight,” she says.
“Ah. Unfortunately.”
“My kids watch GEW all the time.”
“Thank—”
“Oh, they hate you though.”
“—you.” Caleb falters. He sucks on his teeth and frowns at her over his sandwich. “That sounds about right,” he finishes, then stuffs a ten-dollar bill into her hand and shuts the door.
Well that went better than expected. Caleb gives himself a mental high five.
Chewing on a slice of bacon, he pulls out his laptop and smiles despite himself when he sees that his Netflix profile picture has been changed yet again.
The knowledge that, even after all this time, Bailey hasn’t logged him out of her account is a small reprieve.
He constantly expects her to, as anyone would, but she’d gone as far as to create a profile just for him.
It seems silly to think of it this way, but to Caleb, lonely and aimless, that tiny gesture feels like the emotional equivalent of a warm welcome home.
A feeling of being wanted even though he hasn’t done anything to deserve it.
Every couple of days, Bailey sneaks in and changes his profile picture to a character from a show they once watched together.
Last week, Titus Andromedon smirked at him.
Today? Viktor Hargreeves stares back. At the bottom of the picture, white text against a black background: Caleb :-)
Later that morning, he finds himself in a too stuffy press conference room sitting behind a too small table with too many cameras shoved in his face under too bright lights.
This part is familiar. In both the lead up to and after major events or pay-per-views, an email from GEW’s PR team lands in his inbox with instructions to show up for a string of press conferences and interviews to drum up hype. Almost a decade into his career, Caleb could do this in his sleep.
And yet he can’t fucking think today.
Today, Asher Ross sits mere inches away from Caleb. Asher beams at the room, confident and exuberant. It’s the air, too. It feels different. Less stagnant, perhaps. Caleb fidgets uncomfortably.
“Caleb,” a reporter says.
Caleb blinks down at the phones spread across the table, voice recorders switched on. Asher elbows him and Caleb is turning to give him a dirty look when—
Oh, wait. That’s him. He’s Caleb. Good grief.
The reporter, who wears a CBS Sports lanyard, clears his throat and says, “Caleb, Kennedy Prichard announced this morning that you will be putting your GEW World Championship on the line against Asher Ross at Fyter Fiesta in a Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match.”
Caleb arches a brow. “If you have a point, I suggest you make it.”
CBS Sports barks out an uneasy laugh. “How do you feel about your chances of retaining the title?”
“Confident,” Caleb replies. “In fact, every night I think about our match and know this bad boy”—he pats the gold belt draped over his shoulder—“isn’t going anywhere, least of all to some rookie, and it sends me drifting off into the best sleep I’ve ever had.”
At this, Asher turns and looks at Caleb. His lips curl into a sickeningly sweet smirk.
“So you admit it then,” he says.
“Admit what?”
“You think about me.”
“I think,” Caleb says, hating the his words come out strangled, “that all of this is just smoke and mirrors. All you do is crack jokes to hide the fact that you know you’ll never be enough to rule over the men’s division the way I do.”
Asher rolls his eyes and regards the room. “It’s true that I’m fairly new here, but my win-loss record speaks for itself. Knight talks a big game, but I think it’s time for him to put up or shut up, don’t you?”
The smirk on his face never falters, and Caleb allows himself half a second to indulge in wondering how it would feel to bloody it with his knuckles. He can’t wait to find out in two weeks.
The questions keep coming. Most are directed at Asher from reporters keen to extract as much information as they can from a fresh, young face.
Cracking open a bottle of water, Caleb takes a sip before he leans back and eyes Asher, sizing up the competition.
The piercings that adorn Asher’s ear shimmer every time a flash goes off, which is a lot because the camera seems to love him.
To his credit, Asher appears to reciprocate the feeling, handling every question with grace and personality before moving on to the next one.
And Caleb hates it. Hates the way his stupid pink tongue pokes out whenever he’s carefully putting together a response.
Hates the infuriating way the corners of his eyes crinkle when he indulges them with a wide, open smile.
When a reporter from Fox asks if he is prepared for the toll that such an extreme rules match takes, Asher tips his head back and laughs. It exposes the length of his neck, taut and firm as his Adam’s apple bobs.
“Why don’t we find out together, Jeff? What do you say? You and me at six?” Asher quips.
Laughter fills the room again, and when Asher joins in, his long fringe brushes against his cheek, where light brown freckles peek insistently past a rosy flush.
When Asher laughs, he does so with his whole body.
It makes his jacket stretch over the muscles of his back and shoulders.
Beneath the fluorescent lights, a gold chain around his neck glints.
But it’s more than his appearance. It’s the way Asher gives every individual in the room his full attention, the way he listens and responds as though every question they ask is worth it. As though even the most inane question has value.
It’s the way he looks everyone in the eye, the way he seems to make everyone he speaks to feel comfortable.
When he thanks each person for their question, his face lights up as though there’s nothing else in the world he’d rather be doing.
Grin after grin bursts across his face, not unlike starlight yet somewhat different.
Like he’s lit from within and blurring out everything else.
Caleb drags his gaze away.
God forbid he’s actually starting to respect this man.
“Caleb?”
Caleb’s head snaps up. “Hmm?” He gets like this sometimes, so lost in his thoughts that he momentarily forgets he’s a person, but it’s never been this bad.
“ESPN here. There has been lots of discourse on social media about your act getting boring. Some think it’s time for someone new to carry the men’s division. Do you have any comments in response to that?”
“Oh. Uh . . .” Caleb pauses, his brain short-circuiting.
He fidgets, subconsciously rubbing a thumb over his cheek as Prichard’s voice comes rushing back in.
Make bigger waves. Drum up more excitement.
You’re a monster; be a monster. Prove you aren’t a waste of time and money.
To hear it from the chairman is one thing, but a whole other to see that even in the public eye, despite all he’s given, he still isn’t enough. He isn’t wanted. “Uh, I . . .”
Asher speaks up. “Knight's title run has been stellar so far. You try sitting atop an empire and see how you do.” Beneath the table, Caleb nudges his knee against Asher’s in thanks.
A corner of Asher’s lips tick upward. “That being said, he shouldn’t get too comfortable, because once he signs on the dotted line, he will have fueled the devil. ”
And then Asher has the gall to wink.
Letting his defenses down like that is the exact kind of weakness that should have long been beaten out of Caleb's system. He shouldn't have. But it's too late.
“Caleb, do you think Ross could shake things up?”
“Sure. I mean . . .” Caleb blinks away the fog and takes a breath. “Ross is a fantastic athlete. He brings something special to GEW.”
A compliment from Caleb Knight is so out of left field that, briefly, the whole room sits in silence. Even the ESPN reporter seems at a loss for words.
Asher, on the other hand, makes a show of rolling his eyes, and the room breathes again.
Glancing at Caleb, Asher draws his lower lip between his teeth, then releases it.
“Aww,” he coos. It is nothing more than an act he’s putting on for the cameras, but it doesn’t stop the pink of his cheeks from spreading to the tip of his nose.
The press conference ends after a couple more, thankfully non-traumatizing, questions. Before everyone is ushered out, a GEW representative whips out a folder. He flashes the cardstock paper within and sets it down. The contract for their match. Dozens of shutters go off once more.
Uncapping a fountain pen, Caleb signs hurriedly on the line above his name, sliding the document over to his left before the ink can even dry.
When Asher’s reaches over to pluck the pen out of Caleb’s grasp, his fingertips brush against Caleb’s knuckles.
It is the chastest contact in the world, fleeting like a daydream or hallucination, but it is enough to make his skin buzz, as though a current has jolted to life.
He wonders if Asher feels it too.
In the middle of his drive back to the Holiday Inn, as he turns onto Ocean Gateway, a Burger King whizzing by the passenger window, Caleb’s phone rings. He glances down at the phone resting on his thigh, groans when a picture of Kennedy Prichard’s ugly mug glares back at him.