Chapter 8 #2
The next week goes like this: Caleb’s alarm goes off.
He heads to the gym, where the roster always awaits with outstretched arms. They train together.
Work out together. Caleb helps them polish up their moves.
Takes Prichard’s six-figure training sessions and imparts it all to them.
Bailey and Thea attempt to teach him the meanest hurricanrana exactly once, and he spends the rest of the day white-knuckling a packet of Dramamine.
He spends hours tumbling across mats with them, turning moonsaults into backbreakers and powerbombs into sunset flips; days with Thea and Bailey diving and twisting off his and Alexei’s shoulders. For the first time, he thinks he remembers how to smile again. Like it’s slowly coming back.
Through it all, they inch closer to Tennessee, Fyter Fiesta looming over the horizon. Prichard continues to plot; Caleb continues to ignore him. Instead, he shoves his legs into jeans, laces up his boots, switches off his phone, and searches for Asher.
While things are trickier with Asher thanks to kayfabe rules, they chisel out spaces hidden away from the public eye.
It's hard, but they try anyway. At hotel gyms, Asher imparts Big Rob’s wisdom to him, teaching him how to roll out of a chokeslam into a Boston crab, wrenching Caleb’s leg over his back.
And Caleb’s never too far away, backstage, hidden just beyond the curtains, watching Asher soar through the air from Alabama through Nashville.
It's new, yet achingly familiar. For all that Caleb feels safest with both feet planted squarely on the ground, Asher is the closest he has ever come to gravity—no matter how much instinct tells him to flee, Caleb always finds himself pulled back in.
And so, he's always right there, carefully hiding a smile when the referee raises Asher’s hand, but basking quietly in his radiance all the same.
And he likes it. He likes them. He likes when he lets loose and pulls off a silly move, loves it when he catches Asher barking out a laugh, especially ones that he unsuccessfully tries to stifle behind his hand— open, delighted, full-bodied.
He likes earning those little gems. It’s the most fun he’s had in a long time, and he finds himself remembering why he fell in love with wrestling in the first place.
Because there, in jarring contrast to the bruises on his knuckles and split lips, is the kindness that Caleb had convinced himself he didn’t deserve. He’s starting to believe that maybe it’s not too late. Maybe he can always begin again.
Which is why the fact remains that it is the worst thing ever, because as much as Caleb pretends those texts from Prichard don’t exist, they do.
It was never going to be this easy. Come Fyter Fiesta, Caleb is going to have to throw it all away.
He has to ruin it, this good but fragile thing, to save his career.
It’s pointless, he thinks. You can run and run and run until blood stains the cracks in your feet. You can squeeze your eyes shut and refuse to look over your shoulder. You can jump in a car and drive for miles. But at the end of the day, it’s the same.
The money is the same.
It’s dirty, just like he is.
Because maybe, hard as they try, some people just aren’t deserving of second chances.
But for now, he lets himself pretend that this belonging is his to have.
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE
Here’s the thing: in the end, Asher was never going to win the GEW World Championship.
He just didn’t know it.
The night of Fyter Fiesta arrives, and Caleb finds himself putting the finishing touches on his taped wrists as he awaits his cue next to a lever beneath the ramp.
He had managed to catch a glimpse of Asher earlier, his familiar laughter emanating from the locker room as Alexei, fingers stained cherry red, touched up his fringe.
Prichard had caught him staring and dragged him away by the shoulder.
When his entrance music plays, a guitar shred that bleeds into a heavy metal song, he takes a breath. Closes his eyes.
The lever raises the throne that Caleb sits on—golden, elaborate, and worth more than Caleb will ever be.
It sends him up through a hissing cloud of smoke and into an influx of jeers from the packed FedExForum.
He tries and fails not to wince beneath the spotlights but manages to pass it off as a sneer instead.
The diamond-studded crown resting atop his head is heavy and always a relief to take off. There was a time when he itched to put on the crown, to slip that veil back on. But now it just looks cheap and flimsy. Pathetic. A plastic crown for a boy who plays pretend.
Still, he grits his teeth and smiles contemptuously down the ramp. A scatter of tables, ladders, and chairs rush by.
“The following match is scheduled for one fall,” Maverick Wolff announces, stepping out into the spotlight. He’s tiny and compact, but his perfectly styled quiff makes up a good four inches. “Introducing the challenger: Asher ‘The Dragon’ Ross!” Caleb barely hears him over the roar of the audience.
For a heartbeat, the lights flicker out.
When the pyrotechnics burst to life, there’s Asher, a vision in red—figure-hugging deep red shorts with ruby tassels that resemble flames licking down his thighs.
Floodlights spill onto the toes of his maroon combat boots, black buckles gleaming.
His fringe: two freshly dyed crimson streaks.
And wings. He has fucking wings. They unfurl from his back, feathery and lush. He looks drop-dead gorgeous.
Caleb is going to eject himself into the stratosphere.
Under the spotlight, Asher preens. He blows a fireball that does nothing to help the way Caleb’s heart hammers in his ears.
Caleb has always been cynical of magic, but seeing Asher on stage in the flesh striding toward him, hearing the way the crowd shrieks themselves hoarse for him, Caleb thinks it’s time to start believing.
The music swells, and Asher darts down the ramp, ducking under ladders like the cocky bastard he is. Then he snaps his eyes forward to meet Caleb’s, mouthing, Come at me, and there’s that shot of dopamine again. That Fourth of July sparkle.
Asher hops into the ring, and before Caleb knows it, he is handing his championship belt over to the referee, who hoists it high in the air in the middle of the ring.
It’s all come down this: his GEW World Champion title on the line.
The bell rings.
Caleb starts off the only way he knows how: aggressive.
A flurry of punches and kicks force Asher to throw his arms up.
Caleb gets his hands on Asher’s shoulders and sends him over the top ropes.
Sliding out of the ring, he grabs a chair, shoves the curve of it into Asher’s ribs, then down over the length of his back when Asher doubles over.
Right. Ladders. Caleb masks a grimace. He sets up a ladder but only manages to scale two wobbly rungs before Asher drags him down and rolls them both back into the ring.
It’s his turn to be cornered by Asher, who pushes himself up on the ropes before landing a dropkick, the toes of his boots beneath Caleb’s chin. Caleb’s head snaps back and cracks against the bottom turnbuckle. A headache begins to form at the base of his skull.
Still in a daze, he watches Asher open up a chair in the middle of the ring.
A springboard for him to leap off of. A devastating move, but out of sheer adrenaline and an inherent attempt at self-defense, Caleb scrambles to his feet and catches Asher, dropping the younger boy spine-first into the edge of the chair.
“Nasty business!” Wolff winces as Asher protectively curls in on himself, wiggling his fingers to try and check on his nerve function.
When Asher signals—a subtle flick of his index and middle finger that the audience isn’t privy to—that he’s all right, Caleb tosses him out of the ring.
He measures the distance, calculating carefully before flying over the top rope in a clumsy but effective suicide dive.
He lands on Asher, who absorbs the impact of the high-flying move and stumbles backward into the barricade.
Then Asher winks and lunges forward, sending Caleb staggering into the steel steps. Caleb, who only barely recovers in time and leaps on the steps, turns around to dive at Asher, only to be met with a chair to his elbow.
“There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that these two men wouldn’t do to win the championship,” Caleb faintly hears Wolff say over the roar of the crowd.
Shaking off the pins and needles, he follows Asher up a ladder, catching him with carefully placed fists to the ribs.
Halfway to the top, Caleb gets Asher up on his shoulders.
Asher glances down at him, squeezes his shoulders in a way that asks, Are you ready?
It’s just the two of them back in the gym again.
Caleb grits his teeth. Ready as he’ll ever be.
Just like they practiced, Asher slides down Caleb’s back, catching him by the waist and twisting into a beautiful sunset flip powerbomb off the ladder. The move sends Caleb crashing down onto the mat, his head smacking off the canvas.
When the haze clears, two things become clear very quickly. The first, as he struggles to his feet: Jesus Christ on a fucking bike that hurt like a bitch. The second: something isn’t right with Asher.
The move should not have taken too much out of him, but he’s moved himself to a corner of the ring. His breath comes high and short, one arm propped up on the lower turnbuckle. The other clutches at his chest.
Caleb stumbles across the ring, his legs somehow managing to propel themselves forward by the sheer force of need.