Chapter 12 #2
Asher’s thumb hovers over the bridge of Caleb’s nose, finding the end of the trail of scars. His other fingers cup Caleb’s jaw, stroking ever so softly. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well.” Caleb shrugs. He wills the lump in his throat away.
“So, I went to live with my aunt and threw myself into wrestling, because all I wanted to do was hit something. It gave me a source of release, a distraction. Prichard and I crossed paths during one of those scouting trips he used to do. He saw that I was lost and angry—the perfect vessel for him to mold into whatever he desired. He turned me into a professional. He saw to it that I had the best trainers, legends in the business. I was his pet project,” Caleb says, then more faintly, “His monster.”
“I threw myself into this gimmick, this character, because that way, even if people hate me, they aren’t really hating me. If I put up this front all the time, no one will ever be able to hurt me again.”
“But it still hurts,” Asher replies softly. He doesn’t ask it like a question.
To be seen makes Caleb feel young and defenseless, with all that fear like venom soaking into his tongue, poised to strike with cruel, savage words. He swallows the poison and nods.
“And I hurt you too, didn’t I? All those things I said to you in the ring, I didn’t realize the truth behind them.”
“I deserved it.”
“You don’t. No one does.”
“I meant what I said though,” Caleb admits, and when Asher’s face threatens to fall, he quickly adds, “Not all of it was an act. Everything right up till the screwjob, that was real. You were my choice.” Heat crawls up his neck. “I liked spending time with you. I still do.”
For a long moment, Asher is quiet. Then, so softly that Caleb wonders if he’s hearing things, Asher says, “So do I.”
And just like that, the dust settles. A rift in the earth mends. There are no footsteps beyond the apartment door nor is there any traffic on the streets below. They’re still under that paper moon.
Later that night, standing on the balcony looking out over the city lights. Asher clears his throat, and, unprompted, says into the yawning stillness, “It’s your turn.”
“To do what?”
“Ask me for a truth.”
A beat. “Okay.” Caleb keeps getting these glimpses, little slipups from Asher.
Missing pieces that make it impossible to complete a puzzle: Asher knowing the perfect counter to his moves, Asher drunk in a hotel room jabbing his finger in Caleb’s chest. “You knew me, didn’t you?
Even prior to getting called up to the main roster? ”
Caleb watches in fascination as pink tinges Asher’s cheeks, obvious even in the low light. “‘Know’ might not be the right word,” Asher says.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember December in New Orleans?”
“Slamboree?”
“No. Scouting week after Winter Wasteland.”
“At the Smoothie King Center?”
“Yeah. Ava and I were there.” Asher pauses.
“To learn from you. Mostly to meet you, I suppose. And you were a fucking dick. I barely said a word, and you looked at me like I crawled out of the sewer. Right after you received a phone call, you told me not to touch you, and called the session a waste of your time. Then you dipped.”
Caleb flinches. “Woof.”
“It’s fine that you left. No one expected an explanation—you didn’t owe us that—but you didn’t have to be so rude. We cared about you, Caleb. People drove hours to meet you because you mattered to them. And I…” Asher sinks his teeth into his bottom lip, so hard that it goes pale. “It hurt.”
There you go again, that voice in Caleb’s head says. All you do is hurt him. “That does sound incredibly douchey of me,” he agrees.
“Yeah. Whatever.”
Caleb is quiet for a long time, picturing a younger but equally fiery-eyed boy waiting for him in the thick of winter, rosy cheeks and long dark lashes amid a flurry of snow.
It feels physically impossible to have once turned Asher away; all his molecules have since been rewired to protest at the mere thought of leaving him.
“Not that it’s any excuse, but that was my aunt calling. My parents had stopped by, so I dropped everything to drive to her place. How could I not?”
“Did you catch them?”
“Kind of. During the drive, I thought about everything I’d give up for them to take me back.
I’d be good, you know? I would go back to church.
Repent. Kneel and ask for forgiveness. Maybe if I tried hard enough, I could .
. . change. But once I reached my aunt’s home, I couldn’t bring myself to walk through those doors.
I sat across the street and watched from my car.
That might have been my biggest mistake.
“That night, I sat there and watched from the outside, the way I always do. Even at work, every evening I watch kids show up with their parents and I’m just . . . here. Looking in. Wondering what made me so easy to discard. But I was a dick to everyone that breathed and I am sorry.”
“To be young and hurt,” Asher muses, shattering a long moment of silence. Caleb can almost hear Asher roll his eyes again, and he is thankful for that familiar comfort.
“So”—Caleb nudges Asher’s shoulder, ignoring the way his heart starts racing at the casual touch—“always an honor to meet a fan.”
Asher shoves him back. “Shut all the way up.”
“Did you want me to sign something?”
“Yeah, my ass.”
“That could be arranged.”
Asher tips his head back and laughs, unrestrained and beautiful, and it floats out into the darkness—a kindness. The corners of Caleb’s lip twitch because he understands: in that laughter, he is seen. And he is forgiven.
The day that Asher is cleared to return to in-ring action, the two of them celebrate by ordering an appalling amount of Taco Bell.
“God-tier delicacy,” Asher announces around a crunchwrap supreme. “It’s a crime against humanity that they don’t have a Michelin star.”
They sit around the coffee table, swaddled in a comfortable nest of pillows and comforters that Asher excitedly lugs out from the bedroom.
For the most part, Caleb is quiet. A stone sinks deeper and deeper into his chest as he listens to Asher ramble on about going back to the gym with Bailey, about missing the musky smell of the Outlander and needing to catch up on Thea and Alexei’s doughnut adventures.
“Every. Single. Doughnut. Store,” Asher says. He hammers a fist against his palm for emphasis. “They go live on Instagram to review it. We have an economy of ants in the car.”
After dinner, when thinking about the future begins to make it too hard to suck in a breath, Caleb slips out of the apartment, down the stairs, and through a carefully manicured hedge walkway to the swimming pool that lies in the middle of the apartment complex.
The pool is empty and dark, only dimly lit by a couple of garden lanterns tastefully nestled between ixora bushes.
Strung up in the trees are golden fairy lights.
Fireflies buzz around the bulbs, winking in and out of their warm glow.
He takes off his shoes and pulls off his shirt, leaves them in a neat pile on a lounge bed, then dips a toe into the water. Sitting at the edge of the pool, cool water ebbs and flows around his thighs. He looks up and tries to regard the sky, but the envy and ache in his ribs distracts him.
Tomorrow they head back into the real world and leave this makeshift one behind. It was always meant to be temporary after all. They have to be rivals in the ring again, clashing first at Guts and Glory. Who knows what’s next? How can there possibly be room for him in Asher’s grand plans?
The crunch of a leaf catches Caleb’s attention. He turns around and there’s Asher, crouched low with a guilty look plastered across his face.
Caleb frowns indignantly. “You were going to push me in.”
Asher straightens. “I would never.” He kicks off his sandals, sending them flying in opposite directions before he joins Caleb by the edge of the pool. “What are you doing out here?”
“Wishing the moon would forget to go down.”
Huffing out a soft laugh, Asher cranes his neck upward and closes his eyes. Moonlight slinks over his features, softening them, and Caleb can’t breathe, his feelings too thick and cloying. He drowns in them.
“Do we have time for one more truth?” Asher asks. His knuckle brushes the back of Caleb’s hand.
“Mmm.”
“I know why you did it.”
“Did what?”
“I know why you pulled off the screwjob,” Asher repeats. He turns to regard Caleb, his face intense and serious.
Groaning, Caleb glares at the shadows shifting against his thighs. “What the fuck?”
“I grilled it out of Bailey.”
“She’s on thin ice.”
“It’s not her fault. If it helps, she’ll definitely be smothering me in my sleep tomorrow.”
“Um, okay?”
“Why didn’t you just tell me, or the rest of the roster, if you hated me so much?”
Caleb bites his lip, waits a beat, then opens his mouth and says, “I never really hated you. I tried, because I thought it would be easier that way. But I couldn’t do it.
” The only person he really hated was himself.
Not even his parents. Not even a little bit.
It feels silly in hindsight, but he was so furious at the cards he’d been dealt, with no way to ever change or fix it.
A muscle in Asher’s jaw moves. “Maybe I did for a while there.” A smile breaks through and tugs at his lips. “Or maybe I mistook something else for hatred.”
They fall silent for a long time. Caleb looks down the space between them. His fingers mindlessly move in tiny, rapid staccato beats, breaking the surface of the water around his legs.