Chapter 13 #3
Caleb’s eyes darken. Tilting his head, he rakes his nails up Asher’s chest. “You talk too much,” he growls, the edge of his words playful and with a hint of something beyond.
“Come shut me up then,” Asher tosses back, but he’s stripped bare, peeled down to nothing more than a live wire when Caleb glances at his mouth.
Caleb isn’t what Asher thought he was. Rather than being phenomenally dull, there is this rope of tension he plays with, twirling it between his fingers, giving as good as he gets.
Asher lets himself sponge up that heat for one second before shoving at Caleb’s shoulder. He needs to be professional. He crosses his legs and rolls across his shoulders to break Caleb’s grip.
Clambering to his feet, Asher tucks his ankle behind Caleb’s and hits a Russian leg sweep that drops Caleb to the ground.
Caleb tries to roll out of the ring, but Asher catches him with a firm tug on the chain.
He focuses on the burst of adrenaline that carries his foot into the apron, following through with a cutter that sends Caleb’s face-first onto the floor.
He drags Caleb back into the ring and goes for the cover.
One.
Two.
Caleb kicks out at two and a half.
Adrenaline claws through Asher like a wild animal from the near fall. He gives in to it, gathering the chains and whips them against Caleb’s lower back. He then loops them around his fist and lands a blow that glances the side of Caleb’s jaw.
When that isn’t enough to keep Caleb down, he drags the chain across Caleb’s neck, throwing himself around the ring post and choking Caleb out, only forced by the referee to let go when Caleb grabs the bottom rope.
Asher climbs back into the ring, pushing off the ropes but is caught by a recovering Caleb, who, with a brute strength that sends an electrical pulse rocketing through him, manhandles Asher into a bossman slam, catching him around the chest, fluidly swinging Asher up and around as though they’re mid-dance before planting him onto the mat.
Caleb grabs him by the hip a little harshly, breath hard and fast on the side of Asher’s neck.
Caleb could sink his teeth into the flesh there.
It would be so easy. There’s a jangle of metal being wrapped around Caleb’s fist and then he tugs.
The move, carefully calculated and controlled, tightens the collar around Asher’s neck.
His head falls back, whole body automatically reduced to putty in Caleb’s hands.
Fine. So he’s also starting to realize .
. . some other things. What’s one more in the grand scheme of things?
It’s becoming easier and easier to put his body and soul in Caleb’s hands, though that no longer comes as much of a surprise.
After all, it’s Caleb. Asher trusts Caleb to take care of him, more so than ever following his injury.
Caleb thinks himself to be this vile and grotesque creature, ugly hands leaving nothing but a trail of destruction behind, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Asher knows those hands, the familiar weight and shape of them, the way those calloused fingers brush against the high of his cheek and curl around his jaw with nothing but gentle care.
Asher turns to the side, glowering at Caleb over his shoulder. “Goddamn fucker.” A harsh breath cuts out of his mouth. It's incredulous, tinged with delirium. How did he believe, for so much as one measly second, that his heterosexuality ever stood a fighting chance?
Caleb grunts, digging his thumbs into the small of Asher’s back.
Asher gasps, spine arching.
“Get your head in the game, pretty boy,” Caleb murmurs.
Gathering up a length of chain in his hand, Asher reaches around and sends the metal flying onto Caleb’s back.
Caleb hisses, and the pressure on Asher’s neck eases.
Both men start to get to their feet, but Asher beats him to it.
He lands two superkicks in succession, the heel of his boot striking Caleb’s chin.
Caleb falls to the mat. Whiplash sends his neck snapping back.
And there it is, wrapped in a little bow: an opportunity for the taking.
Asher digs deep, scaling the ropes up to the top turnbuckle. He loves this place. It’s where he feels the safest and most powerful. How poetic that it ends here too. He sizes Caleb up, measuring and calculating before he launches himself into the air.
Time slows to a standstill, nothing but himself, Caleb, and the rush of blood in Asher’s ears.
He hangs in suspended animation, body twisting mid-corkscrew. A dream within reach.
Then it all comes rushing back, the world catching up—an elbow landing on Caleb’s chest, the referee’s hand against the mat, a three count.
The crowd inhales as one, through smoke and dry ice and confetti raining down from the rafters.
And in the midst of it all: Asher, with the GEW championship belt—his championship belt—raised proudly in the air.
Unless the chairman had anything up his sleeve, it was always meant to end this way. He knew on paper, yes, but never in any of his daydreams could he have imagined the extent of how it’d feel. Here. Now. Finally.
All those years. All that time away from home. All those endless drives. All those state lines. All of it. All the work, all the bruises and injuries and skin ripped open. All for this.
It feels like flying in a dream.
The party continues backstage. High off his first ever title win, Asher is greeted by the entire roster, who are a riot of color and noise.
There are balloons and streamers and a cake with CONGRATULATIONS YOU ARE NO LONGER A LOSER scribbled in icing that gets smashed into his face approximately two seconds later.
The celebration spills out onto the backstage parking lot, Bon Jovi on full blast, Montez shotgunning two White Claws at once.
His phone, by the time he gets to it, has blown up. At the very top, a text from Ava that says, in front of my fucking salad? He sends back a selfie with the belt and an obnoxious middle finger.
Still dripping buttercream, Asher makes his way down the proverbial line, thanking everyone.
If they hadn’t paved the way, he wouldn’t be here today.
There’s Thea, who taught him tenacity, who he watched work through a torn rotator cuff while he was still in the Performance Center; Bailey, whose dynamic move set inspired so much of his own.
Alexei bowls him over, scooping him off the ground in a massive bear hug. “Thank you,” Asher wheezes, “for being the first person to make me feel at home here—please put me down, I can’t breathe.”
“This is distraction,” Alexei tells him. “We have surprise.”
He points toward the door, where the cattleman crown of a felt cowboy hat bobs through the sea of people.
Asher shoves someone aside, nearly tripping over a cooler box filled with ice in his haste. The red solo cup clutched in his hand goes flying, beer foaming everywhere. He crosses the parking lot in seconds.
“Bate!” he shrieks, barreling into his trainer’s chest. “You’re here? How—”