Chapter 16 #3
Asher shrugs, rolling out his shoulders. “Not much of a choice.” He bounces on his feet as Malik and Montez stroll down the ramp. “You ready for this?”
“Born ready, buttercup,” Caleb says with a wink.
In the end, the match goes fine. Well, even. A mashup of their individual specialties—Asher’s high-risk, high-octane moves and Caleb’s heavy-hitting, surefire steady grapples—leaves them practically unstoppable.
With Caleb’s brute strength, Asher doesn’t need to rely on the ropes or turnbuckles to execute any of his flying moves.
He’s lethal everywhere, agility backed by Caleb’s force.
Caleb picks Montez up with ease, sets him up for Asher to leap off the top turnbuckle with a thunderous clothesline that flips Montez off Caleb’s shoulder and onto the mat.
Caleb hits a neckbreaker, one that lays out Malik for Asher to swoop in with his signature shooting star press, backflipping through the air before he lands on Malik’s chest, driving the wind from his lungs.
There is a moment where Caleb sees an opening to walk away.
It happens when Asher is the legal man in the ring, Montez contorting his leg in a painful figure-four leg lock.
Asher is trying with all his might to claw his way over to their corner of the ring, where Caleb waits with an outstretched arm, ready to make the tag.
He could leave. Drop down from the apron at the very last moment and call it a night.
After years in this business, he’s certain that is what this matchup is meant to be—nothing but a plot device to further their rivalry.
There would be no bigger slap in the face than to leave Asher hanging at the most pivotal moment, leaving him to eat a defeat alone.
This is what Prichard wants.
He could do it.
He should, probably.
But he doesn’t.
He’s right there when Asher makes the hot tag, leaping across the ring in a final burst of energy to tag Caleb into the match.
He’s right there when Montez makes a leap of his own, intercepting Montez before he can get to Asher.
He’s right there when he hoists Montez up, dropping him over his shoulder and into a massive cutter maneuver from Asher, who rams Montez’s face into the mat.
He’s right there when the referee makes the three count, a grand middle finger in the air to Kennedy Prichard.
And for a moment, one that Caleb doesn’t let pass him by, Asher clashes with him in the middle of the ring, arms flung around Caleb’s neck in euphoria, hot and sweaty and beautiful and alive.
Caleb’s hand lingers on Asher’s waist for a dangerous length of time, skin warm beneath his fingertips.
The crowd erupts into cheers for them, and it is like nothing before—a sound so completely foreign.
Caleb knows, objectively, that tonight doesn’t change a thing.
Next week, Creative will have found a way to undo this moment.
They’ll go back to pretending they hate one another.
But as the crowd gets louder and louder and louder, a frenzy of noise and color, there is a feeling tugging at his core, pushing his heart against his ribs.
This could be his. Not booed in stadiums across America and feeling like he’s constantly getting hunted for sport.
Here, defiant against everything Prichard created him to be in an arena full of fans who could learn to love him.
This could be his. It keeps coming back, his fingers intertwined with Asher’s, held high in the air, victorious above the roar of the crowd and their stomping feet and wild hands, Asher’s neck tipped back, grinning at him, bold and proud.
That life becomes increasingly opaque, one where he slots right into place with this weird little hodgepodge of freaks traveling across the world, pressed against Asher’s side.
Now that he sees it, he doesn’t know how to go back to the real thing.
He tucks it away, carries it close to his chest, lets it sink in even as Prichard slaps him with another fine the second he steps backstage, as the roster pick their way from Issaquah to Ellensburg, ending up in Kennewick for their next taping of Friday Night Fight at the Toyota Center.
It is exactly because of that, that when Malik and Montez descend upon Asher like a pack of wolves—snarling teeth and vicious stomps—after Asher picks up a win against Montez, Caleb disregards Prichard’s orders and—with absolutely no business interfering except for a nagging tug from the core of his chest—comes out wielding a long kendo stick.
He rushes the brothers, striking the solid bamboo weapon across their chests and down their backs.
Hushed whispers ripple through the sea of people, perplexed by this sudden shift.
Loud cracking sounds fill the arena until the twins retreat back up the ramp with large ugly red welts already blooming across their bodies.
In the chaos, a stray elbow connects with his eye.
A full spreading pain blooms beneath the socket but Caleb pays no attention to it.
He crosses the ring, towering over Asher who’s retreated to a corner.
He sticks a hand out and the fans start to sway, eating up the twist in their story.
He tracks Asher’s gaze, watching, hopelessly hopeful as the Asher’s eyes dart back and forth between Caleb’s outstretched hand and the curtains where the chairman is no doubt keeping a watchful eye on their every move.
Asher moves to accept Caleb’s hand, but at the very last minute, right as his fingertips brush against Caleb’s, decides against it. His eyes cloud over as he rolls out of the ring. He leaves Caleb there, hanging, breath shallow and hands shaking, drowning alone to chants of “Hug it out.”
Logically, Caleb knows it’s just an act.
Asher is simply being professional, something Caleb has clearly forgotten how to be with the way he’d just gone off script again.
It’s nothing personal. Asher’s career is just taking off, and he can’t afford be on thin ice.
Regardless, watching Asher walk away still stings like a thousand paper cuts.
It would have been tolerable before, back when there was never the possibility of anything else.
But in that moment, waiting for Asher to take his hand, Caleb had let himself imagine for the first time since that night together what a life with Asher could be like if they flipped the script.
Not some blurry future but an immediate present unspooling like film: shoes by the door, two toothbrushes in a cup, a hand on his cheek, fireworks in a dark night sky.
Date nights. Sickly-sweet waffles in the morning.
Falling into bed together after six hour drives and evenings fighting side by side.
Waking up to soft kisses on the nape of his neck.
Walking out the door, hand in hand into the sunlight.
But it doesn’t matter. It never did. When it’s all said and done, Asher is still a face and Caleb is still a heel.
As long as Asher is GEW’s World Champion, as long as he continues living that dream of his, they can never exist together in the ring in this capacity.
Caleb could never take that dream away from him.
Asher looks back at him as he retreats up the ramp, brows furrowed, fists clenched, and Caleb is just . . . He’s just so heartsick for a life wishes he had. All the small things he hopes for. Everything that tonight has proven will never be his to have.