Chapter 3 #2
“That thing giving you issues, Wolf?” Brody asks, motioning toward my foot. He climbs through the ropes and sits on the apron beside me.
“Sometimes, but it’s been a little worse the past few weeks.”
“Maybe you should have Doc check it out,” Rae says, crouching beside us from inside the ropes.
She and Savannah have been huddled in the corner for the last five minutes, talking in hushed tones.
No doubt plotting. They needed to find the perfect gear from Savvy Skye’s extensive collection for the three of us to wear.
I should’ve known better than to accept the terms of our wager—there was no way Savannah Brooks was going to tap with the stakes so high—but I couldn’t help myself.
“I’ll be fine. I need to give it a break tomorrow and Thursday morning before Commotion.”
Thursday Night Commotion is one of our weekly shows, televised biweekly on Thursday nights.
On off weeks, it’s a simple live event without all the glitz and glamour of television.
Personally, I enjoy the live events more because we can try new things without the pressure of millions of people watching.
“It’s just a little sore from overdoing it tonight.”
“Better to be safe than sorry, right? You don’t want to—”
“I said I’m fine, Rae.” I don’t mean to snap at her, but their constant worrying is enough to drive anyone insane.
Despite what the four of them might think, I can take care of myself.
Since my divorce two years ago, they’ve treated me like a fucking china doll, and I hate it.
Dropping the towel, I sigh and clear my throat, evening out my tone before I speak again.
“I’m fine, and I promise the second I start to feel like something isn’t right, I will go to Doc. Okay? But for right now…I’m good.”
It’s quiet for a moment, and from the corner of my eye, I see Raelynn and Brody share a silent conversation the rest of us aren’t privy to.
“Well,” Brody says, stretching his arms overhead. Raelynn jumps down from the ring, moving toward her bag in the corner of the apron across the way. “I think we’re going to call it a night. Wolf, go home and get some rest, huh?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, waving him off as he steps off the ring. “You still coming out this weekend?” I wrap the towel around my shoulders. “Fourth of July at Mom and Dad’s?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
We glance at Brooks, but his face slowly falls, before he glances up at his wife, still standing in the corner. I can’t see her face, but something tells me I’ll be calling Mom later to let her know we’ll have two guests less than expected.
Brody sighs. “Don’t tell me you’re bailing.”
“No, no…We’ll just be a little late,” Brooks says. “They’re sending us to Boston for some Beachbash media.”
“Beachbash? This early?”
“It’s not that early. I’m sure they’re pushing tickets hard with it being the anniversary,” I say.
The fortieth anniversary of Elite Wrestling Entertainment, that is.
Forty years ago, in the summer of 1981, Amos Rafferty took over a failing wrestling promotion in Houston.
With a lot of hard work (and a sprinkle of unethical business practices), he transformed it into the biggest professional wrestling promotion in the world.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Rae’s voice booms around us. “You never told me what happened with your date last weekend. You distracted me earlier when I asked.”
That’s true, and I was hoping she had forgotten how I changed the subject when she tried to dig for information on my so-called “date.” I should’ve known better.
My first mistake was telling Raelynn about it when we were standing in this exact spot last week, two days before I was supposed to meet a girl for coffee.
We’d connected through my neighbor, a sweet older woman who doesn’t quite understand what I do for a living, but thought I seemed nice enough to go on a date with her granddaughter.
“You had a date?” Savannah asks, leaning over the ropes to look down at me.
“I was supposed to, but I, uh…I didn’t go,” I say, scratching the back of my neck.
“You didn’t go?” both women yell simultaneously. Raelynn continues, “Why didn’t you go?”
I clear my throat, suddenly feeling extremely small under their stares. “She seemed nice enough from the little bit we chatted, but…” I sigh. “I wasn’t in the mood.”
“You weren’t in the mood?” Savannah sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Bennett, please tell me you did not say that to the poor girl.”
“Yes, Sav. That’s exactly what I said to her ten minutes before I was supposed to be there,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“No, I didn’t say that! I’m not that much of an asshole.
But the idea of actively dating right now sounds terrible.
I mean, I haven’t been on a date in…Shit, I think it’s been about a year at this point. ”
“Hold on, are you saying you haven’t been on a date since that girl in Phoenix?” Brody asks, folding his arms and leaning back against the ring across from us.
“What girl in Phoenix?” Raelynn asks, head whipping to the side to look at him.
“Wolfie here asked some girl out ringside.”
“You mean a fan? You, Bennett Andrew James…You went on a date with a fan?” Her voice rises at least two octaves.
Damn, she used my full name?
“Something wrong with that?” I ask.
“Nothing’s wrong with it. I’m just surprised. You have always been so pro-‘keeping it in the industry.’”
Which is exactly why I decided to start looking elsewhere.
After my ex-wife and I split, after I dated a few other girls in the company, I started to think I was looking in all the wrong places.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some great women within EWE—within the industry—but none of them are someone I’d want to settle down with.
But the problem is that dating outside of our industry can be hard.
We work a strenuous schedule—almost two hundred and eighty days a year on the road—and the average person in a healthy relationship doesn’t want to spend that many nights alone.
Can’t say I blame them.
As much as I would like to have someone to go home to, the thought of putting myself out there and courting someone after being on the road all week sounds…terrible.
Savannah practically snorts. “Yeah, and look where keeping it in the industry got him.”
“There’s no need to bring her up,” Rae says, rolling her eyes.
Their hatred for my ex-wife is unmatched, and now that I’m no longer with Harper, my friends don’t hold back.
I don’t blame them, especially Savannah.
I never realized how bad things were between them, or maybe I refused to see it because I was completely infatuated.
There was a lot of animosity between the two of them, especially on my ex-wife’s part, but Savannah did her best to remain cordial for my sake.
She even pretended to be happy when I proposed—everyone did—even if it meant dealing with someone who made her professional career a living hell from the very first time she walked through the door.
Looking back, I don’t know how I could have been so selfish as to put my friends and family through that.
“So, what happened with that girl?” Savannah asks. “The one in Phoenix.”
Sloane.
When I saw her sitting in the front row that night, it was obvious she was completely out of her element.
I’d noticed her a little earlier in the evening when I’d snuck out to watch Brooks Taylor and Brody Wilder face off before their big match at Wrestlefest the following Sunday.
I was standing near the back of the floor section with Colin Ryker—who is known to the government as Colin Montgomery but prefers to go by his stage name for everyday use—when I noticed the only person in the whole place who remained seated.
The build-up to the biggest match of the year was happening right in front of her, and she couldn’t have cared less.
Not to mention, her entire ensemble screamed I don’t belong here.
She wore a blue-striped Polo button-down and layers of gold jewelry that stood out in a sea of wrestling t-shirts.
“Nothing,” I say, lifting my shoulders. “We hung out after the show, grabbed a bite, talked, and then went our separate ways.”
Despite her lack of interest in the show, I decided to ask her out anyway.
I thought she might turn me down immediately, but somehow I convinced her to go to dinner with me after the show.
We talked for hours in the corner booth of a twenty-four-hour diner before I drove her home.
I quickly learned Sloane was not a fan of EWE—or wrestling, for that matter.
She was only at the show that night because her best friend dragged her there.
“Did you…you know?” Rae’s eyebrows dance suggestively.
“No, we did not you know.” I roll my eyes. There’s a slight twinge in my left ankle when I plant it on the ground and step down from the ring. I clench my jaw, trying to maintain my composure, because the last thing I need is another lecture about how I need to see Doc.
“At least we know you won’t fall into bed with the first girl you find outside of the company,” Savannah says before turning her head to stare at her husband with a cocked brow.
Brooks rolls his eyes, a slight smile pulling on his lips. “Hey, I married you, didn’t I?”
“Why didn’t you keep in touch with her?” Brody asks. “If I remember right, you said she seemed pretty cool.”
“She didn’t seem interested. Not to mention, she wasn’t a fan of all this. Didn’t understand it, didn’t like it. How can I be with someone who doesn’t respect what I do for a living?”
“You’re telling me that after spending hours talking and getting to know each other, this girl wasn’t the least bit interested in you or what you do for a living?” Brooks asks, draping an arm around his wife’s shoulders once she jumps down from the ring.
“It wasn’t hours, it was like an hour.” Or two, or three, but they don’t need to know everything.
“Sounds like a bunch of excuses to me,” Rae says.
“Look, maybe if things at Wrestlefest had turned out differently, I would’ve considered finding a way to get in touch with her.”
“So, you did like her.”
“She was cool,” I say, shrugging. “But I had no way to contact her, even if I wanted to. We didn’t swap numbers, and I never even got her last name.”
Savannah’s face splits into a wide grin, and she shares a glance with Rae before looking back at me. “So, what you’re saying is we need to find this girl.”