As I took my final step in Callum’s direction, I found myself in a position I wasn’t expecting. I’m not sure what I expected seeing Callum Kincaid again. I’m not sure why I thought it would be any different than it is right now.
Callum dropped the title belt. It hit the floor with a heavy thud the second I was in reach. Before I could blink, he shoved me with everything he had, driving me backward into the concrete wall.
My head cracked against the cinderblock, pain shooting down my spine like a lightning bolt. Callum had his forearm crushed across my chest, pinning me in place, his face inches from mine.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he snarled, spit flying from his lips.
My eyes blew wide. In all the time Cal and Ishouldhave hated each other, back when this behavior was expected of us in the locker room, it never happened. But now, here we were.
“I signed this morning,” I choked out, struggling against the pressure on my sternum.
“Like fuck you did!” he yelled.
That surely got everyone’s attention. The chatter in Gorilla died instantly. But nobody rushed to stop it. Everyone just watched. Maybe my thought was right, maybe there was a target painted across my back, and nobody gave a damn what type of hell was created for me in coming back. They wanted to see the car crash.
“Callum—”
“No, fuck you, Silas!” he screamed.
His voice screamed rage, but his eyes… God, his eyes. Those painfully beautiful seas of hazel were swallowing me whole. They weren’t just angry or cold. They were hurt. That was nearly a decade of hurt, hurt I’d inflicted, spilling across us both, and we both knew it.
Before I could even speak again, Callum pressed harder, getting right in my face.
“You ended a man’s fucking career and severely altered another’s, and for what? Becauseyouwere in your fucking head that night? Because of shityoucaused? Fuck you! You shouldn’t be here!”
I clenched my jaw, the concrete biting into my scalp. He wasn’t wrong. I knew that.
“I fucked up my own career that night too, you asshole!” I finally screamed back, the adrenaline spiking.
And yeah, this time, people started slowly making moves. A few refs stepped forward.
“You ruinedyourcareer becauseyoudid something fucking stupid!” he snapped back, his voice cracking.
Faintly, in the back, I could hear Presley Murran barking orders. The boss was coming, and he was about to fucking shred us to pieces for this. We were making a scene in the one place that was supposed to be professional.
“Callum. Stop. Get off of me,” I mumbled, my voice dropping, sincere and exhausted.
I didn’t expect him to listen. Not with this much adrenaline coursing through him.
But he did.
Like a time machine, like a goddamn light switch, Cal’s eyes locked with mine. The rage was still there, vibrating under his skin, but the programming was deeper. Like he always said he would, he stopped.
He let me go. He stepped back, chest heaving, hands curling into fists at his sides. Even in a full-on rage fest like this, Callum kept his word.
The moment I said stop, everything would.
“Whoa! Hey!”
Evan plowed through the sea of people to get to us, throwing himself between me and Cal. He turned to me first, his eyes blazing.
“We will talk about what the fuck you’re doing here later,” Evan hissed at me, before spinning around to face Cal, shoving him back.
“The fuck are you two doing!” Evan yelled as he looked between us both.
“None of your fucking business, Wilder!” Cal said through gritted teeth.
Before I could interject, Evan snapped, getting right in Cal’s face, his voice low enough only the three of us could hear it.
