“And your dad?”
“Maverick tries,” I admitted, the words tasting bitter. “But he doesn’t apologize. He just moves on. He thinks if he acts like the cool, supportive dad now, it erases the past. To him, we’re just… colleagues. Distant siblings who happen to share a last name.”
Cal tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “You don’t look like him. I mean, you have the Reed structure, the light hair, but the jawline… it’s different. Your skin tone.”
I cracked a small, tired smile. “According to Mav, that would be the Puerto Rican half.”
Cal glanced at me, genuine surprise flashing in his eyes. “Get the fuck out.You?”
“My mom,” I explained. “She was Puerto Rican. Met my dad at a show in Raleigh back in the 90s. Whirlwind romance, or whatever you call a three-month bender on the road.”
“No shit,” Cal mused, a smirk tugging at his lips. “Silas Reed. The spicy side of the dynasty. I wouldn’t have guessed. You hide it well under all that brooding angst.”
I laughed, the sound breaking some of the tension. “I don’t know her. Never met her. I don’t know if she was a wrestler, a fan, or just someone passing through. She left me at the hospital in Raleigh the day I was born. Handed me to Maverick and vanished. I don’t even know her name. Just that she was from San Juan originally and she didn’t want a kid.”
Cal’s smirk faded. “So Maverick raised you?”
“No,” I said softly. “Maverick was touring. The Reed Brothers were at their peak. He couldn’t handle a baby. So he dropped me off in the middle of fucking nowhere, North Carolina. My grandfather raised me.”
“The grandfather,” Cal noted. “You’ve mentioned the house.”
“It’s not just a house. It’s… isolated. It’s this old farmhouse down by the Black River. Dirt roads. No neighbors for miles. It’s just wetlands and oak trees. My grandma died a few years before I was born, so it was just me and this old, hardnosed Southern man who was stuck in his ways. The closest city is like forty-five minutes away, so I didn’t exactly have friends coming over. I spent my childhood playing in the woods by myself, waiting for the phone to ring.”
I looked out the window, watching the palm trees blur by. “My dad and uncle built houses on the land later. But they were never there. And when they were…” I trailed off.
“When they were?” Cal prompted gently.
“They pulled me out of school when I was sixteen,” I confessed. The secret I kept guarded so closely felt heavy on my tongue. “Said it was for ‘experience.’ Homeschooled on the road. But it wasn’t about experience. It was about hiding them.”
“Hiding the using?” Cal asked.
“Yeah. They were spiraling. Pills. Booze. Anything to numb the pain of the bumps. They needed someone to drive the rental cars when they were too wasted. Someone to make sure they woke up for call times. Someone to lie to the promoters and tell them the Reeds were just ‘tired’ and not passed out.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I wasn’t a son. I was a handler. I spent my teenage years dragging my heroes out of bar fights and checking their pulses in hotel rooms.”
The car went silent again, but it wasn’t empty silence. It was the heavy, suffocating weight of shared trauma.
“Is that where the panic attacks come from?” Cal asked. His voice was soft, devoid of judgment.
I closed my eyes. “I guess. Being on the road… it brings it back. The smell of the hotels. The waiting.” I took a shaky breath. “They got sober, Eventually. But not for me. They got sober when they met their new wives. When they had their new kids. They built these perfect little families, and I’m just… the remnant. The leftovers from the bad years.”
“The first time I had a panic attack,” I whispered, staring at my hands, “was in a Red Roof Inn in Memphis. I was seventeen. I went to wake Scott up for a show. He wouldn’t wake up. He’d overdosed. I had to call 911, had to do CPR until the paramedics came… I thought he was dead. I thought I was going to be the one to tell my grandfather I let him die.”
I felt a hand cover mine on the center console. Warm. Rough. Grounding.
“You didn’t let anyone die, Si,” Cal said fiercely.
“I know,” I said. “But the feeling… it never went away. The fear that if I lose control for one second, everything burns down. That’s why I have to be perfect. Because if I slip… I become them. And that’s my worst nightmare. Being the Reed who ruined the legacy.”
I stared at his hand covering mine. I should pull away. I should tell him I’m fine. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Cal squeezed my hand. He didn’t let go.
“I ran away,” he said suddenly.
I looked at him. “What?”
“When I was fourteen. My mom left when I was ten, that’s when the old man started drinking. By fourteen, he was using me as a punching bag every night. So I packed a bag and I left. I walked in the snow to my best friend April’s house.”
He kept his eyes on the road, his grip on my hand tightening. “Her family… they were upper middle class. Big house, nice cars. They didn’t have to take me in, but they did. They had three daughters, April, Heather, and Sarah. I went from being an only child in a war zone to having three sisters who wanted me to braid their hair and watch cartoons.”
