My heart swelled at the thought, at the sight. This was all I wanted, right here, right now. Cal was every single thing in this lifetime I never viewed myself as worthy of having. And here he was, in front of me, looking at me with a look I could only describe as love.
“Let’s eat. We gotta make our flight,” he said, sliding a plate over to me.
We sat at the island and ate together. It felt routine, like we’d done this a thousand times. And I guess in a way, we had.
“Your family coming forFront Lines?” he asked.
I shrugged. The thought of my dad and uncle coming in our home state made me uneasy. I’d have more to prove, more than just the two of them to make proud.
“Maybe. I haven’t asked them. They probably will, it’s like a three hour drive from home.”
“Did you tell them about the push?” he asked.
“No,” I said, staring into the black swirling pool of coffee in my cup, my brain holding on for dear life. “I don’t know how. I mean, I think they’d be proud of me, sure, but I don’t know… I guess I feel guilty. They were supposed to get this outcome, not me.”
“You deserve every bit of this, Si. You’ve busted your ass. You’ve done more than any of us, myself included. You deserved a push from day one,” Cal assured.
“I guess. I just… sometimes I worry I’m only getting this because Murran didn’t get the chance to capitalize on the pill head and the drunk,” I said flatly.
“So? Fuck them. Your dad and uncle didn’t do this work to get here. You did.”
Cal was right. My uncle and dad didn’t have a thing to do with where I had gotten in the UWF. All they’d done was teach me who, and what, not to be. And they knew that. Hell, I knew that.
“Si,” Cal said, his hand landing on my thigh.
I looked over at him. His eyes were sincere, his smile soft. My heart was floating away, and my mind was ready to run straight out of his front door.
“I’m proud of you, really,” Cal said as he leaned in, cupping my face.
I wanted to pull back, to set the walls, to tell him this was too much. But I couldn’t. My mind couldn’t. My heart fucking couldn’t.
He kissed me, slow, meaningful, love fueled, and I kissed him back tenfold.
Wepacked our stuff and got ready in mostly silence, moving around one another much like we did on the road. This was robotic. We’d been doing it for nearly a year. We knew it. We knew how to work around one another, how to get ready together.
My anxiety only built. No matter how hard I tried to push it down, it wouldn’t stay down. I felt like I was vibrating, like if I kept moving, I was going to crash. My body felt as if it was stuck in panic mode, a panic mode I hadn’t felt since I was a kid.
“You okay?” Cal asked as we sat in our seats on the plane.
“Fine,” I snapped.
I didn’t even mean to. God, I wanted to tell him it felt like the world was crashing around me. That I needed us to get off this godforsaken plane and hide. Hide away from wrestling, from our families, from the world, everything.
Cal didn’t respond when I snapped. He just looked at me. A look of concern, of confusion, of uncertainty. I’d never snapped at him. Not once. Even when we were actually pissed at one another, I never snapped, never shouted, never moved with the demeanor of the men in my own life.
“I’m gonna sleep. Wake me when we land,” I said.
Cal just nodded at me. He didn’t seem to know what more to do for me right now, but I knew he was wracking his brain trying to find a fix. And so was I.
My mind couldn’t shut down. I tried, but decided my fate was better served pretending to sleep for the next two hours than sitting here awake with a concerned Cal, the only person in my life who seemed to give a fuck enough to care about me in that way.
I sat there for two hours, locked in my brain, searching for every loophole, every counter, every single way that this, him and I, could exist in the world we lived in. But there was nothing. There was no silver lining, no fine print. Not a single outcome in every universe I dreamt up where this ended happily. Just flames. Just loss. Just him and I losing everything we’d ever known.
“Silas… we landed, baby,” Cal whispered with a nudge.
My eyes fluttered open, trying to make it seem like I really had been sleeping. I don’t know if he bought it or not.
We went straight from the airport to the arena. I drove, even though I probably shouldn’t have been behind the wheel of a vehicle like this.
