Page 17 of Glorious Ruin
He reached out, his hand cupping the back of my neck, his thumb brushing over my pulse point. “It suits you,” he whispered, “You’ll look like a king.”
I leaned into his touch, closing my eyes for a brief second. The weight of the black velvet box hidden in my gym bag down the hall suddenly felt lighter.
4
SUNDAY — SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
Now playing: Dákiti - Bad Bunny
SundaymorninginSanJuan was pure, unadulterated chaos.
Since UWF management had strictly forbidden Silas and me from sharing a suite this weekend, our families took it upon themselves to treat the resort floors like a revolving door. The Donovans and the Reeds bounced between my room and Silas’s, trying to log as much time with us as possible before the pay per view. It was a loud, beautiful, overwhelming mess of shared room service, nervous energy, and endless complaints about the tropical humidity.
By mid-afternoon, we finally escaped to the arena. Backstage, away from the public eye, in the still empty arena, we finally had the freedom to just breathe the same air. Silas and I walked through the pacing of the match and mapped out our high-risk spots. Meanwhile, Evan sat on the top turnbuckle, drinking a protein shake and watching us like a stressed hawk.
“So, let me get this straight,” Evan deadpanned as he pointed a finger at us. “You are going to take a suplex off the top of a sixteen-foot ladder, through a table, at the sixty-minute mark when your legs are already dead?”
“It sets up his finish perfectly.” Wiping sweat from my forehead, I looked at Silas, who leaned against the ropes. “I take the bump, he climbs, he pulls down the belt and the buzzer sounds. It’scinema, Ev.”
“It’s a death wish.” Evan shook his head. “Speaking of cinema. Si, did you get your gear from Rosa? I saw the sketches after she completely redesigned it.”
Silas grabbed his phone, pulling up a photo of the gorgeous light-blue fabric with the Puerto Rican flag patch.
“That’s insane! She practically wove the island’s history right into your tights. You’re going to look like a literal superhero out there,” Evan said.
I glanced at the photo on Silas’s screen, and a slow, wicked smirk pulled at my lips. “It’s incredibly sexy,” I murmured, my eyes dragging up to meet his. “I’m going to have a very hard time pretending I want to murder you while you’re wearing that.”
“Oh for the love of God! We are in a public building. Can you two keep your dicks in your pants for five more hours? If a production assistant walks by and sees the champion looking like he wants to bend his rival over the ringside barricade, my career as a manager is over before it even starts.”
The chuckle Silas let free was deep,rumbling,and fuck, it shot straight to my groin. “Relax, Ev. We’re professionals.”
We wrapped up the walkthrough shortly after and had to separate to finish our respective pre-match routines. While Silas headed to medical to get his shoulder taped, I realized one final piece was missing for tonight. I wanted Silas to have a flag to walk out with. The exact one to match his newly redesigned gear. It was difficult, but I managed to slip away to the wardrobe department to search for Rosa in the midst of the Heatwave chaos. I waited until the room cleared out and she was alone at her sewing machine running some last-minute reinforcement stitching onto a pair of boots.
“Rosa,” I called softly as I entered and walked up to her side.
She looked up, a warm, maternal smile spreading across her face. “Hey, Callum. Does everything fit okay?”
“Perfectly,” I assured her, “But I need a favor. I want to have a matching flag brought in for Silas to carry during his entrance. What should I tell his dad to look for?”
Rosa’s smile softened. She reached into a drawer, pulled out a spool of the vibrant sky-blue thread, and handed it to me. “Its technical name is celeste. Tell him to look for the original flag. The lighter blue, not the navy one.”
“Thank you.” I immediately pulled out my phone to text Maverick the details.
As I typed, Rosa leaned against her cutting table, crossing her arms. “I noticed the necklace he was wearing yesterday at the photo shoot. The Taino Sun.”
I paused, a genuine smile breaking through my focus. The truth slipped out before I could check it. “Yeah, I got it for him. He was really anxious about coming here, and I wanted him to feel grounded.”
Rosa didn’t gasp. Instead, she reached out, resting a gentle, weathered hand on my forearm. “He’s your bright sunshine, Callum. He always has been.”
I froze. My thumb hovered over the screen. The air in the room disappeared faster than Silas’s first coffee of the morning. When I looked up at her, my heart hammered violently against my ribs. “Rosa, I—”
“Shh. You don’t need to panic,mijo. I’m not saying a word to anyone. I’ve been watching you two since you were kids. I saw how you looked at him back then, and I see how you both look at each other now.”
Tears pricked the back of my eyes, a hot flash of relief building behind them. Finally, someone knows besides family.
“It is a beautiful thing to love someone that fiercely,” she whispered, her eyes shining with unshed tears of her own. “Do not let this company, or this business, ever make you feel like you have to be ashamed of your golden boy.”
My chest heaved. To hear someone outside of our immediate bubble look at our relationship and see it not as a scandal, but as something beautiful and sacred,broke something inside me wide open. It flared a sudden, protective anger low in my gut. Pissed that the world around us ever looked at our love and demanded we hide it.
