Page 78 of Glorious Ruin
Now playing: FEAR - NF
WhenPresleysawthefresh, bold, black script of Silas’s name inked permanently onto my neck, he didn’t lose his temper. He completely lost his mind. The screaming match in his office ended exactly how I suspected it would. Every storyline I had was scrapped, my merchandise pulled from the front page of the website, and my physical presence was now strictly confined to the backstage shadows.
To Presley’s dismay, I didn’t seem to mind it.
In fact, the forced exile had become a bizarre kind of blessing. Without the grueling physical demands of matches or the mental gymnastics of cutting live promos, I found myself gravitating toward the production side. As of late, I’d been spending a lot of time with Jim.
Jim had taken me under his wing with a quiet, unassuming grace. He told me I had an eye for the business that couldn’t be taught. We’d sit together for hours, and he would casually bounce random ideas off of me for fun, seeing how my brain worked around the logistics of a broadcast. Some of my ideas were even good enough that Jim implemented two of my spot-call suggestions onShowdown.
“You kids today, you have it down to a science,” Jim chuckled with a shake of his head. The two of us were sitting at the production monitors, aimlesslychatting to kill time. “But writing in the early nineties? It was like the Wild West, man. Beautiful, butbrutal. I watched a great era of professional wrestling build itself into an empire, and then burn itself right into the ground.”
He took a slow sip of his coffee, his eyes lingering on the screen showing the empty ring.
“Your father-in-law and Tate tore the house down every single night. People talk now about Deadlock and Timeless Silas, but Mav and Tate? They were magic. Between the blood spilt and chair shots that would get you arrested today, the chemistry they had in the ring was unparalleled.”
Jim let out a heavy sigh. “Those two should have gone much further than they ever got the chance to, but the constant push ground them down. Their egos, injuries, and the drinking… It fractured them.”
He turned in his chair, looking at me with those sharp eyes. “That’s the tragedy of this business. I’ve watched some of the greatest men to ever lace up a pair of boots push themselves to limits they had no business crossing, all for the glory of a pop from the crowd. The Reed brothers included.”
Jim paused, as if letting his words really sink in, before spearing me with his eyes.
“Which brings me back to my question from last week. When do you think you’ll be ready to hang up the boots?”
I stared at the monitor, my jaw tightening as I shrugged. “I still don’t know, Jim. I’ve never really thought about a life outside the ring.”
“You should start,” he advised gently.
His words echoed through my mind.Did I see myself wrestling until the grave?Was I going to be that guy in my fifties, covered in athletic tape, trying to hang with twenty-two-year olds who moved at the speed of light? Waking up every morning playing a guessing game of which joints would scream when my feet hit the floor?
The answer to that was staggeringly simple. No.
When I closed my eyes, the life I envisioned for myself was with Silas on the Reed land. Holidays at home, waking up in our bed instead of sterile hotel rooms. I even saw kids, which was a thought that had been quietly taking root in my chest lately.
With absolute certainty, I knew that to have that life, I would need to step out of the ring sooner rather than later. Terrifyingly, I was in a position to do it, if I really wanted to. My career was Hall of Fame bound, and Silas and I had the financial means for me to leave the ring tomorrow. If I chose, I wouldn’t even have to work at all. But all of this was dependent on whether Silas saw that future, too.
My mind drifted back to a rainy afternoon in Scotland years ago. I remembered Silas telling me he wanted a slow life, too.Wantedpeace.
The memory had me thinking. While our world was in chaos, and our careers were in a strange sort of purgatory, maybe this was a good time to have that conversation.
The broadcast was in full swing, and the backstage area was a hive of kinetic energy.
Silas was currently at the height of his bitter feud with Rico, and the framework for theFront Linespay-per-view was actively being laid out in the ring. The fans in the arena were deafening. Every time Rico touched a microphone, the crowd erupted into a thunderous, arena-shaking chant.
“DEADLOCK! DEADLOCK!”
Everyone was demanding I come back and defend my husband. They wanted a chaotic, and potentially bloody, reunion of the industry’s two biggest stars. Andif I’m honest, I don’t doubt they’d eventually book me for it. The money was too massive to ignore.
I stood in the shadows of Gorilla, watching the monitors while Evan stood next to me scowling at the screen.
“This is absolute bullshit,” Evan muttered, keeping his voice low so the nearby agents wouldn’t hear. “I hate seeing you two basically pretending to not be together, just to stick around this hellhole. The fans know. The locker room knows. So, you having to hide every time he has a fight is just insulting.”
I sighed, leaning my weight against a road case. “I don’t disagree, Ev. But it’s the hand we’ve been dealt. Presley is trying to starve the fire of oxygen.”
“Presley is a moron,” Evan fired back.
Si ended up winning his fight against Rico, and I ended up rewarding him in our broom-closet dressing room after the fact. It’s been two hours since, and although the feral adrenaline had faded, replaced by a soft, domestic exhaustion, my head still swam with Jim’s conversation. I wouldn’t be able to truly relax until I figured out where Si’s head was for our future. Where he saw us in five or ten years.
Back in our sprawling hotel suite, I was in aftercare mode, a side of me very few people outside of Silas knew existed. I had drawn him a hot bath to soak his sore muscles, helped him wash the sweat and grime from his hair, and rubbed a cooling arnica gel into his skin.
