Page 70 of Glorious Ruin
Grabbing the back of his neck, I crashed my mouth onto his. Silas instantly melted into me, his tension disappearing as I kissed him fiercely. When I pulled back, I rested my head against his. A demand for him to call me his husband again lay on the tip of my tongue, but within a breath, we were interrupted.
BAM! BAM!
The door shook on its hinges.
“OPEN THIS GODDAMN DOOR! RIGHT NOW! BOTH OF YOU!” Presley’s voice roared from the hallway.
“You ready?”
“Let’s go face the music, husband,” Silas smirked, wiping blood from his lip.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?!” Presley screamed as I opened the door, getting right in Silas’s face. “I explicitly told you to keep your personal life off my screen and that I didn’t want a circus! You just turned my main event into a tabloid frenzy and brought chaos to my doorstep! I have sponsors as well as the network calling me!”
Presley pointed a shaking finger at Silas. “You’re suspended as well,indefinitely. Get your shit and get out of my building!”
“Wait,” Evan’s voice cut through the shouting. He stepped out from behind Presley, holding up his phone. “Presley, stop. Look at your phone!”
“I don’t care about social media posts!” Presley yelled.
“You should, because ‘husband’ is trending number one globally. Look at the videos.”
Presley paused his tantrum, his eyes scanning Evan’s screen. The frown on his face deepened, but the rage stalled.
“They aren’t mad,” Evan continued, looking at us with a wide grin. “They’re eating it up, Presley. Check the comments. There’s thousands of edits already. Everything from slow-motion clips of the punch, to edits of Silas screaminghusbandwith music over it. They’re analyzing every glance you guys have shared since Si came back. Captions like: ‘finally real’ and ‘we knew it’ on every post. They aren’t calling for you guys to be fired. They’re calling you legends. You’ve been dubbed the Wrestling Husbands and have gotten twenty million views in ten minutes.”
Silas let out a laugh, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his torn shirt. He looked at Presley, who stared at the phone as if it were a foreign object.
“Well,” Silas drawled, the ghost of a smile curling the side of his bloody lips. “Guess we just made you a lot of money, boss.”
17
HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
Now playing: Lurk - The Neighbourhood
Theproblemwiththerumor mill in professional wrestling is that it never runs out of material. It recycles the same trash, paints it a different color, and feeds it to the masses.
We were supposed to be having a quiet night. Just me, Silas, and Lena, tucked into a high-backed booth at the back of the hotel bar. We weren’t drinking, just trying to unwind and find a fleeting pocket of normal life amidst the wreckage of our careers.
We’d spent the last hour catching up and scrolling through Lena’s photos from her beach trip with the twins.
Two booths over, shielded by a decorative partition of fake ivy, the world, however, decided to intrude. A group of mid-card talent was holding court, their voices loud enough to carry over the low, rhythmic hum of the bar.
“Oh, please,” Dani’s voice cut through the air, sharp and confident. “You think you had a shot with either of them? Good luck. I heard rumours about his conquests while traveling. Honestly, how a guy like that, with that kind of reputation, ends up married to a man is just insane to me. It makes zero sense.”
A muscle feathered in my jaw, and I looked across the table at Silas. He was perfectly still, staring blankly at the condensation dripping down his water glass.
He didn't look angry, just...walled off. I could practically hear the gears grinding in his head. Silas already struggled enough with the years we were apart, but hearing it framed like this, like our marriage was some baffling punchline to the rest of the company, was the exact kind of thing that would send him into a tailspin. His brain was already working overtime, quietly stacking their gossip on top of Presley’s bullshit and whatever Rico had screamed in the hallway.
Silas slid out of the booth quickly and quietly. He adjusted the brim of his dark baseball cap, pulling it low over his eyes, and walked straight toward the doorway leading to the elevators without looking back.
“Cal,” Lena whispered in a tight tone. She reached across the table and grabbed my forearm. “Go after him, right now. You know how his brain works when he gets like this.”
“I’m going.”
Following him, the second my shadow fell across the opening of Dani’s table, everyone went silent. Dani froze, the glass in her hand stopped halfway to her mouth. Her face turned a pale shade of red. I didn’t give her the satisfaction, only a brief, knowing glance. As far as I was concerned, they were a table of ghosts who could choke on their own embarrassment. They weren't worth my words or reactions.
The elevator opened, and instantly I was swallowed by a feeling of unease. The small win I held from ignoring Dani’s group dissipated, knowing that behind our locked door, a potential storm was waiting for me.
