Chapter 75: In the Quiet
There’s a certain kind of silence that settles in when you start to lose trust in your surroundings. It isn’t the calm, comforting silence of peace. It’s heavier. Denser. The kind that hangs in the air like smoke after a fire, something unseen, but impossible to ignore.
That’s what my house has felt like ever since the box showed up.
I don’t even have to open my eyes anymore to feel it. It’s in the air when I wake up. It’s in the sound of Finn’s footsteps on the floorboards when he moves from one room to the next. It’s in the pauses between our conversations. We’re both pretending not to notice, but it’s there, always there. It’s been three days since the poppy arrived. Three days since I confronted Jace’s men. Three days since I heard his voice and realized that, for once, he might not be lying. And that’s what scares me the most. Because if it wasn’t him, then who was it? Every instinct I’ve ever trusted is screaming at me that there’s something wrong. But I can’t quite find the shape of it. It’s like standing in a dark room, knowing someone else is there but never seeing their outline. Just… knowing. Feeling. Breathing through it.
I’ve checked everything, every camera, every piece of mail that’s come since, every shadow that moves too slowly past the window. Nothing. Not a damn thing. Still, I can’t shake it. Finn hasn’t said anything. He’s smart like that. He knows when to give me space. But I can tell he’s watching. Not in a controlling way, just… attentive. Concerned. When I walked into the kitchen this morning, he was already there, leaning against the counter, scrolling through his phone. The smell of coffee filled the room, but it didn’t feel the same. The mug he handed me was warm, comforting, but his eyes lingered a second too long when I took it from him.
“Didn’t sleep again?” he asked.
“Something like that.”
“Bad dreams?”
“No,” I said, taking a sip. “Just… thinking.”
He nodded, but I could feel the question he didn’t ask hanging between us. He wanted to ask if it had to do with Jace. He wanted to know if I’d done something I wasn’t supposed to. And maybe part of him already suspected. But Finn’s not the type to push. Not unless he has to. He’s seen me unravel before, and he knows when I’m one thread away from breaking apart. So instead, he smiled that careful, soft smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes anymore and said, “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”
I wanted to believe that. I really did. But right now, it doesn’t feel like I’m figuring anything out. It feels like I’m drowning in the space between questions I can’t answer. The first time I noticed something off, it was late afternoon. I was in the living room, sitting on the couch, pretending to read. The book was open, but my eyes kept drifting toward the window. Across the street, a car was parked. Black sedan. Tinted windows. Same as the one Jace’s people used.
My stomach turned.
It had been there when I woke up that morning. And again after lunch. When I finally got up and walked to the window, I caught the faintest flicker of movement, someone shifting inside. The silhouette of a head.
My hand tightened around the curtain.
For a split second, I almost went outside again, ready to drag someone out of the driver’s seat and demand answers. But then I stopped. Because if I did that, if I made another scene like the last time, Finn would know something was wrong. And I couldn’t explain it. Not yet. Not without sounding like I’d lost it. So instead, I walked away. Sat back down. Tried to breathe. When I looked again an hour later, the car was gone. Coincidence. Maybe. But the feeling in my chest didn’t ease. That night, I found myself staring at the small red poppy again. I hadn’t thrown it away. It sat on the counter, in the same small box it came in. I told myself I was keeping it as evidence, in case I needed to prove something. But that was a lie.
I kept it because part of me couldn’t.
Couldn’t throw away the one thing that still connected to that part of me, the part that remembered what it was like to be safe, to laugh, to feel warmth on my skin without fear trailing close behind.
Now, it just mocked me.
I turned the box over in my hands, running my thumb along the smooth cardboard, and tried to think. Who else could it have been? Not Jace. Not Amber. Finn wouldn’t do it. He doesn’t even know the full story behind the poppies, that memory belongs to me alone.
So who?
Someone from the compound? Someone from my past that I didn’t bury deep enough? The longer I sat there, the louder my thoughts became. The house was silent except for the ticking of the clock, but my head was a storm. Every shadow looked like it was moving. Every sound made me tense. By the time Finn walked in from the bedroom, I didn’t even realize how tightly I was holding the box. “You okay?” he asked quietly. I looked up. He was leaning against the doorframe, arms folded, studying me. His expression was calm, neutral, but his eyes said everything. He knew I wasn’t okay. He knew something had shifted.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
He didn’t call me out on it. He just nodded slowly, as if agreeing to the lie because he knew I needed him to.
“Try to get some sleep,” he said softly before walking away.
When I heard the bedroom door close, I finally exhaled. Sleep didn’t come easy. When it did, it was restless. I dreamed of the park again, the grass, the smell, the poppies swaying in the wind. But when I turned around, there was no one else there. Not Amber. Not my brother. Not even my dead father’s shadow lurking nearby.
Just me. Alone.
And when I looked down, the poppies weren’t red anymore. They were black. Wilted. Crumbling under my hands. I woke up with my heart pounding, the sound of rain against the window mixing with the echo of my own breathing. Finn was still asleep beside me, his arm draped loosely over my waist. For a moment, I thought about waking him, telling him everything. But then I didn’t. Because how do you explain something like this? How do you tell the person who thinks you’re the strongest woman in the world that you’re afraid of a flower?
So I lay there. Watching the rain. Pretending I could fall back asleep.
The next morning, things felt different again. I could see it in Finn’s eyes, the quiet worry that he was trying so hard to hide. He made breakfast. Asked if I wanted to go for a walk. Offered to drive into the city together. All the small, careful gestures of a man trying to fix something without knowing what’s broken. I smiled, said I had work to do. Watched his shoulders drop almost imperceptibly before he nodded and walked out the door. As soon as he was gone, I felt that silence again. That thick, heavy silence. I turned back toward the window, and froze. There it was again. The black sedan. Parked a little farther down this time. But this time, I didn’t go outside. I just stood there, staring. Watching. And for a split second, I thought I saw a camera lens glint in the morning light. My hand clenched around the curtain, nails digging into the fabric. “Who the fuck are you?” I whispered to myself.
But the car didn’t move. It just sat there, quiet and patient. Just like me. When Finn came home that evening, I was sitting in the same spot I’d been in all day. He paused in the doorway, looking at me, then at the untouched cup of tea on the table. “You been sitting there all day?”
I shrugged.“Didn’t feel like doing much.”
“You’re pulling away again,” he said, not accusing or angry. Just stating it.
“I’m not.”
He gave a small, humorless chuckle. “You are. You think I don’t notice? You think I don’t see when you start building walls again?”
I turned to him, the words sharp before I could stop them. “Maybe I’m tired of pretending everything’s fine.”
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t argue. He just looked at me with that same quiet patience that always made me feel both safe and guilty at the same time. “I know you,” he said softly. “And I know when you’re scared. Just… let me in, Kay.” The silence that followed stretched so long I thought I’d break it. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Because if I let him in now, he’d see how far gone I really am.
Later that night, after Finn fell asleep, I stood at the window again. The street was empty. No sedan. No headlights. Nothing. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was out there, watching.I picked up the box again, opened it, and stared at the red poppy inside. Its petals looked almost too perfect, like they hadn’t aged a day. That’s when I noticed something I hadn’t before. Underneath the lining of the box, tucked so carefully it was almost invisible, was a folded piece of paper. My hands trembled as I pulled it free. Unfolded it. One line. Handwritten. Small, delicate letters.
“Spring always comes back around.”
My throat went dry. Because whoever wrote that didn’t just know what the poppy meant. They knew when it meant something.They knew everything.I turned toward the window one last time, eyes scanning the darkness.
And for the first time in a long while, I wasn’t sure if I was standing in my home anymore, or in someone else’s game.
This is what I am now?
”Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”
Kayla clears her throat and leans forward; her elbow rests on her knee as her hands run through her long black hair.
”It wasn’t meant to be like this, you know? I wasn’t meant to fall the way I have. I have been so successful and so good at what I have done for so long that this entire situation is foreign to me. It has been so long since I’ve lost two matches in a row and not been a champion that it just feels wrong. Like there’s something different in the universe that simply should not be there. Like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich—or jam, as we call it in the rest of the world, you filthy Americans—but a peanut butter and jam sandwich using smooth peanut butter instead of crunchy. It just feels wrong. It just feels like it’s incomplete, like there is something missing. That’s how it feels right now in every aspect of my life because of what has happened.”
“Frankie beating me and taking that championship off of me was one thing. But me being shoved aside and overlooked for an immediate rematch when I have earned the right to have a rematch is what has really gotten into my head. It burrowed in there like an earworm, whispering deep into my memory. It started telling me that I wasn’t good enough, that the entire world was happy that I failed. And maybe they were. Maybe everyone is happy that I finally lost. And not only did I lose, but I didn’t get a rematch. I had to earn a rematch.”
“Despite the fact that everyone else just gets handed rematches when they haven’t even been anywhere close to the type of champion I was.”
“So I was overlooked. I was shoved aside. I was entered into a tournament to earn my way back to Frankie. And considering I have run my way through everyone in that locker room, I was prepared to do it again. Then I hit a roadblock. A roadblock named Victoria Lyons. And let me be very clear on this, Victoria: you may have beaten me once, but you need to wake up to a fact that everyone else in this company figured out long before you. I’m better than you. You should not have beaten me. I’ll say it right now — you should not have gone on to face Bella Madison, at all. You did not deserve to be in that position. You did not deserve to beat me, and you did not deserve to think that you, in any way, shape, or form, are close to the same type of competitor that I am.”
She can’t help but laugh as she shakes her head and pushes her way to her feet. Pacing back and forth, you can see that she’s irritated.
”If you and I were to face each other again, Victoria, I would plaster you all over the canvas. I would destroy you. The fact is that you ended up having to get lucky to advance in this tournament, and I was dumbfounded because you don’t deserve to be there. But karma has a funny way of correcting things, doesn’t it? Because while you were somehow able to beat me, you then went up against Bella and promptly failed. Bella — as good as she is, she isn’t on my level, and I thought she wasn’t on yours. I thought you were better than her. That’s all we ever heard from you, isn’t it? And you failed. When the bright lights were on and you had a chance to go for that match against Frankie and become the World Bombshells Champion, you ended up not being able to do it.”
“Suck shit, Vicky…”
“I really mean that…”
“But while Victoria Lyons crashing and burning fills me with all sorts of joy, I’m still left wondering what this company wants to do with me. I’m too big of a star to be anywhere near the internet or roulette championships. Apparently they’re not going to give me a shot at Frankie — or they’re protecting her from me because they know damn well that if Frankie were to face me again, I’d rip her fucking head off. So what do you do with Kayla Richards? What do you do with the woman who ran all the way through this roster? What do you do with the woman who made Andrea Hernandez quit without having to actually face her in a match? Well, it appears as if they don’t know.”
Kayla shrugs and throws her hands in the air before taking a deep breath and continuing.
”In fact, it’s blatantly obvious that they have no idea. I lost to Frankie, who is the current Bombshells Champion. I lost to Victoria, who — let’s be honest — got a fluke over me. And then, as another insult, I get put in a match with Candy. Candy. The answer to a question that nobody asked. A woman who constantly loses, is not ranked on any contender lists, barely shows up, doesn’t take the professional wrestling business seriously. Is this some kind of joke? This has legitimately made me angry. This is not Kayla Richards the professional wrestler talking. This is Kayla the human being. And Christian Underwood, I’m talking directly to you with this.”
”This is a fucking insult. This is an insult to my talent. This is an insult to my credibility, and this is an insult to what I choose to be. So, legitimately, Christian — fuck you. Fuck you and fuck everyone else in that front office because you all, for some reason, believe that I need to be handheld and I need to face someone who barely does anything and hasn’t been a factor in this company or in the business for the last three years. Instead of letting me face Frankie and getting my rematch or putting me up against someone who is actually talented or on the rise, you simply put me in the ring with a barely functioning piece of fluff.”
”You put me in the ring against someone who barely knows what day it is, whose best friend is a fucking dog. And hey, I guess it’s fitting, because it’s great to see Candy hanging out with her dog — it’s great to see two people at the same IQ just shooting the shit.”
”And yes, Candy, I know you are probably sitting there listening to me talk. There are some little parts of your pee-brain that are registering that a lot of what I’m saying about you are insults. So sit your dog in front of the computer, let the dog watch my promo, and then have the dog explain to you exactly what I’m saying and how I’m insulting you so you can properly understand how angry I am and how I’m going to kick your head into the first fucking row.”
”Climax Control is going to be a moment you won’t forget, Candy. Well, maybe you will forget it — it depends how hard I decide to fucking hit you. But no one else will. They will remember what I do to you for years. And then maybe, just maybe, this company will start giving me the respect that I deserve.”
