Chapter 70: Days of our lives
Summer XXXtreme had been an amazing event for me. Not just professionally but also personally. In my professional life, I was able to overcome a challenge that so many others thought that I wouldn’t be able to. And in my personal life, a milestone event happened. While I was trying to avoid the fans who were on the cruise and while I was shopping, I had a moment that some dream of.
I got proposed to.
By the love of my life.
And when the cruise ship pulled into port, we went back to the airport, flew back home, and got ready to have a well-earned vacation. Finn had kept up with his rehab on his shoulder. I had some well-deserved rest after my championship defense and showing the world yet again that I am just as good as I say that I am. And when I curled up in bed last night and drifted off to sleep, I had never been happier and more content than I had ever been.
My life was moving in the direction that I wanted it to.
But with all things in life, just as everything is looking to be moving on up, someone has to go and shit in your cereal.
My eyes opened. I lifted my arms up over my head, stretching, hearing the various pops and cracks that happen when you have your body slammed on wooden slats for a living. I looked over to the side and Finn was already up. I could smell the coffee drifting through our home as I got to my feet, grabbing hold of my white satin dressing gown and moving out into the hallway toward the kitchen. But something seemed off.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but everything seemed different. More colorful, sharper. Almost as if I was seeing it through a weird 4K filter. It looked hyper-realistic. I turned the corner and stopped in my tracks, Finn stood in the kitchen sipping his coffee. ”Hey…”
He slowly smiled, stepping over to me. He wrapped his arm around my midsection, pulling me closer, giving me a small kiss before looking into my eyes and winking at me. ”Hey yourself…” That felt weird. Not that I don’t enjoy it when he gives me attention like that, but it just seemed off. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then I noticed it. He didn’t have his arm in his sling.
”Feeling better?” I motioned toward his arm.
Finn raised an eyebrow and didn’t even acknowledge his shoulder. ”I’ve never felt better….”
He let me go and moved to the side, reaching over and grabbing my coffee mug, putting it in front of me. He had already made me my coffee. I took it in my hands and gave it a sip before making a contented and happy sigh. ”So what are your plans today? Does Dickie need help running his criminal empire?” I tried to hide the annoyance and disdain in my voice. But as always, I didn’t do too good of a job.
Finn folded his arms over his chest. He flicked his head to the side to move some of his hair from in front of his eyes. There was something strange about his hair. Normally it flowed very naturally. Like he just woke up and ran a comb through it to make sure it was where he wanted it, but this time there was a certain stiffness to it and a certain flow, almost like he had added product to it. That is something that is decidedly not my fiancé. He is not the type of person to wear any type of product in his hair. ”I’m not sure. Dickie is… there’s a problem and only I can fix it…. I don’t want to lose my little brother Kayla!”
I blinked a few times trying to process what I just heard. And what I just saw. The entire scene in front of me was an exercise in melodrama. While Finn had been telling me about Dickie, his body language was sharp and dramatic. His voice had risen and fallen in different ways. It was taking me a moment to process that. It seemed wrong, manufactured, and acted. ”I… ok…..” I had no idea how to respond to it. I simply sipped my coffee and sat back as Finn seemingly returned to normal the second he was done speaking.
This was weird….
After finishing my coffee, I got up to go and get dressed. I did my hair and I did my makeup, walking out in my Gymshark workout gear. I stretched a little before walking over to Finn. We were about to do our usual morning routine where I tell him that I’m going to go to the gym and give him subtle hints that I’d rather he take me to the bedroom. He will then play around a little, but ultimately I will end up going to the gym and he will go about his day which had usually been trying to research new ways to rehab his shoulder and come back earlier.
I walked out and looked over at him with a grin. ”So I’m going to go to the gym. Unless you have something better I should be doing?” I smirked. Finn looked up at me and suddenly took me in his arms. I couldn’t help myself and let out a small squeak of surprise. His lips crashed into mine as he pulled me onto his lap on the couch. ”Oh shit… Finn”
He gripped hold of me, hard. He pulled back, staring into my eyes with a mix of lust and affection. ”Kayla, my love. You know how much I love you and how much lust I have for you….. I want to take you!”
While the sudden actions turned me on, the way Finn just said that didn’t. Something was wrong. Something was off. And it was taking me out of the moment. I tilted my head and before I could say anything, there was a feverish knock at the door. A machine-gun rattle as if it was someone who was panicking. I got up and moved over, opening the door only to find my younger sister Tasmin. She stepped through looking shocked. ”Tas? I didn’t even know you were in Colorado. What are you do-“
”Kayla… I have the most horrible news. Alejandro is dead.” Tasmin threw her hands in the air, her right hand moving up to her forehead. She threw her body back and started to cry. I blinked a few times, looking around the room, looking over at Finn who seemed frozen, and then back to my sister.
”Who the fuck is Alejandro?”
Before Tasmin could answer, Dickie burst through the door. He was taking a few deep breaths and looked shaky. ”And what the hell is wrong with you?”
Dickie was breathing heavy and for some reason he was wet, like he had just walked out of a thunderstorm. I looked outside to see a beautiful sunny day. I shook my head and then looked back at Dickie, confused as to just what the fuck was going on. Dickie breathlessly started talking. ”They… they found him.”
”Who?”
Finn stood up. He looked at his brother who looked back at him with a solemn look. ”My evil twin….. DONNY!”
”Not Donny!”
I stood there for a moment, looking from side to side, my eyes darting between my sister, my fiancé and his brother. The three of them kept going with their overly dramatic conversations. After a few moments, I couldn’t handle it any more. My head was pounding and this entire situation was ridiculous. ”What the fuck is going on here?”
This was all very confusing. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing or seeing. Slowly, Dickie, Finn and Tasmin walked toward me. My heart started racing. I had no idea what was going on. And then.
I woke up.
”What the fuck?” My heart was beating fast, but I was in my bed. I looked over and found Finn laying there fast asleep. The sun just barely coming up over the mountains. I took a deep breath and laid back, staring at the ceiling. ”What a nightmare…” I took a breath, closing my eyes and relaxing. That nightmare was horrible. It was almost like I was in some kind of….
Soap opera…
A diamond in the toilet
”Oh no… I’m still the champion…”
Kayla Richards holds up the SCW World Bombshells Championship. She looks at it, tilting the main plate toward her face before turning it back to the camera and then sliding the belt over her shoulder, clutching it tightly.
”But everyone told me Summer XXXtreme was going to be my downfall. Everyone told me that the Blast from the Past winner, Frankie Holiday, was going to take this championship and become the fastest rising star this company has ever seen. That’s what everyone was saying. All over social media and Inferno leading up to the match. All of these armchair experts telling me that I had no chance, that Frankie was going to be the next big thing. The downfall of Kayla Richards. The downfall of the dynasty that I had created. Everyone was waiting with bated breath to be able to sing my downfall and her praises.”
“But, apparently I didn’t read the script. Apparently, I didn’t get the memo. I beat Frankie Holiday, and I did it in style. And much to the surprise of nobody, the second that I did, Frankie was playing damage control. She started talking about how she’s only had a handful of matches and she will get better and come back. So this woman who admittedly beat a hell of a lot of great names on her way to facing me, who is still a rookie, suddenly acts like experience matters when she just spent two weeks before getting into the ring with me trying to tell us all that experience meant nothing.”
“Well, Frankie. Would you like to tell the class what you’ve learned now, you silly little bitch?”
“Experience matters. And now you have two roads to walk down, my dear. One road is that you don’t learn from this. You keep running your mouth and you keep doing the same thing that you have been. Discounting people’s experience while singing your own praises. You let that ego that has already grown out of control spiral higher and higher. And you’ll still have success, but you’ll never reach the height that you should have. Because you won’t reach your potential. The other path is that you accept the loss to me and you realise you need more seasoning. You realise that sometimes you’re the hammer and sometimes you are the nail, and in our match, I was the hammer. And you took quite a pounding.”
“So… learn from this. Come back stronger and come back after me. I’ll be waiting for you, Frankie, because I genuinely believe if there is anyone in this business who can beat me, it’s you.”
Kayla chuckles and takes a deep breath before stretching and then continuing
”There is so much going on around this championship and around me right now. Aside from beating Frankie, there is a match coming up between three women, and the winner gets to face me next week for the championship. Not to mention if I get past that challenge, I will be facing Andrea Hernandez again. I have to be honest, I’m not very excited about that one. Facing Andrea Hernandez again makes me sick to my stomach, but not because I might lose to her, because the idea of it bothers me to fucking tears. How many times do I have to beat this woman before she just goes away? How many times do I need to bury her deep before she can’t dig her fucking way back up again like some kind of rotting zombie corpse?”
“Alexandra Calaway, Bella Madison, Victoria Lyons…”
“The three of you have an opportunity. Not an opportunity to actually win this championship in Greece. No, that’s not going to happen, don’t be ridiculous. But you have an opportunity to put on a good showing and win an opportunity. The only problem is winning that triple threat match means that you will end up having to face me. And that is where the advantage will come and die. This is where your opportunity will lay down and not get back up. As good as the three of you are, none of you are good enough to beat me. Alexandra, you are a ring veteran who has done this for a very long time, but against me, you are nothing. You are just an ageing star who doesn’t know when to quit.”
“Bella, you will never be as good as your mother. And no matter how hard you try, I am on a level that is unattainable for you.”
“And Victoria…”
“You silly, arrogant little twit. You finally lost that joke of a championship and now you think you can step up to the big girls’ table. Unfortunately for you, aside from that fluke of a win when you took the Mixed Tag Team Championships off myself and Finn with your idiot relative, you have never been able to beat me. And one-on-one, you have zero chance. So the three of you can fight over the scraps all you want. All you’re going to be is a warmup for me as I go on to face Andrea Hernandez and defend my title against someone who knows what it’s like to actually beat me one-on-one.”
Kayla shakes her head and acts as if she is done cutting a promo before stopping, her eyes widening as she slaps herself in the forehead.
”Oh wait, I just realised, all of this exciting stuff with this championship, like facing Frankie Holiday and then going on to face Andrea, and having three challengers vying for an opportunity against me next week… I completely forgot to mention the fact that I’m going to be in action at Climax Control. I completely forgot that I’m getting into the ring against Diamond Caldwell. And why wouldn’t I forget that? This is a random throwaway match with a random throwaway opponent. Do you know why you’re here, Diamond? Do you know why you’ve been booked in this match against me? Because they know I want to get in the ring. You are a sacrificial lamb. Being offered up on a platter, ready to be slaughtered.”
“Do you realise who you’re facing? Combined, I have been champion for over 400 days. My first championship run was almost 300 days, and this one is already well over 100. I have spent most of my career in this company holding some form of championship. I think it’s safe to say at this point that I am one of the greatest Bombshells to ever step foot inside an SCW ring. And you are who they put against me? You? You have to be joking.”
“All I have to do is remind everyone what I’ve done. I just have to look at the camera and tell the entire planet and everyone who is interested in this company all the names that I’ve beaten. And then they look at someone like you who hasn’t beaten anyone in this company. You barely turn up. You can’t be bothered to cut a promo before any of your matches, so no one cares. So now I have to shoulder all of the responsibility to get people interested in this match, and to be quite honest with you, they shouldn’t be interested in this match.”
“Nobody likes watching a one-sided beatdown.”
“But that is where we find ourselves. And I am scratching my head, wondering exactly where we are going to go here. You had an opportunity to earn a championship match. You were there at the Supercard and you could’ve stopped Andrea Hernandez from getting another opportunity against me. But you didn’t, because you failed. It seems to be a running theme with everyone from your family.”
Kayla twitches, her body language showing that she is annoyed with this entire situation. Her jaw clenches together as she takes a deep breath before continuing.
”Seleana, one of your wives, by the way this whole polyamorous three-way marriage thing is completely ridiculous and you all need to just stop. But those are your own personal choices, so I’m just gonna focus on the fact that both of your wives are complete idiots. Seleana can’t buy a win to save her life. She is a constant disappointment to everyone in this company and should just retire and go raise goats on some random farm in Sweden or some other stupid bullshit. And Crystal? There was a time when I honestly thought that I could look up to her, that she and I were friends. But the more I realised what kind of person she is, the more I’ve realised that she is not a friend to anyone.”
“Crystal uses people. She was trying to use me to keep herself relevant in the spotlight. And then there’s you. The third wheel in this weird, wonky tricycle of stupidity. You walk into this company, you act like you’re going to do something worthwhile, and then go about wasting everybody’s time. Failing every single time you get in the ring, failing every single time you get on the microphone. And now here you are, wasting my time, making me cut a promo on you and actually train for a match against someone who has no business being in the ring with me, let alone the same fucking company.”
“So, this is what I’m going to do.”
“I’m going to walk into this match against you, and I’m going to do everything I can to expose you as the horrible professional wrestler that you are. I’m going to outlast you in every way, shape, and form. And when the dust settles and you have to go home and look at yourself in the mirror, you are going to realise that this business and this profession is not for you. Then you are going to divorce your idiot wives, you are going to walk away from this business and walk away from that relationship, and you are going to go and do something else. I don’t care what it is. But you are not going to be a professional wrestler, because you don’t deserve the distinction of calling yourself a professional wrestler. That is what you have to look forward to. Now you have a choice, you can turn up and receive your beating, or you can stay at home. You can retire, and you can leave this business…”
“With a whimper instead of a roar…”
“Because that is all someone like you deserves.”
