Chapter 78: Fracture Lines
I didn’t go to Amber right away.
That surprised me.
For years, she’d been my constant. The fixed point. The one person in that house who had seen everything I saw and had been old enough to understand it the way I did. Where Tasmin’s memories softened at the edges, Amber’s had always been sharp, exacting. We had survived the same nights. The same broken glass mornings. The same apologies that smelled like beer and shame. Amber was the one who taught me how to listen for the sound of his truck in the driveway and read the mood of the engine before the door ever opened. She was the one who showed me how to pack a bag quickly and quietly, just in case. The one who learned first how to disappear in plain sight.
She was supposed to feel like I did.
That certainty sat in me like an anchor. Heavy. Unquestioned.
And maybe that was why I delayed. Because some instinct, buried deep beneath my ribs, whispered that anchors could drag you under if they shifted without warning.
When I finally drove to her place, the sky was overcast in that way that made everything look flatter than it really was. Muted colors. Soft light. A world holding its breath. Amber lived further out than Tasmin, in a house that felt grown-up in a way ours never had when we were kids. Clean lines. Warm wood. Big windows that let the light in instead of barricading against it. Proof that she had built something solid out of what we came from.
I sat in my rental car for a full minute before getting out.
Just breathing.
Just listening to the tick of cooling metal and the distant sound of birds. My chest felt tight, but not with panic. With anticipation. With something like grief, already bracing for impact.
I knocked. Once.
Amber opened the door with a soft smile already in place. “Kay,” she said, like my name was a relief. Like she was glad to see me.
That alone unsettled me.
“Hey,” I replied, keeping my voice level. Neutral. She stepped aside and let me in. Her house smelled like coffee and clean laundry. Familiar in a way that had nothing to do with childhood. She gestured toward the living room. I followed, taking in the details the way I always did when I was trying to keep myself steady. The way the cushions were arranged. The framed photos on the wall. None of them of him. That mattered.
She poured me coffee without asking. Another thing that should have comforted me. Another thing that didn’t. “So,” she said gently, handing me the mug as she sat across from me. “I was wondering when you’d come by.”
There it was. Not if. When. “You knew?” I asked.
She nodded. “Tas called me.”
Of course she had. Tasmin, always reaching for connection. Always trying to weave us together instead of letting us drift. I wrapped my hands around the mug, letting the heat sink into my palms. “He went to see her,”
“I know.”
“And you,” I continued, watching her face carefully, “you’ve seen him too.”
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t deny it. Didn’t rush to explain. She just took a slow breath and nodded again. “Yeah. I have.”
Something cold slid through my chest. “When?” I asked.
“A few weeks ago.”
Weeks. Not days. Not hours. Weeks of silence. Weeks where she’d sat with that information and chosen not to bring it to me. I felt the first real crack form then, thin but unmistakable. “And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“I didn’t know how,” she said honestly. “And I didn’t want to make it harder for you before you were ready.”
I let out a short, humorless breath. “You decided that for me?”
Her eyes softened, but her posture didn’t change. Calm. Grounded. “I decided to give you space.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” she agreed quietly. “It isn’t.”
Silence stretched between us, heavy and expectant. I could feel the anger stirring now, low and slow, like a tide pulling back before it surged. “What did he say to you?” I asked.
“He apologized,” Amber replied. “He didn’t ask for anything. He didn’t make excuses. He just… owned it.”
I swallowed. “And that was enough?”
“No,” she said immediately. “It wasn’t enough. But it was something.”
Something. That word again. The way everyone kept reaching for the smallest possible measure of progress and holding it up like proof of transformation. “You believe him….Just like Tas”
She considered that. “I believe that he’s sober. I believe that he knows what he did. I believe that he’s carrying regret.”
“And you think that changes anything?”
“For me?” She met my gaze. “Yes.”
The word hit harder than I expected. “For you,” I repeated.
She nodded. “Kay… I’m tired.” That caught me off guard. Not because it was dramatic, but because it wasn’t. She didn’t sound defensive. She didn’t sound hopeful. She sounded… done. “I’m tired of carrying him around inside me,” she continued. “Tired of waking up angry at a ghost. Tired of letting my past decide how much peace I’m allowed to have now.”
My jaw tightened. “So you just… let him back in?”
“I didn’t let him back in,” she said calmly. “I let him speak. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” The question came out sharper than I meant it to.
“Yes,” she said. Firm. “Because I didn’t open the door to who he was. I listened to who he says he is now. And then I made my own decision.”
“And that decision was to forgive him.”
“No,” Amber said, shaking her head. “That decision was to forgive myself.”
The room suddenly felt too small. “For what?” I asked.
“For surviving,” she said simply. “For staying. For being angry for so long. For not saving you sooner. For not saving Mom. For all the things I couldn’t control but punished myself for anyway.”
I stared at her, a familiar ache blooming behind my ribs. “He doesn’t deserve that,”
“This isn’t about what he deserves,” she replied. “It’s about what I do.”
There it was. The fault line. Clear now. Stark. “You’re acting like this is some kind of personal growth exercise,” I said quietly. “Like what he did was just… an obstacle you’ve finally learned to climb over.”
Amber leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “I’m acting like I don’t want to bleed from wounds he stopped inflicting years ago.”
“He didn’t stop,” I shot back. “He ran. There’s a difference.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “And running didn’t erase the damage. But it did stop new damage from happening.”
“That doesn’t earn him redemption.”
“I’m not redeeming him, I’m releasing him.”
The anger surged then, sharp and sudden, but I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t lash out. I felt it coil inside me, tightening, demanding release, and I denied it. The old habit. The one that kept me safe. “So what?” I asked, voice deceptively even. “You want me to do the same? Sit down with him and let him tell me how sorry he is?”
“No,” Amber said immediately. “I want you to do whatever lets you breathe.”
“What lets me breathe,” I said, “is knowing that what he did mattered. That it wasn’t just… something we’re expected to get over because enough time has passed.”
Her gaze softened. “Kay… it mattered. It still matters. Nothing about what I’m doing erases that.”
“It feels like it does. That everything I went through and everything I have ever thought has been nothing but a lie. That I’ve been wrong this entire time. That every failed relationship, every friendship I have ended and every single person I have pushed away hasn’t mattered either.”
She inhaled slowly. “I know…but it doesn’t.”
That admission hurt more than any argument would have. “Then why do it?” I asked.
“Because holding onto rage didn’t protect me anymore,” she said. “It just kept me tethered to him.”
I looked away, staring at the window, the dull gray sky beyond it. “You sound like everyone else,” I murmured.
“Everyone else?”
“Tas. Mom. Him.” My fingers curled tighter around the mug. “So ready to move on. So eager to believe he’s different. Like I’m the only one still standing in the wreckage.”
Amber stood then, slowly, and crossed the room. She stopped in front of me but didn’t touch me. Didn’t crowd me. She knew better. “You’re not wrong for feeling the way you do,” she said softly. “And you’re not alone in it. But you’re also not obligated to stay there forever.”
Something inside me cracked at that. Not loudly. Not visibly. Just a quiet fracture, spreading outward. “It feels like you chose him,” I said, barely above a whisper.
Her face tightened with pain. “I chose myself.”
The difference mattered to her. It didn’t to me. I stood abruptly, the chair scraping softly against the floor. “I need to go.”
“Kay….”
“I need to go,” I repeated, already moving toward the door. Not running. Just leaving. The way I always did when staying meant breaking apart. Amber followed me to the entryway.
“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” she said quickly. “I’m just saying your path doesn’t have to look like mine.”
I paused with my hand on the door. “It already doesn’t.” I left before she could respond. The trip home felt longer than it should have. The flight, the drive. Every street too wide. Every stoplight too slow. My chest ached, but I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just felt… hollowed out. Like something essential had been quietly removed while I wasn’t looking.
They were all forgiving him. Or at least, forgiving themselves enough to make space where he once stood. And I was alone in my refusal. By the time I got home, the sky had darkened, the gray deepening into something heavier. I sat there for a moment, feeling the weight of it all press down on me. Not just anger. Not just betrayal. But the slow, creeping realization that healing didn’t look the same for everyone and that sometimes, that difference felt like abandonment.
I didn’t hate Amber. That was the worst part. I loved her. I understood her. And I still felt betrayed. Inside, the house was quiet. Too quiet. I kicked off my shoes and leaned back against the door, closing my eyes. Everyone else was moving forward. Letting go. Releasing. Redeeming. And I was still standing guard over the ruins. Not because I couldn’t leave. But because someone had to remember what it cost to survive.
The end of enablement
”This division…..my division. Is a joke.”
Kayla Richards, the former SCW Bombshells Champion, sits in a penthouse suite at the MGM Grand. Because of course she would. And of course she would go out to Vegas two weeks before the show to enjoy some downtime. She takes a deep breath, a champagne flute in her hand, dressed in a tight-fitting white dress with a long slit going up one leg, which she crosses over the other as she relaxes on the white leather couch inside the main room of the suite.
”Last year, going into Inception, this company had two of the most dominant champions this business had ever seen. I was the World Bombshells Champion, and Finn Wheelan was the World Heavyweight Champion. Coming out of that show, Finn was still holding the World Championship, and I had lost the Bombshells Championship to Andrea Hernandez. Now, when I lost that championship, I made the decision to wait and regain it in the most dominating way possible by destroying every single woman that was in an Elimination Chamber match so I could snatch my championship back and prove to everyone that it was a fluke. I made that decision. No one else did.”
“And when I regained my Bombshells World Championship, Finn lost his World Heavyweight Championship. So in many ways, Inception last year was the final time that this company had real credibility on both levels. I would try to regain that credibility for the Bombshells by getting my championship back, but Finn had done so much for this company that it completely shredded his body. His shoulder was hanging on by a thread. His entire body and mental well-being were being given to this company. A company that never appreciated him. A company that has never appreciated me. And when I lost the Bombshells Championship to Frankie, I made the decision to step back and see how the division was going to play out.”
“I allowed Frankie Holiday to have a grace period to prove herself.”
“And where exactly did that mercy get me, the Bombshells Championship, and the division?”
“It destroyed it. It destroyed all credibility, as everything that I worked for for the better part of the last four years got flushed down the toilet. I dominated as an Internet Champion. I dominated as a Mixed Tag Team Champion. And then I dominated at the very top of the business. I set this division up to be something special. To regain the glory days before it was ruined by mediocrity. The same glory days that we saw when Alicia Lukas was champion. The same glory days when Amber Ryan and Roxi Johnson went to war. Those glory days. I had us back there. And then it was ruined. Flushed down the fucking toilet.”
Kayla pauses, taking a sip of her champagne before slowly putting the glass down on the table in front of her, the black marble making a small noise as the delicate glass touches it. Her long black hair is slicked back but still flowing down her shoulders, a pair of white gold earrings framing her face as a diamond nose stud shines under the bright light coming from above.
”This is my failure. I foolishly thought that Frankie was going to be the next big thing in this company. That she needed room to mature and breathe. So I allowed her to have that breathing room. I allowed her to have that little bit of extra rope to walk away from me. And do you know what happened when I gave Frankie Holiday that little bit of extra rope? I’ll give you one hint.”
“She fucking hung herself, and with it, this entire division.”
She spits her anger like venom, her green emerald eyes staring forward through heavily eyeshadowed makeup and black eyeliner, mascara making her eyelashes pop in a way that seems unnatural yet somehow evil.
”Now where are we? What is this division doing? Frankie Holiday is facing Aiden Reynolds’ much more talented sister. We have, in Amelia, a woman who could be a star against Frankie Holiday, who everyone thought was going to be a star. We have a Roulette Championship match between two old farts that nobody cares about, an Internet Championship match between someone who can’t get out of her own fucking way in Victoria Lyons and a perennial contender in Harper Mason.”
“And the stupidest and biggest joke of all: the World Bombshells Championship being defended in a tag team match. Let me repeat that, just on the off chance that there are some of you who haven’t been watching the show or keeping up with the fuckery that is going on. The top prize in our game, a championship that means you are the best of the best in the women’s division in this company, is being defended in a tag team match between the woman who flew her way into winning the damn thing, her perennial hang-on in Mercedes Vargas, against her ex-wife and her rookie fucking sister-in-law or cousin-in-law or whoever the hell Zenna is…”
“Are you all kidding me?”
“And to top off this birthday cake made out of dog shit and duct tape, what am I doing? In a situation where I could’ve saved the division, saved the show, and saved my precious Bombshells Championship— instead of facing Crystal and snapping her neck like a twig and showing her that the friendship that she and I had was nothing but a joke because she has turned into a joke— I am instead facing Bella Madison. And the saddest part about all of this is that I don’t hate the idea of facing Bella Madison. I don’t hate the idea of she and I having a match, because she seems like someone who could push me to the limit if properly motivated. The issue is the only one in this match who really has motivation is me. What’s Bella’s motivation? To beat someone who’s better than her? Shit, that’s her motivation in 90% of the matches that she ends up dragging her second-generation, pampered ass into.”
Kayla growls and sits forward, uncrossing her legs but keeping her knees together so we don’t have an accidental kitty wardrobe malfunction.
”Look, as painful as it is for me to admit this, Bella going against Crystal for the Bombshells Championship would be a hell of a lot better than the tag team match that we have for the title. It would make a hell of a lot more sense than myself and Bella going against each other. What would make more sense is this company taking the handcuffs off of me and allowing me to get my championship back by snapping that stupid, pathetic bitch’s neck. But since I can’t do that, and since I’m going into Inception to face you, Bella, then you are going to be the one who has to feel all of the anger and frustration that I have been going through over the last few months since losing my championship and making the decision to step back and watching it gloriously blow up in not only my face, but also the company’s face.”
“The last few months have been an absolute nightmare for me. From losing to Victoria, to having to face women like Candy and Zenna and Cassie. And now I’m going into a match with you. And I’d like to believe, Bella, that you understand the magnitude of this. And if you don’t understand the magnitude of this, I want you to go home, I want you to pick up your phone, and I want you to call your mother and ask her to explain it to you very slowly, because you might not get it.”
“You probably want to frame this as some sort of coming-out party for you. A chance for you to beat someone who was dominant. A chance for you to play out your contrived and overused Cinderella underdog story of the girl who everyone thinks is not good enough finally proving everyone wrong. And hey, I get it. It’s an interesting story, and it’s one that people really can get behind. You will have fans, and a lot of the people backstage, and you will have everyone else absolutely cheering you on, but the issue is that it won’t mean shit.”
“At some point, the applause and the back-patting and the love and outpouring that you get will end up stopping, and the bell will ring. And when the bell rings, a year in the ring with me, all bets are off, all Cinderella stories end up failing, and you will be left alone with a goddamn monster.”
“You come from a wrestling family. Your mother and father were professional wrestlers— great ones, even. You surround yourself with other professional wrestlers. You are friends with Miles, you’re friends with LJ, you are married to a professional wrestler. It just so happens that both your husband and his idiot older brother happened to be married to women who are much better at this wrestling thing than either of them. And in your case, that’s not saying much considering Malachi is a fucking joke.”
She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, leaning back to finish her champagne and calm herself down.
”I’m not going to sit here and say that you can’t beat me. I’ve said it before, Bella— if we’ve faced before or been involved in a match, you absolutely can beat me. Anyone can beat me. In one out of 100 matches, I’m sure that there is a timeline out there where I slip on a banana peel and fucking Candy gets a win over me. It’s not if you can beat me, it’s will you beat me? And I just don’t see it happening. Miracles can happen in this world, and yeah, you will come at me with everything that you have. I know that. You know that. Everyone knows that.”
“And you should know that your mother and father will be proud of you no matter what happens. But that’s what they’re supposed to do. They are supposed to love and cherish their baby girl. They’re supposed to support you no matter what. But Bella, trust me— the competitive side of them? There is a small part of your mother that dies every single time you get into the ring and end up failing. She watches as her daughter struggles and fails at the thing that came so naturally to her. And it’s because you simply can’t keep up. You rely too much on your family’s legacy. You rely too much on your last name. And you rely too much on the natural talent that you believe you have instead of getting in the gym and working.”
“I have a natural affinity for professional wrestling, but not the same that you have. The difference between you and me is that despite the fact I’m a natural at this, and even though I act like all of this is so easy, I get in the gym and I work my arse off. I run my mouth. I get in the ring. I do everything I can to win, and I leave it all out there in the ring every single time. I watched as the man I love destroyed his body for a championship. I watched him go through rehab after rehab when it came to his shoulder, and I watched him get stitched back together by fucking voodoo witch doctors.”
“And I would go through the exact same.”
“You want to beat me, Bella? You want to get in that ring and make a name for yourself and show the world that you are more than just a sad underdog story and a famous last name? Then you have to prove it by beating someone who matters. And trust me on this, sweetheart— I matter. And to beat me, you’re going to have to damn near kill me, because you will not be getting anything off of me that you haven’t fucking earned. So saddle up, grow a pair, get in the ring at Inception, and show me something more than what you believe yourself to be. Because if you bring the same tired bullshit that you always have? I’m going to eat you alive.”
