Precious Moments
Kasey-Calaway Home
The sunlight peeked in through their bedroom window, sliding through the thin gap in the curtains and spilling across the bed in a soft wash of gold. It warmed Alexandra’s shoulder first, then her cheek, coaxing her gently from sleep. She blinked slowly, adjusting to the light, and became aware of the steady rise and fall of the body pressed against hers.
LJ was still asleep. He had rolled toward her sometime in the night, and now his arm was wrapped securely around her waist, his hand fisted loosely in the fabric of her shirt as if even in his dreams he needed to make sure she was there. His leg was tangled with hers beneath the blankets, warm and heavy, keeping her anchored in place.
She shifted just enough to see his face. Sleep softened him. The usual spark in his expression was replaced by something peaceful, almost boyish. His lashes rested against his cheeks, his lips slightly parted with each slow breath. A faint line marked his pillow where he’d pressed into it, and his hair was a mess, falling across his forehead in a way that would normally drive him crazy. Alexandra smiled.
Carefully, she lifted her hand and brushed the hair away from his eyes. Her fingers lingered against his temple, tracing the familiar curve of his face. “You’re so handsome when you’re not being stubborn,” she whispered, her voice barely louder than the hum of the ceiling fan. He didn’t wake. But he made a soft, sleepy sound and pulled her closer.
The movement was instinctive. His arm tightened around her waist, drawing her flush against his chest until there wasn’t an inch of space left between them. His chin dipped, resting lightly against the top of her head. She could feel the warmth of his breath in her hair.
“Okay,” she murmured, smiling at him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She let her palm slide over his chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his heart beneath her hand. It beat strong and sure, a quiet reminder that this was real. That he was real. That this life they were building together wasn’t some fragile dream that would dissolve with the morning light.
“I love you,” she whispered softly. The words settled into the space between them, simple and true. He shifted slightly, his fingers flexing at her back, but he stayed asleep.
His body responded to her voice even if his mind didn’t. He tucked her in closer, his nose brushing faintly against her temple in a sleepy nuzzle that made her breath catch.
Her throat tightened unexpectedly. “I can’t wait to marry you,” she continued quietly, her fingers tracing absent patterns against his chest. “I can’t wait to call you my husband. To wake up like this every morning for the rest of our lives.”
The sunlight crept higher, catching on the curve of his cheekbone and turning his skin warm gold. She watched it move, watched the way it made him look almost unreal.
“I can’t wait for the loud mornings,” she went on softly. “The messy ones. The days we’re running late and arguing over who forgot to set the coffee maker.” She smiled to herself. “I can't even wait for the hard days. As long as it’s with you.”
He inhaled deeply, and for a second she thought he might wake. But instead, he only tightened his hold again, one broad hand sliding slowly up her back in a lazy, unconscious motion. It settled between her shoulder blades, warm and protective.
She pressed her face closer to his chest, breathing him in. “You don’t even know how much you mean to me,” she whispered. “How safe you make me feel. How steady everything feels when you’re next to me.” Her fingers curled lightly into his shirt.
“I used to wonder what forever would look like,” she admitted quietly. “And now I know. It looks like this. Sunlight and you half-asleep and refusing to let me move.”
As if to prove her point, LJ shifted again and pulled her impossibly closer, his leg hooking more firmly around hers. His lips brushed clumsily against her hair in another unconscious kiss. Alexandra laughed under her breath.
“You’re ridiculous,” she said fondly. “You’re not even awake and you’re still making me fall in love with you.”
She lifted her head just enough to press a soft kiss to his chest, right over his heart. The steady thump beneath her lips made her close her eyes for a moment.
“I promise I’m going to love you like this forever,” she whispered. “Even when we’re old and grumpy. Even when you steal all the blankets. Even when you pretend you don’t want to cuddle.”
He made a low sound in his sleep, something between a sigh and a hum, and buried his face more securely against her. His hand tightened once more at her back, as if sealing some silent agreement. She smiled, blinking back the sudden sting of happy tears.
“I can’t wait to start the rest of our lives,” she said softly. “I can’t wait to build everything with you. Every holiday, every ordinary Tuesday, every late-night conversation. All of it. I want all of it with you.”
The room remained quiet except for their breathing. The sunlight now fully bathed the bed, wrapping them in warmth, but neither of them moved. Alexandra settled against him again, letting her weight sink into the solid comfort of his embrace. She felt small there, protected and cherished in a way that didn’t need grand gestures or dramatic declarations.
Just this. Just him holding her, even in sleep. “I love you, LJ,” she whispered one last time. He didn’t wake. But his arms stayed wrapped around her, firm and sure, as if even in his dreams he already knew.
Never Gonna Stop
Unknown Location
The iron gate does not swing so much as it complains, a long, tired groan rolling out into the evening as Alexandra lays her hand on cold metal and persuades it to open. The hinge sounds like it has remembered every season it has endured, every storm that has rattled its bones, every time someone crossed this threshold with grief in their throat and flowers trembling in their hands, and it resents the living enough to make them work for it. Alexandra does not. She applies pressure with the steady ease of someone who expects the world to yield when she asks, and the gate gives way just enough for her to pass through, the iron brushing the lace of her sleeve as if testing the texture, as if curious whether this woman is velvet or blade.
“That was like a welcome home..” She looked at the iron gate as she spoke.
She steps into the cemetery and the air changes, not dramatically, not like a door slamming shut behind her, but like a slow exhale, a subtle shift that presses the scent of damp earth and standing water closer to her skin. Spanish moss hangs thick from the oaks, trailing in gray-green veils that sway gently, stroking one another as though whispering. The ground is softer than it ought to be, a skin of moss and slick grass over mud that remembers rain and refuses to dry, and between leaning headstones the swamp has begun its quiet invasion, black water pooling in shallow basins where it reflects pieces of twilight sky. Fireflies drift in lazy arcs, their light blinking like distant lanterns across a forgotten yard, and somewhere beyond the fence frogs sing with the steady confidence of creatures that have never needed permission to survive.
Alexandra’s dress belongs to this place the way candlelight belongs to a parlor, not because it is modest, but because it is deliberate. Black lace overlays pale silk that catches what little light filters through the canopy, the fabric moving in soft, controlled waves with each step, the bodice fitted in a way that shapes her posture into something unyielding and regal, while the neckline curves with a femininity that is not offered so much as possessed. The sleeves are sheer lace, intricate patterns crawling along her arms like shadowed vines, and the skirt trails behind her like a slow, whispering promise. A velvet ribbon circles her throat, anchored by an antique brooch that looks like it has been worn through funerals and weddings alike, and the faint scent of jasmine follows her, warmed by something darker beneath it, something earthen and sweet like crushed petals pressed into damp soil.
She closes the gate behind her with careful finality, letting it meet the post with a low clang that echoes across the graves and settles into the humid air. She stands there a moment, fingertips resting against the iron, her head tilted slightly as though listening to the cemetery’s response, and when she speaks her voice is smooth enough to be mistaken for kindness until the meaning settles in.
“Now this,” she murmurs, eyes sliding over the rows of stones, “is a place that understands consequences. A place that understands finality.”
She begins to walk, unhurried, the camera catching the slow glide of her hand along the tops of headstones as though she is greeting old acquaintances. Names blur beneath lichen, dates soften, marble edges wear down into gentler shapes, and the cemetery seems less like a map of the dead and more like a ledger of time’s patience, a reminder that everything eventually lies down and stays quiet. Alexandra’s boots sink slightly with each step, leaving impressions that darken as water seeps up around them, and she does not hurry to keep her hem dry, because she is not here to be careful.
“You’ve been talking, Bea,” she says, her voice carrying through the open air as if she expects the trees to relay it, as if she expects the swamp to keep record. “I can’t say I’m surprised. You always did enjoy the sound of your own outrage, like it’s a hymn you can sing until it becomes holy.”
She stops beside a tilted headstone, one that leans toward the path as if trying to listen, and she traces the carved letters with a fingertip, slow and thoughtful, her nail catching in a groove where the stone has cracked. She looks at it like she’s considering whether the name still matters, then turns her gaze back toward the darkness between the oaks, toward a presence that is not there but will be, toward a rival who exists in Alexandra’s words whether Bea is listening or not.
“You want to call it cheating,” Alexandra continues, tone warm as candle wax, “because that’s easier than admitting what really happened. Cheating means you were wronged. Cheating means you were robbed. Cheating means you don’t have to look at yourself and ask what it is you lack.”
Her smile is slow, almost indulgent, as if she’s humoring a child’s tantrum.
“But I was there,” she says, and the softness in her voice turns into something sharper without raising its volume. “I stood across from you. I saw your eyes. I felt the way you tried to force the moment to bend toward you, like willpower alone could rewrite the ending.”
She takes another step, and the ground dips toward a shallow pool of swamp water that has spilled into the cemetery’s belly, dark and reflective, collected between graves like spilled ink. Alexandra lifts her skirt just enough to keep the lace from dragging, not out of delicacy but out of preference, and she steps into the water with calm certainty, boots breaking the surface and sending slow ripples outward. The water is cool against her ankles, and the reflection of her dress fractures into wavering shapes, black lace becoming shadow, pale silk becoming moonlight, the entire image trembling as if the swamp itself is unsettled by her presence.
“I didn’t cheat you,” she says, looking down at the water as though it might show her the match again if she stares hard enough. “I beat you.”
She lets the words hang. She does not rush to fill the silence. Somewhere in the trees something rustles, a small sound, perhaps a bird shifting, perhaps nothing at all, and it feels like the cemetery is holding its breath, listening for what comes next.
“I beat you,” she repeats, quieter this time, as if the repetition is not for emphasis but for pleasure, as if she enjoys the feel of truth on her tongue. “Clean. Clear. And the only reason it gnaws at you like rot in the bone is because you walked in believing you were entitled to an outcome you hadn’t earned.”
She wades through the pool and steps onto higher ground, the hem of her gown catching a faint sheen of water that clings like dew, and she does not bother to wipe it away. Instead she drifts toward a weathered statue, an angel whose face has been softened by time until its features are barely there, less expression than suggestion. Spanish moss has gathered around its shoulders like a stole, and Alexandra reaches up to lift it away, fingers combing through the strands slowly, almost sensually, as though she is undressing the stone.
“You demanded another chance,” she says, eyes on the statue as her hand strokes along its wing, which is chipped at the edge. “Not because you’re noble. Not because you’re brave. Not because you love the fight.” She turns her head slightly, gaze sharpening as if she can see Bea standing between two headstones, arms crossed, chin lifted, indignation painted across her face like war paint.
“You demanded another chance because you can’t stand losing to me,” Alexandra continues, and now the cruelty in her voice becomes unmistakable, not loud, not screaming, but steady as a knife pressed into skin. “Because you can’t stand that I am the proof. The proof that all your noise, all your insistence, all your righteous little speeches don’t mean a God damn thing when the bell rings and the only thing that matters is who can take it and who can’t.”
She drags her fingers from the angel’s wing down to the cold stone shoulder, then lets her hand fall away and continues walking, deeper into the cemetery where the graves begin to lean more sharply, where the ground looks less tended, less visited, and the swamp’s encroachment grows bolder.
“Death comes for all in the end.” a smirk. “I’m not talking about literal death here, I’m talking about the death of belief in your skill.” The water gathers in larger pools here, dark and glossy, and roots twist up through the soil like knuckles, breaking the surface in slow, patient rebellion. Fireflies blink in clusters near the ground, their soft light reflecting in the water like scattered beads.
“I remember the end,” Alexandra says, voice turning almost conversational, as if she is recounting a story at a dinner table with a silver fork in her hand. “I remember you trying to twist away, trying to scramble for leverage like you could negotiate with gravity, like you could bargain with pain.”
She pauses beside a grave whose marker has sunk so far that only the top edge shows above the mud. She crouches slowly, lace folding around her knees like dark petals, and she places her fingertips on the exposed stone as if steadying it. “Just like this moment, I’m already staring your future in the face. The death of your dreams.” The swamp water laps quietly at the base, and Alexandra’s reflection hovers in the surface, a pale throat, a dark ribbon, a mouth curved in calm contempt.
“You felt it, hell Amelia felt it, I felt it.” she says softly, eyes on the water. “That moment when the match stopped being your story and started being mine.” She stands again with controlled grace, brushing her fingertips together as if removing invisible dust, and then she smiles, the sort of smile that suggests she is enjoying herself.
“I don’t need to embellish,” Alexandra continues. “I don’t need to invent. I don’t need to tell people what happened like it’s folklore.” Her gaze lifts, steady and unblinking, as if she is staring straight into Bea’s future. “The record already tells it, and your body remembers it.”
She walks on, the path narrowing, the moss hanging lower, brushing her shoulders like a lover’s hand. She does not flinch or duck. She allows it. Her fingers reach up and trail through the moss as she passes, the strands slipping between her knuckles, leaving faint dampness behind. The camera catches the way she touches the world, not like a tourist, not like someone passing through, but like a woman reminding the land who it belongs to.
“You want to talk like the Bombshell internet title like it was stolen from you,” she says, voice softening into something almost pitying, which somehow makes it worse. “As if it ever belonged in your hands. As if you ever held it in your spirit. You don't even have it yet.”
She laughs quietly, a low sound that feels like a door closing somewhere deep inside an old house. “Bea,” Alexandra murmurs, “I didn’t take your chance. I took your fantasy and I broke it in front of you.”
She stops near a cluster of wildflowers blooming in stubborn defiance beside a cracked headstone, pale petals glowing faintly in the twilight. She bends and plucks one flower from its stem with careful fingers, lifting it to her nose as if inhaling something delicate and precious. The gesture is soft, feminine, almost tender, but the look in her eyes is not.
“Smells sweet,” she says, still holding the flower, her voice warm with mock appreciation. “That’s the trouble with sweetness, though. It fools people into thinking it can’t rot.” She drops the flower into a pool of swamp water beside the stone and watches it float for a moment before the petals begin to darken at the edges, soaking, sinking. “That’s you,” she says lightly, turning away as if she has already dismissed the matter. “Pretty noise until the moment it meets real weight.”
She moves toward a family plot enclosed by rusted iron fencing. The gate is crooked, hanging slightly, and she pushes it open with a slow squeal of metal, stepping inside with the ease of someone entering a private garden. The air feels a degree cooler here, the shadows deeper, the stones larger and older, and Alexandra circles the central monument once, fingertips trailing along the iron rail as if tracing a boundary.
“You ever notice,” she says, voice carrying through the enclosure, “how wrestlers build these little fences like they think iron can keep the world from changing?” Her fingers tighten briefly around the rail, and when she speaks again the sweetness leaves her voice, replaced by a calm, lethal certainty.
“You built yourself a fence too,” she says. “You built a story where you’re the wronged woman, where you’re the one who deserves, where every obstacle is unfair and every outcome that isn’t yours is a theft.” She releases the rail and rests her hand on the monument, palm flat, as if claiming it. “And then you ran into me,” Alexandra continues, the words slow and heavy, “and I showed you what happens when fences meet storms.”
She steps back out of the plot and lets the gate swing shut behind her with a soft clang that feels like punctuation. The swamp hums around her, alive with insects, and the sky deepens toward night, the last traces of gold fading into bruised purple. Somewhere in the distance thunder murmurs low, not yet a threat, but a promise.
“That’s what happens, when you step into the ring with me. By now, I figured you would know this for a fact.”
Alexandra begins to follow a narrow trail leading away from the densest graves, and the silhouette of the church emerges through the trees ahead, a crooked steeple rising against the darkening sky. The building looks like it has been abandoned for decades, paint peeled away into strips, boards warped and swollen, windows shattered into jagged mouths. Vines creep along its walls like veins, and Spanish moss drapes from the eaves as though the church itself wears mourning.
Alexandra slows as she approaches, not because she is hesitant, but because she wants the moment to last. She steps carefully onto the first porch board, and it groans beneath her weight, a long, complaining sound that echoes into the trees. She smiles at that, as if amused by how everything in this place insists on speaking. “You hear it?” she asks, tone gentle, almost intimate, as though Bea is standing close enough to feel her breath. “Even the wood complains when I walk on it.” She takes another step. The board creaks again. “That’s power,” Alexandra murmurs, and the word sounds like silk drawn slowly across skin. “Not the kind you beg for, not the kind you demand with tantrums and petitions.”
She reaches the door and runs her fingers along the weathered wood, tracing the grooves carved by time, her nail catching on a splinter that lifts like a tiny tooth. She does not flinch. She presses her thumb against it until it snaps, then wipes her hand against the side of her skirt with slow, elegant precision.
“Bea,” she says, voice low, “you demanded a match like you were calling a servant to fetch you tea, like you could ring a bell and the world would hurry to please you.” She leans closer to the door, and for a moment her reflection wavers in the dark, cracked pane beside it, her pale throat framed by black lace, her eyes steady and cruel. “I’m not your servant,” she murmurs. “And I’m not your salvation.”
She pushes the door open slowly. The hinge groans like something waking from a long sleep, and the smell inside is different, cooler, layered with dust and old wood and the faint hint of mildew, as if the building has been breathing quietly all these years and no one has noticed. Moonlight spills through broken windows in pale beams, illuminating floating dust motes that drift like slow snowfall. The pews sit in rows, coated in a thin layer of time, their edges worn smooth by hands that are long gone.
“I’m your reaper, your end. We both are veterans here, let’s not get that twisted my dear. I’ve been around Sin City Wrestling isn’t my first company, but it’s become my home.”
Alexandra steps inside and the sound of her boots changes, no longer sinking into mud, now echoing softly against warped floorboards. The church feels hollow, but not empty. It holds its own quiet, as if it remembers every prayer ever spoken here and keeps them pressed into the walls like dried flowers.
“Listen, soak it all in.” She walks down the aisle slowly, fingertips gliding along the backs of pews as she passes, leaving faint tracks in the dust, a visible sign of her presence. Her dress brushes the wood with soft whispers, and the lace catches faintly on a splintered corner before slipping free. She pauses, not at the front yet, but halfway down, turning her head slightly as if listening to the building.
“Can you feel it?” she asks, voice soft, intimate, the question aimed at Bea but also at the space itself. “How quiet it gets when it’s honest.”
She resumes walking, and with each step the echo follows her, gentle and persistent, as if the church is repeating her words back in its own language.
“You want to rewrite what happened,” Alexandra says, her tone returning to that calm, controlled cruelty that feels like cold water poured slowly. “You want to pretend the match was stolen, that the outcome was unfair, that the universe owes you a correction. You want to pretend like it was everyone’s fault, except your own. Who’s really to blame for your shortcomings?”
She stops near the front, where the pulpit stands, wood worn and cracked, and she rests her hand upon it, palm flat, as if claiming the only throne she needs. The moonlight catches on the lace of her sleeve, turning it briefly into something silver.
“But the truth,” she continues, gaze steady, “does not care about your feelings. Nor do I. I have a goal in mind.”
She trails her fingers along the pulpit’s edge, collecting dust on her fingertips, then lifts her hand and rubs the dust between her thumb and forefinger as if testing its texture. “This dust,” she murmurs, “is what happens when time keeps going whether you win or lose.”
She turns slowly, facing the rows of pews as though addressing an unseen congregation, as though the church is full of witnesses who have come to watch Bea’s pride be dismantled.
“I beat you,” Alexandra says again, and this time the words land like a final nail driven into wood. “Not because I got lucky, not because I cheated, not because anyone handed me a gift.” Her lips curve into a slow smile, sensual and cold all at once. “I beat you because I wanted it more than you did,” she says, “and because I understood something you still refuse to understand.”
She steps away from the pulpit and begins to walk along the front of the church, slow and deliberate, trailing her fingers along the edge of a broken altar rail. The wood is splintered, rough, and she lets it scrape lightly against her skin, not enough to draw blood, but enough to remind her body that the world has teeth.
“You think you can demand your way into power,” Alexandra continues, voice low, smooth, relentless. “But power isn’t something you ask for, Bea.” She stops, tilting her head, eyes glinting in the moonlight. “It’s something you embody,” she murmurs. “It’s something that changes the room when you enter it. It’s something you take.”
She gestures lightly, letting her hand sweep across the empty church as if presenting it, as if this decaying place is her ballroom and the moss outside is her curtain. “And I changed everything the moment you stood across from me,” she says softly. Her gaze hardens, the sensual warmth sharpening into a merciless edge.
“So here’s what’s going to happen,” Alexandra continues, her voice steady as a vow. “You can keep buzzing and whining, you can keep clinging to the story that protects your pride, you can keep telling anyone who will listen that you were cheated.”
She pauses, allowing the silence to deepen, allowing the church to hold her words like a sermon. “And then you can step into the ring with me again,” she says, “and I will do what I do best.” Her smile returns, slow and terrible. “I will take that story from you,” Alexandra murmurs, “and I will crush it in front of you until all that’s left is the truth.”
She steps back toward the pulpit, resting her hand upon it once more, posture tall and composed, lace and silk and shadow, aristocratic queen and swamp witch all at once, as though she belongs to both candlelight and mud, to both velvet and bone.
“And Bea,” she adds, voice soft, intimate, carrying through the empty church like a whisper sliding under a door, “the next time you come looking for justice…”
She tilts her head, eyes narrowing with quiet delight. “Make sure you’re ready to meet it.”
She lets the silence linger, the church swallowing the last of her words, and she stands there in the pale spill of moonlight, one hand resting on the pulpit like a crown set gently on a throne, as the swamp outside continues its slow, inevitable rise.
