Miles checked the rearview mirror again.
He tried to do it casually but Carter knew better. Miles had been calm throughout dinner when Carter joked about them being the third and fourth wheels on a teenage date that was not technically a date because Kevin turned red enough to stop traffic. He had been calm when they dropped Kevin off outside Connor’s house, where Connor’s mother stood in the doorway and waved to the two men, promising she would text if anything felt off.
Kevin had hugged Carter longer than usual.
Not much longer. Not enough for Connor to notice, maybe, but definitely enough for both Carter and Miles to notice.
“Are you sure?” Carter had asked him.
Kevin had rolled his eyes in that self assured way teenagers had perfected. You know the sort, the way that screams “I am invincible!” even when they were nervous. “I’m staying at Connor’s.” He declared. “Not joining a cult.”
Connor had snorted as Carter finally let go of the teenager who had found his way into their crazy lives and never once looked back with regret.
“I’ll text before bed.” Kevin said.
“You better.” Carter said idly as he reached for the car door, pulling it open and sliding inside.
“I will.”
“And if you need anything…” Miles offered from the other side of the car at the driver’s side.
“I know.”
Miles then climbed into the driver’s seat of the Jeep, shutting the door behind him but with the window rolled down. Arm resting on the window, Miles called out, “Go on! Have a good night!”
Kevin nodded, looked like he wanted to say something else, but then didn’t. Teenagers. Connor saved him by tugging him toward the house, and a moment later they were safely inside.
Now as they pulled away from the curb and heading back home, Carter was watching the passenger-side mirror.
“Nobody’s behind us.” Miles said, his eyes on the road but he’d be lying if he claimed he wasn’t checking the rear view mirror.
“You think he’ll be okay?” Carter asked.
“Kevin?”
“No, Connor’s mom.” Carter quipped. “I’m afraid one more teenage boy might make her spontaneously combust!”.”
Miles glanced at him with a raised brow and Carter smiled.
“Yes, Kevin.”
“He’ll be okay.” Miles answered. “Connor’s Mum knows what’s going on. We’re fifteen minutes away and Kev needs to have something that isn’t this.”
By the time they pulled into the parking garage of Turnberry Towers, Carter’s nerves had eased enough that he didn’t feel physically sick. Carter turned and looked at the limegreen Volkswagen, his car. The one he had not sat in since the attack and wondered silently if he ever would again.
They took the elevator up in silence. Carter stood with his back to the wall, because apparently that was who he was now. Miles stood between him and the doors without making a show of it.
Their floor was blessedly empty when they stepped out of the elevator, but Miles still slowed before they reached the door to their home. He looked once toward the stairwell, once toward the opposite door, then down at the mat. Carter followed his gaze.
Unlike last week after the movies, this time it was empty. No packages, no gift baskets - nothing. Satisfied, Miles unlocked the door and pushed it open only a few inches.
“Ms Thang?” Miles called, forcing brightness into his voice. “Your daddies have returned from feeding the youth! We expect love and adoration!”
Usually, there would be some noise. Nails clicking. An annoyed howl at having been left alone for any duration of time. A dramatic little black and white body rushing toward them like she had survived years alone instead of a few hours in a luxury condo.
Only nothing came. Miles stepped in first and Carter followed, his skin prickling.
They looked around and everything looked normal. The lamp was still on, the throw blanket MIles’s Mom gifted them, folded over the couch. Kevin’s hoodie slung over a chair because teenagers seemed to have an affinity against coat hangers and closets.
“Ms Thang?” Miles called.
A soft sound came from the bedroom, a chattering noise. The same noise their “little girl” made when she spotted a bird through the glass of their patio door. They moved down the hall together.
The bedroom door was open.
Ms Thang stood just inside, stiff as a little statue, her paws planted on the rug at the foot of the bed. Her head was angled up toward the ceiling near the corner by the closet. She did not look at them when they entered. Did not twitch except for the tiny movement of her nose and mouth. All she did was stare at that one spot while whipping her tail aggressively.
“What the hell?” Carter said softly.
Ms Thang continued to stare at the smoke detector and passed it, giving a tiny growl.
Cats had a way of knowing things and Miles took the fact to heart. He went to the closet and pulled the door open, inspecting everything inside. Shoes. Clothes. A duffel bag on the floor. Carter’s purple jacket slipping off its hanger because he kept meaning to fix it and never did.
Miles reached up toward the smoke detector, then stopped. “Gloves.” He said.
Carter stared at him as if he didn’t hear him correctly. “What?”
“Gloves!” Miles repeated, perhaps a touch harsher than intended but that only made Carter more certain how serious his husband was, so off he went. In the bathroom, his hands shook as he opened the first aid kit and took out a pair of emergency latex gloves. Luckily neither he nor Miles had ever had a use for these, and this was not how he pictured the use of them when they stocked up.
When he came back, Miles had not moved closer to the smoke detector and Ms Thang still stared at it. Carter handed Miles a pair, then pulled on his own. The latex snapped against his wrist.
“Do we call the cops first?” Carter asked.
“We call after.” Miles said. “And we leave after that.”
Carter blinked. “Leave?”
“If that’s what I think it is, we’re not sleeping here.”
Miles dragged the small bench from the foot of the bed to the closet, climbed onto it, and reached up. He twisted the smoke detector slowly and it came loose with a dull plastic click.
Miles lowered it and stepped down. For a second, they both just looked at it in his hands. Carter did not know enough about smoke detectors to understand exactly what he was seeing, but he knew enough to know there should not be a pinhole lens tucked into a black piece of plastic no bigger than a shirt button. There should not be a tiny memory card behind the battery. There should not be a second power source taped so neatly inside that it looked almost professional.
His body went cold. Not speaking, Miles set the device on the dresser like it might bite him, then he stepped back from it.
Carter stared at the lens. Their bed was behind him.
That was the part his brain kept circling and refusing to land on. Their bed. The place where they slept. Where they made love on a pretty regular basis - and the thought someone was watching them made him want to vomit.
Carter turned away fast, one hand going to his mouth. Miles was there immediately, but he did not touch him right away. Good, because Carter did not know what his skin would do with touch right now. Carter took a step back and hit the edge of the bed. He jerked away from it like it had burned him.
“No…” He whispered. “That sick fuck!”
Miles picked up his phone.
Carter laughed again, but there was no humor in it. “He put it in our bedroom.”
“I know.”
“In our bedroom!” Carter pointed toward the bed. His hand was shaking openly now. “He watched us! He could have watched us sleep! Jesus Christ, Miles! He was watching us have sex!”
Miles’s control slipped then. Enough that his eyes fell flat and dangerous.
Carter pressed both hands to the back of his head and turned in a tight circle because there was nowhere to go. The room was too familiar. Every object had a memory attached to it, and now each memory felt handled by someone else.
Miles dialed. “I’m calling it in, and then we’re packing enough for tonight.”
Carter nodded too many times. “Good! Great! Love that for us! Very spontaneous. Very romantic!”
Miles lowered the phone before the call connected. “Carter…”
“What?”
“We’ll take care of this.” Miles said with more assurance than perhaps he truly felt deep inside. “They have to do something after this.”
“Like they did something in court last week.” Carter muttered as he moved toward the closet to grab their luggage and Ms. Thang’s pet carrier.
Ms. Thang stuck her nose inside of the closet and backed up a step when Carter grabbed her carrier. Usually that meant either a trip to the vet or a trip to Aron and Fenris’s place. Either way, she wasn’t a fan.
Carter crouched and gathered her up. She let him, which told him how wrong the night was. She didn’t place her paws against his shoulder with her legs extended like usual.
“You found it.” He murmured, nuzzling his nose into her fur. “Good girl.”
Miles was on the phone now with the 9-1-1 operator, giving details. Address. Hidden camera. Bedroom. No, they did not know how long it had been there. Yes, there had been prior stalking incidents. Yes, they would wait outside the unit.
Carter stood with Ms Thang in his arms and looked around the bedroom one more time. He could not sleep here. He did not know when he would be able to sleep here again.
The thought embarrassed him. Then anger burned through the embarrassment so fast it almost steadied him.
Miles ended the call and looked at him. “They’re sending someone. We should wait in the hall.”
Miles stepped closer, slow enough that Carter had time to refuse or pull away, but he never did. Miles slid a hand around the back of his neck and Carter leaned into him with Ms Thang caught gently between them. And for a few seconds, neither of them moved.
Then Carter asked, “Do we call Kevin?”
The question had been on both of their minds from the moment they had discovered the camera, but neither had a definite answer that would satisfy either man. Finally, Miles sighed and shook his head.
“No. Not until we know.” Carter looked up into Miles’s eyes, silently asking if he was certain and Miles said, “Let him have tonight.”
Carter nodded, and this one conciliatory nod made Carter feel all the angrier at the violation of their home.
Lazarus had not needed to break the door to break in.
“You know, there are a lot - and I do mean a lot - of things that I never thought I would do in my career. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart, because there are a lot of things I thought I might do in Sin City Wrestling before the final curtain came down.”
“I thought I might win championships and I did. I thought I might break records and I have. I thought I might stand across the ring from the biggest, ugliest, nastiest monsters SCW could throw at me and still find a way to look better doing it than half the roster does walking down the ramp. And baby, I have done that too!"
"But teaming with Alexander Raven? That was not on the bingo card. This is the kind of thing that makes you stop, look at your life, look at your choices, and ask yourself how in the hell you ended up standing beside the same man who once made it his mission to tear you apart! It’s the sort of thing where you ask yourself, what you did to deserve this and look back to your devilish childhood memories and think - oh yeah!"
"Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been in tag team matches before. I’ve teamed with my best friend, Ariana Angelos, and there is nobody who understands the rhythm of chaos quite like my BFF Ari! I’ve also teamed with my husband, Miles, and let me tell you, there is something very special about fighting beside the person who knows exactly when to let you fly and exactly when to drag you back before you do something stupid, reckless, and admittedly fabulous!”
“But this? This is different. This is teaming with the man who dethroned me as the World Heavyweight Champion! This is teaming with the man who went out of his way to ruin my career, leave me bleeding, leave me broken, and leave me wondering just how much of myself I was willing to sacrifice to survive him!"
"And why? Why would Helluva Bottom Carter, former World Heavyweight Champion, certified professional problem and walking HR incident waiting to happen, stand shoulder to shoulder with Alexander Raven? Because sometimes life has a truly wicked sense of humor. Sometimes the man you bled against becomes the man standing beside you because two other idiots looked at the board and decided they wanted to make themselves common enemies!"
“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
"So let’s start with Logan Hunter, shall we? Because Logan, you emotionally constipated peacock with ‘I need a hug’ issues, you just could not leave well enough alone, could you!? You could not sit in the back, lick your wounds, and accept that your night was over! No, you had to come crawling into my match with Brandon Hendrix because you could not stand what everyone else could see happening right in front of their eyes! You lost, Logan. You lost, and while you were choking on that, I was on the verge of doing what you could not! I was about to beat Brandon Hendrix!"
"And that burned you alive, didn’t it? It ate you up from the inside, because every single thing you want to be, I already am! Everything you have chased, everything you have tried to convince yourself you deserve, I have already held in my hands! I have already climbed the mountain. I have already worn the crown. I have already stood beneath the lights with the World Heavyweight Championship raised above my head while people who once laughed at me had no choice but to shut their mouths and watch me become undeniable!"
"That is what you hate, Logan. Not my mouth. Not my attitude. Not the way I walk into a room like I own the lease and the security deposit. No, those are excuses. Those are the little decorations you hang around the truth because the truth is too ugly for you to say out loud. Everything Logan Hunter hates about Helluva Bottom Carter can be summed up with one simple explanation. Green-eyed jealousy!"
"You are jealous because I make it look effortless when we both know it was anything but. You are jealous because I survived things that would have sent men like you running back to whatever dark little corner they crawled out of. You are jealous because even when I lose, people still talk about me. Even when I fall, people watch to see how I get back up. Even when I am hurt, even when I am angry, even when I am standing there with blood on my face and venom on my tongue, I am still more interesting on my worst day than you are at your absolute best!"
"And then there is Brandon Hendrix. Now Brandon, I am not going to stand here and lie. I am not going to pretend you are not dangerous. I am not going to pretend you are not an absolute beast inside that ring. You are big, you are powerful, and when you hit someone, they feel it all the way down to their bad decisions. I know that. I felt it! I was there with you, and I am man enough to admit that you are every bit the monster you advertise yourself to be."
"But here is the simple fact that everyone saw. Despite all of that, I had you. I had you, Brandon. You can growl and you can posture, but everybody watching knows what happened. I was about to win. I was about to beat you, and I would have beaten you if Logan Hunter had not shoved his insecure little nose where it didn’t belong!"
"And that has to bother you too, doesn’t it? Because a man like you does not want an asterisk. A man like you does not want people whispering that Helluva Bottom Carter had him beat. A man like you wants to be feared. You want the story to be simple. Brandon Hendrix walked in, Brandon Hendrix destroyed Carter, Brandon Hendrix moved on. But that is not the story, is it? The story is Brandon Hendrix was in trouble, Logan Hunter got involved, and now the both of you have to deal with me again."
"But Brandon, let’s talk about what really makes this funny. Let’s talk about Alexander Raven. Because for all the noise you have made, for all the big man intimidation, for all the attacks and the statements and the desperate need to prove that you are the biggest, baddest thing in the room, you are starting to look a whole lot like the very man you are trying so hard to break!"
"Do you see it yet? Because I do. I know Alexander Raven better than I ever wanted to. I know what it feels like to be targeted by him. I know what it feels like to have him decide that your pain is a message and your body is the paper he wants to write it on! I know the obsession. I know the cruelty. I know the way he can turn a wrestling match into something that feels personal, ugly, and impossible to walk away from! And now here you are, Brandon, walking down the same road, telling yourself it is different because you are the one doing it."
"You are jealous of Alexander Raven. That is the part you do not want anyone to say, so allow me to be helpful and say it loudly. You are jealous because Alexander has what you want. He has the aura. He has the reputation. He has the history. He has the name people say with a certain kind of caution because they know what follows after saying it! You do not just want to beat Alexander Raven, Brandon. You want to erase him. You want him out of the picture so you can stand in the spotlight he leaves behind and pretend it was always meant for you!"
"And that is where you and Logan make such an adorable little pair. Two men choking on jealousy, two men furious that someone else has the attention they think belongs to them! Logan looks at me and sees everything he has not and never will become! Brandon looks at Alexander Raven and sees the shadow he cannot step out of! So now the two of you have joined hands, compared insecurities, and decided the best way forward is to make yourselves our problem."
"Well congratulations, boys! You succeeded!"
"Now, I am not going to stand here and pretend Alexander and I are friends. We are not. We are not going shopping after this. We are not getting matching jackets. I am not braiding his hair, and he is not helping me pick out ring gear unless the theme is emotional damage and black fabric. There is history there, and not the cute kind you put in a scrapbook. There is blood there. There is bitterness there. There is a whole chapter of my career written in bruises because of Alexander Raven."
"But here is what Logan and Brandon need to understand. Alexander Raven and I do not have to like each other to hurt you. We do not have to trust each other with our deepest secrets. We do not have to share a tender little moment backstage where we realize we were never so different after all. This is not a friendship bracelet situation. This is two people who know each other inside and out, looking across the ring at two men who made the mistake of thinking our history would make us weaker together."
"If anything, our history makes us worse for you."
"Because Alexander knows exactly how far I will go. He knows how much punishment I can take. He knows that there is a point where most people break, and then there is the point where Carter starts laughing, bleeding, and swinging harder! And I know Alexander. I know the cruelty. I know the patience. I know the way he can smell weakness and dig his fingers into it until a man starts questioning whether he ever belonged in the ring in the first place!"
"So Logan, bring your jealousy. Bring your cheap shots. Bring that desperate little need to prove that you matter in a room where nobody asked for you. Brandon, bring the power. Bring the beast. Bring all that rage you have dressed up as ambition. Bring every ounce of that hunger to replace Alexander Raven in the minds of people who still do not say your name with the fear you think it deserves!"
"Because when that bell rings, you are not getting two men divided by the past. You are getting two men shaped by it! You are getting Alexander Raven, the man who put me through hell, and Helluva Bottom Carter, the man who walked through that hell, came out the other side, and still had enough breath left to talk more trash than either of you could handle on your best day!"
"And there will not be a better moment, not one, than coming full circle. There will not be a better moment than standing in that ring beside the same man I put my career on the line against in Three Stages of Hell. There will not be a better moment than taking everything Logan Hunter and Brandon Hendrix tried to end us and walking away victorious with Alexander Raven at my side!"
"So boys, lace up tight. Stretch properly. Say your prayers if either of you believe in something merciful. Because this week, Helluva Bottom Carter and Alexander Raven are not coming to make peace with the past.”
“We are coming to weaponize it."
