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CHAPTER EIGHT

"I have been
falling apart
all these years
slowly
and
painfully."
~midara

Salem

"I should be out there with them right now," I spoke, my tired gaze watching the television airing the Undisputed Era's tornado tag team match with SAnitY.

It's been a week and a half since TakeOver, and the company is worried about my mental state after what they're calling 'the incident.'

Give me a break.

First, the police got involved. An overweight officer dabbing his sweat with a paper towel asked me to restate 'the incident' in as much detail as possible. Not only that, I was asked to describe the man even though he was clearly shown on video.

I know I lied to the poor guy about not knowing who the man was that harassed me. However, it doesn't mean I should have to recount the time my step-father groped me on live television when the video clearly shows.

I knew Jack's facial features down to the centimeter. If they gave me a sketch artist to describe his face, I could do it in so much detail that the picture would look more like my step-father than even my step-father could do.

He had a small scar under his left eye in the shape of a triangle from when a his drug dealer hit him across the face with a glass bottle. Jack hadn't paid him off on time, and I remembered the man with a missing front tooth and tattoos on his neck barging in the front door to find my step-father.

I didn't feel in danger then; that man had stopped Jack from taking my clothes off.

He had brown eyes, though they weren't dark like mine. Jack had light brown eyes with a green spark on only one: the left once again.

But on the right side, Jack was almost normal. If it weren't for his years of drug abuse, he wouldn't have protruding cheekbones and forehead wrinkles that made him look far beyond his years in the worst way.

You never forget the face that gave you so much pain.

I remembered every millisecond of his hands on my body, as if they never left. I remember the pressure he applied, and I remember the words he whispered in my ear that no one else could hear.

"Did you miss me?"

I didn't miss him, because every day since I left he's been in the back of my mind haunting my every thought. Jack had warped my brain resulting in trust issues and trauma so deep and dark that it consumed me.

How can someone forget that? Forget him?

The day had been so consumed with law enforcement that I had no time to breath—I couldn't cope like I needed to with people who don't know a damn thing about me breathing down my neck. I know that my company was only trying to protect me, but they were only making matters worse.

Since the incident, I've been in and out of a therapist's office as she tries to uncover my true mental state. Am I ready to go back out in front of a live crowd? Is Salem Dawn mentally stable?

Idiots.

"The sooner you explain yourself, the sooner you'll be back out in the ring," my therapist told me. I had already forgotten her name and had no intention of asking for it once again, let alone looking at her desk for a tacky sign with her last name on it.