Flames

Hall of Fame 2019, part 1

"I'm starting to feel like your beard, Rollins."

Seth misheard Cesaro at first and grabbed a napkin to wipe his face. "What's in my beard?"

Cesaro shook his head and laughed. "What, you only understand Irish accents now?" He glanced across the coffee shop to where Becky was heading for the washroom. Leaning across the table, he lowered his voice and added, "Beard. Third wheel. However you want to say it. You don't always have to have someone else around if you want to spend time with her, you know."

"Oh." Seth caught just a glimpse of Becky's hair as she went into the washroom. "Nah, man. That's not it and you know it. You've been great in the workout videos—"

"And so has Becky," Cesaro chimed in, raising his cup to his lips.

"And I know you like coffee, so of course I wanted you to try my shop. . . ." Seth's coffee shop, attached to his wrestling school, hadn't been open for very long, but it was doing well and he was proud of it.

"And same with Becky." Cesaro finally sat back, but he kept his voice low. The wrestlers had a quiet table in the back, but some local fans had still spotted them earlier. "I get what you're doing, but you're only going to start a whole different set of rumours, my friend. People will think you and I are dating and that Becky's the cover, or—"

"I'm the cover? Of what?" Becky slid back into her seat, seemingly none the wiser about what Cesaro had said just before. "I know there were talks about 2k20—is that what they're calling it?—but I didn't think anything had been decided yet. Isn't Hogan the frontrunner?"

"We were saying you and Charlotte and Ronda should be on the Wrestlemania program cover," Cesaro said, shooting Seth a look before standing up. "I'm going to get a coffee for the road. Be right back."

Beneath the table, out of sight, Becky bumped her knee against Seth's. "You weren't talking about video game covers."

There was no sharpness to her tone and Seth knew if he asked her to drop it, she would, but it was something they'd have to discuss sooner or later. "Cesaro was saying people are going to start rumours if the three of us are always seen together." He tilted his cup back and forth, watching the last drops of his drink circle the bottom.

"He's not wrong." Becky kept her knee against his. "But there's already pictures out there. At cafes. At the UFC event. A concert. The Deadboys videos. Some people will connect the dots, sure. . . ." She trailed off, gaze flitting around the cafe. No one had their phone out and blatantly pointed in their direction, but they had both seen enough sneak-shots of themselves online to know that it happened.

Seth reached under the table and squeezed her leg. "I didn't mean anything bad by it. I know it's going to come out eventually. I just know you value your privacy, like I do." He glanced up at the counter and saw Cesaro chatting with two of the baristas, clearly lingering to give Seth time to talk with Becky. They'd been dating for about a month, but so far they had only told their close friends. He was sure most of the locker room knew, but no one in the company would announce their relationship without permission. When and how to reveal things was another thing they would have to talk about. "What do you want to do about it?"

Becky glanced over at Cesaro, who was slowly making his way back to their table. "We could go back to the hotel," she said. "The show's not for a few hours."

He didn't catch the note in her voice, but he certainly knew the look that giving him. "We could," he agreed, already starting to stand.

Cesaro clearly read something either from Becky's expression or Seth's body language, because he grabbed his jacket. "Heading back to the hotel? Let me drop you off. It's on the way to a store I want to visit."

"That video game we were talking about?" Seth asked with a laugh.

"Yeah," Cesaro agreed. "Need something to fill the time, right?"

Retreating to the hotel wouldn't fix their concerns. They knew that. But it would give them some privacy, which was getting harder and harder to find. As much as they wanted to keep themselves to themselves, it didn't look like it was going to be possible for much longer.