Who Do You Love - Dean Ambrose

Chapter 18: Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word

The next morning - fortunately - Dean was feeling brighter and was back to his bullish, Ambrose-swaggering again. He didn't mention his emotional hiccup or his fears of me leaving and that was okay. I got that he wasn't a sharing kind of person and nor had he ever been.

It wasn't his thing.

Besides, whatever latent fears he had briefly given into seemed to have been worked out by the time the morning broke and although I didn't want a medal or anything, I was feeling pretty good on the awesome girlfriend front. Fortunately for me, Dean seemed to agree with it and as a result was fairly low-key sweet. There was no grand gesture, no thank you or post-mortem but there were a bunch of features that weren't usually a thing. For starters he woke me up with a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows and cream which he'd got on his morning run, then he let me shower before him even though it meant me using all the towels and finally he carried my bags without grumbling about the weight, or the color or the damn wheels. He still hadn't been in contact with his teammates - or, at least not that I was aware - so we drove ourselves to the arena without them.

It was quiet, too quiet.

I didn't like it very much.

Dean put the radio on and Free Bird blared out. It was at once both soothing and oddly melancholic and to combat the emotions that I thought it might dredge up, I reached across and dropped a hand across his kneecap and then proceeded to sing along and act out the words, hamming it up and generally being an idiot in the hopes that I could maybe get him to laugh.

It had worked - well, sort of - he loosed a smile at me, then rolled his eyes and kind of snorted a little bit, but it was better than him sitting there looking all grumpy and so I took it as a win.

Girlfriend of the year.

As thanks for that - or maybe just in general - he was still touchy-feely when he dropped me off backstage, pressing me against the wall and then almost inhaling me in a long, deep, passionate and flush-inducing kiss. Unsurprisingly, it made the people around us stutter and I was still trying to focus on breathing and blinking when he finally pulled back from me,

"See you later."

"Uh huh."

"Princess, remember, if you see Wyatt - ,"

"I know," I nodded, repeating it faithfully, "I'll find you."

"You fuckin' better had," he growled in response to that, then dropped his head for one last kiss.

Wow.

Usually he liked to be dark and kind of brooding in front of the backstage crew and assorted production staff but our midnight heart-to-heart had obviously caused a rethink and I loved his newfound unrestrained side. On second thoughts though it was probably a public claiming thing, especially if Stephanie or Hunter were around. In reality I imagined I should have felt maybe offended but since it made me giddy, I honestly didn't care. In fact I watched him swagger from gorilla in a barely there day-dream I was so overwhelmed and only belatedly remembered I'd forgotten to say something as he disappeared completely, at which point -

Damn.

Sprinting off after him I skidded through the doorway and called out breathlessly,