Chapter One
Up close and personal, Brie Danielson looked like a movie star.
Ari Harris spotted her almost immediately when she got off the plane at Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, an ethereal vision in white. Brie's maxi dress was lacy, off-the-shoulder and fell to her ankles. A giant wicker hat, wicker shoulder bag, and wicker wedge sandals completed her look, with giant Gucci sunglasses that covered half of her face. Her lips were painted ruby red to match her fingernails. Ari knew the glasses and hat were more than a fashion statement, that they were a way to try and make herself incognito among the people in the airport, but even dressed down, there was something glamorous about her that made Brie stand out head and shoulders above everyone else.
Brie's arm shot up to wave at her, and Ari smiled to acknowledge that she saw her before she began to weave her way through the crowd of people. Overwhelmed and anxious, Ari kept the smile plastered on her face, forcing it to stick around even as the muscles in her cheeks began to burn. It was her first time on American soil in six years, and she wanted people to believe that she was excited to be back, but the truth was that she was afraid. She was nervous – before she had left the country, she had been in a terrible place. Stepping off the plane seemed to bring a lot of those memories back to the forefront of her mind.
On the plane, thirty thousand feet in the air, Ari realized with a jolt that six years was a long stretch of time by any standard. Her life in America felt like another lifetime ago, the people she had known and loved back then nothing more than characters in a story that had long since lost any semblance of familiarity. In six years, she'd built an isolated, nomadic life that was off-the-grid, with minimal possessions and a small laptop. In the air, looking out at the clouds, it was hard for Ari to shake the feeling that she was about to step into a time machine.
Boston, Massachusetts, was a far cry from where she had been born in raised in Aberdeen, Washington, but not as far from her second home in Philadelphia, where she'd gone to college so long ago. On the plane, she'd smiled every time her years in Philly came to mind; she had spent some of the best years of her life there. It was only now, all this time removed, that she could step back and admit that to herself. Back then, it felt like nothing but chaos, stress, and hard work, with the drama of life thrown into the mix.
"Hey!" Brie greeted as Ari approached. She moved around the black and navy stroller to give Ari a hug. "It's so good to see you again. Long time, no see. How was the flight?"
"Good, once we got in the air," Ari answered as they pulled away from each other. Ari looked around the airport, taking in every detail around her. Brie studied the woman in front of her, red lips pursing into a narrow line as she took in the shaking of her hands and her rigid posture. It had been Ari's original plan to fly out to Aberdeen, but Brie's email two weeks ago about surprising Bryan for his birthday had changed the plans she had made.
"Are you okay?" Brie asked. "You're shaking."
"Oh. I'm fine." She clasped her hands in front of her in hopes of making it stop. Brie studied her, and Ari released a deep sigh. "I'm not going to lie...it just feels weird to be back. Like, really, really weird."
"How long has it been now?"
"Six years." Ari's gaze turned to the smiling baby in the stroller, with blonde hair that had a little bit of curl and big blue eyes that felt so familiar. "This must be baby Bird." She smiled. "She looks so much like Bryan..."
"I know."
"She's getting so big..."
"You don't have to tell me," Brie said with a laugh. "I blinked, and now she's crawling."
Ari smiled. She thought about asking Brie for a moment to hold her niece for the first time, but she knew that they were on a time crunch. Their first order of business was to get out of the airport. She knew that Brie's job as a WWE Superstar had her on a tight schedule, even if she wasn't competing on the card. The window of opportunity to ask closed quickly when Brie took her place behind the stroller and turned it towards the exit. Ari fell into step with Brie, the two of them walking towards the baggage claim.
"I haven't told Bryan you're here," Brie confessed. "I feel like I should get some kind of a medal for that. I usually can't keep a secret to save my life. I haven't even told Nicole. I mean, I only told her this morning because she's got every detail of this party planned to the second..." Ari offered a polite smile in response to Brie's rapid babbling. "I didn't want to risk the surprise getting blown. Bryan doesn't even know that Bird and I flew out. I want him to be surprised."
"Is Nikki here, too?"
"Yeah. She's going through a bad breakup right now, so she's throwing herself into things to stay distracted," Brie said with a shrug. "She's out picking up the party decorations right now. The plan is to sneak you into the arena while he's competing tonight so that he doesn't see you." Ari knew it was a special birthday for him; it was his first birthday since getting cleared to get back inside the ring only two months before. "He is going to freak when he sees you." She looked over at Ari. "You didn't tell him you were coming, did you?"
"No. No. You were pretty adamant I keep my mouth shut, so I just sent him a happy birthday text before I got on the plane." Brie's smile got bigger.
"Perfect! Absolutely perfect! He'll never suspect a thing." The two of them came to a stop at the baggage claim. "How long are you going to be here for?"
"Six weeks."
"Wow."
"I've got a lot of time banked, and my boss thinks this is overdue." They fell silent, watching the bags on the conveyor belt. Ari studied each bag, thinking about everything she had missed since leaving the country: Bryan headlining his first WrestleMania, his wedding to Brie, the birth of their daughter, his forced retirement due to his history of concussions. Ari had left America and stayed gone, throwing herself into a career that slingshot her all over the world. Ari lived in a carefully constructed bubble of isolation, crafted by her own design, and it all started one morning years ago when she decided to wake up and disappear. She'd left everyone and everything but her immediate family behind.
While they waited for their bags, a few people somehow managed to recognize Brie. While she snapped selfies and signed autographs for them, Ari kept her eyes in front of her, looking for the blue camouflage bags. When they came through, she pulled the bags off the belt and put them on the ground, pulling up the handles. Brie said her goodbyes to the fans, and together they walked towards the sliding glass doors.
"You get a room at the hotel?" Brie asked. Ari shook her head.
"I tried, but you WWE guys booked all the rooms. I'm over at the DoubleTree."
"That's not far from here. I'll drop you off so you can get yourself settled in for the night." Brie's face contorted into a pout. "It's too bad you couldn't get a room where we are. Would have made things a lot easier..."
"You guys booked all the rooms. There wasn't much I could do," Ari reiterated. "I tried. Really, I did. There was nothing they could do but put me on a waiting list, and I didn't want to take the chance of being left without a room."
Before Brie could respond, a well-placed ring of her phone cut their conversation short. Brie went through her purse and pulled out her phone, answering it quickly. "Hello, Nicole," Brie greeted. She listened for a few moments. Nikki spoke so loudly that Ari could hear her clearly through the phone. "I just picked up Ari at the airport. I'm about to take her to get checked into the hotel so she can rest a while before she gets ready..." Brie listened for a moment. Shifting her weight to her left side, Ari was sure Brie was also rolling her eyes. Brie pulled the phone from her ear. "Do you have something fancy to wear to the party? Nicole wants to know."
"I think I might have something in my bag. I don't know if it's as fancy as she wants it..."
"I'm sure what you have is fine," Brie assured her with a shake of her head. She turned her attention back to the call. "That's fine. It's fine. Nicole, I said it's fine. I'll see you at the arena." She hung up the phone, shaking her head as she dropped her phone back into her wicker bag. "Ugh. My sister sometimes."
"What?"
"I just wanted this to be a simple get-together, and she's turning this into a black-tie affair," Brie vented, shaking her head. "I should have known this would happen when she said she wanted to help plan the party."
They walked through the sliding glass doors, out into the beautiful weather. Crossing the parking lot, Brie cocked her head in the direction of her rental car, a red Toyota Camry. When they reached the car, Brie opened the trunk and handed Birdie off to her aunt while she took down the stroller and wedged it into the trunk. Ari handed Birdie back to her mother. Ari stacked her bags in the back seat, in the open spot behind the driver's seat.
Inside the car, in the passenger's seat, Ari's hands shook so much that it was two attempts to get her seat-belt on. If Brie noticed, she didn't say anything about it, something that Ari was grateful about. When she was buckled in, Ari clasped her hands together and put them on her lap. The bubble of anxiety that had been in the pit of her stomach was now working its way up inside her chest.
"I'll pick you up around nine-thirty and we'll hit the arena together," Brie told her. Ari nodded. "Bryan told you about our TV shows, right?" Ari nodded; she remembered the day Bryan told her about Brie and Nikki signing their Total Divas deals. He'd been so nervous at the time, but by the time they got their Total Bellas spin-off, Bryan said the cameras were like second nature. Ari wasn't sure if she could ever get used to living with a camera on her all the time. Bryan told her after a while, it wasn't as noticeable, something she had a hard time believing. "They might ask you to sign a release so they can show your face on the show. Just...don't feel obligated to sign if you don't want to, okay? It's up to you." Ari nodded; the idea of being on TV made her want to break out in hives. Even as a child, Ari liked to hide in the background, often seen but never heard. She was sure her upbringing had wired her like that.
Her thoughts came to a halt when Brie started the car, flooding the interior with indie music Ari hadn't heard. Brie backed out of the parking stall carefully. Looking out the passenger window, Ari struggled to steady her nerves. Looking over at her sister-in-law, Brie smiled sympathetically.
"You seem nervous."
She looked over at Brie and nodded. "It's been a long time." Brie had her suspicions that there was far more to the story, but she didn't want to pry. She was sure that she would find out all the details over the next six weeks.
Since booking her flight, Ari had been living in a near-constant state of reflection. She knew there was a very high chance that she was going to run into some familiar faces in the next six weeks, and she knew some were going to be angrier at her than others for sneaking off like a thief in the night without a word. At the time, she thought it was her only option and the best thing to do for the people around her. At the time she thought she'd become a burden, that even if they weren't saying it outright, everyone saw her as pathetic and pitiful. With six years away from everything, Ari was willing to admit her strategy had been a mixed bag of content and disappointment. For everything she loved about the life she had built, she had given up so much. She missed seeing her family in the flesh. She missed her best friend.
The sun was beginning to disappear behind the horizon when Ari awoke in her hotel room. Lying on top of the covers, Ari blinked, a hand moving over her face to rub her eye. She was surprised that she had fallen asleep, but she supposed that she was exhausted from the arrangements and the flight. The moment she'd thrown herself back on the mattress, she had fallen asleep, a deep and dreamless sleep. With a yawn and a stretch, Ari sat up on the bed, her eyes falling on the black alarm clock on the dark wood nightstand. The clock read thirty-five minutes past eight. She felt relief; she had plenty of time to get ready before Brie came to pick her up.
With another yawn, she stood and stretched once more. Approaching the window, she looked out at the congested traffic and winced. She thought back to her sixteenth birthday when Bryan had come home for a week with a concussion and spent it teaching her how to drive. Ari was sure she had mentally blocked out some of the more terrible memories that had come with that week, but at the end of it, she knew how to drive. A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she recalled her first fender-bender. Bryan had made a mountain out of a molehill. He had reacted so hysterically that Ari started becoming selective with the things she told him. Turning away from the window, Ari crossed the room to go through her bags to find what she needed to get ready.
The shower was as hot as she could stand it, the warm sprays offering comfort to her tired muscles. It was only a five-hour flight, but the emotional weight of the trip seemed to take far more out of her than she realized. She stayed in the shower until the bathroom was fogged and until her skin had taken on a rosy tint. Stepping out of the shower, she wrapped the white towel around her frame, tucking it into place so she could work on drying and straightening her hair. The days of unmanageable curls were long gone, another change that had come with leaving her old life behind.
She turned on the fan and cracked the bathroom door to disperse the steam before she wiped a wide patch of it off the mirror with her hand. She plugged in the hair dryer first and worked at brushing and drying her hair. Arista worked in silence, doing her best to ignore the storm raging within. She took deep breaths while she worked, while her mind raced with a dozen thoughts a minute, in every possible direction. Who was she going to see? How many familiar faces had made it to WWE in her absence? How many people remembered her, and moreover, how many of them wanted to wring her neck when they saw her?
Ari stared at the tired reflection in the mirror, her lips thinning into a bemused smile. While it was common knowledge on the wrestling scene that she was the sister of the "American Dragon", it was never a secret that their relationship was the result of adoption papers signed by his mother when she was young. Standing side by side, the two looked nothing alike; Bryan was five-eight, grizzled and dirty blonde with blue eyes. Ari was a statuesque Greek woman of five-ten, with curly blondish-brown hair and light grey-green eyes framed by short, thick lashes.
The dress she wore was black, a simple fit and flare style that clung to her in all the ways a little black dress was supposed to. She spun around, taking in her reflection, loving the way the skirt spun with her body. It was rare she wore dresses – what she wore was one of two in her entire wardrobe, both black – but after Nikki's phone call, she knew jeans and a T-shirt were going to be frowned upon. She accessorized it with a necklace she'd been given by her mother when she turned sixteen, one of her most treasured possessions. The makeup she wore was simple; a small amount of eyeliner, mascara, and gloss. It was years before she wore makeup, a direct result of Bryan's lectures about the evils of the beauty industry. Bryan seemed to define a lot of things in her life, and as she grew into an adult, she learned that her relationship with him and his opinions on things were often a double-edged sword.
A pair of ballet flats finished her look. She looked in the bathroom mirror one last time, fixing her hair so it fell straight around her face. She placed her hands on her abdomen and took a deep breath. Walking out into the hotel room, she slid some money and her key-card into her bra. She looked at herself in the mirror above the desk to make sure there wasn't anything out of place. She slid on her black moto jacket and zipped it to the sternum. Brie would be arriving soon, and then it would be showtime. She went to her bag and pulled out the silver gift box with the blue bow on it. Running her finger over the box, she hoped that Bryan liked what was inside of it.
The drive to the arena had consisted mostly of Birdie making cute noises in the backseat and Brie talking about her clothing line and brand of wine. Ari realized during the drive that she barely knew her sister-in-law; it never occurred to her that Bryan would find someone just as ambitious and driven as he. She learned on the way to the venue that SmackDown co-taped with a show called 205 Live, that 205 taped before SmackDown started. Ari learned the show was for the company's Cruiserweight division, a division that had been dead and buried at the time Ari had left.
When they arrived at the arena, Brie gave Ari directions to the party room before she left to meet Bryan at Gorilla – the area that separated backstage and the ring. It was Brie's hope to cut Bryan off at the pass so Ari could move around backstage undetected. So, clutching her blue and silver gift to her chest like she was holding textbooks, Ari followed Brie's directions to the letter, down a suspiciously empty hallway. She took her place in front of the closed grey door.
With a deep breath, Ari used one of her shaky hands to smooth imaginary wrinkles out of her garment. In the arena now, with some of the most glamorous women on the planet, Ari suddenly felt self-conscious about herself and her choice in fashion, about the lack of makeup, nail polish, and high heels. She had never been that kind of girl, but suddenly she felt like she should have been. Back on home soil, Ari was suddenly hit with all the old feelings of being inferior, of being an outcast, of wanting to change everything about herself if it meant she could fit in just once. The feeling knocked the wind out of her, left her breathless and panicky. She suddenly wanted to turn and run away, forget that she had ever come back. She had no idea who or what waited for her on the other side of the door, but everything felt like a mistake, like the biggest mistake she had ever made in her life.
Before she could register what she was doing, her arm shot out and knocked on the door, following the specific rhythm Brie had shown her on the dashboard of the car. It was a secret knock to let the people on the other side know that it wasn't Bryan, that it was someone there to help set up the party.
A moment passed. She thought about knocking again, but then she heard the sound of something tipping over and some shuffling. "No, no. You just do your thing. Stay put. I got this..."
She froze.
The door swung open, the man in front of her freezing as well, his initial shock causing him to drop the Styrofoam cup of coffee he had been holding. It hit the ground with a soft thump, the coffee spilling out in every direction. Ari felt it hit her leg and her flats, but she couldn't move. She felt herself grow pale underneath his gaze, and she suddenly felt two feet tall. Every patch of exposed skin burned underneath a familiar gaze, a gaze that had once held so much comfort and acceptance, but now felt critical and scrutinizing.
On the other side of the door, Drew Gulak couldn't believe his eyes. The two of them stood in silence, with matching expressions that resembled somebody seeing a ghost in the flesh. Neither made any attempt to move. Every word they wanted to speak seemed to die in the space between them. It was moments before anyone spoke, but it was Drew who broke the silence.
"Ari?"