Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

Thanks so much for the responses for the first two chapters! I'm still so shocked that this fic is receiving such great feedback. Shocked and completely humbled and grateful. I really hope that everyone likes this third chapter! Thanks so much for reading!


Darkness Before Dawn
Chapter Three: Interruptions


It had taken everything in Nikki's body to not text John back with her answer.

A part of her was angry with him - he texted her about something this important? Didn't she even warrant a phone call?

Another part of her, however, missed him, still. And she needed to stamp down this part of her as quickly as possible. Preferably violently. Preferably with a stiletto. Everything was preferable with a nice pair of pumps, after all, even squashing the dreams of something that was once the ultimate goal of one's life.

He hadn't said anything else to her since. She'd avoided him backstage and on the bus and during events. She'd gone as far as leaving the gym whenever he came around to do his usual workout. Brie knew everything now, and she was just as motherly as she'd always been, though she was super supportive. They were twins, after all, and Brie wished the world for her sister.

"Don't compromise what you want for anyone," Brie had told her. "I think you made the right choice, Nicole. Don't doubt that."

Nikki couldn't help but have those words on replay in the back of her mind as she stretched and got ready for her match. She was facing AJ Lee, and that required one to be extremely cautious. Tiny as she was, AJ was a threat, and Nikki didn't deny that. She also couldn't deny her desire to have that butterfly belt around her waist, even if it required smashing a certain Black Widow with her louboutin.

Which she would never conceivably do, of course. Seriously, who would kill a spider with such an expensive shoe? The thought itself was enough to make her cringe.

Smirking to herself at her childish interlude, she hardly noticed the man behind her until he said, "I don't know what I did to cause you to avoid me, Nicole."

Nikki stiffened in the middle of one of her stretches, back arched like a cat, her eyes wide in her face. She shouldn't have been surprised, not really. John's whole life was this company, so it would only by typical that she'd run into him sooner or later. However, Nikki was banking on the later aspect of said situation.

"It's not you..."

She hadn't turned to face him, but she could see that smirk on his face, that face that she still loved. "Oh, it's the whole, it's not you, it's me thing, right?"

Nikki finally turned around, her voice almost desperate as she said his name. John's clear gaze was settled on her, and he looked almost sad. Almost being the key word.

"I wish I could say I don't know why you did what you did," he continued, "but I do."

"Huh. You do? Now isn't that nice? All wrapped up in a pretty little present, like everything is when it comes to you."

Shit, girl, where the fuck did that come from? He doesn't deserve that, she thought. And here you were going to try to be civil.

"I'm sorry you feel that way," John replied, unperturbed by her outburst.

He's always been good like that, you know.

Nikki wasn't sure what to say. She had so many things she wanted to get off her chest, so many things she needed to say to make him understand. She wasn't going to sacrifice anything else for him, not anymore. She couldn't. But even as she thought this, her heart thudded painfully.

"Can I take you to dinner?"

She paused. "What?"

John looked at her, his gaze as steady as it had ever been. At one point, she fancied herself the only person who could truly tell what was behind those eyes of his. Now, she just fancies herself a fool.

"I feel like...the workplace isn't the prime area to talk about this sort of thing," he replied.

"If I recall, you were the one who came up to me," she said, not unkindly.

John smiled at that. "You wouldn't answer my calls."

"Touche," she admitted bitterly.

There was a quiet moment between the two of them, one that Nikki couldn't seem to shake for hours afterward, which was broken by John saying, "I just want closure - from you, not from my own assumptions about you." His voice was soft, the ghosts of her past floating around her head. "Because it seems like I don't know you at all."

He turned away from her, leaving her with a feeling akin to being punched in the gut.

Nikki had no time to think of the way her insides felt as if they were being smashed down by some horrid force beyond her control. She rolled her neck from side to side, inhaling deeply as she continued her pre-match routine, unaware of the eyes on her back until a very familiar, drawling voice said, "Well, that seemed like ideal drama for your little Real Housewives bullshit."

Her spine straightened - out of insult as well as surprise - and she turned around to face a very different set of blue eyes, ones that were mocking instead of placid, ones that were wild instead of calm, ones that seemed to hate instead of love.

"Ambrose," she sneered. "You were spying on us?"

Dean Ambrose rolled his shoulders a bit, his posture slumped and yet she felt like the smaller one in the room. "Hard not to. I could smell the melodrama a mile away, doll."

Nikki felt the sudden urge to punch him. Again and again and again.

"That was none of your business."

A smile cracked Dean's face, one whose very presence whispered, Dangerous. "You do know that shit's been on television for, like, two years?"

She closed her eyes, calming the growl she felt building in her throat. "That wasn't for the cameras, you asshole."

Even though she was clearly trying to keep her calm in this situation, Dean prodded on, like a little kid poking a bruise to determine how badly it hurt. "Everything's for the cameras with people like you."

Blazing brown eyes snapped open and connected with those smirking blue ones of his. "Listen, I don't have time for this little game with you, got it?" she snarled, feeling more malicious than she had in ages. "You don't know anything about me."

This seemed to spur Dean on. "Ah, the whole you don't know me thing, yeah?" He snickered. "How very high school."

"High school or not, the fact still stands."

The Lunatic Fringe tilted his head to the side, looking every bit the picture of unhinged, thriving on the chaos he created with his own two hands - or, in this case, his words. He said nothing, only let out a rough, cynical laugh as he turned, waving his hand in dismissal. "You keep thinking that, doll."

As she watched him walk away, she damned herself for the tears that clouded her vision, damned herself for the way her fists shook, and damned herself for letting Dean Ambrose affect her when no one else had.


End Chapter Three.