Alright! Here's Part 2 of Chapter 8! Make sure to read Part 1, otherwise this part makes zero sense. The whole reason for two parts is that all together, Ch. 8 was way too freaking long, even to my standards.
~/LB/~ simply means it's a line break/continuation. Enjoy!
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The car ride was too silent. Fours later, Paige was still ignoring me. The only time she spoke was about three and a half hours ago when I turned on the radio. Paige had instantly reached over and shut it off, saying that she hated the music I listened to. Quite frankly, I'm not too fond of her choice in music genres and I had told her such in retort. Paige went back to ignoring me. An hour into the drive, silence was fine because we both probably would have just kept arguing. Two hours, the silence was starting to bother me, but I was able to distract myself with driving. Paige had been driving since we had left the arena, but I could tell she was getting tired. Without a word, Paige had pulled over and yawned. I took the hint and traded her places. The three hour mark was when I was starting to become antsy because it was so quiet. Paige had fallen asleep (or was pretending, I wasn't sure which), so I left her alone. Now the silence was just unbearable. Glancing over, I could see the glow of Paige's phone, so I knew she couldn't pretend to be sleeping.
"Paige, will you please say something? The silence is killing me." Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Paige was looking at me. "C'mon. The silent treatment is childish." I had to bite my tongue to stop any other sarcastic remarks. Paige normally didn't take too well to being called a child. She surprised me though. Instead of yelling at me, or worse ignoring me again, the English girl sighed and locked her phone screen. The car got darker, but the light of the GPS provided enough glow to still see Paige. Barely.
"What do you want to talk about?"
"Anything." I replied, searching my brain for a topic. There was one that I was definitely curious about, so it was worth a shot to ask, "Why doesn't your brother talk to you?" Paige visibly tensed, turning her head to look out of her window. "Don't you dare ignore me again." My tone came out more pleading than snarky. Paige sighed softly and light ran a hand through her raven hair.
"I was awarded a developmental contract." Paige spoke so softly that I almost couldn't hear her, but the more she spoke, the clearer her words became. "Zak and I tried out together, but I was chosen for an FCW contract." FCW was Florida Championship Wrestling. It used to be the main developmental territory before NXT.
"I'm not quite following." I commented. Paige shook her head.
"Zak thinks I am handed everything, that I never actually earn what I have or what I get. I was the only girl at the try-out I passed, so Zak assumes they let me through so my feelings didn't get hurt. It couldn't be farther from the truth because I was in the ring more than he was." Paige scoffed lightly. "Things seem to have gotten worse since I debuted on Raw. Zak didn't even watch my match. I didn't win the title, it was handed to me. I didn't work my ass off in NXT, I was just randomly chosen because they wanted an excuse to bring another NXT Diva up. That's what he thinks. That's what everyone thinks." I don't know if it was just sleep deprivation getting to me, but I thought I could hear a twinge of sadness underneath her increasingly bitter tone. I shook my head.
"I don't think that, Paige. I don't think that at all." Paige turned her attention to me while I gept my gaze on the road. "As much as it kills me to admit it, you're extremely talented. You're gonna go far in this business, kid."
"Call me 'kid' again and I will not hesitate to throw you out of a moving vehicle." Paige replied bluntly. I think this damn girl has more mood swings than I do. I figured she was being serious, but I caught a glimpse of a smile from Paige. I couldn't help but smile a bit myself. I had learned something about Paige that I never knew. The car became silent again, though it didn't seem as tense as it did before. Most of the hostility seemed to have disappeared. About a half an hour later, Paige spoke up again.
"AJ, where are we going?"
"Kentucky. Why?" I answered, thinking that she was asking where the next venue was.
"No, I mean you've stopped following the GPS. Even it has no idea where we are." It was then that I realized that I wasn't even paying attention to where I was driving. I bit my bottom lip. I had no idea where we were… Like hell I was going to admit that to Paige though. I could figure this out. Glancing down at my GPS confirmed what Paige had said. It assumed we were in the middle of nowhere.
"Maybe it's a dated map. This thing is about four or five years old." I commented. "You have GPS on your phone, right?"
"My phone has no signal." Okay, now this was seriously becoming a problem.
"Just look for road signs," I instructed. The car was filled with silence again, this time for which I was thankful for. I needed to concentrate now. If Paige and I were late, Paul would be even more furious with us than he already was. We were both looking for road signs, so I admit that I didn't have my full attention on the road. About ten minutes passed and nothing. Not one road sign. Even the mile markers were nonexistent.
"AJ, look out!" Paige screamed. I snapped my attention back on the road and saw a person standing in the middle of my lane. Everything happened too quickly for me to react properly. I panicked, sharply swerving in order to avoid hitting the person. I missed the guard rail on the other side of the road and the car sped down the steep shoulder, my brakes not working when I slammed down on them. If Paige and I were screaming, neither one of us realized it. The car rolled onto the roof before sliding and colliding with a tree, the tree forcing us to a stop. I had knocked my head off of just about everything during all of this and it was a struggled to keep conscious. Looking over, I could see that Paige wasn't moving.
"P-Paige…" I stammered, my voice trembling. Paige still didn't move. "Paige." I tried again. Nothing. I wasn't (miraculously) pinned by anything, so I tried getting my seat belt off to climb over to Paige, but it was jammed. I couldn't get it off. At the same time, I was also losing the battle for consciousness. "P-Pai…"
Everything then faded to black.
In case you haven't realized, this is pretty much slow burn Pai-J. This is also the start of the supernatural aspect of the story. I tried to follow the sequence of events after SummerSlam to make it seem normal, but this is where the fun begins ;}
Ju$t!ce
