Chapter Twenty Five:

A few hours later, Jewel awoke to Adam's green eyes intently focused on her. Instantly unsettled, and partly aroused (with a tiny part of her frozen with terror, as memories from the night before flooded her mind), she pulled the blankets up to her nose, not missing the flash of pain that clouded Adam's eyes for the briefest of moments and tilted her gaze back up to him once more.

"Were you watching me sleep?" she asked quietly, feeling all the more aware of how ghastly she must have looked to him, covered in bruises and bite marks. The memories of the events of the previous night slammed into her head, and the thought of it caused a flush of shame to spread across her cheeks.

Adam watched her silently for a moment, saying nothing. Finally, he saw her lower her eyes, watched her dark lashes swoop down over porcelain pale cheeks, and a surge of longing ran through him. Longing, coupled with an unfathomable degree of fury. Fury at Chris Jericho for hurting this woman. For putting her through so much pain and misery… Not only was it enough to humiliate this woman by sleeping with another and making it obvious to everyone which woman it was that he preferred, but he had the audacity to act like a possessive caveman over Jewel when she finally got the hint and turned her attentions to someone else, and then tried to force himself on her! This match at WrestleMania was more than about a friendship turned sour, about more than a championship; it was about Adam exacting revenge for all the hurt that Jewel had endured for this man, all the nights spent alone, crying and wondering why he didn't love her as much as he once had, agonizing over what she had done wrong to lose his love.

What made Adam the most furious, most eager to rip the other man's head off, was that Jericho seemed to revel in Jewel's agony, seemed to enjoy the fact that he was breaking his wife's heart by parading his affair with Stephanie in front of her. But for him to all of a sudden play the part of the jealous husband when Jewel began to put herself first, begun to realize that what Adam had always felt for her had been more than friendship and had finally begun to act in her own interest, and tried to force himself on her…

He could kill Jericho. Kill him with a smile on his face.

"Adam?" That soft voice broke him out of his violent thoughts, and he looked back over to see Jewel looking up at him once more, that beautiful porcelain face of hers a mixture of confusion and sadness, and the beast inside him roared for Jericho's blood.

"Yeah?"

"You're…you're going to hurt him, aren't you?" Her voice…it was flat and monotonous, but it still soothed the beast raging inside him.

"I… You know I will, Jewel." His hands gripped the blankets on the bed, his teeth ground together, barely holding back the sudden tide of fury that washed over him. "He had no right to do what he did, had no right to do what he almost did, and I thank God that you were able to get through to him when you did." He flashed her a look of bitterness. "He deserves to rot in hell, and I'll be the one to deliver him there."

"As much as the thought of that excites me…Adam…please don't."

Adam shot her a look of disbelief. How could she continue to defend him? Her bruises hadn't magically disappeared; her split and swollen lip hadn't magically healed itself. There was no way he wasn't going to rip Jericho limb from limb when he finally got his hands on him. "And why the hell not?"

"Because…" Despite the grimace of pain, she flashed him a suddenly sly smirk, similar to the cat that ate the canary "…somehow, I have a feeling someone may be taking care of that for the both of us."

Chris Jericho was working out in the gym, trying to burn through the alcohol-induced haze he'd been in for the past few hours, trying to drink away the feelings of shame and self-loathing that ripped through him as his mind kept assailing him with images of the night before.

He had tried so hard to love Jewel the way he once had, hated treating her the way he did and made no excuses for it other than he would never be free to be with the woman he loved. He knew that his affair with Stephanie, for as long as it had endured, was wrong, but he couldn't help the way he felt about her. He knew that Stephanie probably didn't love him, had only invited him into her bed because she loved the thrill of a new conquest, a new man to parade around Hunter, to taunt him with the knowledge that she could have any man she wanted, and chose the man he hated most of all as her lover. He hated being a pawn in Stephanie's game of mental chess with Hunter, because he knew that he had inadvertently dragged his own wife into the game, and they both suffered for it.

In the beginning, it had been fun for him as well, a way of sticking it to Hunter upon the latter's return to the WWE after recovering from his first quad injury. But somewhere along the way, from the first moment he had kissed Stephanie, sparks had flown between them. And though he knew Stephanie, would know she would deny it until her dying day, he was sure she had felt something from that first kiss as well. That was why she refused to let him go back to his wife, but would never leave her husband for Chris. The frustration of being nothing more than the other man wounded his pride and left him infuriated, but despite his anger and frustration, he couldn't bring himself to leave her. She was a decadence he was sure he couldn't live without, and the fact that she still came to him for sex, while making sure he sat back and watched her belly grow rounder and rounder, watching Hunter raising his daughters with a proud smile on his face the entire time, made Chris grow bitter and even more resentful towards his longtime rival.

And he took it out on Jewel.

Poor, sweet Jewel. His lips twisted wryly as he tried to focus on his workout, but thoughts of the petite brunette came to the forefront of his mind. With a grunt of frustration, he set down the weights he had been working with, grabbed his bottle of water and sat on a nearby bench, taking a swig of the cool drink.

Jewel's only crime was that she had come into his life during a time when he was most emotionally vulnerable, and he had thought himself in love with the girl for a short time. Perhaps he even had been; he couldn't even tell anymore. She had given her heart to him, and in turn, he recompensed that payment with pain and coldness, bordering on frigidity and indifference. He knew it hurt her, and it pained him to do that to someone he care so much about, but she couldn't begin to fathom what he went through on a daily basis, having to live a lie all for the sake of keeping up appearances. Despite knowing how much he hurt her by rejecting her, he still cared for her, and out of respect for her father and her family, had promised to look out for her. But despite his warnings, she had plunged headfirst into the WWE, a place he knew she never belonged but would nevertheless thrive due to her immense untapped talent, and he knew she was playing a dangerous game of her own. He had known it from the moment she had first told him to fuck off and stormed out of their hotel room all those weeks ago; she had found someone else, and their influence was corrupting her, the same way he had been corrupted all those years ago.

It was too late for him to get out, but perhaps he could still save her.

The sound of the gym door slamming open brought him out of his thoughts, and he looked up in time to see a fist flying towards his face. Though still quite drunk, his reflexes were still somewhat sharp, and he ducked, just barely receiving a glancing blow from the flying fist, but that did nothing to deter his assailant, who sent another fist flying his way, this time catching him full-on in the eye and sending him flying over the bench and crashing to the floor. He tried to climb unsteadily to his feet, his head now swimming with dizziness and pain, stars winking behind his eyes, only to be shoved back down to the floor, and slaps to be rained down upon his face and shoulders.

"Stupid—fucking—son—of a—bitch!" Natalya snarled as she rained down punches and slaps to the bigger man, causing him to duck and curl up to protect his head and face. "How dare you, Jericho? HOW DARE YOU DO THAT TO JEWEL?!"

Somewhere, through the haze of pain and dizziness, Jericho lamented that he deserved this, after what he had almost done to Jewel. He deserved this, and so much more. Never in his life had he ever forced himself on a woman; barring his vanity, he was attractive and charismatic enough to get any woman he wanted, he never had to force anyone into anything they didn't want to do. But the moment he saw Jewel sing, saw where her gaze had gone to…

A sudden slap to his face brought a fresh wave of pain to his already throbbing head, and more stars winked in front of his eyes. He shoved blindly, sending Nattie flying off of him, and wobbled to his feet. "I'm sorry!" he finally yelled back at the younger woman. "Is that what you want to hear? I'm sorry, damn it all! I'm sorry it happened, I thought she wanted me—"

"—So you force yourself on her? Almost rape her?" Rage dotted Nattie's vision, and Jericho had to shove her away again before she caused more damage. "She's traumatized because of what you did to her, Chris! She can't even look me in the face, and don't even get me started on what you did to her mentally, let alone physically!"

"She told me to stop, and I did," Jericho panted, slumping to the floor in defeat. "Christ, Nattie, do you honestly think I'm so vile and depraved that I'd resort to raping my own wife just to keep her away from other men? You know me better than that, Nat!"

"That's the problem, Chris, I don't know you anymore," she spat, venom and disgust lacing her every word as she glared at him. "None of us have known you for years. You're like a child throwing a tantrum; you don't want Jewel anymore, but you don't want to let her go and find her own happiness, because we all know what will happen when she does. Hunter's going to force Stephanie to choose between the two of you, and you know if he forces her to do that, you'll be the one left all alone.

"I won't let my cousin be your second choice or your last resort, Jericho. She deserves better than you."

"I know she does," he said softly, hanging his head. "She should have never married me in the first place, Nat. Her father tried to tell her not to marry a guy in the business, but she didn't listen. She's too much like him." He gave a small smile at that, a smile which quickly faded from his face, and he looked at Nattie somberly. "I really did love her, you know."

"What changed? Because you weren't fooling anyone in the family, and after a while, we realized that you weren't even fooling yourself."

"I fucked up, Nat. I fell for someone I never should have, when it was supposed to always have been about sex. And then Jewel and I got married right before that, and we were both under ridiculous amounts of pressure… But then Jewel…"

"What?"

"She…lost the baby, Nat. After she lost the baby, everything changed."