She stood proudly next to him as he spoke about how he'd won the Royal Rumble last night, and how that gave him the biggest power in the WWE right now. He was standing strong in the middle of the ring, looking out at the crowd who sounded up a wall of boos for him. He didn't care because he was on top of the world, and nothing could get him down at this moment. She placed her hand at the small of her back, pressing in slightly to encourage him further. He was slightly surprised by the action and turned to her, briefly forgetting his words and smiled at her.

She smiled back then watched as he started in again on Rocky, on how he was a part-timer, someone who wasn't committed to this place, committed to their craft. Somehow, it was so easy to fall into this with him. It was so easy to stand by his side as his girlfriend and be proud of him, to agree with his words, to be someone who cared about him and loved him. It was so easy to pretend to be his girlfriend when she was in the ring or on the stage with him.

However, when she got backstage, when she was just around Dolph the person, her feelings became so muddled and out of control. She knew that she shouldn't want a relationship with him, he would only disappoint her after all, but part of her did want it. She pushed that part down because that part of her said the same things about Daniel, Punk, Kane, John, and that voice was completely wrong all of the time. She couldn't trust that voice, just like part of her couldn't trust Dolph.

It wasn't like it sounded, not really. She trusted in Dolph's friendship more than she'd trusted anything in a long time, but his feelings, the ones he probably had for her, the ones she'd seen swimming in his eyes the night before, those feelings would fail her. They were false, pretend, something conjured up because they pretended so well here, in front of the cameras and these thousands of people.

"And Rocky, I'm coming after you, the title will be mine, and when I'm done with you, I'll be cashing this baby in," he held up his briefcase, almost daring Rocky to come out to challenge him, but that wasn't going to happen because Rocky wasn't here tonight.

She let the thoughts of her feelings for Dolph disappear as he resumed speaking, "but enough about me, tonight isn't just about me. Tonight is also about the beautiful woman by my side. Tonight begins AJ's journey towards the Diva's title." Dolph handed her the microphone, and for a moment, she was shocked. She hadn't expected him to want her to speak. He was putting her on the spot, and she couldn't believe he would spring that on her when she wasn't prepared.

She gave him a look, a desperate look, but he only gave her an encouraging one back. Then she understood that this wasn't just his moment to shine, she needed to start shining soon. This was like he'd said before, they weren't in this to make him champion, they were in this together to be champions, to be the best in the world together. She gave a shy smile back before looking up at the ramp.

"Kaitlyn, you refuse to give me the WrestleMania match I want because you don't think I'm worthy of being the number one contender. That's fine, everyone can have their opinion, so I guess I'll just have to base that all on fact," she said, a sneer making her lip curl up as she regarded the invisible specter of Kaitlyn that stood on the stage. "I will crash my way through the entire diva's division until there is nobody left then you won't be able to ignore me…nobody will be able to ignore us."

"And it starts tonight," Dolph leaned over to say into the microphone. The boos rained down on them, their enemies too cowardly to appear before them, even if one of them wasn't even in the building.

Dolph walked towards the ropes and held them open for her. She went through lithely, and jumped down. As soon as he was beside her, she wrapped her arm around his waist and walked up the ramp with E trailing behind them. When they reached the top of the ramp, he held the briefcase up and pointed towards the WrestleMania sign hanging from the rafters.

When they walked backstage, it was with a renewed vigor. They'd made their statement, declared their presence as a force in the WWE, and she felt good. Somehow, the revenge she'd been so intent upon in the recent past was nothing compared to the bright future she felt on the verge of with Dolph. Suddenly, the past misdeeds of Daniel and the rest seemed inconsequential. She didn't have that burning desire to see them crumpled in a heap in the middle of the ring, not when Dolph as champion fogged her mind up.

"I want you to win," she told him, her words coming without truly thinking.

"Thanks, that's what I want too," he said good-naturedly, not noticing the awed tone of voice.

"No, that's not what I meant," she said, not noticing that E had discreetly tiptoed away (tiptoed might not be the right word for a man of his size, but he tried to be discreet about leaving the two hotheads he called his friends).

"Well, I don't think you wanted me to lose…"

"No, I just mean that…" She sighed, not knowing how he would take this, and she was scared again that he would start to take things in the wrong direction. She didn't want him to think that she was being forward again, that things would end up like last night. She wanted to be friends, not more, friends, not more she repeated to herself over and over again. Still, she'd started talking, and she needed to finish somehow. "I just mean that suddenly, revenge doesn't seem so appealing."

"It doesn't?" he looked surprised because that was the reason she'd come to him in the first place. She wanted to take down John and all the other men who'd made her life a living hell.

Getting to know her as he did, he couldn't say that it wasn't a goal of his now too. AJ was special, beautiful, wonderful even, and for those men to have used and abused her as they did, leaving her a shell, he wanted revenge for her too. Now it wasn't important to her, so what was? What was this? Did she still want to be with him?

"No, now it's just being champion with you," she told him, "and you getting both of the championships. I just want…I don't even know, but I want you to win, and I want to win, and I want everything that comes with that."

"I want that too," he told her. "We'll have it too, I know we will."

"Me too," she told him.

Later that evening, she was lying in bed, toying with her phone. She kept pulling up Dolph's name on her phone and staring at the picture of him she'd chosen as his profile picture. It was from a couple weeks ago when they were driving to the next town. They'd been joking around in the car, and she'd said something that he found particularly funny, and she'd taken a picture of him mid-laugh. The way his eyes lit up made her save the picture, and when she needed a picture of him for her phone, that was the easiest choice she'd ever had to make.

She debated with the idea of calling him just to talk. He was two floors away, but he felt far, and she knew he'd probably still be awake, decompressing from the night. She felt good too, having beaten both Cameron and Naomi then challenging Natalya to a match afterwards for next week. She knew that the time was getting closer for Kaitlyn to give in to her demands. She wanted to share that with Dolph. She let her finger hover over his number, but decided against it at the last minute, and scrolled down further, pressing a button quickly.

"Mija, what's wrong?" came her mother's frantic voice on the other end of the line. She knew it was obscenely late on the other side of the country, but when you needed your mom, you needed your mom.

"Nothing, Mom," she said quickly, "I just needed to talk to someone, I'm sorry though, I woke you, didn't I?"

"I would never turn you away," she told her daughter. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing much, not really," she said, "did you see me tonight?"

"I did, you won, I was proud of you. I also saw that you want the title."

"Yeah, Dolph is encouraging of me," she said with a smile. "He really wants to be champion with me…you'd like him, Mom. You'd like him a lot."

"I feel like I've heard that before."

"I know you have, but this time it's different, he's…he's my best friend," AJ said, and the words sounded ridiculous to her brain. "He's the best man I've ever known, and I know I haven't said that one before."

"You haven't," her mother said, "but what makes him so different?"

"He wants me around, he really wants me around, Mom. Everything he does, it's not for him, but it's for us. Mom, he…I think he might like me like that," AJ finally confessed, "and I told him I didn't want that."

"And you don't want that?" her mother was skeptical.

"I'm not sure, I'm scared," AJ said, "I'm scared that I'll put myself out there again, and he'll just burn me like all the other ones. I know he's different, but how different is the thing I worry about. I just don't want to make that same mistake. I didn't want this. I didn't want this to be girl again."

"But if he's different…oh April, if you know, you just know, I can't explain it, but if you don't want to rush it."

"I'm scared that because I pretty much rejected him, Mom, the other night, after he won the rumble match, we almost kissed, but I stopped it because I didn't want to go down that road again. I told him I just wanted to be friends, but what if he finds someone, I've made a mess of everything."

"It doesn't seem like you've made a mess of anything from the way he was around you tonight. I saw him out there during your match. I don't know if you noticed, but he watched you the entire time like there was nothing else in the world but you. I've hardly ever seen a man accompany a woman to the ring like he did with you, and certainly not one who was so invested in your winning."

"He wants to do this together, be a power couple, run the company, he wants to do that with me."

"And have you considered just why he wants to do that with you so much? I'm not saying he's the one, I don't know him, but I know you do, I can see it in the way you look at him. Sometimes you have to trust yourself, even if you'd made mistakes in the past, even if you think you'll make the same mistakes in the future because you can't change your future if you don't take that chance."

"If I lose him, Mom, I think I'll lose myself."

"How do you know he doesn't feel the same way?"

"I don't." Maybe he was just as scared as she was. She'd never seen Dolph with a girlfriend, and she suddenly wondered why that was. She knew he'd said that he was too busy, but what if there was more? What if there were scars in his past that he hadn't told her about? What if he was in the same boat?

"Maybe you need to find out."