Disclaimer, etc., in part 1.

Part Two

He jerked a hand through his hair, frowning slightly as he glanced at the mile marker he'd just passed. He was making good time on the trek to the city for the next live event, but it still felt like it was taking too long. He was getting a little restless. Sighing, the man reached out and turned up the volume of the music in the car, singing along under his breath to a playlist of his favorite songs. Given how hard it could be to find good radio stations when traveling from town to town - the stations changed so damn frequently - he'd taken to renting cars that had places to plug in his iPod so that he could listen to music he actually liked as much as possible when he was on the road.

Still singing along with the music, he glanced at the clock in the car and noted the time, vaguely thinking that he'd have to stop to grab something to eat after awhile. He'd have to gas up the car, too, so he'd probably just go to one of those places that had a fast food restaurant connected to the gas station or something. One-stop shopping and all of that. He nodded to himself as he thought about it, the man barely glancing at the exit as he passed by a rest stop, figuring that he'd be fine until the next town he'd hit about twenty miles from now... The man barely managing to keep from slamming on his brakes in the middle of the road as he caught sight of a figure stumbling slightly as the person walked through the grass on the side of the road.

Without taking any time to consider what he was doing, CM Punk slowed his rental car down and pulled off onto the shoulder of the road, quickly putting the car in park and turning the engine off before checking to make sure no one was coming and getting out of the vehicle. He quickly made his way around the trunk of the car and stepped out onto the grass, his gaze still on the person that he'd just seen. It was a woman, that much was obvious from the long hair and the figure he could see even from the distance of a couple hundred feet away. She wore shorts and a peasant blouse and carried a purse, but from what he could tell as she continued to walk, she wasn't wearing any shoes. Or if she was, they couldn't be anything more than flip-flops or some type of flimsy sandals.

She also looked incredibly familiar.

"What the hell?" the man muttered, Punk looking up and down the road as if trying to figure out where, exactly, the woman had come from. He couldn't see a vehicle, which confused him, and made him wonder exactly how long she'd been walking around. He also couldn't help but wonder what had happened... Had she been in a wreck and wandered off? Was she having car trouble? But if she had car trouble, why didn't she just call for a tow truck or something? It made no sense, and he wasn't getting any answers by just standing there and staring at her as she kept walking, the woman getting further and further away from him, acting as if she hadn't seen him at all. Frowning, he began to make his way in the direction she was headed, his movement somewhere between a walk and a run.

"Eve? Eve, is that you? Hey, wait up!" he yelled out, noting the way the woman jerked slightly at the sound of his voice, making it clear that she heard him, though she didn't turn around, nor did she change the speed at which she was walking. Of course, if she was barefoot or wearing flip flops, she probably couldn't move too terribly fast. Running in flip flops could make her trip, and running in bare feet could lead to stepping on something she hadn't seen in time. Because she stayed at the same speed, he caught up with her fairly easily, the man's frown deepening as he got a better look at her appearance. She'd pulled her hair back into a messy ponytail, and the sweat he could see on her neck seemed to indicate that she'd been outside awhile. On top of that, there was a nasty looking scrape on her right thigh, just beneath the hem of her shorts. Mostly it was just a graze or something, but there were a few places where he could see blood had started to make a trail from the cut down her leg. He could also finally see for sure that she was indeed barefoot. Her feet were dirty and, as she continued to walk, he was pretty sure he could see some cuts on the bottom of them. Or, at least, he could see something that looked like blood on the bottom of her feet as she continued to walk... To limp, really. It was clear that she was favoring her right leg, though he wasn't sure if it was because of the nasty scrape on her thigh, or because of the cuts on her feet. Whatever the case, she was clearly hurting.

"What the hell is going on?" CM Punk muttered to himself before reaching out and grasping the woman by the shoulders, turning her around to face him. She stumbled slightly at the motion, blinking rapidly as she looked at him. Her eyes were red, which he took as a sign that she had, at some point, been crying. Considering the fact that she was wandering around barefoot and injured in the middle of nowhere, he couldn't really say he blamed her for it. "Eve, what happened?"

She blinked at him, confusion on her face. She seemed able to focus on him pretty easily, which he took as a good sign. Eve didn't seem to have a concussion. If she did, he doubted her gaze would be quite so clear. Of course, he still didn't have any idea what in the hell had happened to her. His best theory had been that she'd had an accident, hit her head, and wandered off. But that didn't seem to be the case.

"Come on, Eve, talk to me," he said quietly, and the woman blinked again, looking like she'd just realized that she hadn't responded to him yet.

"What are you doing here? How did you get here?" she asked, probably the first thing that came to her mind, and he shrugged, pointing back toward the car that he'd left on the shoulder of the road. Thankfully, he'd been smart enough to take the keys with him - and lock the door - before he'd run off after her.

"I passed you in my car. I saw you walking, so I stopped. Eve... What the hell are you doing out here?" He looked around. "Where's your car?" he wanted to know, then gestured to her, specifically the scrapes on her leg. "What happened to you?"

She shook her head, pressing her lips together, and he was pretty sure that he saw tears in her eyes. Whatever was going on, she didn't want to talk about it. After a moment, she spoke. "It doesn't matter."

"You're barefoot, you're hurt, and I don't see your car. Trust me, Eve, it does matter."

"I'm fine."

"Like hell you are," he tossed back, the wrestler torn between frustration for the lack of answers and sympathy because it was obvious that something was going on here. "Eve, where's your car?"

She closed her eyes and laughed, though the sound held no humor. "I have no idea. Long gone, I imagine."

"Did someone take your car?" he asked, though he wasn't sure how that would have happened. If the car had been taken when she'd stopped somewhere... Wouldn't she have stayed there to call the cops or something instead of wandering around the highway? Wouldn't she have been at a gas station or a rest stop or a restaurant if something like that had happened? But she wasn't. Instead, she was in the middle of freaking nowhere.

She jerked her hands through her hair, messing up her ponytail even more than it had been already, the diva shaking her head and turning in a circle, a look on her face that he didn't quite understand. "Oh, he took the car alright," she said after a moment, something a little lost in her tone, like she was confused about how she'd ended up in this position.

CM Punk frowned, the man shaking his head. "He? Who is he?" he questioned, but as soon as he said it, the answer hit him like a kick to the gut. Punk knew, of course, who it was that Eve managed. Everyone in the entire company knew who she managed. She'd managed the man for the better part of a year, so it was a little hard not to notice it. But knowing who the 'he' in her statement had to be didn't really change things. All it did was make things worse, because apparently it was someone that she was supposed to be able to trust that had left her in this condition. Frowning, his gaze moved back to the diva, the man quickly noticing that she'd started walking again, not toward his car, but in the direction she'd been heading when he'd first come upon her. He was able to reach her again in a few strides, the wrestler stepping in front of her and turning to face her, putting his hands on her shoulders to keep her where she was. "Eve, stop walking," he told her, shaking her a bit as he said it, his tone leaving no room for argument, and when her eyes filled with tears, his own eyes widened in surprise and he swore. "Eve..."

"He left me. He shoved me out of the car, tossed my purse at me, and he left me." She looked away, then brought her gaze back to his, tears still pooling in her eyes. "My phone was on the charger. My shoes are probably still on the floorboards. I'd taken them off."

"Fucking bastard," Punk managed, forcing himself not to clench his hands into fists because he knew that there wasn't anything he could hit around here. Instead, he bent low, taking a look at Eve's thigh, wincing when he saw the bits of dirt and gravel clinging to the scrapes. Blood had trailed down her leg a bit, but it was dry now, the injury having stopped bleeding. In some places, the blood had mixed with the dirt on her legs, making the blood look darker and probably worse than it was. Even so, it was bad enough, and it would probably hurt like hell to clean. Without thinking about what he was doing, he reached out, fingers running over the skin, Eve flinching back slightly at the touch. Looking up, he saw her staring down at him with wide eyes, her gaze more focused than it had been since he'd come up to her. A tear was on its way down her cheek. Straightening up, he sighed, then pointed at his car still parked on the shoulder of the road. "Come on. Let's get you in the car, see what we can do for you," he told her, and Eve nodded slightly, turning toward the vehicle, wincing in pain when she went to take a step. The fact that she hadn't seemed to really acknowledge the pain when he'd come up to her and that she did now made him wonder just how out of it she'd really been. The heat, the pain, the shock of actually being left on the side of the road - the fear of what might end up happening...

"My feet hurt," she said quietly, apologetically, and Punk nodded slightly, the man jerking his hand through his hair before reaching out and lifting the diva in his arms, carrying her as he headed back toward the car.

"I know they do," he replied in an equally soft voice, all the while thinking about just what he could do to make a lot more than just Jeff Hardy's feet hurt.