Disclaimer, etc., in part 1. Thanks to everyone still reading/reviewing this one. :) Slowly getting all 61 parts posted...

Part Eighteen

Eve pulled her hair back from her face, a frown marring the diva's expression as she headed down the hallway. She'd walked out for Jeff's matches during the live events over the weekend, putting up with having to be around him as best she could, the woman still trying to figure out the best time and place to maybe turn against him. She had held herself back so far, not letting herself interfere, managing to stop herself mostly because she knew that if she cost him a match, she wanted to do it when more people would see her. When more people would know what she'd done. That meant that a live event wasn't the type of place to do something like that. Which meant she waited... She waited, and she stood at ringside like a good girl... And once the live event was over, then she went back to her hotel and ended up spending her evening curled up on a couch with CM Punk watching movies. She'd kissed him again - several times - and had even missed several important parts of Sunday night's movie due to kissing the world heavyweight champion, but it hadn't gone beyond that, and she was glad for it. Or so she told herself. CM Punk seemed to understand that she wasn't entirely sure of herself, sure of what was happening between them and, while he wasn't backing off completely, he wasn't trying to push things any further than they had already gone. She kept telling herself that was a good thing, because she wasn't ready for a serious relationship right now.

Really. She wasn't. Seriously.

Heaving out a sigh, Eve rolled her eyes at her own thoughts, the woman turning the corner as she headed toward Jeff Hardy's locker room... Not because she really wanted to be there or anything, but because she was, once again, at an edition of Monday Night RAW (despite she and Jeff being a part of the SmackDown roster) and that meant that all the RAW divas were there as well, and she'd discovered that she really couldn't stand being around Maryse. The woman was a serious pain in the ass, and Eve was afraid she'd get herself in trouble for ripping out the woman's extensions or something if she didn't get the hell out of that room... And since she couldn't go to CM Punk's locker room (they'd had good luck so far about not being caught together but that would be pushing it) and Kelly wasn't even there that night... Well, there wasn't much she could really do beyond wander around or head to Jeff's locker room and hope that he'd gone to find his tag team partners for the night or something. Or she could just hope that his tag team partners were there. He was teaming up with Rey Mysterio and the Great Khali tonight to face Dolph Ziggler, Edge, and Chris Jericho, and Eve knew that if Khali and Rey were around, Jeff would behave himself. After all, he didn't want anyone to know he was a total asshole, and treating her like shit in front of others wouldn't help his case since people were already looking at him a bit differently since last week's RAW when he'd tossed her into a wall.

The bruise still wasn't completely gone from that.

She scowled at the thought, having to fight the urge to reach up and rub at her shoulder despite the fact that it didn't really hurt any longer... The diva shaking her head as she made her way toward the locker room areas, deciding that as long as Rey was in there - she didn't really care for Great Khali - then it would be okay. Rey was a good guy, a decent guy, and Jeff wouldn't dare do anything to her in front of him. He'd probably even force himself to be polite. Well, as long as he wasn't too high to remember that being an ass to her would make him look bad. On top of that, when he went into a situation knowing he'd be teaming with other people that might notice he was on something, he usually didn't take anything... And Rey was the type that would notice. That meant that Jeff would probably be sober tonight and therefore more in control of himself and that meant that she was safe. The fact that he was in a tag team match tonight also meant that *he* was safe. It wouldn't be worth it to turn against him when he was just fighting in a tag team contest with nothing on the line. On top of that, she didn't think Great Khali would take too kindly to her costing him a match and, well... She wasn't sure anyone that would be out there tonight would try to stop him if he went after her. Besides that, when she did cost Jeff a match, she wanted it to benefit Punk, and he wasn't even involved in the match tonight. Therefore? She was just going to let the tag team match happen. She would go out there and pretend to be rooting for Jeff Hardy when, in reality, she was only really rooting for Rey Mysterio and didn't actually give a damn what happened to the other five guys involved in the match. She'd stay out of the way and she wouldn't interfere and she'd try to keep from daydreaming about how great it would be to knock Jeff off the top turnbuckle because that would only distract her and possibly lead to her getting hurt. With six men out there, she had to be careful to make sure she didn't end up in the way.

Eve made a face as she came to a stop in front of the locker room marked with Jeff's name, the diva lifting a hand to knock on the door before entering, not wanting to just walk inside in case Jeff was changing or something because, really... She didn't want or need to see that. When her knock was greeted with silence on the other side of the door, Eve knocked again, waiting a few moments before reaching out to open the door and cautiously look inside. The room appeared to be empty at the moment, which was fine with her; Jeff had probably either gone to find his tag team partners or to grab some water or something. It was obvious that he'd already made it to the arena tonight, because his stuff was already in the locker room, his bag resting on one of the benches.

And, for some reason, she couldn't take her eyes off the bag.

She remembered, of course, her thoughts from a few nights before... Her thoughts the first night Punk had come by for pizza and a movie. What she'd been thinking about before he'd stopped by. How she'd been thinking about Jeff Hardy, his drug habits, and how he avoided being caught. How he must keep his drugs close to him. But how close? Would he leave his stash at a hotel room during the shows, or would he actually have the nerve to bring it with him to the show, maybe even to take something before or after he'd had his match? She didn't know.

But she was about to find out.

It wasn't smart. She knew it. But she wanted to know... Part of her needed to know. She needed to know if he was stupid enough to bring drugs into an arena where company officials could easily find out about it. Where, if he dropped something at the wrong time, everyone would see. Eve took a deep breath as she pulled open the bag that was sitting there, her hands moving over the inside of the duffel bag, pushing aside the jeans and t-shirt that Jeff must have arrived to the arena in. His shoes were on the floor; his wrestling gear gone. Obviously, he'd already changed clothes.

She didn't know how long she had.

Eve could feel her heart pounding as she continued to search, using her hands more than her eyes because she kept glancing toward the door to make sure no one was there. To make sure he hadn't come back and caught her and- There! There was something in the lining of the bag, almost like a little pocket had been added at the bottom of the bag, and she could feel something inside of it. Quickly, without thinking about what she was doing, Eve pulled it out, her fingers closing over three small plastic bags. The first bag held some pills that Eve didn't recognize, but she figured that if he had them hidden, they probably weren't anything prescribed to him and more than likely weren't anything that was even legal at all. The second held what she knew had to be marijuana; she recognized it from those 'don't do drugs' seminars she'd had to sit through in high school... and from a few parties she'd been to in college. She'd never tried the stuff, but she knew what it looked like. She also had a sinking feeling that she knew exactly what was in the third bag she'd pulled out... A fine white powder. Cocaine. Jeff wasn't just doing painkillers and pot. He did cocaine, too. Or, at least, she thought it was cocaine. She couldn't be sure there wasn't some other drug that looked like that; she wasn't really well informed on what drugs looked like... Most of her information came from those classes in school or from television shows. She did know, however, that if she was right about one bag holding pot and the other holding cocaine... Then he had both a downer and an upper with him. And mixing those...

Shaking her head, Eve took a deep breath, knowing that it wasn't really her place to do this - she wasn't his sister or girlfriend or even a friend anymore - but she couldn't seem to stop herself, the diva making her way to the small bathroom in the room, flipping up the lid of the toilet and staring down for a brief moment before opening the small plastic bags and dumping their contents out into the toilet bowl. She watched them settle for a moment, then reached out to flush the toilet, tossing the bags in the trash as she did so.

And that was when it happened. As she stood there, watching the drugs spin along with the water and go down the toilet bowl into the pipes where they would eventually make their way into the sewer system, it happened. The thing that she'd known was a possibility from the moment she'd opened up his bag and started going through his things, looking for his drugs.

He caught her in the act.

Eve didn't even have a chance to scream as a hand grabbed her by the hair, violently fisting in the long strands as he yanked her out of the small bathroom, the woman wincing as she was painfully slammed against the wall of the locker room, hitting the bruise that was not quite healed and probably causing another one right on top of it. She knew, of course, who it was that had grabbed her. She knew it immediately, just as she suddenly knew it had been foolish not to close the bathroom door when she'd flushed away his drugs. If the door had been shut, she could have pretended that she'd been using the bathroom herself and he wouldn't have realized that his drugs were gone until he reached for them later. Hopefully much later.

"What the fuck did you do?" Jeff hissed out at her, and she gave him a defiant look, reaching up to scratch viciously at his hand with her fingernails, trying to get him to release her hair. When that didn't work, she instead poked him in the eye, causing him to stumble back and release his grip on her as he put his hands to his face, Eve pushing herself away from the wall.

"I imagine I just flushed a few hundred dollars down the toilet. Maybe more. But that will keep you from snorting it, smoking it, or swallowing it later," she informed him, starting to make her way around him, knowing she had no choice but to try and slip past him... But he wasn't about to let that happen, reaching out to grab at her shoulder and spin her around, and Eve was pretty sure she saw stars when he backhanded her across the face, his hand slamming hard into her cheek and jaw, the woman stumbling back and nearly falling down...

But someone caught her.

She saw Jeff's eyes go wide with shock an instant before she felt herself being set aside, a fist then slamming into Jeff's face... And then she was being grabbed around the waist again, Eve finding herself pulled out of the room and across the hall. The man practically dropped her in a chair in the room before going to the door and reaching out to lock it, and it was only then, when he turned to face her, that Eve realized that she had a different savior this time. It wasn't CM Punk that had come to her rescue, nor was it even John Cena, the man that had helped her the week before. No, it was neither one of them.

This time, it was Edge.