COLLATERAL DAMAGE

The sweat clings to Ryan’s skin like an expensive foundation gone wrong.

She pushes through the curtain, and the arena’s roar dies behind her—The Great Stampede’s energy dissolves into nothing more than white noise. Her red and gold ring gear, custom-designed and usually flawless, feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. Like wearing Balenciaga to your own funeral.

The metallic taste of defeat coats her tongue. Again.

It’s becoming a signature flavor, and Ryan fucking hates it. She’d rather be tasting champagne at some Upper East Side rooftop party, not this bitter reminder that Azure—Azure, with her stupidly perfect name and even more stupidly perfect diving cutter—had just made her look like an amateur. For the second time.

The Touch of Azure. Even the name makes her want to vomit.

Ryan replays it in slow motion, the way you replay a particularly humiliating social media post that everyone’s already screenshotted. The blur of Azure’s body cutting through the air. The sickening impact that rattled her bones. The crowd’s explosion of approval that definitely wasn’t for her.

Sure, The Bloom walked away with the actual victory tonight. But everyone in that arena knew the real story. Azure had gotten the jump on Ryan. Again. Made her look foolish. Again. Left her sprawled on the mat like some nobody who’d wandered in off the street.

The thought makes her stomach clench with something that feels dangerously close to nausea.

She stalks toward the locker room, her designer wrestling boots clicking against the concrete floor with each furious step. The sound echoes in the empty hallway like a countdown to her own irrelevance. Other wrestlers brush past her—some offering sympathetic nods, others pretending not to see her at all. The latter group stings more than she’d ever admit.

Ryan catches her reflection in a mirror mounted on the hallway wall and immediately wishes she hadn’t. Her usually perfect hair is matted with sweat and defeat. Her makeup, carefully applied hours ago to look effortlessly flawless under the arena lights, has smudged into something that screams “try-hard who failed anyway.”

She looks like what she’s becoming: a joke.

And Azure—beautiful, talented, infuriatingly perfect Azure—is the punchline everyone’s laughing at. The setup to Ryan’s humiliation. The reason why her phone will be buzzing with notifications from wrestling blogs and social media accounts, all dissecting exactly how she got outmaneuvered by someone who should have been beneath her notice.

The locker room door looms ahead like the entrance to her own personal hell.

Ryan pauses, her hand on the cold metal handle, and allows herself exactly three seconds to feel the full weight of this moment. The disappointment settled on her shoulders like a cashmere scarf she never wanted to wear. The knowledge that somewhere in this building, Azure is probably celebrating with friends, maybe even laughing about how easy it was to get under Ryan’s skin.

The very thought makes her jaw clench so hard her teeth ache.

She pushes through the door, and the familiar scent of expensive body wash and designer perfume—her locker room sanctuary, usually—now feels like a mockery. All these beautiful things, all this carefully curated perfection, and for what? To get shown up by someone whose finishing move sounds like a pretentious cocktail order?

Ryan sinks onto the bench in front of her locker, still in her ring gear, still tasting defeat.

Her phone buzzes. Then again. And again.

She doesn’t need to look to know what’s waiting for her. The wrestling world moves fast, and humiliation travels even faster. By tomorrow morning, there will be GIFs of Azure’s impromptu cutter. Video packages highlighting Ryan’s shocked expression as she hit the mat. Commentary about how the once-promising star is losing her edge.

The worst part? They won’t be wrong.

Ryan finally reaches for her phone, her manicured fingers trembling slightly as she swipes to unlock it. The notifications flood her screen like a digital avalanche of everything she doesn’t want to see. Wrestling news sites. Social media mentions. Text messages from people who probably think they’re being supportive but really just want to be close to the drama.

She scrolls through them with the same sick fascination that makes you watch a car accident in slow motion.

"Ryan looked completely lost out there tonight."

"Azure is really making a name for herself at Ryan’s expense."

"Is this the beginning of the end for Ryan’s push?"

Each comment feels like a small knife between her ribs. Precise. Surgical. Devastating.

Ryan sets the phone aside and stares at herself in the locker room mirror. Really stares. Not the quick glance she usually gives herself to check that everything’s perfect, but a long, honest look at what she’s become.

A beautiful failure. A designer disappointment. Someone who looks the part but can’t deliver when it matters.

The realization hits her like Azure’s diving cutter all over again.

She’s not just losing matches. She’s losing herself. The confidence that used to radiate from her like expensive perfume has been replaced by something desperate and grasping. The effortless superiority that made her special has curdled into try-hard desperation that everyone can smell from the cheap seats.

And Azure—fucking Azure—is the mirror reflecting back everything Ryan used to be and everything she’s failing to become.

The locker room feels smaller suddenly. Suffocating. Like wearing a couture gown that’s been tailored for someone else’s body. Beautiful, expensive, and completely wrong.

Ryan closes her eyes and lets the weight of another loss settle into her bones like winter in Manhattan. Cold. Inevitable. Unforgiving.

When she opens them again, her reflection looks back with something that might be determination or might just be delusion. In this light, it’s impossible to tell the difference.

But one thing is crystal clear: this can’t continue. She won’t let Azure turn her into a punchline. She won’t let herself become the cautionary tale that other wrestlers whisper about in locker rooms.

The taste of defeat is still bitter on her tongue, but underneath it, something else is brewing. Something that tastes like expensive champagne and feels like revenge.

Azure wants to play games? Fine.

Ryan knows how to play games better than anyone.

“What are you two whispering about?”

About a half an hour later Ryan’s voice cuts through the MSG backstage atmosphere like a pristine silk scarf through a paper shredder: sharp, expensive, deadly. She’s unraveling, and everyone can see it.

The heel-clicks echo off concrete walls; the whisper of tailored leather, announcing the arrival of someone having the worst night of her perfectly curated life. Those boots, a pair of towers of impeccable white, cost more than most people’s cars, and right now, they’re weapons. Each step screams, “I’m better than this place, better than you, better than losing.” But she lost anyway.

Victor scrambles to his feet, all wrinkled Armani and hedge fund panic. His hairline’s retreating faster than his confidence, and those darting eyes… They’re pure prey animals. He tugs at his lapels like he can pull dignity from Italian wool.

“Ryan, just breathe...”

“Breathe?” Her laugh could shatter champagne flutes. “That’s your brilliant strategy? Oxygen?”

The backstage area feels like a mausoleum now, a sacred space turned crime scene. Her handpicked entourage (Daddy’s best people, naturally) have achieved Olympic-level invisibility. If disappearing were a sport, they’d sweep the podium.

Claire edges forward, clutching her iPad like a shield. Sweet, doomed Claire with her Banana Republic blouse and geometric bob, she probably has a Tide pen in her Longchamp for emergencies. This definitely qualifies.

“At least Azure didn’t win,” she squeaks.

Wrong. Move.

Ryan’s jaw clicks audibly. The sound ricochets off cinderblock walls, and suddenly everyone remembers they have somewhere else to be. “That’s not the f---ing point, Claire.”

The profanity is pointed like expensive perfume gone rancid. Ryan never swears. Ryan is composed. Ryan is untouchable.

Was untouchable.

“I should have won. That Tiger Feint Cutter was cheap, and everyone knows it.” Her voice climbs higher, thinner. “It’s probably trending already: #RyanDown, #CutterKnockout... God, I can see the memes now.”

Silence. The heavy kind that makes you wish you were literally anywhere else (Montauk, Milan, Mars). Claire’s knuckles go white on her tablet. You can practically see the crisis management flowcharts scrolling through her head.

Then Claire makes the mistake that ends careers.

“Maybe if you had tried harder...”

The arena stops breathing.

Ryan’s head lifts with predatory slowness. Her eyes have gone arctic, the kind of cold that makes you understand why people freeze to death in designer coats. “What did you just say?”

Claire turns paper-white, like she just hit reply-all on the worst possible email. “I-I only meant...”

“Try harder?” Each word drops like ice cubes into expensive whiskey. “You think I didn’t try hard enough?”

Ryan’s iPhone materializes in her manicured grip, the polished white of her dress a stark contrast to the utilitarian device. The sculpted lines of her mini-dress, a testament to high fashion and even higher prices, seem to tighten with her fury. For a split second, you can see the thought cross her face—the same expression she gets when deciding between Bergdorf’s and Barneys... calculating, decisive, destructive.

“After everything I gave out there? That cutter ruined everything!”

The phone flies.

The crack when it connects with Claire’s temple is sickening, like breaking bone china at a dinner party. Claire crumples in slow motion, all awkward angles and shocked silence. Her iPad skitters across concrete, wounded and abandoned.

Nobody moves. Not Victor, not security, not even the medics who should probably be running toward the girl bleeding on the floor.

“Ryan, stop!” Emma materializes, arms wrapping around Ryan before she can launch her water bottle next. Emma with her Tory Burch flats and trust fund jewelry, résumé reading like an Ivy League greatest hits album. “You’re making it worse!”

Derek appears like some Marvel extra, all jawline and Australian accent that could make “calm down” sound like foreplay. “Ryan, you gotta chill. This isn’t it.”

“Chill.” That’s rich.

Ryan thrashes against Emma’s grip, chest heaving like she just sprinted the entire arena in her impeccably crafted boots. “Worse? How does it get worse, Emma? That cutter was a cheap shot and it cost me everything!”

She tears free, spins on the group like a designer tornado. Her voice, full nuclear now, bounces off walls, probably making security guards three floors up flinch.

“At the first chance I get, Azure’s done. I’ll break her, I’ll end her career, her reputation, everything,” the words taste like victory and venom. “Mark my f---ing words.”

It feels good, like dropping a truth bomb in the group chat at 2 a.m., satisfying, dangerous, absolutely necessary.

She storms out, leaving her entourage frozen like guilty extras waiting for the scandal to break. Medics swarm Claire, checking for a concussion and maybe a pulse on her dignity. Only Victor follows, Ferragamos slapping concrete in a pathetic echo. The others just... stay.

Classic.

The backstage settles into shell-shocked quiet, broken only by a distant crowd roar and Claire’s iPad buzzing with Slack notifications that will definitely go unanswered.