As the CEO of CS Enterprises unbuckled his belt and carefully took one leg at a time out of his pants, Stephen’s mind wondered back to the beach. The island he mistakenly left Red dead for. Was it wrong? Sure. But so is forced marital rape. This was too much. Inappropriate at best. With no card left but “if” to play, Thomas’ demented visions of killing Lyle Tallman were fantasy, a troubling exciting one at that…

“Oh, Shoog…” the Love Sister blushed. It wasn’t a small baby arm, but from the shadows of Thomas’ “CS Enterprises: Building A Better Tomorrow, And Making A Profit Out Of It” boxers, the mirage was fierce and just what the lady needed.

“NO! NO!” Stephen’s body had betrayed him. “I was…”

“You were,” she winked and a bit of a river herself.

“Thinking of killing someone.”

“Sick…”

“Condoms right. The sooner we…the better.” The night was a stunt on Fear Factor to Thomas. Don’t stare at the glass box of worms and roaches, just dive in and mentally go to the beach.

“Condoms?” Hortense laughed. “Baby, I’m not fourteen.”

“Sick…I’m not Melton thank you.”

“We’re healthy and if you get this bitch pregnant….” Her voiced trailed into a laugh.

“Yeah,” Thomas took baby steps to the bed. “Not the miracle I need right now.”

The room shook briefly, a somber reminder of current events. Thomas’ knees embedded next to his wife’s, and he slowly lowered himself over her body. The lights rose to a dim and generic romantic music played in the room.

“Nice touch, Shoog!”

Thomas growled and spun back to glare at the plasma TV. Sometimes the bravest people in the world are the ones history will soon forget and damn to enslavement to their mistakes. Stephen wasn’t Hornet, or Mike Randalls. He’d never sold out Madison Square Garden, took the beating of a lifetime in an electrified steel cage and then visited a dying girl in cancer ward of a local hospital. His victories were often at the expense of others, but victories are prone to be such. Somebody wins, somebody loses. As Thomas kissed his wife, blinding himself momentarily from the gleam in her eyes, he heard what others have said about him in the past roll in the section of his head he was now hiding in. That he was the backbone of the CSWA. In the darkest, hollow of places Thomas found hope. One or the other always comes back. It’s in the scriptures of the Lady’s book.

Stephen signed off on the run-in never to come. Maybe this was his penance finally paid. Fair enough. But as the Saints began their march home, in Thomas’ mind, he owned the league more now than ever. He didn’t have to climb Mount Everest. Just beat a three-foot man. Even the gravest of situations can be made manageable.