Page 103 of Split Decision

"Your attorney."

"My attorney, who has been watching this machine operate in various forms since I was sixteen. He knows how documents like this work. He knows what makes up usable evidence and what doesn't."

Luke nods slowly.

"And Brandon?" he asks.

"Brandon, we protect until we know enough to actually help him." I look at him directly. "Can you do that? Can you have a conversation with him tomorrow and not say anything?"

He exhales. "No."

"Luke."

"I know. I know." He runs a hand through his hair. "Yes. I can do it. I don't like it."

"I know you don't." I reach across and put my hand over his. "I don't either. But the people in this file—" I look at the documents. "They've been operating for thirty years because they move before anyone has enough to stop them. We don't move until we have enough to stop them."

He turns his hand over and holds it under mine.

"Daniel took a risk sending this," he says.

"Yes."

"He could have sat on it. He's been sitting on it for years."

"Something changed," I say. "Something in the last few weeks made him decide the window was now." I think about the accident. The Vegas highway. The drunk driver that a different version of me would have called a coincidence. "I don't know if that something was the accident. I don't know if it was the reconciliation, the Commission file closing, or something we can't see yet. But he made a deliberate decision."

"He decided we deserved to know."

"He decided we could use it." I pause. "That's not the same thing. It means he thinks we have a chance."

Luke is quiet for a long moment.

Outside, the sprinkler system cycles off. The neighborhood settles back into its morning.

"What did you come to tell me?" he asks. Quietly. Not changing the subject—holding it alongside this.

I look at him.

"In Vegas," he says. "At the fight. You came to tell me something, and you didn't. I've beenwaiting."

The documents are on the coffee table between us. The card from Daniel is face-up, his five sentences visible.

The source is still standing.

I look at Luke—at the person who made a bad decision and knew it was bad and couldn't stop himself, who knew I’d been in a wreck but told others not to involve him so he kept his distance, who has been running through this neighborhood at six in the morning because his body needs to keep moving while his heart figures out how to slow down.

"I came to tell you I'm not leaving," I say. "That I was never leaving. That whatever we broke this year, I want to build it back differently—not back to what it was, because what it was had things in it that were going to fracture, eventually. I want to build it as what it actually is." I pause. "Which is harder and less comfortable and more real."

He holds my eyes.

"And I came to tell you I'm afraid of us succeeding separately," I say. "That I've been afraid all year that we'd each solve our problems alone and become two people who don't fit together the same way." I let that sink in. "That's what I'm actually scared of. Not losing you to someone else. Not the external things. Losing the version of us that needs both of us present to exist."

The morning light has moved. It's coming through the window at a different angle now—the shimmering gold of mid-morning, warmer than the first light.

"I've been afraid of the same thing," Luke says.

"I know."