Page 13 of Split Decision

"January second."

“Two days before your birthday.” There’s a hint of sorrow in her voice.

She looks at the coffee table for a moment. She already knows what Joe's facility means—she watched what it did to Shane, watched him come back a different fighter. She knows exactly what I’m telling her. I lean forward.

"Mack's right about the timing, Andi. I'll be twenty-nine in a matter of days now, which isn't old, but it's not young either, not in this sport. If I don't make a real move now, the window gets smaller every year until one day I'm looking at exhibition fights and coaching kids on weekends and wondering what would've happened if I'd taken the shot when it was offered."

She absorbs this without flinching.

"How long have you been thinking about it?" she asks.

"Mack first brought it up a few weeks ago. I've been sitting with it, turning it over in my mind before making a firm decision."

"Without telling me."

It's not an accusation. It's a fact, stated evenly, which is sometimes worse.

"Without telling you," I confirm. "I didn't want to put it on you while everything else was already?—"

"Luke." She stops me, not unkindly. "I know why you didn't tell me. I understand the calculation. I just need you to know that I noticed you left me out."

"I know I did." I meet her eyes. "I'm sorry."

The silence stretches. Something in her expression settles.

"It's your shot," she says quietly. "You should take it. We’ll just have to celebrate your birthday early."

The simplicity of it hits me in a place I wasn't prepared for. No conditions, no negotiation, no inventory of what it costs her. Just:you should take it.This is what I mean when I say she's better than me. She'd never make me smaller to make herself feel better.

"You said you had something too," I say.

She shifts on the couch—a small adjustment, the one she makes when she's deciding how to start something. "Travis called this afternoon. While I was at the youth center." She pauses. "The label wants to put together a tour. Opening act—me, Sound Bar, and one more group. Five months, forty cities, East Coast to West Coast. They want an answer by next week."

I let that settle.

Five months. Tour dates starting in January and completing in mid-June. The same window as Vegas, by the sound of it.

"Have you said yes?" I ask.

"Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first."

"But you want to go."

She holds my gaze without flinching. "I want to. And I know that's complicated right now—with everything happening with the center, with us, with—" She stops. Tries again. "The board asked me to step back. You know what that means for the next several months. If I'm in Atlanta, I'm watching from the outside of the only thing I've built here that feels like mine right now. If I'm on the road..." She trails off.

"You're doing the work you're allowed to do," I finish.

"Yes," he says in a quiet voice. Not relieved that I understand. Just honest about what it is.

I think about the MaxMorgan angle before she has to explain it. Andi, as executive chair on a national tour, isn't a departure from her role—it's an extension of it. Her being visible in forty cities in five months, attached to a major-label act, builds the kind of artist-development profile that no boardroom meeting can produce. Graham would see that immediately. She knows he would.

What she doesn't say and doesn't need to: if the board wants her distanced from the center, the tour gives that distance a purpose. She's not being pushed out. She's building something, and she’s not stepping out of the light. In fact, she’ll be under the brightest lights, center stage, on tour with one of the biggest names in musictoday. The framing matters, and Andi has always understood framing better than she lets on.

"Does it work with MaxMorgan?" I ask. "Technically."

"Graham already said yes. My presence on the road is good for the brand—new artist's debut, executive chair visible in the market. He framed it as strategic positioning." A faint wry edge. "Which it is. It's also me not sitting in Atlanta watching Marin's recommendations take effect on everything I care about."

"You didn't say that last part to Graham."