Page 24 of Split Decision

"Hey, baby."

I lean against the car beside her. We sit in the parking lot and watch the building the way you watch something you love that's slightly out of reach.

"I've been thinking about the donor calls," she says, after a while.

"Tell me."

"The language was too consistent. Three different people, three different conversations, all framing it exactly the same way. It’s not a coincidence. It’s too precise. Someone gave them a script."

"Or the same person made three calls and gave each of them the same framing."

"Yes." She's quiet for a moment. "Someone with access to the donor list. Someone who knew which relationships topressure first so the others would fall like dominoes." She looks at the building. "The donor list isn't public, Luke."

That hit lands harder than it should. The picture of this fight I’ve built in my mind tilts, just slightly.

The list lives in the center's administrative files. The board has access. Marin has been in those meetings. Brandon would have had it as supporting documentation when he first approached her. The coordination feels different now. I don’t say any of it out loud. It’s not proof—but it narrows things more than I’m comfortable with.

"What do you want to do?" I ask.

"Nothing yet." She says it the way she always says it—not passively, but with the specific patience of someone who knows that moving before you have enough information is worse than waiting. "I want to watch the direction. See what moves next."

I put my arm around her. She leans into it.

We stay in the parking lot for another hour, talking about nothing—mostly. About the kids she’s been watching from a distance. about Marcus, who came by twice this week hoping to catch her—he has news he wants to tell her in person, and she hasn't had the heart to tell him she isn't technically supposed to be there. About the song she wrote at two in the morning on Tuesday—one she thinksmight be the best thing she’s ever written—and how she can’t tell anyone yet because she doesn’t want to jinx it.

"Sing it to me," I say.

"Not yet." She tips her head against my shoulder. "When it's ready."

The building lights go off one by one as Mrs. Alvarez closes up for the night. She spots us on her way to her car, gives Andi a look that contains an entire conversation, and drives away without a word.

"She knows everything," Andi says.

"Good," I say. "Somebody should."

CHAPTER SEVEN

LUKE

Three days before Christmas, Mack gives me one afternoon off.

Just the afternoon. He's generous like that.

I don't tell Andi in advance. I drive to the youth center—to the parking lot, not inside, because she's stepped back from day-to-day operations and I'm not going to be the reason she walks back in before she's ready—and I sit in the car and wait.

She comes out at quarter to four, the last one through the door, which tracks. She locks up herself, even though she'snot supposed to be there in any official capacity. She probably tells herself it's just checking in. Probably believes it.

I get out of the car as she turns around.

She goes still for exactly one second—the involuntary kind that happens before the brain catches up—and then she crosses the parking lot in about four steps, and I meet her the rest of the way.

She doesn't say anything. She just wraps her arms around me and presses her face into my chest, and I hold the back of her head the way I know she likes, and we stand there in the cold parking lot for long enough that a kid inside notices and waves at us through the window.

"Hey, baby," I finally say into her hair.

"Hey." Her voice is slightly muffled.

"How are you?"