Page 40 of Split Decision

"I will."

I hang up and sit with the phone in my lap for a moment.

Leadership succession. Community development inquiry. Coordinated with the audit. Coordinated with the Commission escalation Brandon told me about this morning, in the careful voice he uses when he doesn't want to alarm me.

Three separate institutions asking three separate questions in the same week.

That's not procedural.

That's orchestrated with a specific intention, purpose, and calculated end result.

I change into jeans and a sweater and find Travis in the hallway outside the main stage, waiting for his cue with one earbud in and one hanging loose, the way he alwayswaits. He takes one look at my face and pulls the earbud out entirely.

"What happened?"

"Nothing I can prove yet," I say.

He nods slowly. He's learned, in the weeks since the tour started, that I don't exaggerate and I don't panic. When I say something's wrong, I have a reason.

"What can I do?" he asks.

"Nothing right now." I lean back against the wall. "I just needed a minute to be around someone who wasn't going to ask me how I'm handling it."

"Okay." He leans against the wall beside me, both of us facing the hallway, the roar of the crowd coming through the door at the far end. "How was Charlotte today?"

"Good. We walked around the NoDa neighborhood. Cami found a record store."

"She finds a record store everywhere. She has a problem."

"It's an excellent problem." I exhale. "How are you before the show?"

"Good." He glances at me sideways. "Ready."

"You always are."

The stage manager appears at the far door and gives Travis the two-minute signal. He pushes off the wall and rolls his neck once, the pre-show adjustment I've watched him do from the wings six times now. Then he looks at me.

"Whatever they're trying to do," he says, "they picked the wrong person to do it to."

He says it like a fact, not a compliment.

That's why it matters.

CHAPTER TWELVE

LUKE

There are two kinds of off in the ring.

The first kind is physical—tired muscles, a sore shoulder, timing disrupted by something you can correct with rest and repetition. Mack can fix that kind in two sessions. One if he’s in a bad mood.

The second kind lives above the neck. It's the kind where your body does everything right, and your mind is half a beat somewhere else, and you're reacting instead of reading, and the guy across from you doesn't have to be better than you to land on you. He just has to be present in a way you aren't.

I've been the second kind for two weeks.

Mack hasn't said it directly. He doesn't operate that way. He says it sideways, in adjustments that are really diagnoses.Get your weight back before you load that.Which translates to: you're leaning in because you're trying to force an outcome rather than read one.Stop chasing the finish.Which translates to: you're trying to end this faster than it wants to end, and that's desperation, not discipline.

Today, he says it directly.