Page 55 of Split Decision

I'm afraid that we're each handling our separate crises so competently and so privately that by the time we're back in the same room, we'll have become two versions of ourselves who solved their problems alone, and those two versions won't fit together the same way.

That's the thing that keeps me awake.

Not our relationship ending.

Us succeeding separately in a way that pulls us so far apart that being together becomes harder—not because we’ve failed, but because we no longer have to reach for each other. I don’t want my soon--to-be husband to feel as if I’m optional in his life, or for him to become optional in mine. That’s not independence. That’s parallel lives. And that’s not a partnership.

My phone buzzes.

It’s late. Later than Luke usually calls, and that alone is enough to put me on edge before I even answer.

“Hello?”

“Andi.” His voice isn’t raised or sharp, but there’s something deliberate about it, like he’s already decided whatthis conversation needs to be and is holding himself to it. “I just saw something I need to ask you about.”

I sit up straighter, bracing without fully knowing why. “Okay.”

“There’s a story running on a couple of sites. Photos. You and Travis. A playground, and what looks like?—”

“A playground,” I say, cutting in before he can finish.

Chicago comes back all at once.

The merry-go-round.

The warmth of the afternoon sun on a cool day in March.

Travis sitting beside me while I tried to clear my head before the show. I

can see the exact moment he’s describing, the angle of it, the way it would look frozen and stripped of everything around it.

“Luke, I know what you’re looking at.”

“Then walk me through it.”

The words aren’t accusatory, but they’re not neutral either. They land somewhere in between, and that space is enough to make my chest tighten.

“We stopped at a park before the show,” I explain, keeping my voice steady. “I needed a minute. Travis came over andsat with me. He said something ridiculous, I laughed, and when I turned toward him…” My voice trails off, already seeing how it would read to someone who wasn’t there. “It wasn’t what it looks like.”

I let out a breath and add more quietly, “You know me, Luke.”

“I do,” he says.

There’s a slight hesitation after it. Not long, but long enough that I feel it.

“Then you already know the answer,” I say.

He doesn’t respond right away, and in that space, I feel something I wasn’t expecting—not fear exactly, but the awareness that this is how it starts. Not with a fight, but with a small shift. A question that shouldn’t exist but does.

“I do know the answer,” he says finally, and I can hear that he means it. But I can also hear that he had to get there.

That matters more than I want it to.

“They didn’t just happen to catch that moment,” I continue, pushing past it before it can settle. “Someone was waiting for it. Waiting for something they could frame the right way and use against us.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” he says, quieter now.

“Of course you were. That’s how this works. They don’t need something real. They just need something that looks close enough to make people question it.”