Page 57 of Split Decision

“Same,” he says quietly before we disconnect.

I lower the phone and look out the bus window. The darkness stretches endlessly, broken only by the occasional wash of headlights cutting past.

The bus has gone quiet. Even Kale and Drew have finally burned through whatever they were arguing about. Across from me, Travis sits with a book open in his hands. He heard enough to understand what the call was about. He doesn’t say anything. He never does when it matters. Hejust stays on the right side of the line without needing to be told where it is.

"The drivers will make their scheduled stops soon. Get some sleep," he says without looking up.

"You too. Good night."

I lean against the window and close my eyes.

Tomorrow is St. Louis. The crowd will be skeptical at the top, and we'll earn them.

And somewhere in the Nevada desert, Luke is lying awake in a small room working through the same name I am, turning it over, looking at it from the angles I can't see from here.

We're working on the same problem.

That has to be enough for now.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ANDI

The story runs on a Tuesday.

Not a tabloid. Not a gossip site. A mid-tier entertainment news outlet that runs adjacent to legitimate journalism—the kind of platform that has enough credibility to make people stop scrolling but enough distance from accountability to print what they're paid to print.

The headline reads:

Sound Bar's Opening Act Speaks Candidly About RelationshipStrain

I see it on my phone before I'm fully awake, because Cami texts me the link at six-fifty-two in the morning with a single message:call me before you read this.

I read it first.

The piece is built around what the outlet calls "a candid conversation between Andi Morgan and a source close to the tour." No name. No recording. Just a transcript—formatted like a real exchange, time-stamped like documentation, presented with the clinical confidence of something that was gathered rather than invented.

I read it twice before I accept what I'm looking at.

Some of it is real.

That's the part that takes my breath away. Not the fabricated lines—those I can see for what they are, assembled with the care of someone who studied my voice without quite understanding it. The seams show. The rhythm is slightly off, the way a cover version of a favorite song is always slightly off, even when it's technically accurate.

But the real lines. Those came from somewhere. Someone close to me.

"The scrutiny around everything connected to me right now is real. I can't pretend otherwise."

I said that. In the boardroom at the youth center, to the board, with Marin sitting three seats to my left.

"I don't know how much longer I can sustain two crises at once."

I said that too. To Travis, on the bus, somewhere in North Carolina. In private. At eleven o'clock at night, when I thought I was just thinking out loud to someone who understood the context.

“I’m looking at it,” he says.

“I know.”

“Tell me. Walk me through everything.”