Page 79 of Split Decision

I pick up the guitar and try the G chord again.

This time, it sounds almost right.

I callLuke at nine that night. Not to tell him I'm coming. But because it's nine o'clock and we have a window, and I want to hear his voice.

He picks up on the second ring.

"Hey." His voice has that late-camp quality—stripped down, everything unnecessary burned away. I've missed that voice. It's the most purely him it ever sounds.

"Hey." I'm sitting in the venue's green room, empty except for me. Through the wall, I can hear the crew doing load-out from tonight's show. "How are you?"

"Ready," he says. "That's the only word I have right now."

"That's the right word."

A pause.

"How's Phoenix?"

"Sharp," I say. "The light here is different. There's nowhere to hide from it."

"That sounds like you'd like it."

"I do."

We're quiet for a moment. Not the comfortable kind we used to have. The careful kind—both of us present, both of us not quite saying the thing.

"Luke."

"Yeah."

"Win tomorrow."

A beat. Something in his exhale.

"That's the plan."

"Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Andi."

After I hang up, I sit in the empty green room for a while.

Tomorrow night, he'll step into a ring that is the exact culmination of everything he's built toward. Everything Joe Caruso has pushed him toward, everything Mack has been preparing him for since before I knew his name.

I will be in the building.

He won't know I'm there until it's over.

That's the right way to do it. Not announcing, not inserting myself into the moment before. No expectations or anticipation of facing me. I'll just be present for something that matters. The way he showed up in the youth center parking lot on his one afternoon off — not asking permission, not making it about himself, just close enough to matter.

I owe him that.

I close my eyes and listen to the crew working through the wall.

Tomorrow.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE