Page 87 of Split Decision

"You did good work this year," he says.

"Thank you, Joe."

"Come back."

"I will."

He nods once and leaves. That's Joe. Everything that needs to be said in the minimum number of words.

I sit on the couch in the suite's living area and look at the view.

I won the fight. I kept my license. The two-month arrangement to be estranged from Andi is done. The pressure from the youth center's board has eased. Every tactical aim of the last six months has been achieved.

And I'm sitting in a suite in Las Vegas on the twenty-first day of a silence that might be an answer, and I don't know how to accept it.

The fighter in me doesn't give up. That's always been true—not when someone says no, not when the odds stack up wrong, not when everything looks bleak. I keep fighting. That's how I've gotten to where I am, even when my own family doubted it. The one person who has believed in me from the start now won't answer the phone.

The distance I created between us turned out to be more than miles. The arrangement wasn't just sixty days ofpublic separation—it was me deciding what was best for her without asking her. It was me putting her away to protect myself and calling it love. I understand now, sitting in this suite with my bags half-packed and the desert visible through the window, that I became exactly the thing she's spent her whole life fighting. Not a villain. Not cruel. Just a person who decided they knew better and acted accordingly.

There's no one to blame for that but me.

I should go. I should drive back to Atlanta, be in the house, and wait for whatever comes next. That's the right move. That's what a man who respects her decision does.

I'm still sitting there an hour later when the knock comes at the door.

I don't knowwho I'm expecting.

Not her. I've told myself that clearly enough over the last three weeks that I believe it. She's in Los Angeles finishing the tour, or she's on a bus somewhere between cities, or she's already back in Atlanta—and wherever she is, she's not here, because she asked not to be found, and I respected that, and this is just housekeeping, someone from the hotel about the checkout time, or Mack coming to say goodbye.

I open the door.

She's standing in the hallway on crutches.

That's the first thing I register—the crutches, the way she's balancing her weight—and then I see her face, and the bruising that's two weeks old and faded to yellow-green at the edges, and the way she's holding herself with the careful stillness of someone managing pain they're trying not to show, and I understand immediately thatminor injuriesandroutineovernight monitoringwere not the truth.

None of that is what I say.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.

Her jaw tightens slightly. "I need to talk to you."

I step back and let her in. Not because I've decided anything—because she's on crutches in a hotel hallway and I'm not the kind of person who leaves someone on crutches in a hotel hallway. I hold the door, and she moves past me into the suite's living area, and I close the door and stand with my back to it for a moment and try to find the version of myself that knows how to do this without breaking.

She doesn't sit. She stands in the middle of the room, holding the crutches, looking at the packed bags by thewall, then at me. Something moves across her face when she sees the bags.

"You're leaving," she says.

"Today."

She nods. Looks at the floor for a moment. Then back up at me.

"I'll be quick," she says. “Then I’ll go and let you finish here.”

I cross to the window and stand with my back to her because if I'm looking at her face, I won't be able to stay inside whatever is holding me together right now. Outside, the Strip is doing what it always does—indifferent, permanent, overexposed in the desert light.

"Say what you came to say," I tell her.

I can hear her weight shift on the crutches.