Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LUKE
Mack sends me home at nine-thirty in the morning.
Not suggests. Not recommends. Sends.
I’m three rounds into a mitt session that should have been easy work, maintenance work, a rhythm I can usually find even when the rest of the world is trying to crawl under my skin.
But I’m chasing the punches instead of throwing them.
I’m forcing the timing. Trying to manufacture sharpness through effort, which is how you turn a small problem into an expensive one.
Mack catches the right hand on the pad and lowers both mitts.
“Nope.”
I reset my feet. “Again.”
“No.”
“Mack.”
He strips the mitts off and tosses them onto the bench with a finality that ends arguments before they properly form. “You’re done.”
“I just got here.”
“And somehow you managed to bring three weeks of bad decisions with you.”
I roll my shoulders and look toward the ring, because looking at Mack when he has made up his mind is usually a waste of both our time. “I’m fine.”
“That’s the problem with you boys. Fine is where stupidity puts on a clean shirt and tries to pass itself off as discipline.”
Across the gym, Reyes doesn’t even pretend he isn’t listening. He stands by the ropes with his arms crossed, expression carved from stone and judgment. He and Mack have formed some kind of quiet alliance over the last few weeks, which is inconvenient for me and probably good for my career.
“I’m not overtraining,” I say.
Mack looks at me. Just looks. It’s worse than his shouting.
“You’re not training,” he says. “You’re grinding yourself into powder because you can’t punch the thing you actually want to hit.”
That hits closer to home than I want it to.
I pick up my water bottle and take a drink so I don’t answer too fast. The gym hums around us. Bags swinging. Rope slapping. Shoes squeaking. The ordinary sounds of a place where problems are supposed to become manageable because they can be measured in rounds, breath, and sweat.
The problem is that nothing happening outside this building is measurable in those terms.
Evelyn. The files. The witness chain. Brandon’s face bruised from a beating he took because he loved the wrong woman.
Kelly sitting in my parents’ living room, listening while I told her someone had delayed her adoption for leverage.
Andi bearing all of it with that beautiful, brutal steadiness that makes people underestimate what it costs her.
I can’t hit any of that. So I hit everything else harder. Mack sees it because Mack sees everything.
“I can work,” I say.
“You can work tomorrow.”
“I need the rounds.”
“You need your head.” He points toward the locker room. “Go home.”
“I’m not going home at nine-thirty in the morning.”
“Fine.” He picks up the mitts again, turns, and drops them into Reyes’s hands. “Then don’t go home. Go somewhere else.”
Reyes takes the mitts and studies me with the same infuriating calm. “You have six weeks. One morning will not ruin you.”
“I know that.”
“No,” Reyes says. “You can repeat that. That’s not the same thing.”
Mack jerks his chin toward the doors. “Take your girl somewhere.”
I look at him, willing him to change his mind. He simply stares back.
“Somewhere,” he repeats. “Not a boardroom. Not a lawyer’s office. Not your living room with that damn device still sitting behind the bookcase like it pays rent. Somewhere else.”
I laugh once, but there isn’t much humor in it. “You’re giving me relationship advice now?”
“I’m giving fighter advice. You remember being a person, you’ll be a better fighter. You forget being a person, you’re just a machine waiting to break.”
That shuts me up.
Because Mack doesn’t waste words. He doesn’t decorate them or soften them or wrap them in anything comfortable. If he says something like that, it’s because he means it.
I look toward the front windows. The morning has gone strange outside, the light dimming under a bruised sky. A storm is building fast over Atlanta. The kind that rolls in thick and electric, turning the air greenish at the edges before it breaks open.
Mack follows my gaze. “Weather’s going bad.”
“That supposed to be part of the metaphor?”
“No. It’s supposed to be part of why you get out before traffic turns into a parking lot full of idiots who forgot rain is wet.”
I pick up my towel.
Mack’s voice follows me. “And Luke?”
I turn.
He points one thick finger at me. “Don’t take her somewhere safe because you’re scared. Take her somewhere good because she deserves good.”
I hold his gaze for a moment. Then I nod. It’s the only answer I have.
Andi answers on the second ring. “Everything okay?”
We both answer phones like that now. Not hello. Not hey. Damage assessment first, conversation second.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Mack kicked me out.”
There’s a pause. “He what?”
“Kicked me out. Reyes cosigned it. Whole little mutiny.”
“What did you do?” Her voice takes on that tone, the one that says she knows it’s my fault and I should confess and save her the trouble.
“Existing, apparently.”
“Luke.”
“I’m overtraining.”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment, which means she already suspected it and is deciding whether to be kind about that.
I save her the trouble. “I’m coming to get you.”
“I have a meeting at eleven.”
“Cancel it.”
“I also have a call at one.”
“Move it.”
“The sky is about to split open over Atlanta.”
“I know.”
She goes quiet again, longer this time. I can picture her exactly: phone against her ear, standing somewhere near her office window, already measuring the day against everything that could go wrong if she steps away from it.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“Away from the storm.”
“That’s not a destination.”
“It is today.”
“Luke, I can’t just disappear.”
“Yes, you can.”
Her breath changes, not from irritation, but more from recognition. She picks up on something in my voice I didn’t intend to reveal.
“You’re serious.”
“I am.”
“Did Mack tell you to do this?”
“Mack told me to go remember who I am.”
“And that includes kidnapping me?”
“Kidnapping is such a strong word.”
“It’s an accurate word.”
“I prefer surprise transportation.”
She goes quiet again. I sit in my truck in the gym parking lot while the sky darkens over the windshield and wait for her to decide whether she will let the day have this one thing.
Finally, she says, “I’ll move the eleven o’clock.”
“And the one.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
“Andi.”
She pauses. “Fine,” she says. “The one too.”
I close my eyes for one second, and something in my chest loosens. “I’ll be there in twenty.”
“Luke?”
“Yeah, baby.”
“Should I be worried?”
“No.”
“Do I need to bring anything?”
“No.”
“That answer makes me suspicious.”
“You should be.”
This time, her laugh is small, but real. It’s exactly what I needed to hear.
Rain hits before I reach the center.
Not a sprinkle. Not a warning. A full Georgia thunderstorm, hard and sudden, pounding the windshield in thick sheets of rain so hard the wipers can barely keep up.
Traffic slows to a crawl. Brake lights smear red across the wet pavement.
Thunder rolls low over the city, close enough to rattle the cab of the truck.
By the time I pull into the center’s lot, the downpour has turned the world silver. Lightning cracks across the sky before striking somewhere too close for comfort.
Andi is waiting under the front awning with her bag over one shoulder and a look on her face that says she is allowing this against her better judgment and reserving the right to complain later.
She runs to the truck when I pull up, and I lean over to push the passenger door open.
She climbs in, damp around the edges, hair curling at her temples from the humidity and rain.
She shuts the door and looks at me. “I moved both meetings.”
“Good.”
“Mrs. Alvarez thinks this is hilarious.”
“Also good.”
“She said, and I quote, ‘About time that man did something sensible.’”
I pull out of the lot. “I’m wounded.”
“She also packed us napkins, bottled water, and a container of cookies from the staff room because apparently she trusts your planning less than I do.”
“She’s right to.”
Andi sets the bag at her feet and looks through the windshield at the storm. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
“No.”
“Are we staying in Georgia?”
“Yes.”
“Are we running from something?”
I glance at her. The question is too casual to be casual. “No,” I say. “That’s the whole point.”
She looks at me then. Really looks. I keep my eyes on the road.
“We’re not running from anything today,” I say. “We’re going somewhere because I want to take you there.”
The rain pounds harder for a few minutes. Then, as we head north, the storm begins to loosen its grip. Atlanta stays behind us under a sky the color of wet slate. The farther we drive, the lighter the horizon becomes.
Andi watches it happen. “We’re driving out of it,” she says.
“Yeah.”
She leans back in the seat. “You planned that?”
“I planned north. Weather did the rest.”
“Very impressive coordination.”
“I have layers.” I shrug one shoulder, as if she should already know this about me.
She hums softly, unconvinced, but she doesn’t argue.
The city thins. The roads open. The rain turns to mist, then stops completely. Wet pavement gleams beneath us, reflecting breaks in the sun that begin to push through the clouds. The mountains rise slowly in the distance, blue and green, softened by the last traces of the storm.
Andi goes quiet. Not the working quiet. Not the kind where she’s building a case or sorting variables. This is different. The farther we get from Atlanta, the lower her shoulders drop. Inch by inch. As if her body understands the escape before her mind gives permission.
I keep one hand on the wheel and the other on the console, palm open. After a while, her hand finds mine. I don’t close around it right away. I let her choose the contact, the pressure, and the meaning. Then I lace our fingers together.