EPILOGUE — Unanimous （Leo）
The rope hisses under my shoes and snaps against the concrete in a rhythm that has lived in my body longer than most people in my life.
Backstage at T-Mobile Arena, the room is bright, crowded, and stripped down to function.
Tape wrappers litter the table beside the ice bucket.
Mickey’s kit sits open and orderly under the lights.
My gloves are laced and waiting. The undercard runs silent on the television high in the corner while the arena feed hums through the walls in low waves of bass and crowd noise.
Ray stands near the door with his arms folded, watching me work without wasting words.
Elliot is on his second phone call in ten minutes, trying to sound calm for other people’s benefit.
My pulse is up. My breathing is even. Sweat gathers between my shoulder blades, enough to loosen the last layer of stiffness without costing me anything.
I turn the rope faster.
This part never changes. The room. The light.
The smell of leather, liniment, and nerves.
The point in the night when every man in here knows exactly what his job is.
This is where I have always felt clearest. The world gets smaller in here.
Simpler. No room for spiraling. No space for the kind of thinking that turns in on itself and starts eating air.
There’s only the next decision, then the one after that.
Hands up. Angle out. Jab first. Breathe.
Work is coming, and all that matters is whether I am ready.
I am.
The rope kisses the floor, flicks up, and turns again.
What changed is the rest of my life.
This morning Liz stood barefoot in my hotel suite in one of my black T-shirts, drinking coffee by the window while the Strip looked washed out and unreal behind her.
Her hair was piled on top of her head in a loose knot that had given up ten minutes after she made it.
My ring flashed on her left hand when she lifted the mug, and half her clothes were spread across the dresser with no sign she planned to leave anytime soon.
She has done that in Brooklyn too. A toothbrush on my bathroom counter.
Her body wash in the shower. Journals and med school textbooks stacked next to my row of what she calls “brutal men being concise about suffering.” Running shoes in the hallway.
Bright hair ties everywhere. Her charger plugged in on my side of the bed because that is the side she reaches first when she climbs in.
She moved in the way Liz does everything important—quietly, without fanfare, as if the truth had been there for a while and she had finally stopped arguing with it.
The rope catches my heel.
I stop, reset, and start again.
Ray glances at the clock on the wall. “Five minutes.”
I nod without breaking rhythm. The rope keeps turning.
Eden steps into the doorway, dressed for the arena in a fitted black jumpsuit and a look that says she has opinions about at least three men in this room.
“You’ve got two minutes before security starts getting territorial,” she says.
Elliot glances up from his phone. “Tell them to stay territorial. I love that for us.”
Eden ignores him and looks at me. “You want her in here?”
“Yes.”
She studies me, reads what she needs. “Got it.”
That is the advantage of having a sister who grew up in the same house and a body team that has watched you bleed for years. They know the difference between wanting calm and wanting one precise thing.
I finish the set, let the rope fall, and roll my shoulders out. Mickey hands me a towel. I wipe down, then sit while Ray checks the wrap on my left hand and gives both gloves one last look.
“He’ll try to crowd you early,” Ray says. His voice stays flat, almost bored. That’s his version of care. “Give him the jab. Give him the body. Keep his feet honest.”
“I know.”
“I know you know.” He meets my eyes. “I’m saying it anyway.”
Mickey rubs a thin layer of Vaseline across my cheekbones and brow. Elliot kills his call and points at me with his phone. “Please don’t scare the sponsor row in the first round.”
“Then stop putting me in rooms with sponsors.”
“That’s not how prizefighting works.”
Ray says, “Get out.”
Elliot lifts both hands and leaves. The room grows quieter after that. I stand. Roll my neck once. Flex my shoulders. The roar from the arena swells through the corridor outside, then flattens again.
A knock lands on the open doorframe.
Not the quick rap of security or the clipped tap of production. This one is slower. Deliberate.
I turn.
Liz is standing in the hallway with Eden half a step behind her.
The room changes temperature.
She’s in black from shoulders to heels. A fitted silk top under a tailored jacket, hair down over one shoulder in a dark wave that catches the overhead light, mouth bare except for gloss, eyes fixed on me with that directness that still cuts through noise better than any punch I’ve ever taken.
The ring flashes when she reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.
Ray and Mickey move without looking at me. They clear out with the efficiency of men who know when privacy matters more than routine. Eden lingers just long enough to press her lips together at Liz in a silent have at him, then disappears down the corridor.
Liz steps inside and lets the door swing almost shut behind her.
She takes me in from head to toe. The wraps. The sweat. The gloves waiting on the chair. Her gaze moves back to mine and settles there.
“You look terrifying,” she says softly.
“You’re here anyway.”
“I’m making many excellent life choices lately.”
Her gaze drops to the gloves waiting on the chair. “Also, for the record, if he keeps dropping his right shoulder like that, I expect you to punish him.”
My mouth almost pulls. She crosses the room slowly, stops in front of me, and reaches for the collar of the robe draped over my shoulders, smoothing the satin where it has folded in on itself.
Her fingers are cool. My skin is not.
She draws in a breath, then lets it go through her nose. Her hand slides from the robe to the center of my chest, over my sternum, where my heart is working.
“I know this is your job,” she says. “I know you do not need a pep talk. I know you would hate a pep talk.”
“I would.”
Her mouth curves. “That checks out.”
I cover her hand with my wrapped one. Even through gauze and tape, I can feel her.
She looks at our hands, then back at me, and her expression changes. The softness stays, but the edge under it sharpens into something private.
“Win your fight,” she says, so low the words barely travel. “Then I want you alone.”
Heat punches straight through me.
There it is. The cleanest shot of the night, and it lands before I ever step under the lights. My thumb presses once against the back of her hand. “Yeah?”
Her eyes hold mine without wavering. “You’re going to be impossible afterward. I’m prepared.”
I laugh under my breath. The sound comes rough.
She rises onto her toes and puts her mouth near my ear. “Don’t let them keep you too long.”
By the time she leans back, my pulse is no longer a controlled rise. It is a live wire under the skin.
A production runner calls my name from the corridor. Ray’s voice follows, close behind. “Two minutes.”
Liz looks at me one last time. There’s no fear in her eyes. Tension, yes. Love, yes. Desire enough to make a man dangerous in an entirely different way. But no fear.
That matters more than anything.
She reaches up, touches the cut of my jaw with two fingertips, and says, “Come back to me.”
Then she’s gone.
The door opens and closes, and I stand there breathing through the surge she just dropped into my bloodstream. Then I roll my shoulders once and walk into the corridor.
Ray is at my left. Mickey is behind me. The arena sound is louder now, bass and crowd folded into one physical force that presses against the ribs. The tunnel to the floor glows white at the far end. Security peels people back. Production points us forward.
No room remains for anything except forward motion.
Then the curtain opens, and the noise hits full force.
Las Vegas doesn’t do subtle. The arena explodes in light and sound, every surface built for spectacle.
Music slams through the floor. Giant screens throw my face twenty feet high over a bowl of people who paid for blood, glory, and the chance to say they were in the room when a champion defended his title.
I step into all of it and feel the old shift happen. The final locking of parts already built for this.
I walk.
Halfway down the aisle, I turn my head once toward the ringside rows. I find Liz immediately.
She’s seated beside Eden, one hand wrapped around the edge of her chair, the other resting near her lap. The ring catches a stripe of light and flashes once. Her gaze is on me and only me. She’s not flinching. She’s not smiling for cameras. She is simply there, steady as a line pulled taut.
A calm settles under the adrenaline.
I climb the steps, duck through the ropes, and hand the robe off to Ray. The referee brings us together at center ring for final instructions. The challenger stares hard, trying to create a story inside this tiny space before the bell gives him permission.
I look at his chest, not his eyes.
The first bell rings.
He comes fast, exactly the way Ray said he would.
He wants to cut the ring and rough the fight early before I find range.
I meet him with the jab, sharp and straight, then turn through a hook to the body that lands under the elbow and takes enough air to make him reset.
He circles left. I touch him again with the jab.
Once. Twice. A third time with more sting.
He bites on the head feint and leaves the ribs open. I take them.