Chapter 20
Brooke
I grab my bag off the counter at my local bodega, waving goodnight to Yusuf, the owner, who has seen me come through this place in every possible state of human existence: cocktail dresses at midnight after galas, press credentials and coffee-stained blazers during deadline crunches, sweatpants and no bra at eleven PM buying ice cream and cheap wine after particularly brutal days.
He might just be my longest relationship in New York, actually, because it’s been over a decade of bodega transactions and that’s more consistent than any man I’ve dated.
The early November air feels fresh on my face as I push through the door and join the stream of pedestrians heading west, grocery bag hooked over my arm.
I walk down the block, mentally assembling dinner from what I bought, debating whether the leftover chicken in my fridge has crossed from edible into biohazard territory.
My phone rings in my coat pocket. I shift the grocery bag to my other arm, pull it out, and check the screen.
Miles Webb.
I stare at the name. It’s been weeks since I left him a voicemail, rambling and awkward, and I’ve been certain ever since that I’d never hear back.
Why would I? I wrote the article that ended his fighting career.
I step out of the flow of foot traffic and press my back against the brick wall of the dry cleaner’s next door.
“Miles. Hi. Thanks for calling me back.” I press the phone to my ear, trying to sound professional and calm and not like someone whose heart is suddenly pounding.
The line is silent on the other end. I wait, shifting my weight from foot to foot, watching a cab cut off a delivery truck at the intersection while the driver leans on his horn.
“Yeah, well. I almost didn’t.” His voice is flat and hard, and for a moment I’m a young reporter again, sitting across from a younger version of this man in a sweaty gym office, interviewing a fighter on the brink of a huge career.
He’d been cocky then, sure of himself, dismissive of my questions in a way that made me work twice as hard to get anything useful out of him.
He sounds nothing like that now. He sounds tired.
“I wouldn’t have blamed you,” I say. “I know I’m not exactly your favorite person.” I leave out the part where he was a dirty fighter who kind of deserved the article, since that doesn’t feel productive to getting the answers I need.
“Good. Because honestly I sat here staring at your voicemail trying to figure out why the hell I’d ever want to talk to you.
” He lets out a small, humorless laugh. “And then I figured, fuck it. I’ve been sober for eight years and my sponsor keeps telling me I need to stop avoiding the hard stuff.
So congratulations, you’re my homework.”
I swallow. This should be interesting. “Congratulations on being sober, Miles. I didn’t realize you’d been through all that.”
“Yeah, well, I’d always been a drinker. Someone who celebrates, you know?
Big win, let’s party. Bad loss, let’s drink about it.
And after everything blew up...” He trails off.
“It just got away from me. Anyway.” He clears his throat, clearly not interested in going down that road with me. “You said this isn’t for a story.”
“It’s not,” I say. “Completely off the record. I’m not recording, I’m not taking notes, and nothing you say ends up in print.”
“Then what do you want?” The bite is back in his voice, defensive and sharp.
I sigh, tipping my head back against the brick and staring up at the narrow strip of sky visible between the buildings. “I want to know about Dominic. Whether he knew about the PEDs.” I pause, then add, “I need to hear it from you.”
The line goes quiet. I can hear background noise on his end, kids shouting somewhere, the distant sound of a TV.
And I wonder how many kids he has now, what kind of life he built after everything fell apart.
Whether he thinks about the career he lost, or if he’s found peace with how things turned out.
“Why now?” he asks, and the edge is gone from his voice, replaced by something that sounds closer to exhaustion. “It’s been fifteen years. Why does this matter now?”
Because I slept with him twice recently and it cracked open every certainty I’ve been carrying since I was twenty-seven years old.
Because I watched him coach Roman in New York and saw a man who builds things instead of tearing them down.
Because I’m starting to suspect I’ve been wrong about him for a very long time, and the weight of that possibility is keeping me up at night, staring at my ceiling and replaying every argument we’ve ever had.
“I just need to know the truth,” I say instead, because the real answer is too complicated and too personal and none of his business. “For myself.”
The line goes quiet again. A cab lays on its horn somewhere up the block, one long sustained blare of frustration.
A woman pushes past me on the sidewalk with a stroller, shooting me an annoyed look for taking up space in the alcove.
I stand there with my back against the brick and my groceries going warm against my hip and wait.
“It was fucked, what I did to Dominic.” His voice sounds completely different now, stripped down to something raw. “That’s the truth. That’s the thing I’ve never said out loud to anyone except my sponsor and my wife, and now I guess to you.” He takes a breath. “Dominic didn’t know.”
My hand tightens around the phone. Even though I’ve suspected it ever since Aberdeen, since Eddie Kovacs looked me in the eye and admitted he’d lied, the words still land like a fist to the sternum.
“He didn’t know,” I repeat, and the words taste bitter on my tongue.
“No. I got the stuff from someone outside the gym, a guy I knew from way back. I kept it completely hidden, and Dominic never saw anything. When it all came out, I was so ashamed and so scared that I just...” He pauses.
“I dunno, it made me look better if people thought my coach was maybe pushing it, maybe looking the other way. Everyone was fucking coming for me until that point, and then suddenly the story shifted to him.”
I close my eyes. The city noise fades to a dull roar.
“Why didn’t you ever say anything later then?” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Why did you let his career burn?”
“Because I was a coward,” he says. “I was young and stupid and scared, and by the time I got my head on straight enough to understand what I’d done, it felt too late. Dominic had already moved on. I figured reaching out would just open old wounds.”
“It would have cleared his name,” I say, and there’s an edge in my voice now that I can’t quite control.
The anger surprises me with how fast it rises, hot and sudden, and it’s directed at myself first, for not digging deeper the way I should have, the way any decent journalist would have, for letting my personal hatred of Dominic cloud my judgment.
But it’s also directed at Miles Webb and Eddie Kovacs, two lying pieces of shit who let an innocent man’s career burn to the ground while they walked away from the wreckage.
“Yeah.” I hear him exhale on the other end.
“I’ve thought about that every single day since.
I mean, it was terrible, what I did. He was a really good guy too, that’s the thing.
That’s what makes it worse. I think that’s part of why he never called me a liar or really defended himself much, because he knew about my home life and all the shit I was dealing with. ”
I press my forehead against the brick wall of the dry cleaner’s, the cold rough surface grounding me while everything inside my chest threatens to come apart. The anger is still there, but it’s mixed with something else now, something that feels dangerously close to grief.
For Dominic. For the years of his life that I helped destroy. For all the things he could have been if Miles Webb had been brave enough to tell the truth and I had been smart enough to ask the right questions.
I want to scream or cry or punch someone. Maybe all three.
Before I say something I might regret, I need to end this call. I need to think. I need to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do with this information now that I have it.
“Thank you, Miles,” I manage. “That... well, that clears things up.”
“What are you going to do?” he asks, sounding curious, and maybe a little nervous.
“I don’t know. I really don’t.” I rub my hand over my face, trying to think straight through the noise in my head.
“Can I call you again about this? I don’t know what I need to do yet, or if Dominic should hear it from me or from you, or if there’s some way to.
..” I trail off because I don’t even know how to finish the sentence.
“Yeah.” His voice is quieter now, the defensiveness long gone. “Yeah, you can call me again.”
“Okay. Goodbye, Miles. And congratulations on your sobriety. I’m happy for you about that, at least.”
“Thanks, Brooke. I appreciate that.” The line goes dead.
I stand there on the sidewalk, phone pressed against my thigh, groceries forgotten, staring at nothing while the city moves around me.
All this time. All these years. Dominic had tried to tell me, and I’d always assumed he was a liar, had rolled my eyes and shut him down every single time, because I was so certain I already knew the truth.
I had a source and a story and a decade of resentment telling me he was guilty, and I didn’t push past any of it.
I didn’t ask the hard questions. I didn’t follow the threads that didn’t fit the narrative I wanted to be true.
I just wrote the article and cashed the check and moved to Manhattan and told myself I’d done good journalism.
Mexico City is next week, and I have no fucking idea what to do.