18. Xander
The MMA gym in Newburyport is the first place that has ever felt like home without lying about it.
Gideon set it up—one phone call to a college friend named Marco who runs a sanctioned facility with real coaches and the discipline of a place that takes fighting seriously.
I’ve been going every morning before school—five a.m. sessions, technique work with fighters who are actually good and can teach me why I’m good instead of just letting me swing.
I’m walking out after a morning session when I’m slammed face-first into the brick wall of the building. The brick scrapes my cheek. Hands on my neck. Reece.
“Thought you could just walk away from me, fucker? You stop when I say you can stop.”
I turn. Face him. The fear is quieter now—managed. The particular recalibration of a boy who has been training with professionals. “Nah. We’re done, Reece.”
He hits my stomach. I double over. Breathe through it. Wait for the opening. When his hands drop, I rush him. We go down. But this fight is different—I have discipline now. I get behind him, lock the choke. Squeeze until he goes slack. Release. Stand above him.
“Stay the fuck away from me, from Penny, from Daisy. From all of us.”
I walk to my car. The body cam Gideon gave me—clipped to my gym bag—captured everything…
The MacHale kitchen. Gideon sees my face—the brick scrape, the blood—and rushes over.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
“Reece. Outside the gym. I’m fine.”
“Did you get it on camera?”
I pull the body cam from my bag. “Every word. Every threat.”
Gideon takes it. His eyes are alive—the energy of a man who has been building a case and just received the evidence that makes it airtight. “This is it, Xander. Between this, Arthur’s framework, and my federal contacts—Reece is done.”
“What the fuck?”
We both turn to see Penny in the doorway. Backpack over her shoulder. Face white.
She drops her bag. Steps into the kitchen. Slow. The approach of a person who has just heard something that confirms every suspicion they’ve been nurturing about the people who claim to love them.
“You’ve been wearing a camera.” Not a question. A verdict.
“Penny, let me—”
“No.” She puts her hand up. The stop sign. “You’ve been building a case against Reece. With my father. Behind my back. For weeks.”
“Sweetheart—” Gideon starts.
“Don’t ‘sweetheart’ me, Dad.” She turns on him.
Her own father. The particular fury of a daughter who loves a man completely and is learning, in real time, that love and honesty were not occupying the same room.
“How long? How long have you been meeting with Callum and Thomas and Arthur? Making plans about MY dealer? About the man who sold ME drugs?”
Gideon doesn’t flinch. He stands in his daughter’s fury the way he’s stood in every crisis of his career—upright, present, absorbing the impact without deflecting.
“Since the hospital. Since the night Xander found you in the treehouse. We started planning then.”
“Since the—” Her voice cracks. Not from sadness—from the betrayal of learning that the people you trust most have been operating an entire infrastructure around you while you slept.
“That was weeks ago, Dad. Weeks! And you sat across from me at dinner every night and asked me about school and passed the bread and pretended everything was normal while you were building a federal case about my life behind my back!”
“We were protecting you, Penny.”
“EVERYBODY IS ALWAYS PROTECTING ME!” The scream fills the kitchen.
Echoes off the tile. The volume of a girl who has been “protected” into a hospital bed and a treehouse floor and is done being the object of other people’s strategies.
“Xander protects me by pushing me away! You protect me by lying! Mom protects me by counting my pills like I’m a toddler!
Cat protects me by holding me and not telling me things!
Iz protects me by being gentle! None of you—NONE OF YOU—have asked me what I want!
You just decide and execute and I find out later like I’m a fucking bystander in my own life! ”
She’s backing up. Away from both of us. Her back finding the counter.
The retreat of a body that is trying to make itself smaller because the emotions are making it too big.
Her hands are shaking. Her breathing is changing—fast, shallow, the particular rhythm that I recognize because I’ve heard it in the treehouse and in her bedroom and in every moment where Penny’s nervous system shifts from managed to overwhelmed.
“And what about me?” Her voice is higher now. Thinner. The air not cooperating. “What if I’d called him this week? What if I’d bought from him? Would that be on camera? Would I be evidence? Would I be arrested? Would my own father’s body cam footage put me in a courtroom?”
Gideon steps forward. Not retreating. “And why would you buy from him, Penelope?”
The question is a blade. Not cruel—surgical. The incision of a father who has learned from Darla that sometimes the most loving thing you can do is ask the question the person is afraid to answer.
“You’re sober. You’re in the program. You’re clean. So why would buying from Reece even be a possibility?”
Penny’s mouth opens. Closes. Opens. The stutter of a person whose argument has just been dismantled by the truth inside it.
“Because what if I’m not!” The words explode.
“What if I break down? What if I fail? What if today is the day the craving wins and all of this—the program, the sobriety, the promises I’ve made to everybody in this room—falls apart?
I’m scared because I don’t trust myself!
I wake up every morning wondering if today is the day I lose! ”
Her breathing collapses. Not crying—hyperventilating. The spiral of an anxiety attack arriving in real time: chest tightening, vision narrowing, hands going numb. She grabs the counter. Her knuckles white. Her body folding.
“I can’t—I can’t breathe—”
I move. Not fast—steady. The pace Darla taught me. The approach that says “I’m here” without saying “I’m taking over.” I put myself in front of her. Between her and the room. My hands on her arms—not gripping. Resting. Warm. Present.
“Penny. Look at me.”
Her eyes are wild. Darting. The unfocused gaze of a nervous system that has left the building and is operating on emergency protocols.
“Look at me, Penny. Just me. Nobody else. Just my face.”
Her eyes find mine. Lock. The anchor. “Breath in. Slow. Through your nose. Count to four.”
She tries. The inhale stutters. Catches. Tries again. Makes it to three.
“That’s good. Now out. Through your mouth. Count to six.”
The exhale. Shaky. Incomplete. But present.
“Again. In through the nose. Four.”
She breathes. I breathe with her. The synchronization of two nervous systems calibrating to each other—my calm lending itself to her chaos, the way music lends itself to silence, filling the space with something organized.
Her hands leave the counter. Find my forearms. Grip. Not the gripping of a girl reaching for a boy—the gripping of a person reaching for solid ground.
“I’m scared, X.” Whispered. The anger gone. What’s left is the thing underneath every explosion she’s had since October—the particular, quiet terror of a girl who is trying to stay alive and isn’t sure she’s strong enough.
“I know.” My thumbs rubbing circles on her arms. The thing Gideon does to Alice. The thing I’m learning by watching. “Being scared means you care. People who don’t care about their sobriety don’t worry about losing it.”
Alice is beside us now. Her hand on Penny’s back. Not taking over—joining. The presence of a mother who has watched a boy calm her daughter in a way she couldn’t and is grateful rather than threatened.
“But what if I fail, Mom?” Penny turns. Presses her face into Alice’s chest. “What if I disappoint everybody?”
“Then you try again. I failed four times, remember? And your father didn’t leave. And you won’t lose us. You cannot lose us, Penny. Not by failing. Not by falling. Not by anything.”
Gideon wraps around both of them. The MacHale formation. Three people in a kitchen holding each other while the boy who caused the crisis and calmed the crisis stands three feet away, hands empty, watching.
The breathing normalizes. The shaking stops. Penny pulls back. Wipes her face. Looks at me with the expression of a girl who was just talked off a ledge by the boy she’s been fighting for months and doesn’t know how to categorize that.
“I need to sit down.”
I guide her to the table. She sits. I sit beside her. Not across—beside. Gideon across from us. Alice standing behind Penny, her hands on her daughter’s shoulders.
The room resets. The fury has burned through. What’s left is the post-fire landscape—scorched but clear. The air in the room is different now. Cleaner. The clarity that follows an explosion when the smoke lifts and you can see the damage and the damage is not as bad as you feared.
“Penny,” I say. Quiet. Not the dark voice, not the closet voice. Just my voice. “Close your eyes.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Trust me. Close your eyes. Tell me the first thing that comes to mind when I ask: where do you see yourself in five years?”
She closes her eyes. The silence stretches. I watch her face—the micro-expressions, the search behind closed eyelids.
Her eyes open. Something has shifted. The particular light of a person who has just seen something inside themselves that they’ve been afraid to look at.
“I changed my major.”
Alice’s hands tighten on her shoulders. Gideon leans forward.
“I emailed my advisor at Yale last week. I changed from pre-law to music industry management. And I added a sports management minor.”
The kitchen absorbs the announcement.
Alice: “Penny… is that what you want?”