Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
LUKE
Mack doesn't waste time on preamble.
I've been at the gym for forty minutes—just finished intervals, still breathing hard, hands on my knees—when he walks over and stands in front of me the way he does when he has something to say that he's already decided he's going to say regardless of how I take it.
Arms folded. Eyes level. The distinct stillness of a man who has been doing this long enough to have learned patience the hard way.
"You're twenty-eight," he says.
"Thanks for the newsflash. I know how old I am, Mack."
"Then you know what it means." He doesn't blink.
"Most guys your age who haven't broken through yet are already calculating their exit.
You're not most guys—you've got the tools, you've got the discipline, and you've got the right kind of mean in you when you need it.
But the window isn't open forever. It's open now. And its timing is exact."
I straighten up and reach for my water. I know where this is going. I've known it was coming since he first mentioned Joe Caruso three weeks ago.
"Joe's facility," I say.
"Joe's facility." He unfolds his arms. "Six months.
Full immersion. His camp is what took Shane from contender to title conversation—you know that.
You've watched it happen from the same gym.
Joe doesn't take many fighters. He asked about you specifically, which means he's already seen enough to believe you're worth his time.
" Mack pauses. "I don't say that lightly.
Joe Caruso does not give a damn about most people. "
"When?"
"January second. You'd be back by July. His rules: no outside training influences, no scheduled visitors, no downtime built into the calendar.
He runs it like a professional operation because that's what it is.
" He looks at me directly. "This isn't a training camp, Luke.
This is a decision about whether you're serious. "
I look at the ring. At Tom working the mitts with one of Mack's middleweights.
At the speed bag hanging perfectly still in the corner.
I've been serious my entire adult life. The difference between now and everything before is that now someone with real standing is offering to make that mean something.
"Joe has already identified a probable opponent," Mack says.
"Ranked heavyweight. Not a title fight—not yet.
But a legitimate ranked bout that puts you in the title conversation if you win it.
That's what the six months are for. Not just conditioning.
Preparation for a specific fight." He looks at me.
"Joe doesn't run camps for the sake of training. He runs them for outcomes."
"I want to do it," I say.
Mack nods once, like he expected that and is not particularly moved by it. "Good. Then I need your final answer by the end of the week so I can confirm with Joe." He turns to go, then stops. "Have you talked to Andi?"
I hesitate half a second too long.
He turns back.
"Mack—"
"I'm not asking you to justify it to me," he says.
"I'm asking because she's like my daughter, and I don't want her blindsided.
She's got enough coming at her right now.
" He levels me with the look he reserves for when he means what he says with no softening around the edges.
"Tell her today. Before you tell Joe yes. "
"I will," I say.
He walks away. I stand there for another moment with the weight of it settling in—not doubt, not hesitation, just the specific gravity of a decision that's real now in a way it wasn't ten minutes ago.
The association has already assigned me a PR representative—a woman named Syndi Roberson who operates as if she were born with a clipboard in her hand and opinions about my media availability. Mack thinks she's useful. I think she's relentless. We're both probably right.
I already know what I'm going to say to Joe. I just need to figure out how to say it to Andi first.
She supports me, but she’d object to the timing of this.
That’s exactly why I’m not presenting it as a choice.
The mornings are the only time we have each other right now, and even those are borrowed.
I'm up before five. She gets home close to midnight most nights—MaxMorgan business that spills into evening hours, and lately a studio she's been booking on her own, working on material that doesn't have a destination yet.
She's writing songs because she needs somewhere to put the emotions in her head and heart.
By the time she climbs into bed, she's already mostly asleep, her body moving through the motions of the routine before her mind has fully caught up.
I lie there in the dark for a few minutes after she settles, her breathing evening out against my shoulder, and I think about the fact that this is what our schedule looks like before I've even left Atlanta.
The studio time is hers. I don’t ask about it, and she doesn’t offer details, which is unusual for us.
Music is her constant, the same way the gym is mine—something that doesn’t need justification because it is who she is.
The surrounding silence lately doesn’t feel like secrecy.
It feels like something still forming, something she hasn’t put words to yet, and doesn’t want to speak aloud until it’s real.
I notice. But I don't push.
I leave her a note on the kitchen table on Thursday morning.
Home by 1. Stay if you can. We need to talk.
She texts back at nine-fifteen when she wakes up.
Ominous. Everything okay?
Everything's fine. Just have something to tell you.
A longer pause than I'd like.
Me too. I'll be here.
She's on the couch with her laptop when I come through the door, still in the oversized shirt she slept in, coffee going cold on the end table beside her.
She looks up when she hears the garage, and the quality of her attention—careful, steady—tells me she's been thinking about her something to tell me the same way I've been thinking about mine.
I drop my bag by the stairs. She closes the laptop.
"You first," she says.
"No. You."
She almost smiles. "That's not how it works."
"I called it."
"You didn't call anything. You said we needed to talk."
"Which was implicit."
"Luke." Her voice is soft, but she is not backing down.
I sit in the armchair across from her. I've been rehearsing this the entire drive home, turning it over, looking for the version that softens the blow, and what I've come to is that there isn't one. There's just the truth, and how you say it.
"Mack wants me at Joe Caruso's training facility in Vegas," I say.
"January second. Six months. Full immersion—no visitors built in, no scheduled downtime.
Joe's rules." I hold her eyes. "It’s to prepare me for a ranked fight, Andi.
I told Mack I wanted to do it before I talked to you.
That was wrong. But I'm telling you now before I make it official, and I want to figure out what this means for us. "
She's quiet. Her expression doesn't shift into anything I can read cleanly—not hurt, not anger, the same stillness she uses when she's processing faster than she wants to show.
"Six months," she says.
"Six months."
"January."
"January second."
“Two days before your birthday.” There’s a hint of sorrow in her voice.
She looks at the coffee table for a moment. She already knows what Joe's facility means—she watched what it did to Shane, watched him come back a different fighter. She knows exactly what I’m telling her. I lean forward.
"Mack's right about the timing, Andi. I'll be twenty-nine in a matter of days now, which isn't old, but it's not young either, not in this sport.
If I don't make a real move now, the window gets smaller every year until one day I'm looking at exhibition fights and coaching kids on weekends and wondering what would've happened if I'd taken the shot when it was offered. "
She absorbs this without flinching.
"How long have you been thinking about it?" she asks.
"Mack first brought it up a few weeks ago. I've been sitting with it, turning it over in my mind before making a firm decision."
"Without telling me."
It's not an accusation. It's a fact, stated evenly, which is sometimes worse.
"Without telling you," I confirm. "I didn't want to put it on you while everything else was already—"
"Luke." She stops me, not unkindly. "I know why you didn't tell me. I understand the calculation. I just need you to know that I noticed you left me out."
"I know I did." I meet her eyes. "I'm sorry."
The silence stretches. Something in her expression settles.
"It's your shot," she says quietly. "You should take it. We’ll just have to celebrate your birthday early."
The simplicity of it hits me in a place I wasn't prepared for. No conditions, no negotiation, no inventory of what it costs her. Just: you should take it. This is what I mean when I say she's better than me. She'd never make me smaller to make herself feel better.
"You said you had something too," I say.
She shifts on the couch—a small adjustment, the one she makes when she's deciding how to start something.
"Travis called this afternoon. While I was at the youth center.
" She pauses. "The label wants to put together a tour.
Opening act—me, Sound Bar, and one more group.
Five months, forty cities, East Coast to West Coast. They want an answer by next week. "
I let that settle.
Five months. Tour dates starting in January and completing in mid-June. The same window as Vegas, by the sound of it.
"Have you said yes?" I ask.
"Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first."
"But you want to go."