Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
ANDI
Isit in the parking lot for eleven minutes.
I know because I watch the clock on my dashboard without meaning to, the way you track something when you don't know what else to do with your hands.
The building looks exactly the same from out here.
Bright paint. Clean windows. The mural the middle school art class finished in October, with the letters still slightly uneven because they voted against straightening them.
The defect added character, they said. And I love them for it.
How they embrace the flaws and make them beautiful.
Inside, Mrs. Alvarez is running the afternoon programming.
The kids are doing what they do every day—loud and present and entirely unaware that anything has changed.
The kids need the consistency and stabilization that the center brings.
Everything in me wants to fight the adviser’s advice, but whoever’s gunning for me won’t care about them.
That’s been painfully proven. For now, my diminished capacity is required, and I have to accept that they won this battle.
I put the car in reverse.
The word “wise” follows me home.
Wise decision.
Luke is already asleep when I get there. He's on the couch in his training clothes, one arm across his chest, the other fallen off the cushion toward the floor. The television is on but muted. He went through a whole day and ran out of steam before I even got home.
I sit in the armchair across from him for a minute.
I can tell by the way he’s positioned that he tried his best to wait up for me, so we’d have a few more minutes together that don’t involve pre-dawn mornings, oatmeal, and fruit.
But because I also know Mack’s training schedule backward and forward, Luke already would’ve been beyond exhausted before he even reached the couch.
Once he touched the cushions, he would’ve been out like a light.
He looks younger when he's asleep. The visible tension he carries in his jaw releases, and what's left is just the person underneath all of it—the one who called me baby before he even knew my last name.
The one who drove forty minutes in the wrong direction once because I mentioned offhand that I liked a specific diner's coffee.
I love him so much it sits in my chest like a stone sometimes.
He hasn’t agreed to Marin’s suggestion. Not yet. He’s still thinking about it, weighing his options.
But the statement is still on the table—the one with his name on it and mine conspicuously absent.
The one that protects his license by treating us as two separate stories.
And I know what Luke does when he can't solve a problem by standing in front of it.
He finds a lever. He pulls it. He fixes it.
The question is whether he'll decide that letting me stand alone is the lever that fixes this.
I turn the television off and go upstairs. I can’t bring myself to wake him.
But I don't sleep well.
The weight of the world is on my mind, and the love of my life isn’t beside me.
LUKE
Three days after the board meeting, Brandon calls me on my way into the gym.
"Audit's been assigned," he says. "The auditor is someone Marin knows. She says that's actually good news—he's methodical, not politically motivated. The review should be clean."
"Should be," I repeat.
"Is."
I pull into the parking lot and kill the engine. "How does Marin know him?"
There’s a slight delay before he replies. "They worked adjacent cases in D.C. a few years back. She says he runs straight."
I don't say what I'm thinking, which is that knowing the auditor doesn't sound like distance. It sounds like positioning.
"Okay," I say instead.
"How's Andi?"
I look at the gym door. Inside, Mack is already waiting. "Holding on."
"That's Andi for you."
"Yeah." I get out of the car. "I'll call you later."
I never call him back. I go three hard rounds with Mack’s best sparring partner and come home so drained that even words feel out of reach.
Andi has left a plate for me in the microwave with a note that just says, “Eat this.” I eat it standing at the counter and go upstairs and fall asleep before I can think about Marin's offer again.
I’ll think about it in the morning instead.
ANDI
The first call comes on a Wednesday.
It's not threatening. It doesn't need to be. It's a donor—one of the original ones, who helped fund the center's second wing and whose name appears on a plaque by the entrance. His voice is careful. Measured.
"I want you to know I support you personally," he says. "But I've had a few calls this week from people I respect. Questions about the governance structure. About your role during the review."
"My role hasn't changed," I say.
"Of course." A pause. "I just wanted to give you a heads-up. These things move faster than they should sometimes."
He hangs up before I can ask who called him.
I sit there longer than I mean to, replaying the way his voice shifted at the end.
People he respects are putting pressure on him.
This was orchestrated by someone who knew to call him specifically.
Someone who already knows about his ties to the youth center.
I open my laptop and pull up the center's donor list.
By Thursday, two more donors have called with variations of the same script.
Someone who knew which donors to apply pressure to, and in what order, and how to frame the conversation so it sounds like concern rather than a campaign against me.
Not with accusations. Never accusations that could be easily disproven.
Just carefully crafted questions, delivered with the same careful language, from people they respect.
Questions that tend to lead to more specific questions about the donors themselves if they don’t take care.
On Friday, I call Brandon.
"Has Marin mentioned the donor contacts?" I ask.
"She flagged it this morning, actually." He sounds unsurprised. "She says it's standard pressure-testing before an audit. Happens when someone wants to see which relationships hold."
"Someone is calling our donors, Brandon."
There’s a pause. “Yes, they are.”
"That's not random."
“No,” he agrees carefully. "It isn’t. Marin's working on tracking the origin. She thinks it might be connected to a PAC that had existing friction with Jackson."
Jackson.
Still.
Even from the bottom of the Atlantic.
"Tell her I'd like to see whatever she finds. Directly, when she has something concrete. Not filtered through the PAC angle—I want the origin."
"She's handling it, Andi. Marin’s good at this kind of thing." He tries to sound reassuring for my benefit, but there’s an edge to his tone that’s never been there before. It’s more protective than defensive, but the protection isn’t for me.
I close my laptop. "I’m sure she is."
I haven't decided yet whether that means it’s been handled.