Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
LUKE
I've been sitting with Marin's recommendation for six days.
Not avoiding it. Not refusing it. Just sitting with it the way you sit with a decision that's going to cost you something, regardless of which way it falls.
There's no version of this that doesn't have a price attached.
That's the thing no one says out loud in these conversations—not Marin, not Brandon, not me.
We talk about strategy and optics and parallel lines and what the Commission wants to see, and underneath it all is the one question none of us are naming.
What does it cost Andi if I do this?
I know the answer. I've known it since I read that statement and felt the weight of her name not being in it.
She stands at the center of her own crisis without my name attached to hers, which protects my license and leaves her to carry the board's scrutiny alone.
Marin calls it insulation. Brandon calls it temporary.
I've been calling it nothing because I don't have a word for it that doesn't make me feel like a man choosing his career over the woman he loves.
Strategically, Marin isn't wrong. I know she isn't wrong. That's the part that keeps waking me up at four in the morning.
I call Brandon on Tuesday, which is the day he reliably picks up because it's the one day he doesn't have site visits.
"I've been thinking about Marin's recommendation," I say.
"And?"
I stand at the kitchen counter with my coffee.
Andi left an hour ago for a morning full of MaxMorgan meetings, and she’ll be at the recording studio for the rest of the day.
The house has the unique quiet of someone who has just left, as if it can still sense her presence.
Her favorite coffee mug is still in the drying rack.
"I will not issue the statement."
A pause. "Luke—"
"Not the way she wrote it."
"The Commission wants—"
"I know what the Commission wants." I keep my voice level.
"I also know that issuing a statement that treats Andi like she doesn't exist is not something I'm willing to do.
If they want a statement, it mentions her.
It doesn't elaborate. It doesn't connect the two investigations.
But her name is in it because she is my team and I'm not pretending otherwise in public. "
Another pause. Longer this time. I can hear Brandon working through the angles the way he always does—methodically, looking for the version that satisfies everyone.
"Marin's going to say it opens the door to linkage," he says finally.
"Then she can say that. She advises. She doesn't decide."
The stillness that follows is the silence of a man who agrees with you and isn't sure he should say so out loud.
"I'll let her know," Brandon says.
"You don't need to. I'll call her myself."
"Luke." His voice changes slightly. Not cautionary. Something else. "Be careful how you do that."
"She's a consultant, Brandon. Not family. Not my boss."
"I know." He pauses. "I'm just saying she doesn't respond well to being overruled directly. Better to let her think she's been redirected."
I stand there for a moment, wondering if Brandon fully comprehends what he just said. That's an interesting thing to know about someone. I file it away for future reference.
"I'll handle it," I say.
Marin takes the call without warmth or hostility—the professional neutrality of someone who's heard pushback before and knows how to receive it without it affecting her position.
"I understand your instinct," she says when I finish. "I want to be clear that I'm not recommending you hide Andi. I'm recommending you don't amplify the connection between two separate regulatory processes."
"I understand the recommendation. I'm changing it."
She hesitates. "What does changed look like?"
"My name. My statement. One line acknowledging that Andi and I are facing separate inquiries and that I have full confidence in her work at the center. No elaboration. No press conference. Just the statement."
Complete silence this time.
"That line will generate questions," she says.
"Let it. Silence generates assumptions. This generates questions, which I don't answer."
Another beat of silence, only longer.
"It's your call," she says. Her tone is exactly the same as it was before. Neutral. Measured. Nothing in it I can point to or call her out for. It’s simply impartial.
What I notice—and don’t comment on—is that she doesn’t push back.
She acknowledges the risk, clarifies her stance, and then disengages.
That kind of retreat can be a form of professional restraint.
Or it can mean she’s already calculated every possible scenario and found that this line of opposition isn’t strong enough to interfere with the larger plan she’s executing.
I don't know which one it is yet.
"Thank you for your time," I say.
After I hang up, I stand in the kitchen for another minute.
Let her think she's been redirected.
Brandon said it like it was useful advice, which it was. He also said it as if he had already learned it from experience.
ANDI
December is pressing in from all sides now—shorter days, colder mornings, the distinctive exhaustion of a month that asks you to be festive while the rest of your life is asking something else entirely.
I slip out of bed before the sun, heavy-eyed but unbothered. This hour belongs to us in a way the rest of the day never will. We take it seriously—not because it’s rare, but because it’s ours. Two chairs at the kitchen table, held open on purpose, where nothing is required, and nothing intrudes.
This morning, he's already at the stove when I come downstairs.
He doesn't hear me at first, and I stand in the doorway for a moment and watch him—the way he moves in the kitchen, unhurried and competent, like a man who has made peace with the routine of it.
He hates a lot of things, but he has never once complained about making breakfast.
"You're up early," he says without turning around. He always knows.
"Couldn't sleep." I pull out my chair and fold into it. "How was training yesterday?"
"Mack tried to kill me." He sets the bowl in front of me—he made enough for both of us without being asked, which is so Luke, I feel it in my chest a little. "Then he told me I wasn't hitting hard enough, which I took to mean I should hit harder, which he then told me was not what he meant."
"What did he mean?"
"Apparently, I'm hitting with anger instead of intention." He sits across from me. "He spent twenty minutes explaining the difference. I'm still not entirely sure I got it."
"Did it make you better?"
He considers my question for a moment. "Probably."
I smile into my coffee. Outside the kitchen window, Atlanta is going gray at the edges—November dark giving way to December dark, which is a different kind of dark, colder and more final-feeling.
"Travis called about the rehearsal schedule," I say. "They want to push the first full run-through to Thursday. Katelyn has a venue conflict on Wednesday."
"Katelyn." He says it the way he says anything he's reserving judgment on.
"She's very good at her job," I say. "She's also extremely unpleasant about it."
"Those are not mutually exclusive things, I'm learning."
He's thinking about Marin. I'm thinking about Marin. Neither of us says her name.
"The statement went out," he says, after a moment.
I look up.
"I modified it." He holds my eyes. "Your name is in it. One line. No elaboration." He pauses. "I know it wasn't what Marin recommended. But it was what I decided."
Something shifts in me—not relief, not exactly. It’s quieter than that. More complicated. The strange awareness of watching someone I love show up exactly as I need them to, at the precise moment I didn’t want to need anything at all.
"How did she take it?" I ask.
"Professionally." A pause. "Perfectly."
The word lands between us. We both know what it means, and neither of us unpacks it.
"Thank you," I say.
"You don't have to thank me for that."
"I know." I meet his eyes. "I'm doing it, anyway."
He reaches across the table and covers my hand with his. We sit like that for a few minutes—the oatmeal going warm, Atlanta lightening slowly outside, the day pressing toward us and not quite here yet.
"I'm going to miss this," I say.
"Which part?"
"All of it." I look at him. "This exact thing. Morning. You. The oatmeal you make even when I don't ask."
He squeezes my hand once. "I'll make you oatmeal when I'm back."
"I know you will."
He has to leave. He always has to leave. I watch him do the things he does every morning—pack the bag, check the watch, fill the water jug—and I think about how in less than a month this kitchen will just be mine in the mornings. His chair will be empty. The stove will be cold.
He kisses me at the door the way he does when he means it—deliberate, unhurried, the kind that says I’m with you rather than I'm leaving.
"Wake me when you get home," he says.
"Always," I say.
He walks out to the garage, and I stand at the door for a moment as he puts his gear in the backseat of the truck. I’m wearing his T-shirt that I slept in, watching him with so much love in my heart that I’m sure it’s spilling over to my eyes.
Killing me, I hear him mutter as he climbs behind the wheel.
I smile as I close the door.
I stand in the kitchen and let the quiet settle around me, and I think about the fact that the pressure has been building for eight weeks without any of us being able to see where it's coming from.
The donor calls. The audit. The Commission review.
The board meeting. All of it arriving in the same window, from different directions, with the same effect.
Someone is very good at this.
The question I keep not finishing is: good at this for how long?
LUKE
The week before Christmas, Mack tells me I can have the evening off.
Not phrased as a gift. Phrased as a tactical decision—my body needs a recovery cycle, I've been running at a deficit, and a fighter who trains through exhaustion is building bad habits into muscle memory.
He says it the way he says everything, which is like he's reading from a technical manual.
But I've been around him long enough to know when he's also doing something kind.
I text Andi.
Free tonight. What do you need?
She takes longer than usual to reply. When she does, her reply is cryptic.
Come find me.
I know exactly where she is. So I drive straight to the youth center.
She's in the parking lot when I pull in—sitting on the hood of her car, which she does when she's thinking, which means she's been here a while.
The building is lit from inside. Mrs. Alvarez's car is still in the lot. The afternoon programs are still running at full capacity. But they’ll always make room for one more.
I park beside her and get out.
She looks at me for a moment. Just looks. What I see in her eyes tells me she can breathe easier now that the thing she needed is finally here.
"Hey," she says.
"Hey, baby."
I lean against the car beside her. We sit in the parking lot and watch the building the way you watch something you love that's slightly out of reach.
"I've been thinking about the donor calls," she says, after a while.
"Tell me."
"The language was too consistent. Three different people, three different conversations, all framing it exactly the same way. It’s not a coincidence. It’s too precise. Someone gave them a script."
"Or the same person made three calls and gave each of them the same framing."
"Yes." She's quiet for a moment. "Someone with access to the donor list. Someone who knew which relationships to pressure first so the others would fall like dominoes." She looks at the building. "The donor list isn't public, Luke."
That hit lands harder than it should. The picture of this fight I’ve built in my mind tilts, just slightly.
The list lives in the center's administrative files. The board has access. Marin has been in those meetings. Brandon would have had it as supporting documentation when he first approached her. The coordination feels different now. I don’t say any of it out loud.
It’s not proof—but it narrows things more than I’m comfortable with.
"What do you want to do?" I ask.
"Nothing yet." She says it the way she always says it—not passively, but with the specific patience of someone who knows that moving before you have enough information is worse than waiting. "I want to watch the direction. See what moves next."
I put my arm around her. She leans into it.
We stay in the parking lot for another hour, talking about nothing—mostly.
About the kids she’s been watching from a distance.
about Marcus, who came by twice this week hoping to catch her—he has news he wants to tell her in person, and she hasn't had the heart to tell him she isn't technically supposed to be there. About the song she wrote at two in the morning on Tuesday—one she thinks might be the best thing she’s ever written—and how she can’t tell anyone yet because she doesn’t want to jinx it.
"Sing it to me," I say.
"Not yet." She tips her head against my shoulder. "When it's ready."
The building lights go off one by one as Mrs. Alvarez closes up for the night. She spots us on her way to her car, gives Andi a look that contains an entire conversation, and drives away without a word.
"She knows everything," Andi says.
"Good," I say. "Somebody should."