Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ANDI
Valentine's Day in Atlanta looks like every other day in Atlanta, except the grocery store has arranged its impulse purchases around a theme.
I buy coffee, eggs, and a single red tulip from the bucket by the checkout, because it's February and I am at least going to put something alive on the kitchen table.
I didn't expect to be here.
The evening before Valentine's Eve, when Luke softly and carefully told me—in his usual gentle tone—that Syndi had scheduled him for the Lindsey Blair interview and Mack had arranged something afterward, I sat on the tour bus floor, staring into the middle distance for a moment.
So I said the only thing I could. "Okay." Then I added, "I'm going home to Atlanta then."
He said, "Are you sure you don't want to come to Vegas and be there even if we can't spend time together?"
And I said, "I'd rather be in our house than near you but not with you." Which was honest, but I could hear what it sounded like.
He said, "Okay. If you’re sure. I love you."
I said, "I love you too. Win your interview."
And we both laughed a little, which helped.
The house is strange when I'm in it alone.
Not uncomfortable—I've been alone in harder places—but strange in the specific way of a space that's built itself around two people and notices the absence of one.
Luke's weight is in this house. His coffee mug is on the drying rack.
His training schedule is on the kitchen whiteboard, crossed off by the day in his handwriting.
The indentation in his side of the mattress waits for him to take his place there again.
I cook dinner for myself at six and eat it while reading the youth center's quarterly reports, which Mrs. Alvarez sent with a note that said, “You don't have to read these. I just thought you'd want to.” She knows me well.
The reports are clean. Every program is running as designed and expected.
Enrollment is up eleven percent from this time last year.
Marcus is waiting to hear from the admissions offices of two colleges.
There's a new girl, fourteen, who showed up three weeks ago without a referral—just walked in and sat down in the after-school room and didn't leave until closing, and has come back every day since.
That's the one that gets me.
The one who finds the door herself.
I sit at the kitchen table reading about her—no identifying details, just Mrs. Alvarez's careful notation of her attendance streak—and I feel the specific grief of stepping back from a place I built with my hands. Not rage. Just weight.
My phone lights up. Travis.
Happy VD from your secret admirer—lol.
I set the phone down and then pick it up again.
Thank you. Eat something that isn't from a venue concession stand.
Too late. Already had nachos. Tell no one.
Your body is a temple, Travis.
It's a highly decorated temple with very good acoustics. Nachos are a tribute.
I put the phone down and find myself smiling at the kitchen table in my empty house on Valentine's Day, which is not where I thought I'd be but is, I realize, still okay. There are worse things than the company of your own life.
I pour a glass of wine and take it to the couch and call Luke at nine, which is six his time, and he should be done for the day.
He answers on the first ring.
"Hey, baby." His voice has the stripped quality it gets when he's tired in the good way—emptied out by physical work rather than worry. "How's Atlanta?"
"Quiet. How's Vegas?"
"Loud. But not tonight." I can hear him moving, the familiar sounds of the facility hallways in the background. "How is the house?"
"Ours," I say. "That's the best word for it."
He's quiet for a moment, which is a different kind of quiet from his usual quiet. "I'm sorry I'm not there."
"I know. I'm sorry I'm not there either."
"We're both where we need to be."
"I know that too." I pull my knees up on the couch. "Luke, the community development office came back with a follow-up request."
"Brandon told me. Marin's tracking it."
"I know she is." I pause. "Brandon mentioned she's been coming by the office a few times a week now."
"Is that a problem?"
I choose my words carefully. "I think she's very good at what she does."
"Andi."
"I don't have anything concrete," I say. "Just—keep your eyes open. When someone is very good at what they do, you have to ask yourself what they actually want out of it."
Luke is quiet on his end. Not dismissive. Thinking, processing, and assessing the possible angles.
"I'll talk to him," he says.
"Don't do it in a way that puts Brandon on the defensive. He trusts her."
"I know. That makes it harder all around."
"And she may be exactly what she appears to be. I just—."
"I know," he says again, softer this time. "I hear you."
We talk for another hour about nothing consequential—a fight he watched on tape with Joe and Mack, the record store Cami found in Charlotte, the tulip on the kitchen table, and a story about Shane that makes me laugh until I spill my wine.
By the time we hang up, the empty house has settled into something warmer than absence.
I refill the wine and sit with the quarterly reports a little longer.
Marcus is waiting to hear from colleges. I wish I could’ve been there to help him fill out the applications, to see the pride on his face when he realized he is “good” enough for college, and to wait with him until he chose which one he wanted to attend.
The girl who found the door herself came back again today.
It makes me wonder what’s happening at home.
What is she facing alone? Not that I don’t trust Mrs. Alvarez to be available for whatever this child needs, but she is exactly why I started this venture in the first place.
Helping those kids is what gives my life purpose and meaning.
It helps erase the horrors of my past. It’s times like this when I struggle to tamp down the anger welling in my chest over the inequity of this covert, coordinated assault.
Whoever is behind it is a cold, calculated monster, leaving innocent kids exposed to carry out a personal vendetta.
And for what? Because I exposed our degenerate congressman?
Some things are still moving in the right direction.
That's good enough for me. For tonight, anyway.
LUKE
The Lindsey Blair Show tapes in a studio on the north end of the Strip, which is close enough to the training facility that Syndi wants to walk.
I draw the line at walking the Las Vegas Strip in a suit at two in the afternoon.
We take a car.
She's been prepping me since breakfast—not in the way Mack preps me for a fight, which is specific, physical, and built on months of observed tendencies, but in the way of someone who understands that the ring I'm walking into today operates differently.
Different rules. Different footing. The person across from me won't be trying to knock me out.
She'll be trying to get me to knock myself out.
"She's going to open warm," Syndi says in the car, not looking up from her tablet. "She always opens warm. It makes people comfortable, and comfortable people say more than they intend to."
"I know how interviews work, Syndi."
"You know how you think interviews work.
" She looks up. "Lindsey Blair covered Andi's story.
She's not neutral territory. She has an existing relationship with your fiancée, an opinion about the people who came after Andi, and an audience that cares about the outcome of this situation.
" She holds my gaze. "That's not a hostile interview.
It's a complicated one. Complicated is harder. "
I look out the window at the Strip passing in daylight, which is always slightly wrong—like seeing a stage set without the lighting it was designed for.
"What's she going to ask about?" I ask.
"The Commission review. Your record before you went professional. Andi." She goes back to her tablet. "In that order, probably. The first two are the approach. Andi is what she actually wants."
"Then I'll talk about Andi."
"Yes." A pause. "Carefully."
The studio is smaller than I expected. Lindsey Blair's show has the reach of something meant for a room with high ceilings and a live audience, but the production office is just a production office—monitors, cables, and people moving with the focused efficiency of a crew that does this five days a week.
The impressive part is that Lindsey and her team flew out here and set this up specifically for me, because I'm confined to Joe's camp and can't get back to Atlanta, where she normally films. She didn't wait for me to come to her.
Lindsey is already on the set when we're brought through, reviewing notes with a producer while a makeup artist works on her without her seeming to notice.
She's smaller than she looks on television. Not fragile—compact. There's a precision to how she holds herself that I recognize from the gym: someone who doesn't waste movement.
She looks up when I walk in.
"Luke Woods." She crosses the set and shakes my hand—firm, direct, no performance in it. "Thank you for being here."
"Thank you for having me."
"How's training?"
"Better every day."
She smiles. It's a genuine smile, which is interesting. "Sit. Let's talk before we tape."
The pre-interview lasts twenty minutes. She covers the logistics—format, timing, and what the segment is building toward. Then she sets down her notes and looks at me with the attention of someone who has decided to be honest with a subject rather than strategic.
"I want you to know where I'm coming from," she says. "I covered Andi's story. I know what she went through, and I know what it cost her. I'm not interested in adding to that. But I'm also a journalist, and the Commission review is a story, and you're here, and I'm going to ask you about it."
"I know," I say.