Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ANDI
The bus to St. Louis leaves at eleven-fifteen.
I know this because Katelyn has announced it four times in the last hour, each time with the clipped efficiency of someone who believes that repetition constitutes authority.
I've been on the bus since ten-forty-five.
I have a book I'm not reading, a mug of tea that's gone cold, and the low, specific hum of exhaustion that comes not from lack of sleep but from the sustained effort of pretending wellness.
Chicago was good. The audience was with us from the first note—the kind of crowd that gives energy instead of taking it, that makes two hours feel like twenty minutes and leaves you standing in the wings afterward slightly stunned that it's over. I love those shows.
I love them in a way that makes it harder to get back on the bus.
I put on the show. Then I come back to this, and the show is over, and what's underneath it is still there.
Luke and I are in an odd rhythm right now.
Not broken—I’m careful with my words and thoughts about us—but stretched.
Like something that's strong in its material but operating under more tension than it was built for.
We talk. We tell each other the true things.
But there are true things we tell each other too fast, in windows that close before the other person has time to receive them properly, and then we move on because the window is gone.
Last week, he told me that Mack was giving him a hard time about focus, and beneath it, I could hear he was scared he was losing something he'd worked so hard to build. I wanted time to process that and work through the mechanics with him. I wanted to understand where his head is, what’s on his mind, and what’s distracting him while he’s in a specialized camp.
These are important points, especially since he has a fight coming up and can’t afford any distractions.
But I had only two minutes before his sparring session.
Two minutes is enough to say I hear you. That's not enough to actually be there in the way he needs me. I'm trying to decide whether that's a temporary condition or a new one when Travis sits down across from me.
He doesn't ask if he can. We're past asking. He just sits and sets a fresh cup of tea in front of me to replace the cold one, which tells me he's been paying more attention than I've realized.
"You don't have to talk," he says.
"I know." I wrap my hands around the mug. "How are you before the show tomorrow?"
"Good." He leans back, one arm on the seat back. "Ready. St. Louis crowds are different from Chicago—they feel more skeptical at the top. You have to earn them."
"You always earn them."
"Yeah, but the working-for-it part is half the fun." He tilts his head. "When's the last time you called him?"
"Three nights ago."
He doesn't respond to that. He just lets it sit, which is the correct thing to do with it.
"He's busy," I say.
"You're both busy."
"Right."
"Andi." His voice is careful. "Busy is a reason. It's not the only reason."
I look at him across the table. Travis doesn't push as a general rule. He offers and waits. So when he's being direct, it's worth paying attention to.
"What are you trying to say?" I ask.
"I'm saying that I've watched you for two months talk about him in a way that gets more careful every week. Like you're editing yourself." He keeps his voice level. "I'm saying I notice that."
"He's the person I'm going to marry," I say.
"I know he is."
"Nothing about this changes that."
"I know that too." He picks up his coffee. "I'm just telling you what I see. I'm not trying to make it into something it isn't."
"I know you're not."
We sit in the quiet for a moment. The bus is moving now, the St. Louis highway unfolding outside the window.
Kale is somewhere in the back of the bus having what sounds like a philosophical argument with Drew about the structural integrity of stadium stages, which is a very Kale-and-Drew kind of Tuesday night.
"Can I ask you something?" I watch his reaction.
"Yeah."
"What do you do when you can feel something changing, but you can't tell yet if it's changing into something better or something worse?"
He thinks about this seriously, the way he takes questions seriously when they're real ones.
"I try to figure out what I'm actually afraid of," he says finally. "Because usually when I can't tell which direction something's going, it's because I'm spending too much energy hoping for one outcome instead of looking clearly at what's happening."
"And when you figure out what you're afraid of?"
"I either do something about it, or I accept it." He sets down the coffee. "There's not a third option that's actually useful."
I let his answer permeate my thoughts, consider it from every angle, and decide how I can apply it to my situation.
What I'm afraid of isn't what most people assume. I'm not afraid that Luke will stop loving me. I'm not afraid that distance will erode what we’ve built. I've lived through harder things than distance, and I know what erodes under pressure and what holds.
What I'm afraid of is more specific.
I'm afraid that we're each handling our separate crises so competently and so privately that by the time we're back in the same room, we'll have become two versions of ourselves who solved their problems alone, and those two versions won't fit together the same way.
That's the thing that keeps me awake.
Not our relationship ending.
Us succeeding separately in a way that pulls us so far apart that being together becomes harder—not because we’ve failed, but because we no longer have to reach for each other.
I don’t want my soon--to-be husband to feel as if I’m optional in his life, or for him to become optional in mine.
That’s not independence. That’s parallel lives. And that’s not a partnership.
My phone buzzes.
It’s late. Later than Luke usually calls, and that alone is enough to put me on edge before I even answer.
“Hello?”
“Andi.” His voice isn’t raised or sharp, but there’s something deliberate about it, like he’s already decided what this conversation needs to be and is holding himself to it. “I just saw something I need to ask you about.”
I sit up straighter, bracing without fully knowing why. “Okay.”
“There’s a story running on a couple of sites. Photos. You and Travis. A playground, and what looks like—”
“A playground,” I say, cutting in before he can finish.
Chicago comes back all at once.
The merry-go-round.
The warmth of the afternoon sun on a cool day in March.
Travis sitting beside me while I tried to clear my head before the show. I
can see the exact moment he’s describing, the angle of it, the way it would look frozen and stripped of everything around it.
“Luke, I know what you’re looking at.”
“Then walk me through it.”
The words aren’t accusatory, but they’re not neutral either. They land somewhere in between, and that space is enough to make my chest tighten.
“We stopped at a park before the show,” I explain, keeping my voice steady.
“I needed a minute. Travis came over and sat with me. He said something ridiculous, I laughed, and when I turned toward him…” My voice trails off, already seeing how it would read to someone who wasn’t there. “It wasn’t what it looks like.”
I let out a breath and add more quietly, “You know me, Luke.”
“I do,” he says.
There’s a slight hesitation after it. Not long, but long enough that I feel it.
“Then you already know the answer,” I say.
He doesn’t respond right away, and in that space, I feel something I wasn’t expecting—not fear exactly, but the awareness that this is how it starts. Not with a fight, but with a small shift. A question that shouldn’t exist but does.
“I do know the answer,” he says finally, and I can hear that he means it. But I can also hear that he had to get there.
That matters more than I want it to.
“They didn’t just happen to catch that moment,” I continue, pushing past it before it can settle. “Someone was waiting for it. Waiting for something they could frame the right way and use against us.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” he says, quieter now.
“Of course you were. That’s how this works. They don’t need something real. They just need something that looks close enough to make people question it.”
“And make me question it,” he adds.
There’s no edge to it. Just honesty.
I close my eyes for a second. “Yeah. That’s part of it.”
The silence that follows isn’t empty. It’s full of everything we’re both trying not to say out loud—how easy it would be for this to turn into something else if we let it.
“Luke,” I say, more carefully now, “this isn’t random. The Commission review, the audit, the donor pressure, and now this… It’s all moving in the same direction. Each piece on its own is deniable, but together it’s not. Someone is putting this together.”
“I see it,” he says.
I can hear the shift in him, the part of his mind that steps into a fight instead of reacting to it.
“We can’t let it work,” I continue. “Not on us. That’s the whole point of this piece of it. If we start second-guessing each other, they don’t have to do anything else.”
“I know,” he says, and this time it lands differently. Not automatic. Considered.
“Travis is my friend,” I add. “He’s been looking out for me while I’m out here. That’s all this is.”
“I believe you,” he says, and then, after a second, “I just didn’t like seeing it.”
The admission settles between us, honest in a way that doesn’t make things worse, but doesn’t let them stay easy either.
“I wouldn’t have liked it either,” I say quietly.
That seems to steady something.
“I’m more concerned about who’s behind this than I am about Travis,” he says.
“Good,” I reply. “That’s where this actually is.”
We stay on the line after that, neither of us rushing to end it. The silence isn’t comfortable exactly, but it isn’t fractured either. It feels like something that was held under pressure and is still settling back into place.
“The photos are staged,” I say eventually. “Whoever took them knew where I’d be.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he says. “About who would have access to that kind of information, and how they’d be able to line all of this up.”
I don’t say the name.
He doesn’t either.
But it’s there, fully formed, sitting between us.
“Be careful,” I tell him.
“You too.”
There’s a pause, softer this time.
“Luke?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you. And I’m not going anywhere. Those are the only things in this that aren’t moving.”
He doesn’t answer immediately, and for a second, I think I’ve said too much, pushed too hard into something he’s still working through.
Then he exhales.
“Same,” he says quietly before we disconnect.
I lower the phone and look out the bus window. The darkness stretches endlessly, broken only by the occasional wash of headlights cutting past.
The bus has gone quiet. Even Kale and Drew have finally burned through whatever they were arguing about.
Across from me, Travis sits with a book open in his hands.
He heard enough to understand what the call was about.
He doesn’t say anything. He never does when it matters.
He just stays on the right side of the line without needing to be told where it is.
"The drivers will make their scheduled stops soon. Get some sleep," he says without looking up.
"You too. Good night."
I lean against the window and close my eyes.
Tomorrow is St. Louis. The crowd will be skeptical at the top, and we'll earn them.
And somewhere in the Nevada desert, Luke is lying awake in a small room working through the same name I am, turning it over, looking at it from the angles I can't see from here.
We're working on the same problem.
That has to be enough for now.