Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ANDI
The story runs on a Tuesday.
Not a tabloid. Not a gossip site. A mid-tier entertainment news outlet that runs adjacent to legitimate journalism—the kind of platform that has enough credibility to make people stop scrolling but enough distance from accountability to print what they're paid to print.
The headline reads:
Sound Bar's Opening Act Speaks Candidly About Relationship Strain
I see it on my phone before I'm fully awake, because Cami texts me the link at six-fifty-two in the morning with a single message: call me before you read this.
I read it first.
The piece is built around what the outlet calls "a candid conversation between Andi Morgan and a source close to the tour.
" No name. No recording. Just a transcript—formatted like a real exchange, time-stamped like documentation, presented with the clinical confidence of something that was gathered rather than invented.
I read it twice before I accept what I'm looking at.
Some of it is real.
That's the part that takes my breath away.
Not the fabricated lines—those I can see for what they are, assembled with the care of someone who studied my voice without quite understanding it.
The seams show. The rhythm is slightly off, the way a cover version of a favorite song is always slightly off, even when it's technically accurate.
But the real lines. Those came from somewhere. Someone close to me.
"The scrutiny around everything connected to me right now is real. I can't pretend otherwise."
I said that. In the boardroom at the youth center, to the board, with Marin sitting three seats to my left.
"I don't know how much longer I can sustain two crises at once."
I said that too. To Travis, on the bus, somewhere in North Carolina. In private. At eleven o'clock at night, when I thought I was just thinking out loud to someone who understood the context.
“I’m looking at it,” he says.
“I know.”
“Tell me. Walk me through everything.”
“Two of those sentences are real,” I say. I keep my voice even. He needs the information, not my feelings about it right now. “The rest is constructed around them. The real ones were said in two separate private contexts weeks apart. Someone put them together.”
A silence.
“Which two?” he asks.
I read them to him. He’s quiet while I do.
“The boardroom one,” he says slowly, as if he’s turning it over from more than one angle. “Who was in the boardroom?”
“Board members. Brandon.” I pause. “Marin.”
He doesn’t respond immediately. I can hear him thinking, not reacting.
“And the bus?”
“Travis. Cami. Two crew in the front. Katelyn was in her room.”
Another silence, but this one feels more focused.
“The bus one is harder to trace,” he says. “Could have been overheard. It could have been repeated. It’s messy.”
“Yes.”
“But the boardroom one isn’t messy,” he continues. “That’s contained. That had to come from someone who was supposed to be there.”
“Yes,” I say, more firmly now. Because that’s the part that matters.
“Luke.” I keep my voice level. “The transcript uses the language to make it look like I’m considering leaving you.
That I’ve been thinking about it. That the weight of—of what’s attached to me is something I want to move away from. ”
“I saw how they framed it,” he says, and there’s something in his voice now that wasn’t there before. No doubt. Something closer to restraint. “They want it to sound as if you’ve already decided.”
“You know that’s not true.”
He hesitates. Not long. But long enough that I feel it land in my chest before he answers.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I do.”
It’s not as immediate as I want. Not as clean.
“Luke.”
“I’m here,” he says, softer now. “I’m not going anywhere. I just… needed to hear you say it in your own words.”
That settles something in me. The edge eases just enough for me to breathe again.
“Someone is building a transcript of me,” I say. “Not just pictures. Not just press. A version of my voice that sounds authentic enough to be believed. That requires access, Luke. Real access. To specific conversations.”
He exhales slowly.
“Then this isn’t random,” he says. “This is someone who’s been close enough to study you.”
“The machine didn’t die with Jackson.”
“No,” he says. There’s a brief pause. “It adapted.”
We sit on the line for a moment, both of us in the same thought from opposite ends of the country.
“What do you want to do?” he asks.
“Nothing yet.” The answer comes from the same place my answers always come—clear and preceded by a full second of stillness. “Responding confirms that something was said. Denial feeds it. The safest move is silence for now.”
He lets that sit for a second before answering. “Marin’s going to land in the same place,” he says.
“I know.”
“That doesn’t make me comfortable,” he adds. “It just means the logic checks out.”
That’s better than agreement. That’s him thinking.
“Does that bother you?”
I take a moment before answering. “It means she’s smart,” I say. “It doesn’t tell me whose side the smart is on.”
Luke is quiet, but not distant. Present. Processing.
“I’ll talk to Brandon,” he says finally.
“Carefully.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m not walking into that blind.”
I look out the window at the dark going gray at the edges. Morning coming. Show tonight. The machine is running somewhere in the background, patient and deliberate.
“Luke,” I say. “You know the thing that bothers me most about this?”
“What?”
“It’s good,” I say. “Whoever built that transcript—they listened to me long enough to know how I actually sound. They used my actual words. They got the cadence close.” I pause. “That’s not a stranger. That’s someone who’s been paying careful attention.”
The line is quiet for a long moment. When he speaks again, his voice is different. Not reactive. Focused.
“Then we start paying attention to who’s been paying attention,” he says. “Not just who had access… who had reason to listen that closely.”
It’s not a full plan. But it’s movement. It’s him stepping into it with me.
“Get some sleep,” I say.
“You too.”
“Luke?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you. In case the next transcript they build tries to say otherwise.”
Another pause. Then, his voice comes across the line quieter than before, but steadier.
“I’m not letting anyone rewrite that.”
LUKE
I spend forty minutes after the call reading the piece three more times.
Not because I doubt her. I know what she said, and I know what she didn't say, and the distinction is clear to me.
What I'm doing is something different. I'm reading it the way Mack taught me to read a fighter's footage—not looking for what I see. I’m looking for the decision behind what I see.
Who threw this, and why, and what do they want me to do with it.
What they want me to do is doubt.
Not Andi. Me. They want me to doubt my own stability.
They want me to read transcripts at seven in the morning instead of sleeping before a training day.
They want me calling Brandon in a state, and Brandon mentioning it to Marin, and Marin producing another "containment strategy" that separates us further while appearing to protect us.
I know this.
I still feel the pull of it.
That's the thing about a well-constructed piece.
It doesn't need to be believed to do its work.
It just needs to introduce enough friction that the people it's aimed at are forced to spend energy pushing back against it. Energy that was supposed to go somewhere else. It’s a classic distraction ploy.
Look at this hand waving in the air while the other hand is performing the real trick.
I set the phone face down on the nightstand. Then I pick it up again and call Brandon. He answers on the second ring, which means he's already seen it.
"Before you say anything," he starts.
"I'm not angry," I say. "I just want to think it through with you."
A slight pause. "Okay."
"Two of those sentences are things Andi actually said. One of them was in a board meeting. Who had access to the notes from that meeting?"
Brandon is quiet for a moment—the kind of quiet of someone running through a list. "Board members. Me." He pauses. "I shared the summary with Marin because she's been advising on the audit response."
I don't say anything.
"Luke."
"I'm not making an accusation," I say carefully. "I just want to understand the information path."
"But you think Marin sourced that transcript."
"I think someone sourced that transcript who had access to a very specific conversation in a very specific room. I'm trying to understand who that could have been."
Brandon is quiet for longer this time.
"She's been trying to help," he says. But there's something in the phrasing—been trying to—that tells me he's saying it as much to himself as to me.
"I know she has," I say. "I'm not dismissing that." I keep my voice even. Level. The voice Mack uses when he's delivering a fact rather than an emotion. "I'm just saying that help and harm can come from the same hand without the person knowing they're doing both."
A long pause.
"What are you asking me to do?" Brandon says.
"Nothing yet. Just be careful about what you share and with whom." I pause. "And pay attention to the direction things keep moving. Not any individual recommendation. The direction."
Another pause.
"Okay," Brandon says finally. It comes out quietly, like something he didn't entirely want to say.
After I hang up, I lie in the dark for a while.
Mack's voice in my head, “You're not losing skill. You're choosing chaos.”
I'm not choosing chaos. I'm choosing to see clearly, which sometimes feels the same from the outside. The difference is what you do with what you see. Chaos swings at everything. Clarity waits.
Waits for what, I'm not sure yet. More information. A clearer angle. The moment when the pattern becomes undeniable enough to move on.
I get up, put my training clothes on, and go to the gym an hour early.
I run. Not from anything. Toward the things I can control right now, which are my body, my preparation, and the fight that's coming.
The transcript is still out there. By tonight, it'll be on three more platforms. By the end of the week, it'll have been retweeted forty thousand times by people who have never met Andi and will never question whether the sentences belonged together.
I can't stop that.
What I can do is to be in the ring in thirty days and win.
And keep my eyes open.
And remember what Andi said, “That's not a stranger. That's someone who's been paying careful attention.”
I add another half mile to my run.