Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
LUKE
The locker room before an actual fight differs from everything that came before it.
Not louder. Quieter, actually. The noise is outside—the crowd building through the walls, the frequency of thousands of people settling into seats, the low thrum of a room filling up. In here, it’s just Mack, Joe, and me, and a silence that carries the weight of what’s about to happen.
Mack wraps my hands without talking. He does this by feel now—the tension calibrated exactly, the pull at the knuckles precise.
He's wrapped my hands maybe three hundred times in the months I've been here, and he's never done it the same way twice, because the right wrap depends on how the hands feel today, how the shoulder is sitting, what the weather's doing to the joints.
He does it by feel because he knows my hands better than I do by this point.
"How are you?" he asks.
"Good."
He pulls the wrap once more and secures it. "Not asking about the hands."
"Good," I say again. And this time I mean it.
I've been thinking about what Andi said on the phone two nights ago, when we talked for an hour, and it was the first time in weeks that the conversation felt like both of us fully in it rather than one of us slightly absent.
"I've been managing this wrong," she said. "Keeping the hard things to myself because I didn't want to put them on you while you were in camp. But you've been reading my caution and trying to work around something you couldn't name, which is worse than just knowing."
"What's the hard thing?" I asked.
She was quiet for a moment. Long enough that I could hear the tour bus in the background, the distinct sound of something moving.
"I'll tell you when I see you," she said. "I need to say it in the same room."
I didn't push. She'd tell me when she was ready, and she'd decided she needed to be standing in front of me when she did. That's not avoidance. That's Andi understanding what something costs and choosing the conditions that give it the best chance of landing right.
I've been carrying that since Tuesday. I'll tell you when I see you.
I don't know when I'll see her. But I know she meant it.
Now it's fight night. Rafael Soto is waiting for me, and he's hungry for the win.
I push the door open and step into the noise, the hallway narrowing into light and sound as I make my way to the ring. By the time I duck through the ropes and straighten, the crowd is already rising, and whatever I carried out of that locker room stays there.
The bell snaps, and the noise comes up around us in a low, constant roar, but it fades almost immediately as Soto steps forward with the same measured patience I saw on film, his guard tight, his eyes steady, the kind of focus that doesn't waste energy because it doesn't have to.
He isn't looking for a wild exchange. He's looking for something clean, something final, and I can feel the weight of that right hand in the way he sets his feet and settles into range like he already knows how this ends if I give him what he wants.
I circle, testing the distance, letting him mirror me, watching the minor adjustments in his shoulders and hips, the way he keeps everything contained until there's a reason not to.
He wants me to commit first, to step into something he can answer, so I give him just enough to start building that expectation.
I close the distance harder than I need to, let the space collapse between us, take the inside like it's where I'm most comfortable, and when he answers with a short hook and a tight jab, I stay there longer than I should, letting it look like I'm reacting instead of choosing, letting him think I don't mind being in front of him where his power lives.
By the time the first round closes, he's the one pressing forward, and I'm giving ground just enough to sell it, just enough to let him believe he's beginning to read me correctly.
When I sit, Mack doesn't waste words. He watches me, sees everything he needs to see, and tells me not to rush it, which isn't a warning so much as a reminder, and I nod because I'm not rushing anything. This only works if he walks into it on his own.
The second round picks up right where the first left off, but I tighten the space faster this time, step inside with more intention, let my guard drift just a fraction lower than it should, my chin just a fraction more available—not enough to be reckless but enough to be noticed by someone who's been waiting for something like that.
I can feel the shift in him before he even throws, the way his patience sharpens into something more deliberate, the way he starts stepping in with the idea that he's beginning to find openings instead of just measuring them.
I give him the angle again, turning just enough, staying in front of him half a beat longer than I should, and I can feel him commit to the read, feel him start to believe that what he's seeing is real.
The round ends before he fully acts on it, but I know I've done what I needed to do because when we separate, there's a different kind of intent in the way he looks at me.
He thinks I'm there for him now.
By the third, that belief has settled in.
He comes forward with more weight, still controlled but no longer content to wait indefinitely, and when we meet in the center, I don't circle away this time.
I hold the ground, let him see the same picture again, let him think the pattern is holding.
His jab comes sharper, faster, meant to set the line for what's coming next, and I slip inside it, stay close enough to force him to adjust his feet, to make him reset instead of fire clean.
Then I see it.
It's small, the kind of movement most people would miss, but it's there in the dip of his elbow and the shift in his shoulder, the moment where the right hand begins before it exists, and I'm already moving before it fully commits, already stepping off the line as his punch cuts through the space where I was, close enough that I feel the air move with it as it passes.
He overreaches just enough trying to catch what isn't there, and I'm back on him before he can recover, driving a shot into his body and bringing the next one up high while he's still resetting, the combination landing clean enough to snap his head and force his feet to find new balance instead of the one he expected to close the exchange with.
It doesn't end the fight, but it changes it.
I can feel it immediately in the way he comes back at me—not reckless, not out of control, but no longer dictating in the same way. He's adjusting now, recalibrating, looking to take back something he thought he already had, and that shift is exactly where I need him.
The fourth is where I almost give it back.
I press when I should be holding, feel the opening and reach for it before it's fully there, stepping in half a beat early, and this time his right hand doesn't miss.
It lands clean enough to snap everything sideways for a second, light flaring behind my eyes as the reminder comes sharp and immediate: he only needs one.
I reset as soon as my feet hit the canvas again, guard up, breath controlled, forcing the moment to pass without letting it take anything else with it, and when I sit, Mack doesn't need to say much.
Patience. Again.
I nod because I know exactly what I did.
The fifth settles back into something more controlled, more deliberate.
I take the center again and make him work for it, give him nothing I didn't choose to give, no angles I didn't set myself.
He tries to draw me in the same way I drew him, but I don't take it.
I stay just outside of what he wants, step in only when I decide, keep the exchanges short and clean, and every time we break, I can feel the difference between where he wants the fight to be and where it actually is.
By the sixth, everything narrows down to the essentials. The crowd fades into something distant, the lights stop mattering, and it's just him, his breathing, the way his feet move when he's tired but still dangerous, still looking for that one clean shot that can erase everything else.
I don't give it to him.
I stay inside the rhythm Mack built into me, inside the discipline that keeps me from reaching for something that isn't there, and when the final bell sounds, we're both still standing, but I know before anyone says it. I did what I came here to do.
When they raise my hand, the noise comes rushing back, loud and immediate, but underneath it, there's something quieter settling into place, something that's been waiting for this exact moment to arrive.
Mack is through the ropes before the announcement finishes, and he doesn't say anything when he reaches me. He just puts his hand on the back of my head, solid and certain, and that's enough.
ANDI
The fight venue's backstage is exactly what backstage always is—organized chaos with a distinctive smell, all industrial and electricity and whatever catering is running.
Travis gets us through without difficulty.
He has the kind of name that opens doors at the service entrance, and nobody asks questions when the answer is standing in front of them.
We find a spot in the wings with a clear line of sight to the ring. Far enough back that we're not visible from the floor.
I watch him walk out.
That's the first moment. Not seeing him—I see him constantly on screens, in coverage, in the photos Syndi posts.
Watching him walk out. The way he moves.
The way the crowd responds before he's even fully in the ring—the recognition of someone who has earned the room's attention.
I've seen him in the gym, I've seen him in my kitchen, I've seen every version of him I've had access to.
But this version—Luke Woods walking toward something he's built his whole life toward—I've only seen this version twice.
And each time it resets something in me.
Reminds me what's underneath the rest of it.