Chapter 23 #2
I watch the fight.
Not the way the crowd watches it—not for the spectacle of it, not waiting for something to happen.
I watch it the way Mack taught me to watch everything: for the information underneath the action.
The shoulder that loads before the right hand.
The footwork that telegraphs direction. The specific moment when a fighter stops reacting and starts choosing.
Luke is choosing.
By the second round, I can see it. He's feeding Soto a picture that isn't quite accurate, giving him enough to build a read, then using that read against him.
Patient, deliberate, exactly what Mack would have prescribed for this opponent.
I spotted Soto's right hand tell on film three months ago when Luke described it to me on the phone, and I asked the right questions, the same way I've asked questions about fighters since I was sixteen years old, standing ringside at Tough Enough.
It's there in the second round, just like he said.
By the time the third round turns, I already know why.
He's good.
He's so good.
By the time the final bell rings, I've forgotten completely why I came here as anything other than someone who loves the man in that ring.
Then I remember.
Travis finds me after, and we make our way through the crowd toward the corridor that leads to the dressing rooms. The plan—if it can be called a plan—is to wait until the media clears and see if he comes out.
I haven't decided whether to knock. I haven't decided anything past being in the building.
We're waiting in the corridor when the dressing room door opens.
Not Luke. Syndi. His publicist, the one I've seen in photos for five months, the one who has been careful and professional in a way I respect even as I've hated what her job required this year. She's talking to someone on her phone, already working the post-fight coverage.
Then Luke comes out.
He’s freshly changed, sweat still glistening at his hairline. He moves as if his body finished the job, while his mind lags a few steps behind, trying to catch up. He’s staring at his phone—thumb hovering, attention snagging and slipping—as if the screen could tell him this really happened.
I know him. The win hasn’t settled in yet. It’s like a dream he hasn’t woken from, still surreal, and he’s reaching for something solid without even realizing he’s doing it.
My chest tightens anyway because I’m so proud of him—so proud it almost hurts—and I hate that pride and doubt can live in the same place. I watch from a distance, where he can’t see me, and I can’t tell whether this moment is the start of something or the last time I’ll ever feel close to him.
Syndi sees him. Her hand goes to his shoulder—not intimate, just the automatic contact of someone who has been working alongside someone for months. She says something I can't hear. He looks up from the phone.
He doesn't see me yet.
She leans in to say something else. He's nodding, still distracted. She puts both hands on his shoulders from behind, a brief physical gesture of congratulation, and laughs at something.
I watch his face.
There's nothing there. He's not looking at her the way he looks at me.
He's barely looking at her. But I'm standing thirty feet away watching someone touch the man I'm not sure I'm still with, and the thing that happens in my chest is not jealousy.
It's more specific than that. It's the sudden, clear understanding of how much of his life I've been absent from.
He looks up.
He sees me.
The change in his face is immediate. Not guilt—he has nothing to feel guilty about, and I know that. Something more like the expression of someone who has been carrying a question for weeks and just found the person who can answer it, but doesn't know if he's ready for the answer.
Syndi reads the room. She says something brief, steps back, and finds somewhere else to be in about four seconds, which tells me she's good at her job.
Luke walks toward me.
Travis briefly rests his hand on my arm, then he too finds somewhere else to be, because Travis has also spent five months getting good at knowing when to leave a room.
Luke stops in front of me.
"You came," he says.
"I needed to see you win," I say.
It comes out too carefully. Both of us know it.
He looks at me—at my face, the way he does when he's reading something he's not sure about. His hand comes up, an instinct, the specific reach toward me he's had since we first started negotiating what we were to each other.
An instinct kicks in, and I step back. It's not dramatic. Just a half step. Just enough.
His hand drops.
Something moves through his face that I can't fully name. Not hurt — he processes too fast for it to settle as hurt before he's already adjusting. More like a man who has just received information he expected and is absorbing it.
"Andi—"
"I watched the whole fight," I say. "You were incredible. I mean that."
"I know you do." He's very still now. "You're a terrible liar, so I'd know if you thought otherwise. But that's not what I want to talk about."
"I know it's not."
"Then tell me what you came to say."
I look at him. The man who won tonight has been living in a hotel room for nearly six months and is standing in a corridor with fight night still on him, asking me to tell him what I came to say.
"I don't know yet, Luke," I say. The part of me that loves him and the part of me that protects myself still haven’t reached a truce. My uncertainty isn’t a pause—it’s the ground giving way under my feet.
He looks at me for a long moment.
"I've been waiting three weeks for you to call me back," he says. "I left a message. I said I'd be here."
"I know you did."
"Then what do I have to do?" He says it without heat, which is almost worse. "Tell me what the answer looks like, and I'll do it. I'll do whatever it takes, baby."
It's the wrong thing to say. He knows it the instant it's out—I can see the realization light on his face. Not because it isn't true. Because whatever it takes is not the specific thing. You can't solve the thing he did with effort and compliance. That's not what I need from him.
"Luke," I say. "That's not how this works."