“You lied to me?” I try to quell the rage in my voice.
“Not exactly.” He finally meets my eyes, and there’s something in his face that looks almost like shame. “I mean it could have been true. Only Miles and Dominic know that for sure.”
Fucking coward. The floor of the ring seems to tilt under my feet. Everything I thought I knew about this story, about Dominic, about my own integrity as a journalist, is suddenly unstable. Years telling myself I did the right thing, followed the evidence, reported the truth.
But the truth was built on the word of a bitter man who wanted revenge.
“Did he actually know?” I ask. “About the PEDs. Did Dominic actually know what Miles was doing? Be fucking honest.”
Eddie looks at me for a long moment. The hostility from earlier has faded completely, and the fluorescent lights flicker overhead, casting shadows across his weathered face.
He shakes his head slowly, and the motion seems to cost him something. “No. I don’t believe he knew. The man was a hardass and a control freak, but he did everything by the book, sometimes to a fault. I can’t say for sure, but... I don’t think he did.”
I can hear my own heartbeat, too fast, pounding against my ribs. I yank at the velcro straps on the gloves, and shove them into Eddie’s chest without looking at him and duck through the ropes. My heels are where I left them on the concrete floor and I step into them mechanically.
Eddie has the decency to look ashamed, at least. But I doubt he’ll ever fully take responsibility for what he did. Not a man like that, who’s spent years convincing himself it wasn’t really his fault. The question is whether I’m any different, whether I can do what he can’t.
I walk out into the gray Aberdeen afternoon with the smell of salt water and decay heavy in the air. The rain has picked up while I was inside and it’s drumming steadily on the warehouse roof and the gravel lot and the hood of my rental car.
I don’t bother running for it. The rain soaks through my blouse in seconds and I barely notice, because I’m too busy replaying every conversation I’ve had with Dominic since I got back to Dark River, seeing them all in a completely different light. The anger in his voice when he told me to get out of his gym. The way he looked at me at the gala, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to kiss me or kill me. The years of silence built on a foundation of betrayal I thought was justified.
I sit in the driver’s seat for a long time without starting the engine, watching the rain stream down the windshield.
I was wrong.
I wanted Dominic to be guilty because it made everything simpler. Because it justified the anger I’d been carrying since high school, the bitterness over the scholarship, the years of telling myself he was the bad guy in our story. If he was complicit in doping, then I was right to hate him. Right to expose him. Right to feel nothing but satisfaction when his career crumbled.
I put the phone away and start the car. The rain keeps falling, steady and gray, and I drive back toward Dark River with no idea what I’m going to do when I get there.
The only thing I know for sure is that everything I thought I understood about Dominic Midnight, about our history, about who was right and who was wrong, has just collapsed under the weight of a bitter old coach’s confession.
And I have absolutely no idea how to rebuild any of it.
CHAPTER 11
Dominic
The first thing I notice when we step off the plane at LaGuardia is how loud everything is. Seattle has noise, sure, but New York noise is different, layered and relentless, a constant hum of urgency that seeps into everything. Even here in the terminal I can feel the city pressing in from all sides, and I understand why people either love this place or can’t wait to escape it.
Roman takes it all in stride, moving through the terminal with the energy of someone who’s been waiting his whole life for this moment. He’s got his headphones around his neck and his gym bag slung over one shoulder, looking around at everything like he’s trying to memorize it.
The car waiting for us is a black SUV with tinted windows. Roman slides in first and I follow, pulling the door shut behind me and watching through the window as the airport falls away and the Manhattan skyline grows closer. That jagged silhouette I’ve seen in a thousand movies but never in person until now, bigger than I expected and sharper, the kind of skyline that makes you feel small and hungry at the same time.
Roman’s got his face practically pressed to the glass, grinning like a kid on Christmas morning, and I let him have the moment. He’s earned this, and so have I.
The fight hotel is a massive glass tower in Midtown, the kind of place that screams money and importance from every surface. The lobby is crawling with people wearing lanyards and wristbands, fighters and coaches and media and the endless ecosystem of handlers and promoters.
I spot a few faces I recognize from the circuit. A coach I worked with years ago, back before everything went sideways, catches my eye and nods. I return it but keep moving, because there’s too much to do and not enough time to do it, and stopping to catch up with old acquaintances isn’t on the schedule.
Roman and I get processed through registration, handed our credentials and room keys and a printed schedule that’s dense enough to give me a headache just looking at it. Media obligations, weigh-in times, rules meetings, photo ops, all of it color-coded and cross-referenced with locations scattered across the city.
Our rooms are on the fourteenth floor, a few doors apart. Roman pauses at his door and turns to look at me, that restless energy still buzzing under his skin.
“Alright, coach,” he says, bouncing on his toes a little. “I’m gonna shower and crash for a bit before dinner, unless you need me to do some visualization exercises or meditate on my inner warrior or whatever.”
I shake my head. “Get some rest, smartass. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
He smiles and disappears into his room, and I let myself into mine, dropping my bag on the bed and crossing to the window. The city sprawls out below me, endless and indifferent, millions of people going about their lives.
