“Twelve weeks,” he says abruptly. “Your next bout.”
“Twelve?” I echo.
“Undercard again, but tougher and more rounds. You want to move up? You prove you can keep your head when you’ve got something to lose.”
That hits close to home.
Something to lose.
Andi stiffens almost imperceptibly beside me.
When Mack leaves, the locker room feels smaller.
“Can you do both?” she asks quietly. “Fight and feel?”
“I have to,” I answer.
She nods, but there’s something unsettled in her eyes. Whatever she meant about not trusting her own thoughts hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s hovering just beyond the surface.
We walk side-by-side, but the weight between us is different now. Twelve weeks until the next bout. Twelve weeks to prove I can stay focused. Twelve weeks before whatever she isn’t saying demands to be heard.
Twelve weeks.
Eighty-four days.
Long enough to fix in me what I’ve broken.
Or lose everything for good.
For the first time in my life, the fight I’m most unsure about isn’t the one in the ring.
ANDI
I watch Luke leave the gym floor with Mack’s words still echoing between us, and I realize something uncomfortable: the ring isn’t the only place he measures risk. He measures it everywhere. In timing. In silence. In whom he shares his thoughts, his heart, his life.
And now I do.
When he admitted Megan still lived somewhere in the wiring of his mind, I didn’t flinch. Not because it didn’t matter, but because I understand what it is to be reshaped by something that shouldn’t have happened.
The difference is, his history made him cautious.
Mine made me guarded.
He thinks his hesitation in the ring is about losing me or being betrayed again.
It isn’t. It’s about control.
He thinks he’s controlling the narrative if he denies or hides his feelings, buries his thoughts under layers of muscle, or dismisses his needs behind the oncoming punch. He survived betrayal by deciding he would never be blindsided again. That kind of survival instinct doesn’t turn off because someone kisses you under stage lights and calls you beautiful in the morning.
As we step outside, the air is warmer than it should be for this time of day. He reaches for my hand automatically, as if it’s already a habit, and that simple gesture steadies something inside me. This is new territory for him. I can feel him bracing against it even as he leans toward it, the same way he braces himself in the ring, riding the punch to lessen the impact when it connects.
“Twelve weeks,” I say quietly as we walk toward the parking lot.
He nods. “It’ll be tougher.”
“I know.”
What I don’t say is that I saw the shift in him when Mack said he’d have to prove he could keep his head when he had something to lose. It wasn’t subtle. It moved through him like an electric current, tightening his shoulders, sharpening his breathing, and intensifying his focus. The words weren’t about me specifically, but they landed there anyway. I don’t want to become the reason he hesitates. I don’t want to be the variable he calculates before he throws a punch.
