Page 61 of Main Event

“And somehow you managed to bring three weeks of bad decisions with you.”

I roll my shoulders and look toward the ring, because looking at Mack when he has made up his mind is usually a waste of both our time. “I’m fine.”

“That’s the problem with you boys. Fine is where stupidity puts on a clean shirt and tries to pass itself off as discipline.”

Across the gym, Reyes doesn’t even pretend he isn’t listening. He stands by the ropes with his arms crossed, expression carved from stone and judgment. He and Mack have formed some kind of quiet alliance over the last few weeks, which is inconvenient for me and probably good for my career.

“I’m not overtraining,” I say.

Mack looks at me. Just looks. It’s worse than his shouting.

“You’re not training,” he says. “You’re grinding yourself into powder because you can’t punch the thing you actually want to hit.”

That hits closer to home than I want it to.

I pick up my water bottle and take a drink so I don’t answer too fast. The gym hums around us. Bags swinging. Rope slapping. Shoes squeaking. The ordinary sounds of a place where problems are supposed to become manageable because they can be measured in rounds, breath, and sweat.

The problem is that nothing happening outside this building is measurable in those terms.

Evelyn. The files. The witness chain. Brandon’s face bruised from a beating he took because he loved the wrong woman. Kelly sitting in my parents’ living room, listening while I told her someone had delayed her adoption for leverage. Andi bearing all of it with that beautiful, brutal steadiness that makes people underestimate what it costs her.

I can’t hit any of that. So I hit everything else harder. Mack sees it because Mack sees everything.

“I can work,” I say.

“You can work tomorrow.”

“I need the rounds.”

“You need your head.” He points toward the locker room. “Go home.”

“I’m not going home at nine-thirty in the morning.”

“Fine.” He picks up the mitts again, turns, and drops them into Reyes’s hands. “Then don’t go home. Go somewhere else.”

Reyes takes the mitts and studies me with the same infuriating calm. “You have six weeks. One morning will not ruin you.”

“I know that.”

“No,” Reyes says. “You can repeat that. That’s not the same thing.”

Mack jerks his chin toward the doors. “Take your girl somewhere.”

I look at him, willing him to change his mind. He simply stares back.

“Somewhere,” he repeats. “Not a boardroom. Not a lawyer’s office. Not your living room with that damn device still sitting behind the bookcase like it pays rent. Somewhere else.”

I laugh once, but there isn’t much humor in it. “You’re giving me relationship advice now?”

“I’m giving fighter advice. You remember being a person, you’ll be a better fighter. You forget being a person, you’re just a machine waiting to break.”

That shuts me up.

Because Mack doesn’t waste words. He doesn’t decorate them or soften them or wrap them in anything comfortable. If he says something like that, it’s because he means it.

I look toward the front windows. The morning has gone strange outside, the light dimming under a bruised sky. A storm is building fast over Atlanta. The kind that rolls in thick and electric, turning the air greenish at the edges before it breaks open.

Mack follows my gaze. “Weather’s going bad.”