Page 77 of Main Event

“I finally can.”

She looks out the windshield, smiling faintly. “Was I trouble?”

“The exact amount.”

“You have no basis for that conclusion.”

“You threw a rock seven times across a lake and called it strategy. You were trouble.”

“I was resourceful.”

“That too.”

She settles deeper into the hoodie. “What were you at sixteen?”

“Hungry.”

“That tracks.”

“And angry.”

“That also tracks.”

“And convinced nobody understood what I was going to become.”

She looks over. “Did they?”

“No.” I pull onto the road. “But I didn’t either.”

The mountains gather around us as we drive away from the lake. The road curves through late light and shadow, past little houses, roadside signs, and fields still wet from the rain that passed before us. The windows are down because Andi asks for them that way, and the warm air moves through the truck, carrying the smell of lake water, cut grass, and peaches.

She stays awake for almost an hour. Then her head tips toward the window. I reach over and take her hand before she goes fully under. Her fingers close around mine.

By the time we reach the outskirts of Atlanta, the storm has passed. The pavement is wet, and streetlights glow against it. Branches litter the edges of the road. The city looks rinsed and tired, exactly as we left it, except something in me is not the same.

Tomorrow, training will be waiting. The Commission will still have questions. Bill will still have files. Evelyn Carrington will still be out there, moving pieces across a board she thinks belongs to her.

But today, Andi laughed in my arms at a lake that remembered me before I learned to fight. Today, she wore my hoodie and ate peaches beneath a tree. Today, for a few hours, we were not evidence, targets, witnesses, headlines, or liabilities.

We were just Luke and Andi.

And that is not small.

That is the thing. That’s the whole reason I’m going to step into that ring in six weeks and win. Not because winning proves I’m strong. Because I know what I’m coming home to now. And I know exactly what it’s worth.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

LUKE

Five weeks out.

Reyes has a word for where I am right now. He uses it sparingly—he doesn’t believe in giving fighters language for their own progress because language makes you think about it instead of doing it. But last Thursday, after the session, while watching film, he said it once.

Sharp.

That’s the word. Five weeks out, I’m sharp in a way I haven’t been before. Not faster—I’ve always been fast. Not stronger, because strength isn’t what wins at this level. Sharper. The precision of someone who has stopped fighting the fight they prepared for and started fighting the one that’s actually in front of them.

Reyes put me back in with Castillo on Monday. Different result than two weeks ago. Castillo went home quieter than he arrived, which is the only review that matters.