Page 97 of Main Event

The judges’ scorecards go to the announcer. He goes through the ritual. The fighters wait in the center of the ring, their corners behind them.

Luke’s face is calm. Whatever the decision is, he’s already accepted it. That’s who he is.

“By split decision⁠—”

The crowd is already reacting before the name is announced, half of them certain of one outcome, half of another.

“—and the new number one contender, Luke Woods.”

The arena goes up.

I’m already on my feet. Brandon is beside me. He’s got his good hand on my shoulder, and we’re both doing something that might be laughing or something else, and the arena is seventeen thousand people, all responding to the same moment at the same time.

Luke looks for me.

I’m where I told him I’d be. Second row, aisle seat. He finds me before his corner does. I cross to the ringside barrier. He comes to the ropes.

“Congratulations, Luke,” I whisper. “I watched every second of it. I know what it took for you to stay that steady, to fight that clean, to not let anything else in. You were exactly who you needed to be out there.” I press my forehead briefly to his. “I’m so proud of you. More than I know how to say.”

He doesn’t respond right away, savoring this private moment between the two of us while we stand in the middle of seventeen thousand screaming fans.

“I wouldn’t be here without you, baby. Now tell me what happened outside the ring.”

“Daniel,” I say. Under the noise. Just for him. “The journalist has everything. The story runs on Monday.”

He looks at me.

“And someone was outside Daniel’s hotel room tonight,” I say. “Security removed them. He’s fine.”

Luke looks at the floor of the ring for one second. The long breath of a man absorbing two pieces of information simultaneously—the story is in motion, the machine tried one more move, and both of those things are true at once.

Then he looks at me.

“Is he safe now?”

“He’s with his attorney. Bill is watching.”

Luke nods once. He turns to Reyes behind him and says something I can’t hear. Reyes looks at me, then at Luke, and nods.

Luke ducks through the ropes.

He’s still in his gloves.

He drops off the apron, and he’s on the arena floor. I’m right there, and he pulls me in with both arms—gloves and all—and I let him. Seventeen thousand people around us, cameras pointed at the ring, and the whole of the last three months converging into this one moment.

“You won,” I say into his shoulder.

“We won,” he says.

We stand there for a moment.

Then Brandon appears at my elbow. “Daniel’s attorney just called Bill. Daniel wants to know if Luke is available tomorrow morning.”

Luke pulls back enough to look at me.

“Tell him yes,” I say.

There’s a corridor under the arena between the floor and the locker rooms.