Page 95 of Main Event

Stay with him until it’s over,

Already planned.

Brandon: “Good?”

“Good,” I say.

In the ring, Luke lands the right hand clean. The crowd goes up.

LUKE

Round ten.

My body is talking to me the way bodies talk in the late rounds—not screaming, just present and fully aware of the punishment I’ve put it through. The ribs where Vega landed a short right in round eight. The left eye, slightly swollen from a jab I didn’t slip fast enough in round nine. The accumulated cost of thirty minutes of professional combat.

I’m ahead. I know I’m ahead because I’ve been doing this long enough to count rounds, understand the scoring, and know what Vega needs to do to take it from me. He needs a knockdown. Probably two.

He knows it too. His eyes tell me.

He’s going to throw everything in round eleven.

I breathe. I look at Mack across the corner. He gives me the nod—the one that means I see what you see and you’re right.

Bell.

ANDI

Round eleven is the hardest to watch.

Vega comes forward with everything he has—combinations I haven’t seen him throw before, pressure he’s been saving, and the desperate fury of a fighter who understands what the scorecards say and has one round plus change to change them.

Luke takes some of it.

Not all of it—he’s moving, he’s covering, he’s making Vega miss enough that the shots that land do less damage. But some of it lands. The crowd is on its feet. Brandon has his hands clasped in his lap, his jaw set, his eyes on the ring.

My phone is face down on my knee. Whatever Bill needs to tell me can wait until the bell.

Vega throws a right hand, and Luke rolls under it, coming up with a left hook that snaps Vega’s head back. Vega covers. Luke works his body. Vega will feel those body shots for days. The roar from the crowd is deafening.

Bell.

I pick up my phone.

Bill: Daniel is done with the journalist. The story is filed. It runs on Monday at six a.m.

I read it twice.

The story is filed.

I look at Brandon. He reads my face.

“Filed,” I say.

He closes his eyes for one second. Then opens them.

“One more round,” he says.

LUKE