Emma wiped her face with the back of her hand.
"That's where I got it, Jake. The thing I told you on the field. Courage is caring enough to act even when you're afraid. I didn't come up with that. A five-year-old did. I just borrowed it."
Jake stared at the mat for a long time.
"That's why you came here," he said at last. "To teach."
"I came here because Danny didn't get to see his son grow up. And somewhere out there, there's a girl who's a teenager now, alive, because he chose her over himself. And I thought, if I can't go back to that life, maybe I can at least help a few kids learn the thing he knew. That strength isn't about who you can beat. It's about who you're willing to stand in front of."
Jake swallowed hard.
"Coach," he said, and his voice broke a little. "I don't know if I can be like that."
"You already are," Emma said. "You just haven't had to prove it yet."
He helped her up off the mat. Handed her the crutches. Walked her to her car through the cold parking lot, the stars sharp overhead.
Before she got in, he said, "Good luck Thursday."
"You too, Jake."
Neither of them knew yet how much luck they were going to need.
Thursday was gray and wet, the kind of March day that can't decide whether it wants to be winter or spring.
At seven in the morning, Emma lay on a narrow bed in the county hospital in a paper gown, an IV taped to the back of her hand, listening to the steady beep of a monitor. Dr. Alvarez came by and squeezed her shoulder. A nurse asked her to count backward from ten.
She got to seven.
The last thing she thought about, strangely, was not the surgery, or the leg, or Danny. It was Noah, standing at the edge of the mat with his too-big shorts and his inhaler, looking at the floor while Cole Ritter laughed.
Then everything went dark.
At three-thirty that afternoon, Jake Mason stood in a hallway at the Riverside Arena in sweatpants and a hoodie, his stomach empty, his head light from cutting weight. Weigh-ins started at four. Cameras were already set up by the stage. Victor Hale was talking to a promoter in a sharp gray suit. Rick Mason was pacing by the vending machines, checking his watch every thirty seconds.
Jake's phone buzzed.
It was a text from Tyler Brooks. The sophomore who had posted the video in January. Jake barely knew him.