19. Eli #2
“Oh god,” Brady mutters.
“For the record. Our girl.” He lifts his beer toward Dakota like a toast. “Has been thoroughly bred by every man at this table.”
Brady spits beer back into his glass.
“Cruz,” Dante groans, dropping his forehead to the wood table.
Cruz shrugs. “What? It’s a milestone. We should mark it.”
“You’re disgusting,” Dakota says, but she’s biting the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
“I’m observant. There’s a difference.”
Dakota shakes her head. “There isn’t. I stand by my previous declaration, you're a dick. And again… not a compliment.”
“Coach.” Cruz turns those bright blue eyes on me. “Tell her there’s a difference.”
“You’re disgusting,” I say.
“Et tu, Daddy.”
Dakota makes a sound somewhere between a wheeze and a laugh and hides her face against Cruz’s shoulder. Brady looks like he’s about to slide under the table and die.
“Cruz. I will end you,” I warn.
“Promises, promises.”
“I’m serious,” I deadpan.
“You’re a little serious. Eighty percent serious. There’s twenty percent that’s into me calling you Daddy and we all know it.”
“I hate you.”
“You love me.”
Brady, quiet, like he’s just figured something out: “He’s not wrong though.”
We all look at him.
“Not about. I mean.” His ears are red. He’s staring into his glass. “About this mattering. About wanting to protect it. What all five of us are building. I care about that. A lot.”
Dakota reaches across the table. Her fingers brush the back of Brady’s hand. Just that. He turns his hand over so they’re palm to palm for one second, then he pulls back.
“Yeah, angel,” Cruz says, and his voice has gone soft. “We all do.”
For once he doesn’t follow it with a joke. He just looks at Brady like he’s looking at something precious.
Then, because he’s Cruz: “Which brings me to my second point.”
“Oh god,” Dante says.
“Our girl’s been bred. Beautifully. Repeatedly. By all of us.”
“Cruz!” She admonishes.
“But.” He lifts a finger. “There are two tight asses at this table that have not been bred. By anyone. To my knowledge.”
Brady makes a strangled noise. Goes the color of a stop sign.
“Three, actually.” Cruz’s grin sharpens. He looks at Dakota. Slow. Deliberate. “Counting our girl’s.”
Dakota’s whole face goes red. She covers it with both hands.
“Cruz Bennett,” I say, “we’re in a public establishment.”
“And I’m whispering.”
“You are not.”
“I’m whispering with feeling.”
Dante is full-on laughing now, head down on his arms, shaking. Brady’s somewhere between mortified and dying of laughter, that high tight wheeze that means he’s lost the fight.
I should shut this down. I should. I’m the coach. I’m supposed to be the responsible one.
I take a long drink. Set the glass down. “Three, you said.”
Cruz’s eyes light up. “Three, Coach.”
“Hm.”
“That’s all you got? ‘Hm’?” Cruz demands.
“I’m processing.”
Dakota’s still hiding her face. “I hate all of you.”
“You don’t.”
“I really do.”
“Princess.” I reach across and touch her wrist. Gentle. “Look at me.” She peeks through her fingers.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
“I know, Daddy.” It slips out, soft, before she can catch it, and Cruz makes a sound like he’s been shot.
“Jesus Christ,” Brady whispers.
“I’m sorry,” Dakota says into her hands. “I’m sorry I keep doing that.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “It’s fine. Just… ” I rub my forehead. “We’re going to get arrested.”
“For what?” Cruz says. “Excessive yearning?”
“Yes.”
“Worth it.”
Dante lifts his head finally, wipes his eyes. “We’re the worst at keeping this secret in history. You realize that. We are going to get caught because Cruz cannot stop talking about asses in Rocco’s booth.”
Cruz clears his throat. “I will go to prison for this cause.”
“Please don’t.”
The waitress comes by to check on us. We all go silent like children caught shaking presents a week before Christmas. She refills Dakota’s Coke, asks if we want food, leaves. The second she’s out of earshot Brady puts his head down on the table.
“I cannot live like this.”
“You will,” Cruz says, patting his back. “You’ll get used to it. Like a slow gas leak.”
“That’s comforting,” Brady replies.
“I try.”
I lean back. Watch them. Brady with his forehead on the table, Cruz rubbing slow circles between his shoulder blades.
Dante watching Cruz watch Brady, his mouth tipping up at one corner.
Dakota tucked under Cruz’s other arm, drinking her Coke through a straw, hazel eyes finding mine across the table.
She holds my gaze. She mouths something I can’t quite catch. I think it’s thank you.
I nod, once.
“Logistics,” I say, because somebody has to.
“More logistics?” Cruz groans.
“Tomorrow night. My place. I cook. We figure out a real schedule. Brady, you bring nothing, just yourself. Dakota, same. Cruz and Dante, bring wine if you feel the inclination to be useful for once.”
“I’m always useful,” Cruz states.
“You really aren’t.”
His brow furrows. “Fine, I’m decorative.”
“You’re a hazard,” I state.
“A hot hazard.”
Dante: “He’s not wrong.”
I sigh. Long. Deep.
Brady lifts his head and looks around the table. At Dakota. At Cruz. At Dante. At me.
“Coach,” he says. Quiet. “I’m in. All the way. Whatever this hot-mess express is.”
I feel my chest do a slow, dangerous thing. “I know you are, kid.”
“Just so you all know.”
“We know,” Dakota says, finding his hand under the table.
Cruz lifts his beer. “To the dumbest, hottest, most felony-adjacent thing any of us has ever done.”
“Beautiful toast,” Dante says, lifting his.
I lift mine. Dakota lifts her Coke. Brady, last, lifts his beer, and his hand only shakes a little.
The glasses clink. Quiet, in the corner of a dive bar, where nobody’s looking.
“To us,” I say.
“To us,” they echo.
And Cruz, because he’s Cruz, leans in and adds, “And to three tight asses, may they soon be acquainted with nice thick cocks.”
Dakota chokes on her Coke. Brady drops his head back to the table. Dante laughs until he’s wheezing.
I drain my whiskey and signal for another.
It’s going to be a long night. I wouldn’t change a second of it.