22. Cruz
CRUZ
Sunlight cuts through Eli’s blinds in thin gold stripes across the ceiling, jail-cell bars, except nothing about this morning feels like a cage.
My shoulder aches in that deep, satisfying way, and when I reach up to rub my neck, my fingers find the raised skin where Brady marked me last night.
That’s going to need crew necks for at least a week, even in training.
The smell of coffee hits me before I even open my eyes all the way. Eli’s been up. Man doesn’t know how to sleep in, even after a night we had.
I turn my head on the pillow and take stock.
Brady’s sprawled half on top of Dante, one arm slung across Dakota’s stomach like he’s checking she’s still real, still here.
Dante’s got that boneless look he gets when he’s completely wrecked in the best way.
Dakota’s mostly asleep, mumbling something when I shift.
“Eli’s in the kitchen,” she says without opening her eyes. “Coffee maker’s been going about ten minutes.”
“You been awake this whole time?”
“Didn’t want to move yet.”
Fair enough. I don’t either, but my bladder has vetoes that as an option, and eventually caffeine wins out over staying tangled in warm bodies.
We migrate to the kitchen in stages. Dante goes first, because the man cannot function without coffee in his system, some kind of biological law.
Dakota follows a few minutes later wrapped in one of Eli’s shirts that hits her mid-thigh, hair a wild mess that somehow works for her.
Brady and I bring up the rear, both of us shirtless, moving slow with the kind of soreness that means we used our bodies well.
Eli’s at the stove in just sweatpants, scrambling eggs like it’s just another Sunday and not the morning after the night that finally cracked him open.
His eyes track each of us as we walk in, and underneath the domestic softness there’s still that coach-assessment thing he does, checking bodies for injuries, checking faces for tells.
“Sit,” he says. “Coffee’s ready. Eggs in a minute.”
Dante pours mugs for everyone, delivers Eli’s with a kiss pressed to his shoulder blade. Eli leans into it, just slightly, and that tells me everything about how last night settled into him. Man’s different this morning. Looser somehow, like a rope that finally stopped fighting the knot.
We eat crammed around his little kitchen table, five people and about four chairs’ worth of space, knees bumping underneath. Nobody says much for a while. Just forks scraping plates, mugs lifting and setting back down, the occasional look that says more than any words could this early.
Then Eli sets his fork down. Deliberate. The same way he does before he’s about to rework someone’s entire training plan, and we all know to pay attention when he does that.
“I want to talk about something.”
Dakota’s eyebrows go up slightly, but nobody interrupts.
“Topping Dante last night was new for me,” Eli says, no hesitation now that he’s started.
“It worked. I felt in control. Felt like myself, maybe for the first time in longer than I want to admit.” He looks around the table, meeting each of our eyes in turn.
“But watching Dante submit like that. Watching Brady take Cruz apart the way he did—it did something to me. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. ”
He takes a breath.
“I want to know what it’s like from the other side.”
Nobody laughs. Nobody looks surprised, not really, not after everything we’ve already worked through this weekend. The lack of reaction seems to ease the slight tension in his shoulders.
“I want to bottom,” he says plainly. “I want to be taken by a man.”
Dante leans back in his chair, processing. I already know where this is going and it’s gonna be something else.
“Who do you want to do this with?” Dante asks carefully, and I can tell he’s assuming the answer’s gonna be him, given last night and the trust they’ve already built.
Eli’s answer surprises all of us.
“Brady.”
The table goes quiet in a different key than before. Brady’s coffee mug freezes halfway to his mouth.
Eli doesn’t flinch from explaining himself.
“I watched you last night. Watched you dominate Cruz with that ferocity, that mouth on you. It fascinated me. It made me want to know what it feels like to surrender to that kind of raw need.” His voice doesn’t waver, even though this has to be terrifying to say out loud. “I want to feel that directed at me.”
Brady’s face is doing about fifteen things at once. Shock. Fear. Something hungry under both.
“But I need something else too.” Eli’s gaze shifts to Dakota. “I need you there. Not on the side, watching. I need you present, intimate. I need you as a bridge, the same way you were during the train.”
I remember that. Eli caught between two things he wanted, Dakota there to ground him so he didn’t spiral.
“I’m not ready to just be taken by a man without that connection to a woman too. I need to feel held between you both.”
Dakota reaches across the table, takes his hand. “We’ll figure it out. Whatever you need.”
Brady finally finds his voice. “Are you sure? Really sure?” His hands have started shaking slightly around his mug. “Because I don’t know if I can be gentle with this. You saw what happened with Cruz. That mouth, the roughness—I don’t know if I can control that.”
Eli looks him dead in the eye.
“That’s exactly what I want. I don’t want gentle.” He says it like a confession, like something he’s been carrying since last night and has finally needed to set down. “I want your full intensity. I trust you to take me rough while keeping me safe. That’s why I’m asking you specifically.”
The weight of responsibility lands on Brady, and it brings a visible shift in his demeanor, like Eli reached across the table and put something heavy directly into his hands. Brady’s jaw works for a second before he manages a nod.
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll do it. I won’t let you down.”
The conversation shifts into logistics then. Dakota suggests the configuration: Eli inside her missionary, Brady taking Eli from behind. That way Eli’s connected to her, can see her face, kiss her, stay grounded while Brady works him from behind.
“Yes,” Eli says immediately. “Giving to her while receiving from him. That’s it exactly.”
“Dante and I will be there,” I add. “We’ll watch.”
The decision settles over the table, solid as fact. After breakfast, after everyone’s ready, we’re popping Eli’s cherry.
The mood lightens after that. The complicated part has been spoken and didn’t break anything. Brady plates up more eggs from the pan. Dakota complains about being sore in a very specific place, which gets a laugh out of Dante that turns into a wheeze when Dakota pokes him in the ribs.
I find myself just watching them. This strange, cobbled-together family I somehow ended up part of. The domesticity of it—planning something this intense over breakfast dishes—makes me think about my own road here.
I start talking without really deciding to.
“You know I wasn’t always like this,” I say. “Together. Whatever this is.”
Dakota tilts her head, waiting.
“My twenties were rough. Nashville. I was bouncing at clubs, getting into fights that had nothing to do with a cage or rules or any of that. Drinking too much. My temper wasn’t something I controlled; it was just a weapon that went off whenever it wanted.”
I tell them about the arrest. Twenty-six years old, some drunk grabbing a woman who didn’t want to be grabbed, me stepping in, the guy swinging first. I finished it. Badly. Broken jaw, cracked ribs, a concussion that put him in the hospital for two days.
“Didn’t matter that he started it. I nearly killed a man over a bar fight.”
“Victor bailed you out,” Dante says quietly. He’s heard pieces of this before, just not all of it laid out.
“Barely knew him at the time. Just a guy from the fight scene. He showed up at the jail at three in the morning, paid my bail, then drove me to a diner and gave me a choice.” I turn my coffee mug in a slow circle on the table.
“Channel it into something with structure or keep going the way I was going and end up dead or in prison. That simple. That stark.”
“And you chose the gym,” Brady says.
“Started training seriously the next week. Been five years now.” I shrug. “Gym gave me purpose when I didn’t have any. Family, when I sure as hell didn’t have that either.”
“Is that why you’re so loyal to Oath?” Dakota asks. “Why you’d do anything for Victor?”
“He didn’t just give me a job. He gave me a reason to be better than my worst instincts.”
Dante nods slowly. “We’ve all been saved by that place in some way. Found family when the real one didn’t want or deserve us.”
The table’s quiet for a second, everyone sitting with that.
“Since we’re doing confession hour,” I say, deflecting before it gets too heavy, “might as well tell you about the last time I did the poly thing.”
Dakota perks up, more curious than wary this time.
“Boyfriend and girlfriend, both knew about each other. About a year and a half ago. Eight months, give or take.”
“What happened?” Brady asks.
“Nothing dramatic. No cheating, no blowup.” I think about how to say it right.
“We just wanted different things. Sam wanted the whole picture, marriage, kids eventually. Rae wanted to move to Colorado, live out of a van, chase whatever came next. And me?” I laugh, but there’s no real humor in it.
“I didn’t know what I wanted. Still don’t always. ”
“Did it hurt?” Dakota’s voice is soft.
“Still love them, honestly. We stayed friends. But love wasn’t enough to hold the shape of it together once we admitted we wanted such different lives.” I look up, meet Brady’s eyes, then Dante’s, then Eli’s. “Left me wondering what I actually want out of any of this.”
“Does this scare you?” Brady asks. “Doing it again?”
“No.” The answer comes out faster than I expect, but it’s true.
“Not because you all are better than Sam and Rae, that’s not it.
It’s just—we were performing something. Being the cool progressive triad, checking the boxes for what that’s supposed to look like.
” I gesture at the table, at all of them.
“This isn’t that. This is just messy and honest and real.
Nobody’s performing; we just—fit, I guess. ”
Dakota knocks her knee against mine under the table. “Glad you’re here.”
Warmth spreads behind my ribs, and because I don’t know what to do with that feeling except make a joke, I say, “Guess I just keep getting saved by people who see something worth saving. First Victor. Now you lot.”
“Wasn’t just Victor,” Brady says quietly. “You did that. Showing up every day. He gave you the option, but you chose to do the work.”
I deflect again, some smartass comment about him getting soft on me, but the words land somewhere weird and stay.
Eli stands, starts clearing plates, and the movement shifts the whole room from talking to doing. “After cleanup,” he says, “once everyone’s ready. We’ll do it.”
Everyone pitches in with the dishes. The kitchen fills with running water and clinking plates, ordinary sounds for an ordinary Sunday, except beneath it all is the hum of what’s coming.
I watch Brady at the sink; hands unsteady around a mug he’s already rinsed twice, then watch Eli move with a deliberate calm that doesn’t quite hide the nervous energy coming from him.
Then my attention tracks Dakota and Dante as they trade a look that says they both feel the weight of what’s about to happen.
When the kitchen’s clean, Eli takes a breath.
“I’m ready,” he says. “Everyone else?”
We are.
We move toward the bedroom together, all of us about to witness something that doesn’t happen twice. Daddy about to surrender for the first time. The youngest of us about to claim that surrender and prove he can hold it without breaking it.
I follow last, grinning to myself, because this weekend just keeps getting more interesting, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than right here, watching every piece of this family find the parts of themselves they didn’t know they were missing.