28. Cruz
CRUZ
The gym after dark is a different animal.
The fluorescent lights hum overhead, half of them switched off, throwing long shadows across the mats.
The heavy bags hang still. No music, no coaches barking corrections, no smack of gloves on pads.
Just me and Brady in the cage, and the sound of our breathing, and the squeak of skin on vinyl every time one of us shoots for a takedown.
“Again,” Brady says, wiping his forehead with the hem of his shirt. “I keep losing the underhook.”
“You keep losing the underhook because you’re muscling it. You’re a striker, man. Stop trying to out-strength me.”
“Easy for you to say. You bench small cars for fun.”
“Flattery gets you nowhere. Hips first, then hands.”
We reset. He shoots, I sprawl, and we scramble across the mat in a tangle of limbs and sweat. His fight is around the corner, and his ground game is the hole in his armor, so when he asked me to stay late, I said yes before he finished the sentence. That’s what teammates do.
That’s what I told myself, anyway.
Forty minutes in, I start noticing things.
The way his fingers curl into my shirt and stay there a beat past useful.
The hitch in his breath when I climb his back to demonstrate the choke.
Grappling is intimate by design, bodies stacked and locked and grinding for position, and normally I can flip the switch that keeps it technical. Normally.
Nothing about the last few weeks has been normal.
“Rear naked,” I say, sliding my arm under his chin. “Same one you finished Ortega with. Feel where my elbow lines up?”
“Yeah.” His voice comes out rough.
“Now defend it.”
He fights the grip, chin tucking, hands hunting for my wrist, and he’s good, he’s fast, but I’ve got fifty pounds and a decade of dirty tricks on him. I sink the choke slowly, controlled, my chest flush against his spine, my legs hooked around his hips. He taps my forearm twice.
I don’t let go.
He doesn’t make me.
We stay like that, locked together on the mat, his back against my chest, his pulse slamming against my forearm like it’s trying to punch through the skin.
The cage feels smaller than it did an hour ago.
The whole gym does. I can smell his sweat and the fabric softener on his shirt and underneath it just him, and my arm isn’t a choke anymore. It hasn’t been for a few seconds now.
Brady turns his head. His temple is slick, his pupils blown so wide the blue is only a halo around black, and I watch the exact moment technique leaves his brain entirely.
He kisses me.
No hesitation, no question mark at the end of it.
Brady doesn’t do anything halfway once he decides—I’ve got the bite marks to prove it—and his mouth crashes into mine hard enough to knock a sound loose from my chest. My brain whites out.
Then I’m kissing him back, my arm curling around his neck, pulling instead of controlling, and he twists in my grip until we’re chest to chest on the mat, breathing each other in.
We break apart, gasping.
The gym hum rushes back in. The empty gym. The two of us. Alone.
I watch it hit him. His whole body goes rigid against mine, and his eyes do that thing they do right before he spirals, flicking toward the cage door like the others might materialize there with judgment on their faces.
“Cruz. We just—the others aren’t—”
“Hey.” My hand comes up, cupping the back of his neck before the panic can dig in. “Don’t you dare apologize.”
“We didn’t ask. Isn’t that—doesn’t that count as—” He can’t even say the word.
“Cheating?” I say it for him, and he flinches. “On who, Brady? On our boyfriends? Our girlfriend? The people we’re all dating?”
“I don’t know how the rules work.” His jaw ticks. “Nobody said whether we’re allowed to. Just us. Without everyone.”
And there it is. Twenty-five years of a father’s belt and a church pew telling him that wanting affection is a sin, and now he’s found four people who want him back and he’s still waiting for the punishment.
“Look at me.” I wait until he does. “We’re all in this. All five of us. That includes every combination of us. Me and you is not a betrayal of them. Me and you is part of it, of us.”
“You’re sure.”
“I’ve been in a poly relationship before, remember? This is how it works when it works.”
The relief that moves through his face becomes a physical thing in an instant—shoulders dropping, breath leaving him in a rush.
And then the relief burns off and what’s underneath is hunger, pure and focused, and before I can say anything clever he shifts his weight, and I’m flat on my back with a hundred and fifty-five pounds of striker pinning me to the mat.
“Well,” I manage. “That’s one way to work on your top game.”
“Shut up, Cruz.”
He kisses me again, and this one is different.
Slower. Deliberate. When all five of us are together it’s beautiful chaos—too many hands, too many mouths, never enough time with any one person.
This is the opposite of chaos. This is every ounce of Brady’s attention aimed at me like a spotlight, and God, no wonder Dakota looks wrecked every time he’s done with her.
His hips settle against mine and I feel him hard through his shorts, feel my own body answering, and my hands slide up under his shirt to the sweat-damp muscle of his back. He makes a sound into my mouth that I want to record and keep.
I want to strip him bare right here on this mat. I want to find out what he tastes like without an audience, I want to take him apart slowly with nobody waiting their turn.
“Brady.” I pull back an inch. His mouth chases mine and I have to put a hand on his chest, laughing. “Brady. Hold up.”
“What?” He’s panting. “You said we’re allowed.”
“We are. I believe that. But we never actually talked about it as a group, and I don’t want you lying awake at three AM. convincing yourself we broke a rule that doesn’t exist.” I brush my thumb along his jaw. “Text them.”
He stares at me. “You want me to text the group chat. Right now. While I’m—” He gestures at the obvious situation in his shorts.
“Consider it foreplay.”
“You’re the worst.”
“I’m the best, and you know it. Phone.”
He climbs off me with a groan and retrieves his phone from his bag outside the cage. I prop up on my elbows and watch him type. Delete. Type. Delete. His hands are actually shaking a little, and it’s the most endearing thing I’ve seen all week from a man who breaks people’s faces professionally.
“What do I even say?”
“The truth. Keep it simple.”
He types one more time and hits send before he can chicken out, then holds the screen where I can see it.
Brady: Me and Cruz are at the gym alone. Things got heated. Is it okay if we keep going, just us?
The responses land fast enough that they must have all been on their phones.
Dakota: OH MY GOD YES. Details later. ALL of them.
Dante: Green light. Have fun. Take care of each other.
Eli: You don’t need permission. We’re all each other’s. But be careful and make sure you are truly alone there. Now put the phone down.
Brady reads Eli’s message three times. I watch the last knot in him come undone.
“We’re all each other’s,” he repeats, quietly.
“Coach has a way with words.” I hook a finger in the waistband of his shorts and tug. “You heard the man. Phone down.”
The phone hits the bag with a thump. Then he’s back on the mat with me, and the desperate edge from before has mellowed into a slow burn, because now there’s no clock, no guilt, the doors to the front are locked and we have nothing but time.
We make out like teenagers. There’s no other word for it.
Long, deep kisses on the mat, his hand sliding into my hair and gripping tight the way I’m learning he loves to do, my palms mapping the terrain of him—the ridge of his ribs, the cut of his hip, the ink on his neck that I trace with my mouth until he shivers.
I learn that a bite below his ear makes his whole body jerk.
He learns that dragging his nails down my chest gets him a sound I’ll deny making later.
“Off,” he mutters against my mouth, pulling at my shorts, and I lift my hips and shove everything down, and he does the same, and then it’s just skin.
We don’t go further than this. Neither of us says it out loud, but there’s an understanding—some things we save.
Instead he settles on top of me, and when our cocks slide together, bare and slick with sweat, we both groan loud.
The sound echoes off the gym walls, and when he grinds down just right, I see stars.
“That thing,” I breathe, “is a lethal weapon.”
“You should file a complaint.”
“I’m filing something.” He laughs into my neck before rolling his hips. Neither of us are laughing anymore.
I get a hand around us both—his fingers tangle with mine a moment later—and we find a rhythm the way we found one grappling, instinct and friction and his forehead pressed to mine, breath mixing, eyes open.
That’s the part that undoes me. He keeps his eyes open the whole time, watching me like I’m worth watching.
“Cruz.” My name breaks apart in his mouth. “I’m close.”
“Good. Come on me.”
He comes with a shudder that rolls through his entire frame, spilling hot between us, and the sight of it—Brady Williams, unguarded, undone, mine—drags me over the edge right behind him. My back arches off the mat, and he swallows the sound.
For a while, neither of us move. The fluorescents hum. Our heartbeats slow in stages.
“We’re disgusting,” he says eventually, muffled against my shoulder.
“Occupational hazard.” I grab his discarded shirt and clean us up with it, ignoring his protest. “You brought a spare. I’ve seen your bag. You pack like a mom.”
“Preparedness is a virtue.”
“So is honesty.” I fold my arm behind my head and look at him, sprawled beside me, flushed and loose-limbed. “Tell me the truth. How long?”
He doesn’t pretend not to understand. He stares at the ceiling for a while.