28. Cruz #2
“The bar. Months ago, when Dante joked about including me in—all that. I said it wasn’t my thing.
” His Adam’s apple bobs. “I went home that night and couldn’t stop thinking about you.
Both of you. And I hated myself for it, and I told myself it was the beer, and then I saw you at training the next morning and it wasn’t the beer. ”
“Brady.”
“I know how to want Dakota. That part was terrifying, but easier. Wanting you meant everything my dad said about me was true.” He turns his head. “Except it doesn’t feel like what he said. It doesn’t feel wrong. It feels right.”
I have to take a breath before I can answer that.
“You want to know what I think is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever watched?
” I say. “You. These past weeks. Watching you figure out you were allowed to exist. Every wall that comes down, there’s more of you behind it, and every single time, the real Brady is better than the performance.
Every wall you overcome, it feels like a gift.
And I know I’m not the only one who feels that way. ”
“Now who’s being mushy,” he deflects.
“I contain multitudes.”
He snorts, but his hand finds mine on the mat, fingers threading through. We lie there under the humming lights, and the conversation wanders the way it never can when all five of us are together and someone’s mouth is always occupied.
“Can I ask you something?” he says. “Your triad. The one that ended. Did you guys have, like, a hierarchy? Primaries and secondaries and all that?”
“We tried. Made it worse. Ranking people you love is a fast way to make somebody feel like a consolation prize.” I shrug against the mat.
“What we’ve got is different. Dakota’s the center of it in a lot of ways—she’s the one who cracked us all open.
But this, tonight? This isn’t about her.
This is its own thing. You and I are a real thing that exists whether or not anyone else is in the room. ”
“A constellation,” Brady says. “That’s how I’ve been thinking about it. She’s the brightest star but there’s lines between all of us.”
“Look at you. Poet and a puncher,” Cruz jokes.
“Don’t tell Dante. He’ll make me read actual books.”
“He absolutely will. He’s got a list.” I squeeze his hand. “For what it’s worth—being with you like this doesn’t take anything away from what I feel for them. It’s not a pie. Nobody’s slice got smaller tonight.”
“It’s more like the pie got bigger.”
I think about how three months ago this man could barely make eye contact with me over drinks, and I can’t help but smile a little.
“What happens if we get caught?” he asks, quieter. “Somebody walks in here right now, sees two teammates naked on the mats. The commission finds out about all five of us.”
“Then we handle it. Together. But tonight, the front door is locked. So, unless it’s Victor, no one’s coming in.” I say it with more confidence than the situation deserves, but I mean it. “Worrying about the crash doesn’t make the drive safer. It just ruins the view.”
“Did you get that off a bumper sticker?” Brady asks.
“Fortune cookie. Same energy.”
We shower fast in the empty locker room—separately, because if we shower together we’re starting round two and someone books this gym for late sessions on Thursdays.
So as long as we’re gone in thirty minutes, we’re golden.
We wipe down the mats, kill the lights, and lock up again.
Erase the evidence. By the time we push through the front door, Oath looks exactly like it always does, like nothing happened inside it tonight, and I feel weirdly protective of the secret.
The parking lot is empty except for his truck and my car. The night air bites at my damp neck, October sliding toward real cold. We stand between the vehicles longer than we need to, neither of us reaching for our keys.
“So,” Brady says.
“So.”
“That happened,” he says awkwardly.
“It sure did.” I grin at him. “Dakota’s going to interrogate you later. She already texted twice. She wants a play-by-play with diagrams.”
“She can interrogate you. You’re the one who narrates everything anyway.”
“It’s a gift.”
He steps in and kisses me one more time. This one is nothing like the cage—soft, unhurried, a period at the end of the sentence instead of an exclamation point. When he pulls back, his eyes crinkle at the corners.
“Thanks for staying late, Cruz,” he says.
“Anytime. Your underhooks still suck, by the way.”
“Goodnight, asshole.”
I watch his taillights pull out of the lot and disappear down the road before I get in my own car. I sit there a minute, hands on the wheel, engine off, letting it settle.
We crossed a threshold tonight. Not just the kiss, not just what came after—the asking, the answering, the proof that the five of us contains all the twos and threes inside it. That intimacy doesn’t require a quorum.
My phone lights up on the passenger seat the whole drive home. At a red light, I glance at the thread.
Dakota: DETAILS. I know you’re driving, but the second you’re home, DETAILS.
Dante: You both good? Check in when you can.
Eli: Training at 9 tomorrow. Hydrate. Both of you.
I laugh out loud, alone in the car. Coach can direct four people through the filthiest night of their lives and still sign off like a calendar reminder. The mundane and the meaningful stacked on top of each other, which pretty much sums up the whole relationship in three text messages.
At home, I kick off my shoes and type back:
Cruz: We’re good. Better than good. It was perfect, and Brady’s a menace. Details in person. Goodnight, all four of you.
I fall asleep alone in my bed, but alone isn’t the right word anymore. Two months ago I was drifting—dates that didn’t stick, a bed that felt too big, a life that fit like someone else’s clothes.
Now I’ve got four people stitched into me, and tomorrow we’ll all stand ten feet apart at the gym pretending we’re merely teammates, and it’ll be the hardest thing I do all day.
Worth it. Every impossible second of it.