6. Dakota
DAKOTA
Iwrap my hands at the edge of the mat, watching the room fill up.
Cruz comes in first, all six-foot-two of him, beard freshly trimmed, tattoos climbing his neck above the collar of his gray training shirt.
He drops his bag by the wall with the kind of thud that shakes the floor a little, stretches both arms over his head, and catches me watching.
“Morning, gorgeous,” he says.
“Morning, enormous.”
He grins so wide his eyes crinkle. “You say that like it’s an insult.”
“Purely descriptive.”
Dante follows him in about thirty seconds later, which I’ve noticed is always how it goes. Dante’s got a coffee in each hand. He gives one to Cruz without being asked. Cruz takes it without acknowledging the gesture.
I file that away.
Dante catches my eye and tips his chin. “Fisher.”
“Jackson.” I reciprocate.
Brady comes in after, hoodie half-zipped, dark-brown hair perfectly styled for so early in the morning. He sees me, does a small double-take he clearly didn’t mean to do, and then looks somewhere slightly to my left. His ears go pink.
I find that endearing and mildly inconvenient because he’s so shy around me.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey yourself.”
He drops his bag next to mine along the wall.
Then Eli walks in. Coach.
I need to be very clear with myself about something: I noticed Eli Morgan the moment I stepped into this gym four days ago, and I have been waging a quiet internal war about it ever since.
He is forty years old, silver-haired, green-eyed, and built like someone who hasn’t stopped training since he was twenty.
He carries himself with the authority of a man who’s been in charge for a long time.
He’s also my coach, which means I need to get my shit together around him.
He crosses the mat with a clipboard and doesn’t look at me immediately, which is something he does.
Intentional avoidance. He addresses the room at large, makes eye contact with Cruz and then Dante and then Brady, and then finally me—and there it is, that fraction of a second where his jaw tightens slightly and he shifts his weight back half a step.
He does it every time. I don’t think he even knows he does it.
“Alright.” He sets the clipboard on the bench.
“First session together. I want to see how you all move as a unit before I design anything around it. We’ll start with a circuit, then I want live rounds.
Dakota, since you’re new to the group dynamic, I’ll be watching your positioning relative to the others. That’s all.”
Cruz raises his hand like we’re in high school.
Eli’s mouth twitches. “Cruz.”
“When you say watching her positioning…”
“Don’t,” he warns.
“I was going to say it’s a great coaching strategy.”
“You absolutely were not,” he bites back.
Dante covers his mouth with his fist. Brady stares at the ceiling with the practiced blankness of a man who has learned to pretend he hears nothings.
I bite the inside of my cheek and start stretching.
The circuit runs forty minutes. Bag work, shadow boxing, partner drills rotating through all four of them. Cruz is powerful in a way that makes the chain rattle differently for him, heavier, more violent. When we do pad work and it’s my turn with him, I have to really brace.
“Nice,” he says, when I absorb a push kick without stepping back. “You’ve got roots.”
“Took me years.”
“It shows. Most people get pushed and they move. You just,” he mimes a tree, roots spreading from the floor, his big hands illustrating. “You absorb it.”
“You could just say I’m hard to move.”
“I could.” He grins. “But the tree thing was better and you know it.”
Dante is a completely different experience.
Where Cruz is forceful, Dante is quick and precise.
His jabs are short and tight and they land exactly where he intends them to, which is never quite where you expect.
We rotate through a combination drill and he adjusts his angle twice in four exchanges, subtly shifting the geometry of his attack, making me recalibrate each time.
“You noticed,” he says, when I adjust to cut off his angle before he can.
“Third time. You like the diagonal.”
He tilts his head, dark eyes warming slightly. “Most people take six or seven.”
“I’m not most people.”
“No,” he says. “You’re really not.”
Brady and I do takedown defense together and it’s surprisingly comfortable.
There’s a rhythm there already, like we’ve trained together before.
He’s technical, clean, thinks two steps ahead.
When he shoots for a double-leg and I sprawl, he adapts smoothly, switches to a body lock, and I have to actually work to stay upright.
For a moment his face is close to my shoulder and his breathing is controlled but quick, and then I get the angle, reverse the pressure, and he taps the mat.
He comes up with his hair in his eyes, grinning at the floor.
“Good,” I tell him.
“You’re annoyingly good at that.”
“Thank you,” I reply.
“That wasn’t entirely a compliment.”
“I know. Thank you anyway.”
He glances up and then looks away again. Pink ears. I keep my expression neutral.
All through this, Eli watches.
That’s his job, obviously. Coaching. Observing.
It’s completely professional and appropriate and I understand that.
The issue is the quality of the watching.
There’s attentiveness, and then there’s the brand of focused attention that Eli levels at me every time I move, like he’s not just watching my technique but me.
When I shadow box through the final stretch of the circuit, I feel his eyes on my footwork, then my hips, then he makes a small sound, not quite a word, and adjusts his stance.
I see him rearrange his sweatpants, and my cheeks go warm. He tries to make it subtle, but he’s not subtle enough.
I throw a cross-hook-low-kick combination at the bag and keep my face completely straight.
The thought of calling him Daddy has entered my mind far too many times in the past four days.
God. I do not need that thought in my head right now.
Next we practice live rounds. Cruz and I go first, three minutes, light contact, working positioning.
He’s good at making small spaces feel smaller, using his size to crowd without telegraphing, and it takes me a round and a half to find the distance management that works against him.
When I do, I start landing the jab and he actually stops mid-exchange.
“Hm,” he says.
“Problem?” I ask.
“No problem. You just found me.”
“You telegraphed the overhand,” I state.
“I always telegraph the overhand.”
“Then why does it still land on people?” I ask.
He spreads his hands. “Because by the time they figure it out, they’ve already eaten four body shots and their brain’s running slow.”
“Noted.” I point at him. “That’s not happening with me.”
“Oh, I know.” He looks genuinely delighted. “This is going to be fun.”
Dante and I are sharp. Clinical, almost. We spend three minutes testing each other’s reactions, learning response times and habits.
He’s trying to figure out what I default to under pressure and I’m doing the same to him.
It’s almost like chess in fighting gear, and when Eli calls time, Dante gives me this slow, approving nod, his eyes darkening with more than just professional appreciation.
The man is smooth. I’m aware of it.
Brady’s different. We slip into each other’s rhythm easily, which is both useful and slightly alarming. At one point we’re moving in perfect counter to each other, a fluid exchange that draws Cruz to the edge of the mat.
“Yo,” Cruz calls to Dante, not quietly. “Does that look like two people who’ve never trained together before?”
“Not even slightly,” Dante says.
Brady overextends on a hook out of distraction and I slip it, take his back, get the body triangle.
“Stop listening to them,” I tell him.
“I’m not listening to them.”
“Your pink ears tell another story.”
He laughs into the mat, genuinely, and taps.
Eli runs us through cool-down stretches himself, which is the part of coaching that doesn’t require him to keep professional distance, and I’m very aware of him moving through the group, crouching to check alignment, adjusting Brady’s hip angle on a hip-flexor stretch with a hand on his pelvis, giving Cruz a correction on shoulder position with both hands on his traps.
He does the same for Dante. When he gets to me, he crouches beside me in a low lunge and I watch him register my position.
“Hip square,” he says. His voice drops slightly when he addresses me specifically.
“It is square.”
“Left side’s rotating.” He pauses. Long pause. “Can I?”
“Go ahead.”
His hand settles on my left hip, thumb pressing into the iliac crest, and he adjusts the angle precisely, efficiently, and then removes his hand like it burned him. The whole thing takes three seconds. He stands, clears his throat, and goes to check Brady’s lunge depth.
Cruz catches my eye from across the mat and raises one slow eyebrow.
I give him absolutely nothing.
He grins like he won something anyway.
After, we’re all spread around the bench area, unwrapping hands, drinking water.
The session’s left us loose and warm, and the mood has shifted from the focused training into the easier version of itself.
Cruz sits backward on the bench with a protein bar, tearing into it.
Dante’s reworking the tape on his left hand.
Brady’s staring at his phone but not really looking at it.
Eli’s at the far end with his clipboard, writing notes.
“So,” Cruz says, to no one in particular. “First group session. Thoughts.”
“Clean,” Dante says. “Everyone’s got their own language. We’ll need time to translate.”
“Brady, you went soft in the second round,” Cruz says.
“I did not go soft,” he replies.
“You got distracted.”
“I was managing distance.”
“From what?”
Brady looks up from his phone. “From your commentary.”
Cruz points at me. “See, he’s blaming you.”
“He’s blaming you,” I say.
“I’m not blaming anyone,” Brady says.
Dante makes a sound that’s half-amusement, half something more knowing, and then knocks his shoulder against Cruz’s.
The contact is brief, natural, the kind of touch between people who’ve been in each other’s orbits long enough that it doesn’t register.
Except that Cruz glances at him for just a second, a quick check, and Dante holds the eye contact half a beat past casual.
I drink my water, watching them not-quite-look at each other.
So. Yeah. I’ve been working that one out since day two.
I don’t know what exactly they are to each other.
Friends, clearly. Close ones. But there’s a charge in it that I recognize, the weight of two people who’ve crossed a line into something closer to intimacy than cohorts.
If I’m honest with myself, and I’m trying to be these days, the thought of them together is hot.
I’m not examining that either. There are too many things I’m not examining. It’s getting crowded in the not-examining corner.
Eli finishes writing, caps his pen, and looks up. He scans the group in his way, checking in, and his eyes land on me last and stay there two seconds longer than the others.
“Good session,” he says. “You all read each other well for a first run. Dakota, your ground-to-stand transition needs work in a live setting. Technically solid but you hesitate on the commitment. We’ll drill it.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll do it Thursday.”
“Just us?”
He blinks. “I was going to have Brady assist.”
Brady looks up. “Yeah, sure.”
“Okay,” I say again, keeping my voice level, watching Eli’s jaw do that thing where it goes tight for a beat.
Cruz is absolutely vibrating next to me. I can feel him holding back one of his wisecracks.
“Cruz,” Eli says, without looking at him. “Don’t.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You’re thinking. Loudly.”
Cruz finishes his protein bar. “Just admiring your coaching style, Coach. Real hands-on approach.”
Eli turns and walks toward his office.
Cruz turns to me. His grin is enormous.
“Don’t,” I tell him.
“What? I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were absolutely going to say something.”
“I was going to say,” Dante cuts in, voice dry and even, “that it’s a good group. All of us. Good chemistry.” He looks at me steadily. “Glad you’re here, Fisher.”
Brady, from behind his phone, says quietly: “Yeah. Me too.”
I look at them. Cruz with that ridiculous grin. Dante, unreadable but warm. Brady is staring at his hands. And down the hall, through the glass of the office window, Eli is standing at his desk with his back to the room, one hand on the back of his neck.
Something shifts in my chest. The feeling of a place settling around you like it was already shaped for you before you arrived sinks into my bones.
I pick up my bag.
“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”