9. Dante
DANTE
The shouting hits my ears before I’m through the door.
Not the usual gym noise. Not the slap of pads or the thud of bodies hitting the mat. This is something else. Sharper. The kind of sound that reminds me of when I was twelve and watching my dad lose his shit in the driveway.
I drop my bag at the cubbies and follow it.
Coach has Cruz pinned against the cage, forearm to throat, and Cruz is laughing.
Actually laughing. Blood on his lip, grin splitting his face wide, like he’s having the best Thursday of his goddamn life.
Dakota’s gripping the cage from the outside, knuckles white, and Brady’s got one foot inside the cage like he can’t decide whether to wade in or wait it out.
“Coach, back off,” Dakota’s saying. “Eli. Eli.“
He doesn’t hear her. I can tell from the set of his shoulders. That deep green stare’s gone somewhere ugly.
Cruz ducks under, slips the forearm, comes up grinning wider. “That all you got, old man?”
Coach swings. Cruz isn’t there. Cruz is never where you expect when he wants to play, that’s the thing people forget about him. All that muscle and he moves like water when the mood takes him.
“What the fuck?” I say.
Brady’s head snaps round. “Dante. Thank God.”
“What the fuck is going on?”
Dakota’s cheeks go red. Not pink. Red. The red that tells you everything before anyone opens their mouth.
Brady scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Uh.”
“Brady.”
“They’re.” He winces. “They’re fighting over Dakota.”
I look at her. She looks at the mat.
Cruz, still grinning, calls out from the cage like he’s narrating a fucking podcast. “I got my dick sucked. Then I ate her out. Now Coach is jealous.”
Coach throws another punch and this one nearly lands. Cruz lets it graze his cheekbone, just to make a point.
Something hot kicks up under my ribs. Not anger. Worse than anger. It’s the petty cousin.
Cruz and me, we’ve been hooking up. Not labeled, not promised, but his mouth has been on mine in dark corners and on a stone column in a park and in the back of a cab last Tuesday, and now he’s in there bragging about Dakota with blood on his teeth and I wasn’t even on the invite list.
I swallow it. Push it down behind my sternum where it belongs. Cruz doesn’t owe me anything.
Doesn’t stop the heat though.
I climb into the cage. “Coach. Hey. Coach, look at me.”
He doesn’t. He shifts his weight and Cruz reads it and slips again, this time laying a palm on Coach’s chest as he passes, light as a feather, mocking.
“Eli.” I use his name the way you use a knife. “Breathe. Right now. Breathe with me.”
His chest is moving too fast. The vein in his temple’s a live wire.
“Cruz, back the fuck up,” I snap. “Now.”
Cruz drifts back two steps, hands raised in surrender, that smirk still hooked at the corner of his mouth. “I’m cool. I’m cool, brother.”
“You’re a menace,” I snap.
“Yeah, but a cool one.”
I plant myself in front of Coach. Not touching. Close enough that he has to see me. “Eli. Look at me, man. You’re at work. You’re at your work. Breathe.”
His eyes finally drop to mine. Green. Wet around the edges. The rage cracks a hairline and underneath it I can see something I’d rather not look at. Something deep-seated, humiliated and confused.
I lower my voice. “Whatever happened, it’s not worth your license. Not worth your name on the door. Breathe.”
He breathes.
In, out. One ragged pull and a slower release. The forearm at his side unclenches. Knuckles uncurl.
“That’s it.” I let my hand come up, carefully and rest it on his shoulder. He doesn’t flinch. Small win. “That’s it, Coach.”
Behind me, Cruz is shaking out his shoulders like he’s just done a warm-up round, not provoking a forty-year-old grappling expert into actually trying to bury him under the cage.
Dakota’s still gripping the cage.
“Okay,” I say, soft. “Let’s run it back. Slow.”
Coach shakes his head. Once. “I shouldn’t be here.”
I clench my jaw. “Don’t do that.”
“Dante—”
“Don’t do that, Eli. We’re working it out. Stay,” I urge.
But he’s already moving. Past me. Past Cruz, who steps aside without comment for once in his goddamn life. Through the gate. Out of the cage.
Dakota turns toward him as he passes, mouth open, but he doesn’t look at her.
I catch the expression on her face when his back’s turned. There’s a flicker there. Hurt, and as quickly as it surfaced, it’s tucked away
“Coach,” she says.
He keeps walking.
We watch him go through the double doors. Watch them swing. Watch them still.
Cruz lets out a low whistle. “Well.”
“Don’t.” Brady’s voice cracks on the word. “Don’t you fucking well right now.”
“What? I’m just—”
I glare at him. “You knew he was raw. You wound him up on purpose.”
Cruz wipes blood off his lip with the back of his wrist. Considers it. Shrugs. “He needed to bleed it out somewhere. Better me than her.”
It lands like a slap because he’s not wrong, but I don’t think Coach would take it out on Dakota.
Dakota’s still hanging onto the cage from outside, looking at the door like she might follow him—she doesn’t, allowing her hands to drop as she turns into the cage and pulls open the gate, stepping inside.
“Right,” she says. Voice steady, even if her face isn’t. “What were we supposed to be doing?”
Brady blinks. “Coach had a circuit. Pads, takedowns, three live.”
“Okay.”
“We can call it. Reschedule,” I suggest.
“No.” She rolls her shoulders. The motion is small but it does something to the air. Her T-shirt rides up an inch and there’s a strip of skin above her shorts and I see Brady clock it and look away too fast. “I’m here. You’re here. Cruz, run it.”
Cruz drops the rest of the grin. Goes neutral. Coach for the day. “Pads first. Five minutes each. Brady, you hold for Dakota. Dante, hold for me. We’ll switch.”
Brady picks up the pads like they personally insulted his mother.
I take mine and stand opposite Cruz.
His knuckles touch the center of my pad as a check-in, habit by now, and his eyes find mine.
You okay? he’s asking, without saying it.
Are we okay?
I just lift the pad.
He starts working.
Five minutes is a long time when you’re standing two feet from someone who got their mouth on a woman you’ve been circling and who you’ve also been fucking and who you can’t decide if you want to hit or kiss.
Cruz throws clean. Hard. The pop of leather echoes off the high ceiling and after a minute we both stop performing for each other and settle into the rhythm of it.
Across the mat, Brady’s calling Dakota’s combinations. One, two, three. One, two, low kick. She moves like she was born knowing how to do this dance. Hair coming loose from her braid. Sweat at her collarbones. Brady’s voice gets thicker every round. He’s not even hiding it.
When we switch, I take the pads off and hand them to Brady and step over to her side without asking.
“Up,” I say.
She lifts her hands.
I run her through drills. She catches every cue and doesn’t argue once. The only sound between us is breath and impact and the small grunts she makes when she sinks weight into a strike.
Her ponytail brushes my forearm on a turn and I think about Cruz’s mouth on her.
Cruz eating her out.
Her sucking his dick.
The flat way he said it, the brag of it, like he wanted to plant a flag.
I push the pad up. “Again. Harder.”
She gives me harder.
By the time we break for water, the whole cage is humming with it. Whatever it is. Cruz is sitting with his back against the fence, beard wet at the edges from his bottle, watching all of us with that half-lidded look that means he’s enjoying himself too much.
Brady’s pulled his shirt off. The neck tattoo crawls down onto his collarbone, dark against the flush of his skin, and Dakota’s eyes find it and stay there for half a second too long. He sees her looking. Looks back. Looks away.
“Live rounds,” Cruz says. “Three. Light contact. Dakota, you’re with me first.”
“No,” Dakota says.
Cruz raises an eyebrow.
“You’re tired and you’re bleeding and you’ll go too hard because you’re pissed. Brady’s first.”
Brady chokes on his water.
“Get up,” she tells him. Soft. Not unkind. “I’ll go easy on you.”
“You will not.“
She smiles. First proper smile I’ve seen on her since I walked in. It transforms her face into something I have to look away from.
They square. Touch gloves. Move.
Cruz drops down to the mat beside me, cross-legged like a kid at story time, and watches.
“You’re mad at me,” he murmurs.
“I’m not mad at you.”
“You’re mad at me.”
“Cruz.”
He bumps his shoulder against mine. Solid. Warm. “Talk to me.”
I keep my eyes on Dakota and Brady. They’re moving smooth, the way they were the first morning Brady sparred her, that unexpected, shared rhythm.
Brady ducks a hook and she follows him with her whole body, a fraction off, and the way she resets her weight after…
God. She’s beautiful when she fights. I’d be a liar to pretend otherwise.
“You set him off on purpose,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“Why?” I ask.
Cruz exhales. “Because he was going to combust quietly. Eat himself up about it for six months and snap on somebody who deserved it less. Better me. Better in the cage. Better with hands wrapped.”
“Yeah? Keep telling yourself that bullshit story. We both know better.”
“Mm.” He bumps me again. “Maybe. Maybe also I’m jealous he got there first in her head and I wanted him to know I got there first in her mouth.”
“Cruz.”
“What. You wanted me to lie?” he asks.
I do look at him then. Blue eyes, crinkled. Cut on his lip. Smug bastard.
In the cage, Dakota lands a leg kick and Brady curses softly and grins.
Cruz’s hand drops between us, the back of his fingers brushing the side of my knee. The lightest touch. Nobody could see it from outside.
“Dante.”
“Don’t,” I warn.
“I’m not asking you not to be mad. Be mad. But don’t go quiet on me.”
I let my knee press into his hand. Just a fraction. Enough.
“Round,” he calls. “Switch. Dakota with me. Brady with Dante.”
Dakota wipes her face with the inside of her elbow and walks over to Cruz. She doesn’t touch him. She doesn’t have to. The whole cage feels his hand on her waist before it gets there.
Brady comes to me. Dark hair sticking up at the front, blue eyes too bright. He’s still flushed from sparring her and there’s a question etched in his expression that he hasn’t worked out how to ask yet.
“Light,” I say. “Hands only. I’m tired of you boys breaking each other today.”
He huffs a laugh. Touches gloves.
We move.
Brady’s faster than I am. He always has been. But I’ve got reach and patience and he keeps glancing past my shoulder every time Cruz shifts behind me on the other half of the mat. I clip him twice for it. The third time I just stop.
“Stay with me, Williams.”
“Sorry.”
“You wanna watch them, watch them after the round.”
He nods. “Sorry. Sorry. Go.”
We go.
Behind me I hear the low rumble of Cruz’s voice. And under it, Dakota’s quick breath, the slap of her shin on his guard, the small fuck she lets out when he gets inside on her.
We finish three rounds. We’re all soaked.
Dakota peels her gloves off and sits down on the bottom step with her legs out in front of her and her head tipped back, throat long, ponytail slightly swaying down between her shoulder blades.
Cruz is leaning against the cage on the other side, towel round his neck, watching her like he wants to put his teeth on her clavicle.
Brady’s on the floor between us, knees up, elbows resting on them, looking at the pair of them like he can’t decide which one to fall for first.
I sit down next to him. Close enough our shoulders bump.
He doesn’t move away.
“You okay?” Dakota says, eyes still closed. Head still tipped back.
I take a second to realize she’s talking to me.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Mm.” She rolls her head sideways. Looks at me from under her lashes. “You were quiet today.”
“Was thinking.”
“About what.”
I let the silence sit.
Cruz, from the cage wall, interjects lazily, “About me, probably.”
Brady snorts.
Dakota’s mouth twitches. “He’s got a point, Dante. We were all kind of thinking about him.”
I look up at the ceiling. The fluorescents hum. Somewhere downstairs a door slams and I think for a second it might be Coach coming back, but it isn’t. It’s just the building.
“Y’all look good together,” Dakota says. Quiet. Almost to herself.
Brady goes very still beside me.
Cruz, just as quiet: “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Nobody says anything for a long moment. The fans turn overhead. My pulse is doing something that has nothing to do with the round I just finished.
Brady’s knee shifts and bumps mine. He doesn’t apologize.
“We should clean up,” I say.
“Yeah,” Dakota says.
Nobody moves.
Cruz pushes off the cage wall finally and walks over and offers Dakota his hand. She takes it. He pulls her to standing and she ends up too close to him by a fraction, hip almost brushing his thigh, and she doesn’t step back.
“Same time tomorrow,” Cruz says, looking between Brady and me.
“Same time tomorrow,” Brady echoes.
Dakota nods, eyes on Cruz’s mouth, then on Brady’s. Then on mine.
She holds my eye a beat longer than the others.
Then she slips out through the gate and heads for the showers.
“For the record Cruz, You’re a dick.” she states flatly.
“And that’s not a compliment.” she tosses over her shoulder at him without missing a beat, leaving the three of us in the cage trying very hard not to look at each other and failing.
“Fuck,” Brady says, finally. To the ceiling.
Cruz laughs. “Yeah, brother. Fuck.”
I stand up. My knees crack. I pick up the discarded pads and stack them and try to remember what my life looked like before a blonde fighter walked in off the street with a chip on her shoulder.
I can’t remember, and I don’t think I want to.