14. Brady
brADY
The bite at the back of my throat means I’ve been pushing too hard for too long. My hands are taped tight, knuckles already aching, and Dante’s circling me with that patient look he gets right before he ruins somebody’s night.
“Move your feet, Brady.” Victor’s voice cuts through the fog building in my head. He’s leaning on the railing outside the cage, arms folded across his chest. “You’re flat-footed. Dante’s gonna take that knee out from under you if you keep planting like that.”
“He’s planted because he’s tired,” Cruz calls from the bench. “Boy’s been going for forty minutes.”
“Boy’s got a fight in three weeks. Tired isn’t an option in the cage.”
I dip my shoulder, slip a jab, and come back with a low kick that Dante checks with the side of his shin. The impact rattles up my leg, and I hiss through my teeth.
“Better.” Victor again. “Now stop telegraphing the cross. I saw it coming from the parking lot.”
Jonah snorts from where he’s stretching on the foam roller. “Bro, he saw it coming from the next zip code.”
“Eat my whole ass, Jonah,” I snap.
“That’s not really a Brady thing, is it?” Cruz drops his water bottle and grins, all teeth. “More of a Dakota thing I would think.”
The cage goes quiet for half a second, and I clench my jaw so hard I think I might crack a tooth.
Dakota is sitting on the apron of the second cage, legs dangling, her blonde hair pulled up in a knot that’s already coming loose. She doesn’t blush. She doesn’t look away. She just raises an eyebrow at Cruz.
I lose my footing for half a beat, and Dante’s leg sweeps up into my ribs.
“Fuck.” I stumble sideways, catching myself on the cage. The mesh bites into my forearm.
“That’s what happens when you stare at the pretty girl instead of the guy trying to put you on your back,” Dante says.
“I wasn’t—”
“Brady.” Victor’s voice has dropped, that tone he uses when he’s going to lecture you. “Eyes on Dante. Whatever else is going on, leave it at the door. You take that distracted shit into the cage on fight night, and you’re gonna get knocked out cold. You hearing me?”
I nod. Breathe. Try not to look at her again.
I look at her again.
She’s wearing those black leggings with the rip up the side of the calf and one of Dante’s hoodies—I know it’s Dante’s because he wore it to the gym last week and at the moment it’s swallowing her shoulders. The sight of it does something dangerous in my chest.
Dante notices me noticing. His mouth tilts.
“Reset,” Victor calls. “Thirty seconds. Brady, drink some water and get your head out of your ass.”
I drop down to the apron next to Micah, peel my mouthguard out, and squirt water into my mouth like I’m trying to drown the thoughts.
“You good?” Micah asks, voice low. He’s wrapping his own hands.
“Yeah.”
“Liar.”
“Yeah.”
He grins, and the scar through his eyebrow pulls with it. “She’s just sitting there, man. You can do this.”
“She’s not just sitting there. She’s sitting there in Dante’s hoodie.”
“Yeah, I clocked that too.” Micah glances over at Dante, who’s bouncing on his toes, rolling his neck. “And Cruz keeps looking at her like she’s a steak. And you keep looking at her like she’s water. Y’all are about as subtle as a brick to the head.”
“Shut up, Micah.”
“I’m just saying.”
Ray, our old-timer, snorts from the corner where he’s been quietly watching everything with his arms folded. Ray doesn’t say much. Ray doesn’t have to. When he does talk, the whole room shuts up.
“Kid,” he says, and I’m not sure if he means me or Micah. “Discipline. That’s all this sport is. You can want everything in the world, but you step in that cage, there’s only room for one thing. Winning. Everything else can wait six minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t sir me. Listen to me.”
“Yes, Ray.”
Victor claps once. “Up. Let’s go again. Two rounds left.”
Dante locks eyes with me as I step back into the center. There’s something playful in his expression. “Stop thinking about her,” he murmurs as we touch gloves.
“I’m not.”
“Brady.”
“Fuck. Off,” I huff.
The buzzer goes.
He comes forward, and I circle out, jab, jab, slip, hook to the body. He absorbs it on his elbow. Steps in. I feel his weight shift before I see it, and I’m already moving, ducking under his hook, coming up with an uppercut that grazes his chin. He smiles around his mouthguard.
“There he is,” Victor says.
I push the pace. Two-three combo, hook to the leg, switch stance.
Dante reads it, ties me up in the clinch, and I feel his forehead press against mine, the heat of him, the way our breath syncs without trying.
For one weird half-second, I think about him with Cruz, the way they looked at each other in the cage.
I shove him off harder than I need to.
“Easy, baby,” Dante says, low enough that only I hear it.
My whole body goes hot. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why not?”
I don’t have an answer.
The buzzer goes, and I’m grateful.
“Water break. Four minutes.” Victor checks his watch. “Last round, then you’re done, Brady. Cool down properly. I don’t want you cramping up.”
I climb out of the cage and grab my towel, and Cruz is right there, all six-foot-two of him, blocking out the light. He hands me a fresh bottle of water without saying anything, just claps his huge hand on the back of my neck and squeezes once before letting go.
“Looking sharp, kid.”
“I lost focus.”
“Once. Then you found it.” He shrugs. “You did good.”
Dakota slides off the apron and walks over, and Cruz’s hand drifts to her lower back without him seeming to think about it. She doesn’t move away. Leaning into him instead, wearing Dante’s hoodie, with Cruz’s hand on her spine.
“You okay?” she asks me. “Dante caught you with that shin.”
“I’m good.”
“Your ribs?” she asks.
“My ribs are fine, angel.”
The word is out before I can stop it. I see Cruz’s mouth twitch. See Dakota’s cheeks flush. See Dante across the cage pretending not to listen.
“Brady.” Victor’s voice. “A word.”
I turn. Victor’s standing at the edge of the cage with a look I can’t quite read—amusement, maybe, or just tired. He gestures for me to come over with two fingers. I jog across.
“Sir?” I ask.
“Twice in one session, you’ve lost focus because of her.”
“I know.”
“You know what I’m going to say.”
“I know.”
He sighs and rubs his beard. “I’m not telling you to stop whatever it is.
I’m not blind, Brady. Half the gym isn’t blind.
But you’ve got a fight in three weeks. Whatever’s going on with the four of you—and I don’t want details, ever, please—you keep it out of this cage.
You hear me? That kind of distraction can not only lose the fight, it can get you killed. ”
“Yes, boss.”
“This gym means something. We took an oath when we rebranded this place. Every fighter who walks through that door—we don’t break that oath.
That goes for the people we love, too. We don’t break each other.
Whatever this is between all of you, you handle it like adults and on your own time. Not in my cage. Clear?”
“Clear.”
He studies me a moment longer. Then his face softens, just at the corners.
“She makes you better, you let her make you better. She makes you worse, you figure that out fast. Three weeks, Brady.”
“Yes, boss.”
He claps my shoulder. “Now go.”
Jonah’s tossing a tennis ball against the wall. He looks up when I sit down next to him. “Where’s Theo? He said he’d be here today. Was gonna bring those protein cookies his pastry guy makes. I’ve been thinking about them for a week.”
“He’s in New York,” Micah says. “Some music thing. Back Friday.”
“Friday’s too far away,” Jonah whines.
“You’re literally a grown ass man crying about cookies,” Micah taunts.
“They’re really good cookies, Micah. I will fight you over those cookies.”
“You’d lose.”
“In my heart, I’d win.”
Cruz laughs that booming laugh that fills the whole room. Even Ray cracks a smile. Victor, halfway across the gym, shakes his head without looking up from his clipboard.
“He texted me this morning,” Victor calls. “Said tell my favorite gym rats hi. I’m not your messenger pigeon, but consider yourself told.”
“Tell him I love him,” Jonah calls back.
“Tell him yourself, Jonah,” Victor snaps back, that possessive undertone in his voice.
“I will. With feeling.”
Dakota’s smiling, that soft, genuine smile she gets when she’s watching everyone banter. Dante drops down on Dakota’s other side and bumps his shoulder against hers. “You good, baby?”
“I’m good.”
“You sure?”
“Dante.”
“Just checking.”
He kisses the top of her head. Just like that. In the middle of the gym, with Victor and Ray and Jonah and Micah all right there.
My stomach drops through the floor because I want to be the one kissing her.
Dakota’s cheeks go pink under her freckles. She glances at me, then at Cruz.
“Last round,” Victor calls. “Brady. Up.”
I climb back in. Dante follows, rolling his shoulders. We touch gloves a third time.
“Head in it,” he says.
“Head’s in it.”
“Liar.”
“Maybe.”
He grins around his mouthguard. The buzzer goes.
This time I’m sharper. I don’t know if it’s because I’m tired enough that my brain has finally shut up, or because Victor’s words are sitting in my chest like a weight pressed against my sternum—we don’t break each other—but my feet move right, and my hands move right, and Dante has to work for every inch he gets.
I catch him with a hook he doesn’t see coming. He grunts.
“There you go,” Cruz says.
“That’s it, Brady,” Victor encourages.
I keep my eyes on Dante. Just Dante. The slope of his shoulders, the shift of his hips, the way his weight loads onto his back foot before a kick.
I tag him with a teep, follow with a cross, slip his counter, and clinch up against the cage.
We trade knees that don’t quite land flush, and then he reverses me, and I’m the one with my back against the mesh, and his forehead is pressed to mine again.
“Better,” he murmurs.
“Get off me.”
“Make me.”
I sweep his leg, and we both go down, scrambling for position, and the bell saves us both. He laughs into my shoulder before he gets up, hauls me up with him.
“Good work, baby.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“And yet.”
I should hate him for it. I don’t.
Cool-down stretches. The five of us in a loose circle on the mats—me, Dante, Cruz, Micah, Jonah. Dakota’s perched on a stack of mats with a water bottle, watching, ankles crossed.
“So,” Jonah says, voice deliberately casual. “Are we doing dinner Friday when Theo gets back, or what?”
“He’ll want Eclipse,” Cruz says.
“He always wants Eclipse. He owns Eclipse.”
“That’s why.”
“Fair.”
Micah stretches forward over his leg. “Boss in?”
“Boss is always in if Theo’s there.”
“Cute.”
“Disgusting,” Cruz says fondly. “Forty years old, mooning around like a teenager. It’s embarrassing.”
“You’re thirty-one, Cruz.”
“And I’m not mooning around like a teenager, am I.”
“Aren’t you?” Dante says, and doesn’t look up from his hamstring.
The mats go quiet.
Cruz doesn’t answer. He just smiles, slow and easy, and his eyes flick to Dakota and then to me, and then back to his stretch.
Micah’s biting his lip, trying not to laugh. Jonah’s openly grinning. Even Ray, from his corner, makes a sound that might be amusement—though it could also be a cough. You never really know with him.
“Okay,” Victor calls, walking past with his clipboard.
“Whatever this is, it’s contained. I don’t see it, I don’t hear it, I don’t know about it.
Brady, ice your ribs. Dante, foam roll your hip.
Cruz, stop making faces at people. Dakota, you’re with me for the next twenty minutes, I want to talk through your conditioning numbers. ”
Dakota slides off the mats. As she passes me, her hand brushes the back of my neck, just for a second, just enough that my breath stutters.
“Good work,” she says, low.
She’s gone before I can do anything with that, my dick stirs in my pants on cue.
Cruz watches her go. Dante watches her go. I watch her go.
Then Cruz turns to me, claps me on the back of the neck like he did before, and his thumb traces a small circle against my hairline.
“Three weeks,” he says quietly. “You’re gonna be ready.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You’re looking good out there,” Cruz says.
Dante’s hand lands on my shoulder. Squeezes once.
I exhale. The ache in my ribs, in my legs, in the space behind my breastbone that’s been throbbing all afternoon, eases a fraction. The throbbing in my shorts, though? That one only gets worse with their hands on me.
Across the gym, Jonah’s already on his phone, presumably texting Theo about cookies. Micah’s helping Ray sort the training mitts. Victor’s leaning in his office doorway, Dakota sitting on the desk inside, the two of them deep in some conversation.
It’s just the gym. Just another Tuesday. Just sweat and resin—the hum of the AC and the soft thump of someone hitting the heavy bag in the back.
Just my family.
I put my head down and unwrap my hands, trying to think about literally anything else.