21. Dakota #2
“Look.” Cruz deliberately rolls his shoulder forward, displays the marks like a trophy. “These? Best thing that’s happened to me all year. I’m wearing these to the gym Monday and I’m gonna grin every time someone looks at me funny.”
“But I said—”
“You said exactly what I wanted to hear.” Cruz’s mouth tilts. “Hottest fucking mouth I’ve ever heard, Williams. Christ. I’m gonna think about that for weeks.”
Brady’s shoulders are shaking. I move in close, sit on my heels beside him, put my hand on his back. Feel the tremor running through him.
“He’s right.” I keep my voice low. “Brady. I’ve been on the other end of that mouth. I know what it does. Cruz wanted it. He was begging for it. That’s not what Gerald did to me. That’s something completely different.”
He turns his head toward me. His eyes are wet.
“It’s play.” I touch his jaw. “It’s words people choose together. Cruz was choosing it. Loud.”
“Loud,” Cruz confirms.
Behind me, Eli moves. He sits up, swings his legs over the edge of the bed, and comes around to Brady’s other side. Settles. His hand finds the back of Brady’s neck and squeezes once.
“Williams.”
Brady’s whole body responds to that voice. I see it happen. The way his spine straightens before his brain catches up.
“Yes, Coach.”
“Look at me.”
Brady meets his eyes.
Eli’s voice goes low, steady, absolute. “What I just watched was you being yourself. The roughness, the words out of your mouth. There’s nothing wrong with what you did. There’s nothing wrong with what you said. There is nothing wrong with who you are.”
Brady’s face crumples.
“That’s an order, Williams. You don’t get to hate yourself for what just happened. You don’t get to take that away from Cruz, either. He earned every mark. Look at him grinning.”
Cruz, on cue, grins wider.
“I,” Brady’s voice breaks. “I was so scared I’d be like him.”
“Like who, baby?” I ask, even though I think I know.
“My dad.”
The room goes quiet in a different way.
Brady’s hands come up to scrub at his face. He doesn’t crumple so much as fold into himself, and Cruz immediately gathers him in, pulls him against his chest, marks and all.
“He caught me,” Brady says into Cruz’s collarbone. The words come out muffled. “When I was thirteen. He caught me in the bathroom just touching myself. Just hands. And he… ”
He stops. Breathes.
“He beat the shit out of me.” His voice flattens. “Told me I was disgusting. Demons. He said demons. At church the next Sunday my youth pastor preached on it. I knew it was for me. Everyone knew it was for me.”
Dante has shifted closer now, sitting cross-legged on Brady’s other side. His hand finds Brady’s shoulder. Says nothing. Just exists in the space to comfort.
“And the worst part is I wanted it more after.” Brady’s voice cracks. “Not less. More. All the time. I was thirteen and I wanted everything. Constantly. Girls. Boys. And I knew, I just knew, if I let any of it out it’d be too much. Too rough. Too loud.”
His shoulders shake.
“I thought if I ever let go, I’d be him.”
“You’re not him.” Eli’s voice is steel. “You hear me, Williams? You are not your father, and you didn’t deserve that. Any of it.”
“What your father did is reprehensible. You were a child.” I move closer, fit myself against his back, wrap my arms around his ribs from behind. “Cruz asked. Cruz begged. You listened. Every step. Your dad didn’t listen, didn’t care to. He humiliated and shamed you.”
“And Christ, that mouth,” Cruz mutters into Brady’s hair. “I’m gonna need that on a regular schedule. Sorry to break it to you.”
Brady makes a sound that’s half-laugh, half-sob.
Dante squeezes his shoulder. “We’ve all been performing, man.
All of us. Cruz performs the funny frathole, you know, half frat boy and half asshole.
Coach performed straight all his life. Dakota performed fine when she was bleeding.
I’ve been performing fine my whole life.
Tonight you stopped performing. That’s not bad. That’s the whole point.”
Brady’s breathing starts to even out. Slowly. Cruz keeps stroking his hair. I keep my arms locked around him. Eli’s hand stays on his neck.
After a long minute, Brady turns his face out of Cruz’s chest. His eyes are red but the wildness has drained from them. What’s left is exhausted and stunned and something I haven’t seen on his face before.
Peace, maybe. The first sliver of it.
He looks at the marks on Cruz’s shoulder. Reaches out, slow, and touches one with the pad of his finger.
“I really did this.”
“You really did,” Cruz says, smug.
“And you really liked it.” His eyes flick to Cruz’s for confirmation though, searching for a lie that won’t come.
“I really liked it.”
Brady exhales. Long. Like he’s been holding his breath for twenty-five years.
“Okay,” he says, mostly to himself. “Okay.”
“Okay,” I echo against his back.
His hand finds mine where it’s wrapped around his stomach. Threads our fingers together. Squeezes.
“I want… ” He stops. Starts again, steadier. “I want to mark all of you. Eventually. If—”
“Yes,” Cruz says immediately.
“Christ, yes,” Dante says.
Eli’s hand on Brady’s neck goes still. I feel him take a breath. Then he says, carefully, more quietly than before, “Yes.”
I tilt my head back to look at him. He’s watching Brady’s profile. There’s something new in his face. An understanding that wasn’t there an hour ago.
I file it away with the rest.
Tomorrow, I think. Tomorrow we talk about what Eli saw in Brady tonight. Tomorrow we figure out what it means that Daddy’s eyes went dark when Brady’s mouth got dirty.
Not tonight.
Tonight, Brady needs to be held.
Cruz is already shifting back against the pillows, dragging Brady with him. Dante grabs the duvet from where it’s twisted at the foot of the bed and hauls it up over everyone. Eli reaches across me to switch off the lamp.
The room goes dim. Just the strip of light under the bathroom door remains.
We rearrange without discussion. Brady ends up against Cruz’s chest, exactly where Cruz wants him, Cruz’s arms locked around him like he’s daring anyone to try and take him.
I fit myself against Brady’s back, my arm draped across his ribs to Cruz’s hip, anchoring them both.
Eli curls behind me, his chest to my spine, his arm heavy across my waist. Dante settles on the outside, one hand on Cruz’s shoulder, finishing the circuit.
Five bodies. One bed. The breathing in the room slowly syncing up.
“Hey,” Cruz murmurs after a while. His voice is half-asleep already. “Williams.”
“Yeah.”
“For the record. That filthy fucking mouth of yours? Need that again. Soon.”
“Cruz.”
“I’m serious. The degrading shit. All of it. Hottest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Cruz, oh my god.”
Dante huffs a laugh into the dark. “He’s not wrong. That was... intense.”
Eli’s chest shakes once against my back. “Shocking. But intense.”
Brady’s hand finds Cruz’s on his stomach. Holds it.
“Goodnight, idiots,” he says.
I close my eyes.
Eli’s mouth presses, soft, to the slope of my shoulder. His arm tightens once around my waist. I feel him exhale against my skin, slow and long, like he’s letting go of something he should have never carried in one breath.
I fall asleep with all four of them around me.