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“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.”

7

ELI

Her scent is all over the gym this morning; sweet citrus from her shampoo probably. I caught it the second she walked in, and I’ve been trying not to notice ever since. You’d think after six weeks I would be less affected by her.

Brady’s twenty minutes late. I check my phone again.

Stomach’s fucked, Coach. Sorry.

Convenient.

“He’s not coming.” Dakota’s voice cuts through my staring contest with the heavy bag. She’s already wrapped, already loose, already watching me with those stunning hazel eyes that make my throat go dry. “Is he?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“So.” She rolls her shoulders, blonde hair caught up in a knot at the back of her head, loose strands sticking to her neck. “What are we doing?”

What are we doing? Christ.

“Clinch work. Pummeling drills, dirty boxing from the over-under.”

She nods, all business, and walks past me toward the center of the mats. I make myself look at the clock. The bag. The ceiling. Anything but the line of her spine under the thin black sports bra, the dip at her lower back where her shorts ride low.

I’m forty years old. I’ve coached world champions. I’ve coached women who looked like her, fought like her. I have never once in fifteen years had to talk myself out of a hard-on before warm-ups.

Today’s the fourth time this week.

“Coach?”

“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

I step onto the mats and the room shrinks. That’s what she does to a space, makes it smaller. Makes everything else dim down until she’s the only thing the light’s hitting.

“Hands here.” I show her the position, my own hands rising. “Over-under. You’re going to drill the swim, then we’ll add the bump and the pummel. Slow first. Build to fast.”

“Got it.”

She moves in.

I forget how to breathe properly the second her chest presses against mine.