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“Fisher.”

She finally gets the latch and yanks the door open.

“Hey.”

She freezes.

“Look at me.”

She doesn’t. She looks at the floor. Her chest is heaving.

“It’s fine. Yeah? You’re fine. Nothing changes.”

A laugh bubbles out of her. Slightly hysterical. “Nothingchanges?” Then she’s gone. Out the stall, across the locker room, the outer door slamming shut behind her.

I stand there. Naked. Still half-hard. Cum probably somewhere on my chin. The smell of her all over my face and my hands and the bench behind me.

I drag a palm down my beard and let out a long breath.

“Well.” I grin at the empty room. “That’s gonna be a problem.”

I don’t move to fix it. I never do.

I grab my towel off the floor and head back into the shower humming, because if I’m gonna have a problem it might as well be a hot one, and Dakota Fisher just became the best kind of problem I’ve had in years.

Coach is gonna lose his goddamn mind.

9

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 forgetabout 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.”