Page 59 of Filled

“Yes.”

“Brady?”

“Not yet.”

Not yet.Two words and my whole spine lights up.

“Are you angry?” she asks.

“No.” It comes out rough. “That’s the problem.”

She stands. Slow, wincing, and I have to fist my hands at my sides to keep from reaching for her. Her bare feet on the mat. The smell of her shampoo under the sweat. She steps into my space and she’s so much smaller like this, head tilted back to look at me, and I forget how to breathe.

“You’ve been toeing that line since I arrived, Coach.”

“Don’t.”

“Watching them touch me. Watching me watch them. Pretending you don’t want it too.”

“Dakota.”

“I see how you look at Cruz.” Her voice drops. “I see how your jaw clinches when Dante leans into him. When Brady laughs too loud. You think I don’t notice? I notice everything about you.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know exactly what I’m talking about.” Her hand lifts. Settles flat against the center of my chest. My heart hammers against her palm like it wants out. “You want all of us. It’s okay if you don’t know what to do with that. I didn’t either.”

“I’ve never—” My throat closes. “Forty years old. I’ve never thought I was into men?—”

“And now it seems like you are and you don’t know what to do with that.”

“Yes.”

The word breaks me. I haven’t said it out loud. Haven’t even said it inside my own head clean like that, justyes, no qualifier, no excuse, no four years of careful walls. Just yes.

Her hand slides up to the side of my neck. Her thumb finds my pulse.

“We’ll figure it out,” she whispers. “Together. All of us.”

The dam finally breaks and I kiss her.

It’s not a conscious decision, it’s instinctive. My mouth finds hers and the split in her lip opens again, the coppery tang of her blood blooms on my tongue and I don’t stop. I cradle the back of her head in my palm, careful of the bruises, and kiss her like a starving man, because that is exactly what I have been since the day she walked through the doors.

She makes a sound against my mouth—a soft surrender—and my whole body answers it.

I pull back before I lose what’s left of my faculties. My forehead presses against hers. Her breath comes in the same quick succession as mine.

“It’s not jealousy that makes me ask,” I say. The words come out scraped raw. “I want to be part of it. With them. With you. I don’t know how, I don’t know what that would look like. Only that I can’t stand on the outside looking in anymore.”

“Then don’t,” she says.

“Princess—”

“Daddy.”

Everything in me goes still. One word tilts my entire world on its axis.

She says it again, softer, watching my face for any sign of my truth. “Daddy. I know what I’m asking for.”