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Cruz’s laugh vibrates along my whole spine.

“You were incredible,” Brady whispers, kissing my temple. “Watching you take us like that—angel, I’ll never be normal again.”

“None of us were normal to start with.” Dante stretches out along my other side.

Eli climbs in last, and even in this pile of tangled limbs he finds my face, cradles it, presses his forehead to mine.

“You okay in there? Really?”

I think about the girl on the Greyhound with a duffel bag that contained everything I owned. Then I think about tonight. About choosing this.

“Daddy,” I whisper, “I’ve never been more okay in my life.”

He kisses me, and around us three men settle closer. I fall asleep held in the center of everything I thought I would never have, before I even knew what it was.

37

DAKOTA

The heavy bag doesn’t know my body still remembers Wednesday night. Every time I pivot, my hips send up a small ache, a souvenir from Dante’s apartment, and I catch myself smiling into my combinations like an idiot. Four days since the dinner at Bellucci’s. Four days since we stood under a streetlight and talked about houses and dogs and forever like people who get to have those things. Four days since I took all four of my men at the same time.

Jab, cross, hook. Sweat runs down my spine and pools at the waistband of my shorts.

I feel loved. I feel safe.

The front door opens. I don’t look up at first—people come and go all day, fighters and trainers and the occasional journalist—but an old instinct lifts my chin anyway. The one that never sleeps. The one that scanned every room I entered from age fourteen on.

A man stands at the front desk talking to Marco. Khakis. Polo shirt. Gray-streaked hair combed neat, posture loose with the confidence of someone who has spent a lifetime being believed.

The floor tilts under me.

Gerald.

My hands stop. The bag swings back and clips my shoulder and I don’t feel it. The gym keeps moving around me—weights clanking, Cruz’s laugh rolling across the room, somebody’s timer beeping—and none of it reaches me. Sound funnels down to a thin whine. I’m fourteen again, standing in a kitchen in Florida, learning that the man my mother married wears two faces.

He’s gesturing now, brow furrowed, mouth shaping words that make Marco’s face soften from professional to sympathetic. Whatever story he’s selling, Marco is buying. Of course he is. Gerald has always been good at stories. Good at being the concerned one, the reasonable one, the wounded one. Good at making me the problem.

Marco picks up the desk phone.

Run.

The word screams through every muscle and none of them obey. The only exit is past the front desk. Past him. My legs won’t carry me toward that man because they remember what happens when you get too close.

Cruz notices first. He’s holding pads for one of the new guys across the floor, and his head turns like he felt my stillness. His expression drops. He says a word to the kid and starts toward me, pace easy, eyes anything but.

Eli comes out of the back hallway, answering whatever Marco said into the phone, and he passes close enough to the desk that Gerald extends a hand. They shake. Firm grip, warm smile, nothing to hide. Eli’s face stays polite and guarded, the face he gives strangers, and I want to scream across the gym that this isn’t a stranger, this is the reason

Cruz reaches me, grabbing my arm gently. “Hey. Sweetheart. What’s wrong?”

One word. That’s all I have. “Gerald.”

His whole body turns to stone. He knows the name. They all know the name. His hand tightens, not hurting, just anchoring,and he shifts his shoulders until his body blocks the sightline between me and the front desk. His free hand pulls out his phone and his thumb moves fast.

Across the gym, Brady checks his screen and his face drains white. Dante does the same by the water fountain. They both start moving—casual, unhurried, nothing to see here—but I read the coil in their shoulders.

Victor comes out of his office, crosses to the desk, shakes Gerald’s hand. Whatever Gerald tells him puts a complicated look on Victor’s face. Concern. Confusion. And under it, a thread of suspicion that gives me one flicker of hope. Victor is good at reading people. Maybe he’ll see it. Maybe someone will finally see it.

Then Victor gestures toward his office. Gerald nods and follows. Eli trails them both, jaw tight.