Page 17 of Filled

She doesn’t capitalize on it. But she notices it. She knows.

The realization is faintly mortifying and also sort of thrilling in a way I can’t justify to myself, so I shove it into the same drawer asCruz’s fantasyanddark bedroom spank bankand get my hand back where it belongs.

We run three rounds. Real rounds. Whatever light contact was supposed to mean went out the window somewhere in round two when she caught a body kick I didn’t disguise well enough. She drove back into me leaving me making me sprawl on instinct. We ended up grappling in a way that wasn’t really sparring anymore as much as it became two people figuring each other out through sheer force and will.

She’s strong. Surprising on the ground, which means she wasn’t lying about being adaptable. When I try to control theclinch she doesn’t panic or scramble, shethinks, working my grip, finding the angles. I get dominant position twice but it costs me effort I didn’t plan for.

“Where did you train before?” I ask during the water break between rounds.

She rests her forearms on her knees, wrist wraps unraveling at the end. “Florida. Independent gym, good coaches, terrible management.” She says it like she’s reciting a fact, neutral, but something behind it is more bait and switch than neutral. She doesn’t want me looking any closer, so I don’t.

“Their loss.”

She glances up, and this time the look is different. Less sparring partner, more caught off-guard. Grateful, almost, for the simplicity of it. “Yeah.”

Eli crouches beside us, elbows on his knees, and the three of us end up in this low triangle of proximity. He smells like fresh sweat and whatever product he uses in his hair, and he looks at Dakota’s wrap coming loose with this expression I know—I’ve seen it a hundred times on a man’s face. He wants her.

His eyes linger too long on her face when she looks back at him, and his jaw does this slight thing, a tightening and release, and I watch the whole thing happen in under two seconds.

He’s absolutely gone for her.

Dakota holds his gaze for a beat, just long enough to be deliberate, then drops back to her water bottle with a composure that I find genuinely impressive.

Eli clears his throat.

“Round three.” He stands up, back to being Coach, no deviation on his face now. “Brady, I want you to let her set the pace. Don’t chase.”

“Sure.”

Round three, she sets the pace.

It’s different when she leads. She’s patient in a way that makes me impatient, which is probably the point. She draws me in with feints, reads my weight shifts, makes me feel like I’m making decisions when really she’s been four moves ahead since we started. I land more than I expect to because she’s not invincible, her defense has gaps on the right side she compensates for with footwork rather than blocking, but she lands more than I’d like to admit.

When Coach calls it, she rolls her shoulders and shakes her hands loose, not even fully winded.

“You’re going to be trouble,” I tell her.

She grins, full and unreserved, and it does the same thing to my chest it did the first time. Maybe worse. “Good trouble or bad trouble?”

I pick up my water bottle and pretend to think about it seriously. “Ask me again in a month.”

She laughs again, and Eli makes some notes on his clipboard, and the gym is starting to fill—the distant bang of the main door, voices, someone’s playlist bleeding through the locker room wall.

She fits here. That’s the thought I keep circling back to, rolling it around, looking at its underside. She fits here, and it isn’t just about the fighting. She fits in the particular chemistry of this place.

She fits in the specific frequency ofus.

Which is a thought I am absolutely not equipped to handle this early on a Wednesday morning with sore ribs and Cruz’s voice still rattling in my skull.

I collect my bag, drain the last of my water, say something normal to Dakota about seeing her at the afternoon session. She nods, restarting her cool-down like she’s been doing this routine here for years instead of hours.

Eli watches her.

I watch him watching her.

Then I walk out into the gray morning and stand in the parking lot for a solid thirty seconds, doing nothing except breathing cold air and acknowledging, quietly, to absolutely nobody, that I am in an enormous amount of trouble.

The worst part isn’t even the attraction. Attraction is simple; I know what to do with attraction.