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I run her through drills. She catches every cue and doesn’t argue once. The only sound between us is breath and impact and the small grunts she makes when she sinks weight into a strike.

Her ponytail brushes my forearm on a turn and I think about Cruz’s mouth on her.

Cruz eating her out.

Her sucking his dick.

The flat way he said it, the brag of it, like he wanted to plant a flag.

I push the pad up. “Again. Harder.”

She gives me harder.

By the time we break for water, the whole cage is humming with it. Whateveritis. Cruz is sitting with his back against the fence, beard wet at the edges from his bottle, watching all of us with that half-lidded look that means he’s enjoying himself too much.

Brady’s pulled his shirt off. The neck tattoo crawls down onto his collarbone, dark against the flush of his skin, and Dakota’s eyes find it and stay there for half a second too long. He sees her looking. Looks back. Looks away.

“Live rounds,” Cruz says. “Three. Light contact. Dakota, you’re with me first.”

“No,” Dakota says.

Cruz raises an eyebrow.

“You’re tired and you’re bleeding and you’ll go too hard because you’re pissed. Brady’s first.”

Brady chokes on his water.

“Get up,” she tells him. Soft. Not unkind. “I’ll go easy on you.”

“You willnot.“

She smiles. First proper smile I’ve seen on her since I walked in. It transforms her face into something I have to look away from.

They square. Touch gloves. Move.

Cruz drops down to the mat beside me, cross-legged like a kid at story time, and watches.

“You’re mad at me,” he murmurs.

“I’m not mad at you.”

“You’re mad at me.”

“Cruz.”

He bumps his shoulder against mine. Solid. Warm. “Talk to me.”

I keep my eyes on Dakota and Brady. They’re moving smooth, the way they were the first morning Brady sparred her, that unexpected, shared rhythm. Brady ducks a hook and she follows him with her whole body, a fraction off, and the way she resets her weight after… God. She’s beautiful when she fights. I’d be a liar to pretend otherwise.

“You set him off on purpose,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“Why?” I ask.

Cruz exhales. “Because he was going to combust quietly. Eat himself up about it for six months and snap on somebody who deserved it less. Better me. Better in the cage. Better with hands wrapped.”

“Yeah? Keep telling yourself that bullshit story. We both know better.”