“Records.”
His thumb resumes its movement on my hip, grounding us both. “Marco’s been more of a brother to me than my actual sister. Says something.”
“It says you built your own family when the one you were born into couldn’t hold you.” I press my palm flat against his chest. “It says a lot.”
“Yeah.” His voice carries a weight I don’t quite understand yet. “Yeah, it does.”
Neither of us says anything for a while. His thumb keeps moving in those same absent patterns. Outside the window, traffic noise is starting up—the city deciding it’s morning, demanding we rejoin the world. I don’t want to move. I don’t think he does either.
There’s something peaceful about this moment—both of us sharing the parts of our pasts that shaped us, the families we’ve lost or left behind. It feels like we’re building something new between us, something that doesn’t require the approval or understanding of people who were never going to give it anyway.
Eventually, I clear my throat against his chest, lightening the mood before it gets too heavy. “Just so you know, my coffee maker is top of the line. Criminal to let it go unused.”
“Always with the sales pitch.” Victor shakes his head, but his eyes are smiling—that soft expression that’s become more frequent lately, the one that makes my chest ache in the best way. “Fine. But after coffee, I’m bending you over the nearest surface."
“Promises, promises,” I tease, even as heat pools in my belly at the rough promise in his voice.
We’re still us—still trading barbs and challenges, still finding that edge between tenderness and hunger. But something fundamental has shifted. The aggression hasn’t disappeared; it’s just made room for something else. Something I’m not ready to name yet.
23
VICTOR
Three months have passed since the Hunt, and I still can’t believe where I’ve ended up. Tonight, I’m at Theo’s place again, watching him sleep beside me, his breathing steady in the darkness. It’s become our rhythm—up to four nights a week spent like this—and I’m caught between finding comfort in it and fearing what it means.
He sleeps on his back, one arm flung above his head, his lashes resting against his cheek so heavy they look like someone drew them on. The first time I see him without his armor up—without the smirk at his mouth—I almost can’t reconcile it with the man who took me apart in Julian’s living room. He looks too soft to be the same person. He isn’t. They’re both him. I’m only just learning that.
No one knows. Not the guys at my fight club, not my business partners, not even Marco. During the day, I’m still Victor Kaine, the hard-ass who built an empire with his fists. But nights belong to this—to us.
That’s the version I tell myself.
The version Marco hands me at the start of every Monday meeting reads differently. Hartwell from Southwest Financial signed with Dawson in the third week. Lin let his BioMaxcontract lapse two months ago and didn’t reply when I asked what we’d done wrong. Hamilton’s Sporting Goods is renegotiating scope—Marco’s word for it. Three of my mid-tier fighters took offers that Dawson laid on their table since he came to town. We’ve replaced two. The third, we’ll lose.
The blog pieces have stopped naming names, but they don’t need to anymore. Old guard. Slow to adapt. Distracted, even, some of them. That last one was a guess on the writer’s part.
A guess that landed.
I tell Marco we’ll claw it back. I tell him there’s no plan that doesn’t account for it. Then I drive to Theo’s after the gym closes, and from the moment his door shuts behind me, none of it exists.
We’ve established a rotation without ever discussing it. Sometimes Theo comes to my apartment, slipping in after midnight, leaving before dawn. Other nights, like tonight, I find myself at his place in the arts district, surrounded by his records and the smell of sandalwood. And when we’re both too impatient, there’s his private room at Eclipse, soundproofed and secure once the club empties out.
I’ve memorized the lines of his body now, the way his breath catches when I touch him just right, the sound he makes when he’s close. I know which marks he likes me to leave and where. I know how he takes his coffee and which side of the bed he prefers.
What I don’t know is what the fuck I’m doing.
During those first few weeks after the Hunt, I told myself it was just physical—some primal need I could eventually satisfy and move past. Yet here I am, three months later, my fingers tracing the tattoo on his shoulder in the dark, feeling something dangerously close to contentment.
There’s a precariousness to it all. Our separate worlds exist just outside these doors—worlds that would collapse if theycollided. So we exist in this liminal space we’ve created, a secret universe governed by its own rules, suspended in the hours between dusk and dawn.
It’s not just the sex anymore.
That’s the thought that keeps me up at night, watching Theo’s chest rise and fall beside me. Don’t get me wrong—what we do with our bodies is unlike anything I’ve experienced. We’ve mapped every inch of each other, learned every sensitive spot, every trigger that makes the other gasp or beg or surrender. Our bodies speak a language that needs no translation.
But it’s what happens after—those quiet moments when we’re spent and vulnerable—that’s becoming the most dangerous part of all this.
Last night, lying in the tangle of his sheets, I found myself telling Theo about the day my knee gave out during the championship fight. How I felt the pop, knew instantly my career was over even as I tried to stand. I told him about the months of depression that followed, the dark place I sank into before the idea for the gym surfaced.
I told him about Marco—how Marco had been at the hospital that night, three in the morning in a chair beside the bed, saying nothing because there was nothing to say. How he came back the next day. And the day after.
