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Brady says the thing none of us will. “Maybe we end it. Not just Eli stepping back. The five of us. We go back to being teammates and nothing else. We take away the target by becoming what we should be.”

The silence after is the worst sound I’ve ever heard. I feel it in my own chest, the ghost of the man I was before them. Alone. Angry. Drinking too much and swinging at strangers and cruising toward a wall I’d made peace with hitting.

“I can’t.” My voice splinters. “I burned down every good thing I ever touched before this. I finally found the thing that makes me want to be better, and I’m not handing it over because some coward with a zoom lens decided to play God.”

Eli looks at me, and what’s in his eyes breaks whatever was still whole in my chest. “Sometimes love isn’t enough, Cruz.” Quiet. Defeated. “Sometimes the world wins.”

Brady storms out first, shoulders shaking, and I can’t tell if it’s rage or tears; either way, it doesn’t matter, we’re all shattered. Dante follows soon after, his hand heavy on my shoulder as he passes, his eyes saying everything his mouth can’t. Eli stays longest, standing in my living room like he’s memorizing it. Before he goes, he kneels in front of Dakota and takes her hands.

“Whatever happens, princess. This was real.”

She doesn’t answer, just stares at the wall like she’s already left through a door the rest of us can’t see.

Then it’s the two of us and the wreckage.

I don’t know how long we sit. Long enough for the light to change, for the shadows to crawl across my walls, for the building to go quiet around us. I keep waiting for her to move. She doesn’t. So I sit with her while the weight of tomorrow presses down like a hand on the back of my neck.

Then someone knocks.

Brady stands in my hallway with tear tracks shining on his face and his hands trembling at his sides.

“I got halfway home.” His breath hitches. “Had to pull over cause I couldn’t see the road. And all I could think was—I can’t be alone tonight, Cruz. I can’t sit in my apartment and wait for it to end by myself. I can’t.”

I pull him in and he collapses against me, his whole body shaking, and I hold him.

Dante shows up ten minutes later. No explanation. Doesn’t need one. He walks in, sees Brady in my arms and Dakota curled on the couch, and he settles on the couch next to her.

And then Eli. Eli, who was supposed to go home and draft a resignation. Eli, standing in my doorway with his composure in ruins, looking at the four of us like a man who tried to walk away and found his heart had other plans.

“I sat in my truck for twenty minutes.” His voice barely holds. “Couldn’t turn the key. Because driving away means it’s over, and I’m not ready. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.”

Dakota moves. Finally. She lifts her head from wherever she’s been hiding inside herself, and when she sees all four of us gathered in my apartment, drawn back like iron filings to a magnet.

It starts like a spark hitting dry grass.

One second we’re standing in my living room drowning in everything we’re about to lose. The next, Brady has Dakota’s face in his hands and he’s kissing her hard, desperate and graceless, and she’s kissing him back with a sound like a sob breaking loose. Dante presses against my back, his mouth finding my neck, his hands sliding up under my shirt, and Eli watches us all.

“We shouldn’t,” Eli says.

“We should,” Dakota answers against Brady’s mouth. “If tomorrow takes it, then tonight we take everything.”

We shed clothes down the hallway. My shirt hits the floor by the couch. Dakota’s leggings land on the doorframe. Brady’s jeans, Dante’s belt, Eli’s watch clattering on the dresser—a trail of breadcrumbs marking the path of our beautiful destruction. By the time we hit my bed, we’re bare and reaching for each other with hands that shake from so much more than want.

This isn’t the tender thing from the night after Bellucci’s. This is teeth and salt and tear-streaked skin, grief and hunger braided so tight I can’t find the seam. Brady ends up underneath Dante, both of them crying while they move together, Dante whispering against his ear,

“Good boy, that’s it. I’ve got you.”

Dakota climbs into Eli’s lap and wraps her legs around him and buries her face in his neck while he rocks into her with a rhythm that’s more prayer than sex.

I watch them and my chest cracks wide open, and the want that rises up out of the crack isn’t like anything I’ve felt before.

“Stop.” My voice comes out torn. Everyone stills. Four faces turn toward me in the low light. “I need—” I have to stop and breathe. “I need all of you. At once. Not taking turns, not passing me around. All of you inside me at the same time, while I’m inside our girl.” My eyes find Dakota’s. “I want to be so full of this family that there’s no room left for fear. I want to feel you fordays. I want proof in my body that this was real, no matter what they take from us tomorrow.”

Silence. Then Dante, hoarse. “Cruz. Three of us. That’s—do you understand what you’re asking?”

“I’ve never understood anything better in my life.”

Dakota crosses the bed to me. Her eyes are wet and blazing and she understands, I can see it, she understands better than any of them. She pushes me down onto my back, throws one leg over my hips, and sinks onto my cock in a single slow slide that punches the air out of both of us. The sound she makes is half moan, half sob.