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“The baby wants what the baby wants,” I reply.

“The baby is the size of a bell pepper. You’re the one eating us out of house and home, angel.” Brady is stretched out on the floor beside the couch, one hand resting on the curve of my belly. Eighteen weeks. Too early for kicks, but he keeps his palm there anyway, patient as a man waiting for a phone call he knows is coming.

“Say that again and I’ll make you drive back out for more orange juice.”

“I’d do it.” He tips his head back to look at me, upside down, blue eyes soft. “You know I’d do it.”

He would. He drives twenty minutes out of his way twice a week for the one brand that doesn’t turn my stomach, and he’s never once complained. None of them have. Not about the 2:00 AM pickle runs, not about the crying over commercials with dogs in them, not about the week I couldn’t stand the smell ofcoffee and banned it from the house entirely. Eli, a man who mainlines black coffee like it’s a food group, drank cold brew in his truck in the driveway for seven days and never said a word.

Our house. Five bedrooms, a fenced yard, a kitchen big enough that four large men can cook in it without throwing elbows. A huge master suite with a family bed that comfortably fits all five of us. We signed the papers fourteen months ago, all five names on the deed because Dante found a lawyer who specializes in exactly this kind of family and Eli read every line of every document twice.

Eli’s thumb traces slow circles on my ankle. He’s got a pregnancy book open on the armrest, reading glasses low on his nose, and there’s a highlighter tucked behind his ear like he’s breaking down fight film.

“It says here the baby can hear us now,” Eli says. “Recognizes voices.”

“Then the baby already knows Cruz never shuts up,” Dante says.

“Heard that!” Cruz’s voice booms from the kitchen, followed by his laugh. “Baby loves my voice. Baby kicks for me first, I’m calling it now.”

“You can’t call dibs on the first kick,” Brady says.

“Just did,” he shoots back.

The pregnancy wasn’t planned. Not exactly. We’d circled the idea for a year, careful conversations that started hypothetical and got less hypothetical every time. Then my period was late, and the test was positive, and I sat on the bathroom floor and cried while four men crowded into a doorway built for one, their faces running the full spectrum from terrified to lit up like Christmas.

We don’t know whose baby it is. We decided not to find out, a conversation that lasted until three in the morning with all of us tangled in the bed that eats up most of the master bedroom.

“Four fathers,” Dante had said that night. “Genetics is just paperwork.”

Cruz appears in the doorway now, dish towel over his shoulder, flour on his forearm for reasons I don’t want to investigate. “Lunch is up. The baby needs to eat.”

“The baby or me?” I ask.

“Same difference, sweetheart. Come on.”

Getting off the couch is a production. Eli helps me sit up. Dante steadies my elbow when I stand. Brady scrambles to his feet and walks beside me to the kitchen like I might tip over on flat carpet. I’m not even that big yet. I could still put any of them on the mat, and they know it, but they hover anyway.

Sometimes it makes me want to scream.

Mostly it makes my chest ache in a good way.

Cruz loads my plate before I can reach for the serving spoon, and I don’t fight him on it because the rice smells like heaven and I’m past the point of pride.

“Victor called this morning,” Eli says. “He wants to know if you’ve thought about the coaching offer.”

I bite my lip. “I’ve thought about it.”

“And?”

I chew, taking my time. Six months since I hung up my gloves, and the question still lands in a tender spot. Retiring was easier than I expected and harder than I let on. The fire that carried me through twelve amateur fights and a professional career didn’t go out. It changed shape. Banked itself into something that wants to build instead of break.

“Tell him yes,” I say. “After the baby. Women’s program, the way we talked about. Girls who show up with nothing but a duffel bag and a bad story.”

Dante reaches over and squeezes my hand.

“He’s going to lose his mind,” Cruz says. “He’s been trying to get you on staff for a year.”

“He’s been trying to get me on staff since the day I walked in and dropped you in front of everybody,” I reply.