Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Cooper paced inside the front doors of the training facility, occasionally checking his watch as the minutes crawled by. By the time Nico sauntered through the door, it had been fifty-seven minutes of waiting. In that time, Cooper had more than enough time to do the math in his head.
“You’re an hour late and in that time, I have earned almost two thousand dollars.”
Nico peeled the earpods from his ear and tucked them into a case. “Got paid to do nothing. I don’t see how that’s a bad thing.”
“Because I’m not lazy and my time is far too valuable to wait around—”
“And yet you’re still standing there.” Nico chuckled. “How much money have you made since I walked in the door? Can you do that math in your head?”
Cooper wanted to discount the rookie’s bad attitude on generational differences, but they were only five years apart in age. There wasn’t a time in Cooper's young career he ever dared to utter disrespect to his coaches. The rookie was pushing him, and he decided to not take the bait.
He followed Nico down the hall, the overhead LEDs above activating one step at a time.
Something lurched in Cooper’s gut, a potent combination of feelings familiar and feelings strange. Walking familiar corridors, but without all the same faces. In there, it was just him and the rookie, but the ghosts of yesterday tore through his gut.
Nico pushed open the door to the locker room and did the unexpected—he held it open for Cooper. “See, I can be a nice guy. Helps with the ladies. Chivalry, you know?”
“Noted.”
Either the rookie somehow knew Cooper liked nothing more than being pushed, or he just enjoyed playing with fire. He wagered on the latter.
“White told me he was considering bringing in someone, but I didn’t realize it would be you.” Nico hung a duffel in his open-faced locker. “I thought you were retired.”
“I thought you were my biggest fan,” Cooper said, reminding Nico of his own words. He retrieved a tablet from his bag and tossed the bag into the empty stall beside him, the name Matteo Reyes etched into a gold plate. “I’d think you’d be a little happier to see me.”
“I am happy.” Nico forced a teeth-bearing grin and pointed to his mouth with both hands. Pearly white teeth, albeit slightly uneven and jagged. “See?” He dropped the act and tossed his cap into the stall. “I’m always happy to be here, and I just thought you should know that.”
“I stayed up all night reading a dossier on you. Watched enough interviews to make me tired of your voice already. You said in an interview you hoped you could have my kind of career, albeit in a place better than Ohio. I know everything there is to know about you.”
“I very seriously doubt that,” he scoffed as if it were a challenge and began untying his street shoes. “Where did I go to school?”
Cooper swiped through the tablet and settled on a page of demographics. “Orlando Heights High School. Florida State for a year, and then the coaches at Alabama saw something special in you, so they signed you there. And now you’re here, in my classroom.”
“This isn’t a classroom and I don’t think I need a teacher.”
“Everyone around you says otherwise and after watching tape of your first few games, I’m prone to agree. Not only do you need a teacher, you need an intervention.”
Nico sat on the bench and hooked his gaze upward. Dark brown eyes that bordered the thin line between being a fucking puppy dog and a demon possessed.
“Does it suck?” Nico asked quietly.
“Specify please.”
“Being downgraded from a quarterback on the verge of having the greatest career ever to… this.” Nico shrugged. “Whatever this is.”
“I’d smack you on the side of the head if I wasn’t worried one more concussion would cause permanent damage to what little common sense you have.”
“Was my lack of that in the dossier?”
“It’s just obvious.” Cooper sized up the rookie.
Dark, shaggy brown hair, bordering on black.
Sharp, angular jaw that probably drew as much female attention as it did the attention of men wanting to fight that smart mouth.
A black hoodie and red fleece sweatpants with white streaks stained into the fabric. “You have jizz on your sweatpants.”
“Most likely paint, or ice cream,” Nico groaned, hooked his hands into the front of his sweats, and tore them down his legs, exposing a tight pair of black boxer trunks. Thick, muscular thighs. Hairless legs. “Could be milk. Who knows..”
“White said you were sloppy,” Cooper said, taking in the sight of the younger quarterback for a little too long. “Is it your jizz or someone else’s?”
A ridiculous question, and still Cooper waited for entirely too long for an answer.
“It’s obviously mine.” Nico shook a pair of white shorts and slipped into them. “So what’s the game plan today? Going to throw some passes like father and son?”
“You haven’t cleared the concussion protocol, so we won’t be doing anything too strenuous. We are going to start with some light cardio and spend some quality time watching some footage of your many mistakes.”
“How is this supposed to make me a better quarterback?”
“The definition of insanity–”
“Is always doing the same thing expecting different results.” Nico tugged his hoodie over his head, the fabric catching on the polyester undershirt and dragging it upward to reveal a sculpted Adonis belt. “I didn’t completely zone out in school.”
“And yet in your first six games, you have been concussed twice. You’re lucky it wasn’t three times. You were saved only by a missed tackle from a team known for missing tackles.”
Nico lifted his shirt and caressed his bare stomach. “So what do you want me to do first, coach?”
Same shit. Different day.
Cooper Callahan stood beside Nico as he logged a moderate pace on the stationary bike.
“How do you spend your free time?” Cooper asked.
“I don’t have free time. I walk, sleep, and eat football.”
“Don’t give me the trained media response you’d give the rest of them.
Football is about so much more than the physical demands.
It’s about a brotherhood. It’s about the family you make away from the family you come from.
Before we settle into the rhythm of you hating me for pushing you and then eventually thanking me, I’d like to get to know the man I’m coaching. ”
“Working out. Watching sports. Manly stuff. You know, like knitting.”
“Be serious.”
Reading, but he wasn’t about to say that part out loud.
Jerking off, but he couldn’t say that part.
Sticking my nose, and other objects, where they don’t belong. Yeah, that part especially would stay right there in his fucking head, locked up with a deadbolt and a key. Maybe some chains, too.
“I get a lot of hot chicks.” It was a half-truth.
Nico had been with a few women, mostly in college.
None since. He was too busy doing football things to have time to chase women.
And the women who chased him? Again, time constraints.
Besides, ever since he found that spot in his no-no square…
Well things had been different, and it’s not like he could ask a woman to peg him, not without signing a hefty NDA agreement and a proper legal document would require a lawyer to write up such a document.
Would the lawyer then have to sign an NDA of his own?
The logistics made Nico’s head throb.
“Men who get a lot of hot chicks don’t typically need to convince others they get hot chicks,” Cooper said. “It’s okay, though. By the time I’m done with you, you’re going to be a chick magnet.”
“You obviously don’t know me, coach,” the last word especially came out laced with sarcasm.
“I know that you have a one-five record and nobody likes losers, especially not women.”
“Fuck off,” Nico scoffed.
Cooper ducked down and ripped the power cord from the wall. The mechanics of the bike halted instantly while the whirring winded down.
Nico turned to him with a flat stare.
“Don’t ever tell me to fuck off again,” Cooper said sternly, finally with the attitude of a real coach. “Not until you’ve earned it.”
Nico nodded in silence, bit his tongue so fucking hard he could taste iron.
But that mouth… It always won in the end.
“And how do I earn it?” Nico hunched over the front of the bike and dared Cooper to look him straight in the eyes. The coach took the bait, the both of them locked in through the silence. “By being a good boy?”
“By playing like a professional athlete instead of whatever the fuck it is you’re doing.” Cooper shrugged. “But being a good boy certainly wouldn’t hinder your case.”
It felt different when Nico was the one doing the innuendos.
What the fuck was Callahan doing?
Nico had his suspicions, but would need to wait for the right moment to test his hypothesis.
“Here’s my favorite part.” Cooper pointed to the TV at the front of the boardroom.
Nico sat across from the other man on the opposite side of the table, forced to watch mistake after mistake. Watched himself as he dropped his head against the defensive end for the Bengals.
The video paused, rewound, and Cooper laughed as he watched it again. “It’s like a car crash. I know I shouldn’t keep watching but I can’t look away.”
Nico swiveled in his seat. “I’m not the first quarterback to get a concussion and I won’t be the last.”
Cooper slid a red folder across the table.
“What is this?” Nico flipped it open to find multiple packets of papers stapled together. Too much reading and he still had a headache. He closed the folder and pushed it to the side.
“It’s a list of every concussion in the history of the league.
It’s true, you’re not the first player to get a concussion.
On average, the league records about two-hundred a year.
You are, however, the first quarterback to ever have two concussions in their first six games.
I’m guessing those aren’t the kind of records you dream of holding. ”
Nico leaned back in his chair, folding his hands behind the back of his head. “Guess it’s a good thing I have you here, then.”