Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
COOPER
What time are you coming?
STASSI
Trying to get a red eye out, but LAX is jammed up right now.
STASSI
Might not make it there till the morning.
COOPER
Please hurry.
STASSI
What is going on???
STASSI
Coop!
STASSI
Answer the damn phone!!
COOPER
Not in the mood to talk.
Cooper set the phone down beside a fresh glass of red wine on the kitchen island.
Flashes of lightning painted the kitchen in quick bursts of somber blue, only to leave Cooper standing alone in the dark again. The wind and the rain howled outside, scratching at the windows and the roof.
His phone lit up again—another missed call from Nico Fallon. How many had that been at that point? Fifteen? Twenty? Cooper lost track a while ago. Everyone was calling: Nico, Tommy, Coach White, Mother, Stassi, Matteo, Razer. And he didn’t answer a single call.
Instead, he stood in the kitchen of the house he, Stassi, and Luke had built—a real-world cage brought to life right before it all came to a screeching halt.
The memories, and the echoes, of the accident screamed a little louder whenever it’d rain.
And when it’d storm like it did that night, like it did the night everything spun out of control, the memories deafened.
Screaming metal. Crunching glass. A hollow ringing in his ear not unlike his first concussion back in college.
A knock on the door? Unexpected.
Cooper left his phone vibrating on the kitchen island and made his way down the open hall leading to the grand foyer. When he ripped the front door open, a torrent of wind and side-swept rain tunneled inside, but not as fast as Nico Fallon did.
Cooper slammed the door shut, slicing the sound of the storm outside in half. “You can’t be here, Rook.”
Fallon’s white tee shirt clung to his chest as he spun in a quick circle. “I’ve been calling you all night.”
“And so you thought that I must have lost my phone or something, so you somehow found my address, showed up to my house, and thought whatever is on your mind is so important that you can just waltz right in through my front door.”
Nico shook the water from his hair like a wet puppy. And just like a puppy, he had the gall to do it inside. And those eyes, damn those fucking eyes… They tore right on through Cooper. “They’re fucking trading me.”
This is exactly why Cooper was ignoring his phone. He couldn’t bear to look the rookie in the eye, not when he was like this. “That’s the life of a pro. We’re commodities, and we are always expendable.”
Cooper rushed past where Nico stood and made a sharp turn into the kitchen to collect his glass of wine, needing it now more than ever. He took the glass into his hand but hesitated in drinking it.
He shouldn’t indulge.
Not when he was like this.
Not when he was so close to breaking.
He let out an exasperated sigh when he noticed Nico had followed him into the kitchen, but what the fuck did he expect.
“I see you want a house tour or something. I’d offer you a glass of wine but I know you don’t drink and drive, and since you’ll be leaving in a minute, maybe a glass of water instead? ”
“Did you know?”
“What?” Cooper asked lowly, but he heard exactly what the rookie had said. He just needed time to figure out how open and honest he was willing to be.
Nico stood firm in a puddle of water that dripped from his soaked tee and sweatpants. “Did you know they were sending me to Hollywood?”
This lie didn’t feel like any other. Cooper dug into the side of his head, scratching at the shortest of hairs. “I found out at the same time as you.”
“Bullshit,” Nico spat.
And he was right.
Cooper rested his arms on the island and lowered his head into his hands. “You want to be honest?”
Nico scowled. “I think honesty is generally a great policy, yes.”
“Fine.” Cooper clapped his hands together.
“Time for honesty. You need to be serious about this. If you stayed with the Cobras, you’d just be sitting on the bench waiting for me to go down.
The second you went down and I came out of retirement, it was a done deal that you were going somewhere else.
The writing was all over the goddamn walls and it’s not my fault you were too blind to see it. ”
“Fuck you, Callahan,” Nico said softly. The words were venomous but his tone was anything but. He slid his wet ass onto a stool on the opposite side of the island and reached for the glass of wine. “You’re a real piece of shit sometimes, you know that?”
Cooper nodded. “Sometimes.”
Nico swirled the wine glass in his hand, watching the walls of red wine crash against the sides. He gave it a polite sniff before taking the smallest of sips. He grimaced as he set the glass back down. “Tastes like shit.”
“It’s a little more refined.” Cooper grabbed the glass and took a long sip. “You’ll appreciate it when you’re older.”
Nico looked away, his gaze tearing to the oversized window over the kitchen sink where the storm continued to rage outside. “I don’t want to go.” He looked back to Cooper. “I don’t have to go.”
Cooper didn’t want him to go, either. Not really.
But there was only one spot on the roster for a star quarterback.
Anything more would be a waste. It was Cooper or it was Nico, and in a dog-eat-dog world where Cooper was accustomed to always winning, he couldn’t even find the joy in beating the rookie.
And there were rules for these sorts of things. “The Hollywood Knights will fine you every day you don’t show up. You hold out long enough and you won’t have anything left. There’s a difference between being stubborn and being stupid.”
“Stupid…” Nico scoffed with a shake of his head, but his eyes never left Cooper’s. “And what about this?”
“This?” Cooper asked with a raised brow, but deep down, he knew exactly what the rookie was saying.
Nico’s throat tightened. “What If I never see you again?”
Cooper nodded. “I’ll see you on the field.”
It was the coldest of goodbyes, but what the fuck was the alternative?
Whatever the two of them had? It was over.
Coach and player was one thing. Two quarterbacks on the same team?
Maybe things could have been different, but they were going to be on opposite ends of the country, on rival teams nonetheless. It was done.
Cooper stood up and finished the glass of wine, wiped his lips, and gestured towards the door. “I don’t think it’s a good idea if you stay much longer.”
Nico rotated off the stool, his back turned to Cooper.
He made it about three steps towards the foyer before he turned back around with a defiant smirk on his face. “Go fuck yourself, Callahan.”
“Fuck you too, Rook.”
“Piece of shit,” Nico groaned under his breath as he got to stepping again, but with a sudden lapse in thunder, Callahan heard every word.
And he knew the words were earned.
Someday, Nico would figure it all out. That this was the way it was always going to go from the second he signed on to coach him.
The deal was to coach the rookie to win, to make him bankable enough to trade in the event Cooper ever decided to come back.
A dirty deal done in the backrooms of The Citadel.
Nico’s injury just fast-tracked things by a little over a year.
“No, seriously,” Nico said, coming to a stop directly in front of the grand staircase that led to the second floor. “Fuckkkk you.”
Cooper nodded patiently. “Anything else you want to get out?”
“Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck—”
Cooper closed the gap between them. “Say it.”
“Fuck you.” Nico’s breath danced on the edge of Cooper’s lips.
Cooper shook his head and punched the inside of his mouth with his tongue. He stepped towards Nico and the rookie took a step back. They did this little tango until Nico’s back was pressed against the wall just beside the wrought-iron railing. “Not what I’m looking for.”
“Me,” Nico whispered.
“Getting on the right track.”
“Fuck me, that’s what you want me to say?”
“One last time,” Cooper whispered in Nico’s ear.
“Please,” Nico begged.
“Get upstairs,” Cooper growled, but he couldn’t wait for the other man to run on his own accord. He picked Nico up in his arms, holding him by the wet fabric cinched to his ass, and began a slow march up the stairs.
Nico threw his arms around the back of Cooper’s head and when Nico bowed his head to kiss him, Cooper didn’t rebuff him. Not this time. Not this final time.
Cooper’s no-kissing rule went out the window, but tonight the playbook was torn to shreds, the pages littered about the marble stairway.
Cooper slipped, almost dropping Nico. Almost tumbling to his death. He lowered the other man to his own feet and the two of them raced up the stairs, hand-in-hand. They passed large, framed pieces of art mounted to the walls.
And damn those walls, if only they could talk.
If only they could sing the song written all over Cooper’s face, the words this irritating rookie was too oblivious to read. These walls Cooper wore like a heavy coat weren’t built to keep boys like Nico out. They were built to keep people like Cooper in.
Every step climbed was another inch towards reaching a precipice Cooper knew they couldn’t come back from. The higher they climbed, the lower the walls crumbled until Cooper scooped Nico back up into his arms and carried him down the hall.
The rookie was in his world now, and there was no turning back.
The cage got a little bigger and Cooper understood that was never a good thing. When day would eventually break over the long night, the harsh light of day would make them all pay. Cooper knew the price and he carried Nico into his bedroom anyway, tossing him onto the bed atop white satin sheets.
It took no time for Cooper to rip his black shirt over his head, rip the belt from his trousers, and step out of them. He climbed on top of Nico, and went straight for the mouth. Kissing the younger man. Tasting him as he’d never tasted him before, as he’d never let himself before.