“Sometimes I get the urge, but it’s rare and our arrangement works perfectly.”
“So I’m supposed to believe you’re not coming here to scare me away from Coop because you’re jealous?”
“We’re not in competition with each other, Nico. Cooper and my brother were deeply in love and that perfect little life the three of us had is gone. You’re in competition with a past he’s never going to let go of.”
“You think I want that same life?”
“Don’t you?”
“I don’t know.” Nico shook his head, knowing the admission should have been a lie, but there was a deep-seated truth lying in the pinched recesses of his gut. He didn’t know who he was or what he wanted. He knew who he wanted, but supposed that wasn’t quite the same thing. “Right now, any kind of future isn’t something I consider day-to-day. I mean, what’s the point?”
“The point is that you have to want a life outside of this.”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”
“And what if you never reach that bridge?” Stassi moved a piece on the board. “Or worse, what if Cooper isstanding on the other side of that bridge and he burns it to the ground when you’re walking across it?”
“I suppose I don’t know.”
“Checkmate.”
Nico glanced at the board and searched for options, but Stassi was right. There was no safe place for his king to go. Stassi knocked Nico’s king over with her queen, which wasn’t exactly how the game went. The king was never supposed to be moved from the board, but he assumed she did so for dramatic effect.
She finished her beer as she stood up. “I have a red-eye to catch out of LAX.”
“Why did you really come here, Stassi?”
She stood for a moment, lost in contemplation. “Cooper is falling in love with you and I wanted to make sure you understood the gravity of that.” She left Nico on the pool deck and made her way inside. She turned back around one last time. “You only have one chance with him. If you break something, it’ll stay broken. So be careful with it. Be careful with him.”
Careful? Cooper was the one always breaking things, not the other way around. Nico didn’t know if Cooper had filled Stassi’s ear with false narratives or if Cooper really was that fragile. Unfortunately, Nico had a game the next day and didn’t have the mental capacity to delve too deep into the matter.
He finished his drink alone by the pool.
Chapter Twenty-Six
new years eve 2025 - new york city
Nico and Coopershowed up in separate cars, hiding behind their identities for the night, and found each other just inside by the coat check. The two had agreed to collaborate on a theme. Cooper was to be the devil and Nico the angel. Only one of the two followed through on the premise, but when Cooper looked that fucking good, it didn’t really matter.
Cooper’s mask resembled a fox with ridged metal painted a gunpowder grey. He wore a fur scarf over his bare chest with a pair of dark trousers and dress shoes.
Nico wore a netted white shirt with white suspenders strapped into his white leather pants. His mask was also white, with wings branching out from the sides of his eyes while a muted pair of angel wings hugged his back. To cover up the identifiable tattoos on his arms, he wore detached white sleeves.
The rules were simple: everyone must wear a mask at alltimes, no drugs that required flame, consent was to be respected at all times, and absolutely no photography. In the packed venue—a forgotten and abandoned warehouse in Brooklyn—the scent of sexual freedom whispered through the thick fog of strobe lights.
Hung above the crowd were four TVs forming a box so they could be seen by everyone but those standing directly beneath them. On the screens was a countdown, the seconds ticking down to the new year.
Nico’s entire body tensed with every step he took. There were probably close to five hundred faceless people all around them. Well, they had faces, but they were hidden behind masquerade masks.
“Relax,” Cooper whisper-shouted in Nico’s ear. “Nobody will know.”
As they made their way through the crowd, Nico found an opening in the middle of the floor—a little space where he could catch his breath as his nerves surged, coating his skin in a sweaty panic.
“It’s just a lot,” Nico said. “We’re really doing this in public, right before playoffs.”
Cooper placed a finger over Nico’s lips. “Tonight is about anything and everything other than football.”
“Our lives are about football.” All the different ways the brackets could shake out ran through Nico’s mind. He should be at home getting his head on straight, not out partying all night. The Knights earned a bye in the first round of the playoffs by winning the division. Assuming the Cobras would beat Portland in the first round, the Knights would then be set for a rematch againstthe defending champions. It’s all Nico could think about. “The game is right around the corner.”
