A faint knock at the door stole Cooper’s attention. He cocked his head over his shoulder and waited for the second knock, and then the third.
He looked through the peephole.
It was Nico, standing in the hallway with his ear pressed against the door.
Cooper ripped the door open.
A wrinkled smile passed over Nico’s punchable-sized lips. “I’ve been out here knocking for like five minutes.”
“Please tell me you’re fucking joking.” Cooper poked his head out into the hallway and looked both ways, grabbed the rookie, dragged him inside, and slammed the door shut. “Did anyone see you?”
“So how does this work?” Nico asked, ignoring the question as he stepped past him. He turned around and began popping the buttons of his black shirt. Tore the shirt down his arms and tossed it onto Cooper’s tidied bed. “I take off my clothes and you do what I want you to do to me?”
Cooper stared at him wide-eyed and in disbelief. “Haveyou lost your mind? This hotel is filled with players and staff.”
“The team is at the club,” Nico said with a shrug, ignoring that the players were just one piece of the hundred-and-fifty or so entourage. “They say they’re going to make it back before curfew, but I have my doubts.”
Ever since the team—and the league—had become more lax about curfew, away games had turned into the wild west. “I don’t give a shit what the rest of them do. They aren’t my responsibility.”
Nico narrowed his eyes. “You do realize I’m standing here, nine minutes before curfew right? I’m doing the things I’m supposed to be doing which is a huge compliment to your coaching abilities because I have to say, I’d normally be out way past curfew.”
“You should be standing in your own room.”
“And yet I’m standing in yours.” Nico’s belt clanked, metal on metal, as he undid it and undid the top button of his trousers. He stared straight into Cooper’s eyes as he pulled down his zipper. “So tell me what the fuck are you going to do about it?”
Cooper forced his gaze upward, forced himself to stay there, to look anywhere but down. “I think you’ve forgotten who I am.”
“You’re Cooper Callahan,” Nico said with a sly wink. “I could never forget that.”
Cooper took a measured step towards him. “Say it with a little more oomph.”
“ThegreatCooper Callahan.”
The rookie thought he was smoother than he really was. These games he played might work on others, but theyweren’t going to work on him. “Do you know what they say about me?”
“The good stuff or the bad stuff?”
“No such thing as bad stuff. Do you know why?” Cooper closed the distance between them. Stood right in front of him. Eye-to-eye. Breath on breath. “Because I always win.”
Cooper reached down and trailed a hand over the front of Nico’s thigh and reveled in the way the younger man’s breath seemed to hitch, the way his throat seemed to tighten. He maneuvered his hand over Nico’s crotch and brushed it gently, just barely passing over the hardness growing beneath the fabric. He took hold of the zipper and pulled it back to the top of Nico’s trousers and whispered against his mouth, low but stern, “Put your shirt back on. Nothing is happening here.”
Nico grumbled under his breath, but obeyed. He reached for his shirt off the bed and pulled it over his shoulders and began buttoning the buttons up. Cooper helped expedite the dressing by reaching for Nico’s belt and pulling it through the buckle.
The rookie didn’t always listen, but Cooper noticed he listened when he used a certain tone. It was a very specific tone, like that of a father scolding his child. That’s when he listened the best. Cooper took very good notes on what drove the rookie.
In his younger years, Cooper leaned more into chaos. It wasn’t until he was older that he began to find comfort in routine, and after the accident, he craved control like it was the only sustenance that gave him the energy to stay standing.
“All of this in your head? It’s a bad idea. Trust me, I know.” Cooper knew this all too well. Too often, he got lost in the thoughts about how different life would have been if he had stayed in control. If he never let what he had with Luke get so far. If he hadn’t intervened when White tried trading Luke away in his third year. If Luke was anywhere other than Columbus, if he was with anyone other than Cooper, he would have been alive. “Bad ideas lead to bad outcomes.”
“I’m very attracted to bad ideas.”
The rookie was going to be the fucking death of him. The longer he stood there, the longer Nico weaponized those demonic puppy eyes, the harder Cooper’s resolve fell. If Cooper didn’t find a way to get Nico out of his room in a hurry, the rookie was going to find himself limping onto the field the next day and that wouldn’t be a good look for either of them.
And good luck explaining how a quarterback ended up on IR with an anal injury.
Cooper winced and pinched the bridge of his nose, not believing this incredibly bad idea was about to come out of his mouth. He choked on the words at first and then they finally came, “I’ll make you a deal. You go and win that game tomorrow night and I’ll do to you what you want me to do to you.”
Nico tongued the inside of his cheek, intrigued. “And how do you know what that is?”
