Page 35 of Tumbling the Cornerback

"Is it working?" I groaned, flopping back on my bed. "I don't want to talk about him anymore. I want to pretend he doesn't exist until I absolutely have no choice. Then, when the meeting is over, I want to go back to pretending he's just a bad smell in the room."

Cooper snorted softly. "I like the idea, but I don't think that's how it's going to work. Not if he's throwing money at the group like this."

"Well," I said slowly, an idea taking shape, "then we just have to make sure he's not the most interesting guy in the room, won't we?" Cooper made a startled sound as I hurried on. "Be your charming self, and Jameson will look like a no-neck-having blowhard toad in comparison. And just really go balls to the wall on this promo stuff before the next fundraiser. And... do you trust me?"

"Yes," he drew out. "Why? What are you planning on doing?"

I wiggled my feet happily, a growing wave of giddiness swamping over me. "Making this event at least ten times more awesome."

Cooper laughed nervously. "Ah, how so? I thought you already had things all in place for this. Ash sent me a message earlier to confirm I'd help with the training..."

"Oh, I'm not changing that," I promised, ideas spawning and growing by the second. "Trust me. This will be awesome! It will get Queering Sports a heap of support and long-term growth potential. Shit, I need to bust out the spreadsheets for this one. Oooooh, maybe I can add a pivot table!" I do love a good pivot table... I opened my spread sheet app and started moving things around.

"I love it when you talk organizational to me," he purred with a laugh. "Say slide deck. Oh, no, wait! Tell me to optimize my workflow and facilitate the synergy of the customer experience!"

"Oh my god, that's it, I'm breaking up with you," I sniffed, smiling to myself as I opened one of the other sheet tabs.

Cooper suddenly fell silent, the drop in conversation snapping me out of my split focus with a sudden lurch in my belly. I realized belatedly what I'd said. A worm of panic took bites out of my good mood. "Wait?—"

"Breaking up with me," he repeated. "So that means we're together? I mean, since you can't break up with someone you're not dating, so..."

"Uh..." I leaned back from the laptop. "Uh. I mean. I..."

"Lucas..."

Were we? I mean... I wasn't seeing anyone else. I didn't want to. I just wanted to see him. Cooper was who I thought about first whenever I wanted to share something. He was who I wanted to see first thing in the morning and last thing at night. When we weren't together or talking, I wondered how he was doing, if he needed anything, wondered if he missed me too...

"Lucas, it's okay if you're not sure if you want this to be more serious," he said quietly, though his voice told me it was definitely not okay.

I frowned down the line. "You're making a face. That one where you're trying to look all stoic and badass, but your eyes get all tight and your lips go all crimpy. It's the same one you make when y'all lose a game."

"Am not," he grumbled, but there was a hint of a smile in the words. "How do you know?"

"That's your upset face. I may not enjoy football, but I've seen enough of it to know what your upset face looks like."

Cooper made an offended sound. A second later, my phone beeped with an incoming request for a video call. "This," he said as soon as I picked up, "is my upset face for football." He pulled the exact expression I'd just been teasing him about. "And this is my upset face when I find out there's no vegan ice cream left." He made a sad puppy face, lower lip jutting out, brows drawn, head tilted to one side. "And this is my upset face when I see someone's parked too close to my truck and I can't get in since they decided they are super-special parkers and need to crowd other people, so they feel special."

I burst into giggles, unable to stop myself as he demonstrated a few more levels of upset face for me. "Okay okay, fine, you weren't making that face! But you were still upset!"

His expression smoothed, and he shifted, moving nearer to the screen now. It would be easy to pretend he was here with me, I thought that we were lying on my bed in the dark, his head on the pillow beside mine. If I just focused on his face, the rest of the room could fall away. He was just an image on my phone's screen, but that wouldn't matter—my vision would be filled with him and not the reality that we were a city apart, feeling like an entire continent rather than just a handful of miles. "I wasn't upset. I was... cautiously optimistic. That's this face."

His small smile, his slightly raised brows, made something prickle in my chest. "Cautiously, huh?" I murmured. "Well. Maybe hopefully is a better word?"

I shifted onto my side, bringing the phone a little closer. "Hopeful sounds good."

He licked his lips, his gaze traveling to mine, sending a zing of heat through me even across the distance. "I know we'll have to keep this quiet. I really wish we didn't. But?—"

"But yeah." There went my warm fuzzies. The zip and zing of arousal fizzled out under the cold dash of reality. "It's going to suck. Not the us part," I hurried to correct as his face froze. "No! The hiding it part. I... I have bad experiences with that."

He nodded slowly. "I know. I just... I wish it didn't matter."

I blew out a rough breath and shook my head. As my warm glow faded, tiredness crept in. "But it does. For both of us."

"You'd get it worse than I would, if word got out," he muttered, raking his fingers through the tangle of red curls that had fallen in front of his face. He pushed them back so I could see the striking blue of his eyes again. "So, for now, we're private. As much as we want to be seen on one another's arms..."

"In public, purely professional and if anyone asks, it's about the fundraisers. So brush up on your talking points," I teased halfheartedly.

He nodded. "And even if we have to deny involvement, we know the truth."

---