Page 31 of Play the Game
“Okay, well, I guess you learn something new every day.” Spinning to face him, I set a hand on his chest. “Cooper Wyles, why are standing in my kitchen at four-thirty in the morning, opening my cabinets and making yourself right at home?”
He covers my hand with his, and my pulse goes haywire. “Because you’re pregnant and I helped get you that way. You’re doing the hard work of growing a human, and I can’t do that part, but I can do this. I can make sure you have everything you need to feel as well as you can.” He brings his other hand to my cheek, and I think it’s the most caring gesture I have ever felt in my life. “I know this sucks, Evan. I want to make it easier for you in any way I can.”
It's his soft voice—so different from the way we usually speak to each other—and him calling me by my actual name instead of my last name that does me in. Tears fill my eyes and spill over before I can stop them. I don’t know if they’re hormonal tears or anxiety tears or terrified tears orThe father of my child is in my kitchen at four-thirty in the morning and made bagels for me from scratch because that’s the only thing I can eattears, but whatever they are, they’re not going away.
Cooper drops his hand from my face, wrapping an arm around my waist and tangling his other hand in my hair. I bury my face in his chest, soaking his sweatshirt in my tears as I breathe in his pine scent like an addict looking for her next fix. He feels steady. Like I could lean on him if I needed to, when I don’t ever lean on anyone.
“Let it out, Rhodes,” he whispers in my ear as his thumb strokes comforting circles over my lower back. “It’s a lot. You don’t have to carry it on your own.”
I give a watery laugh. “I literally am carrying it on my own.”
He laughs a little, and it’s definitely my imagination when I feel the ghost of a kiss over my hair. “Yeah, but I’m here to help with whatever I can.” He leans back a little, so his eyes meet mine. “I want to help with whatever I can. For better or worse, we’re in this together.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “But you don’t even like me, and I definitely don’t like you.”
He smiles that soft smile of his, and I think maybe I could live on that smile alone for days. Something is definitely wrong with me. “I don’t know, I think maybe you’ve got to like someone who has an aquarium of axolotls as pets.”
I gasp, staring at him like he’s an alien from outer space. “You know what an axolotl is?”
He shrugs. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“Uh, no, they don’t.”
“Well, I do. Why axolotls?”
“I’ll tell you, but I think if I don’t get a bagel in my mouth in the next thirty seconds I’ll die. Or throw up. Neither is ideal.”
He grins at me, and it lights up the room. “Go sit on the couch. I’ll take care of it.”
Five minutes later, I’m sitting in my favorite corner of the couch, blanket back over my legs, eating the best bagel I’ve ever had in my life with the perfect amount of cream cheese, and there’s a glass of ice-cold seltzer on the table next to me. Cooper is sitting opposite me, still wearing those slutty glasses, and we haven’t fought even one single time in the half an hour he’s been in my apartment. I think I’m kind of in heaven.
“It was the gills,” I say with a mouthful of bagel.
“The what?” he asks, taking a bite of his own bagel.
“The gills. Axolotl gills look like feathers, and I thought that was cool. Also, they’re pink and they have this, like, perma-smirk that I thought was the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. I fell in love, and that was that.”
“Do they have names?”
I scoff. “Of course they have names.” I gesture to myaquarium with a flourish. “Meet McDreamy, McSteamy, and Nick.”
Cooper barks out a laugh. “You named your fish afterGrey’s Anatomycharacters?”
“First of all, axolotls aren’t fish; they’re salamanders. But you’re forgiven because you recognized the names. You knowGrey’s Anatomy?”
He takes a sip of the coffee he brought with him and sets it on the table. “You bet. I discovered it in law school. I couldn’t sleep one night, and one of my streaming services fed it to me. Three episodes and I was hooked.”
I nod, taking a sip of my seltzer and sighing as the cold bubbles hit my stomach, settling it immediately. “Same. I’m a superfan. I go where Shonda takes me.”
“So McDreamy and McSteamy I get, obviously. But why Nick?”
I shrug. “I like that he doesn’t try to take Derrick’s place. That he’s okay with knowing Meredith had a great love of her life before him, and he just wants to love her now. And I like that she gets a second love of her life. She deserves it.”
Cooper stretches his leg out and nudges my knee with his foot. “You a secret romantic, Rhodes?”
I pause, thinking of the stories I write, the way my heart practically melts every time I watch Chris and Rio together, how I liked catching the glimpse of how devoted Cooper’s brothers are to their girls when I saw them at the baseball game, and I say the truest thing. “I think I might be.”
I watch Cooper’s eyes change, darken a little, swirl with something I can’t quite name. My stomach tightens, and I get lost in those deep blue eyes just a little as he opens his mouth to speak. But before he can, the moment is broken when the door to my apartment flies open, Chris and Rio barging in like they own the place.
