Page 46 of Play the Game
I shake my head. “It’s different. I write stories I post on an online forum. I don’t want to make it my career or anything. I’m a lawyer. I love being a lawyer. I’ve never really wanted to be anything else.”
Cooper studies me. “I’ve always wondered,” he murmurs.
“Wondered what?”
“Whether you liked being a lawyer.”
I swallow down my instinct to jump down his throat, reminding myself that he’s trying to get to know me, just like I’m trying to get to know him, and that maybe, just maybe, it feels good to be known, especially early in the morning, when it’s still dark outside, with only the glow of my candles for light.
“I love it. I love it so fucking much I’m willing to put up with the misogyny and the favoritism and the old boys club of BigLaw because I feel like this is what I was meant to do.” I shrug, leaning back in my chair. “Maybe it seems stupid thatrepresenting pharmaceutical companies is what I feel like I was meant to do, but it just calls to me, you know? Crafting the arguments and the twists and turns of the law and the way I get to do science all at the same time? It’s so fucking cool.”
Cooper blows out a breath and leans his elbows on my desk. “I wish I was that passionate about my job.”
His deeply dissatisfied tone makes me want to ask him a million questions about whether it’s the law he doesn’t like or whether it’s working here, but I kind of feel like maybe that’s still none of my business, so I settle on something else instead. “What is it that you’re passionate about, Cooper?”
“Cooking,” he says immediately. “Baking too. Anything in the kitchen, really.”
I smile. “Ah, yes, the secret you keep from your family. Explain please.”
He chuckles. “It’s not really that complicated. My mom was adamant that my brothers and I learn how to cook. The first couple times she tried to teach me, I messed up in spectacular fashion—like, burned a dishtowel and shattered her favorite bowl and put salt in a recipe instead of sugar. Since I’m the youngest of four, my mom didn’t have a ton of patience for it, so she would kick me out of the kitchen and tell me to go do something else while she made my brothers clean up whatever mess I made and finish cooking. I learned pretty quickly that if I fucked up in the kitchen, I got to go play basketball or video games or whatever without any brothers stealing the balls or the controllers. Then it became a kind of a game. How badly could I mess up and make it believable so I could get out of helping? I got really, really good at it, and the habit stuck.”
I burst out laughing. “This is the best thing I’ve ever heard. Like, peak youngest child. So, for more than twenty years, you’ve been making your family believe you’re a menace in the kitchen?”
He grins at me. “Yep.”
“So how did you actually learn to cook?”
His grin spreads. “My mom, but she has no idea. Again, youngest of four boys. If I was quiet and didn’t fuck anything else up after the first time, no one paid much attention to me. At first, my brothers would grumble about how I didn’t have to help, but Pam Wyles has no patience for that, so she just gave them even more work to do, and they learned pretty quickly to cut that shit out. I paid attention, and I have a really good memory. When I went to college, I cooked all the time, and now I do it whenever I can. It’s become kind of a game for me to keep up the ruse around my family.”
I snort out a laugh. “Have you ever considered telling them?”
“I have, but it’s been going on for so long that when I finally do, it needs to be a serious reveal. Like, really epic and shit.”
“Oh my god, please let me be there for that,” I say without thinking.
Cooper’s eyes go soft again, and honestly, I think that look of his is going to be the death of me. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, Rhodes. You’re a part of this now. I’ve been cooking only for myself for so long, except now I get to make you bagels.” The look on Cooper’s face when he looks at me makes my insides go gooey. “It’s nice, baking for someone. Taking care of someone in that way. I’ve never really gotten to do it before, so thank you for letting me.”
I stare at him, entirely without words because in this moment, sitting in my dark office in my pajamas, I realize something with absolute clarity.
I like the father of my accidental baby, and I have no idea what comes next.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
COOPER
DECEMBER
“Goddammit, Cooper,” Evan explodes, slapping her hands down on the conference table and standing up. I can tell she gets dizzy from standing too fast, but I watch her white knuckle the table and push straight through it, the glare never leaving her face.
“Problem, Rhodes?” I drawl, leaning back in my chair as thunder booms from the storm raging outside. It rarely storms like this in Boston in December, and with the rain pounding on the windows and the cloud-darkened sky, it feels ominous somehow. Like it’s a harbinger of things yet to come.
For the past few weeks, Evan and I have been getting along weirdly well as we navigate theHoly shit we’re having a baby togetherof it all. We’ve had one more doctor’s appointment where Evan leaned on me and I got to support her in a way I liked a whole lot—probably too much—and I come in earlyevery morning with bagels and seltzer as a reward for letting me take her blood pressure. Sometimes I leave her to her writing and go to my office and work on a little secret project of my own I started a couple of weeks ago until I absolutely have to do my real work. But sometimes she feels like talking, and I settle in across from her and we chat in her dim office, lit only by the glow of her candles.
I like those mornings the best.
It turns out I just like her the best, and it’s giving me whiplash, but the good kind, I think.
Despite everything, though, we’re still us, which is why it’s an odd sort of relief to have Evan back to yelling at me about work stuff. Kind of like coming home. I smile because I know it will enrage her, and I’m rewarded with a look so menacing it’s a wonder I’m not dead right here on the conference room floor. The thing is, that menacing look also comes with a side of flashing blue eyes and a popped hip in a snug black skirt. Evan’s absolutely spectacular pregnancy tits rise and fall with every breath she takes, and my cock and I really like it all.
