Breakaway (Beyond the Play, #2)(58)

I’ve never had baby fever, aside from the occasional reaction to a well-written breeding kink scene, but if I become a parent, I think it’s going to go something like this. In the past week, Cooper and I have texted about nothing but Tangerine. Tangerine’s feeding schedule. Tangerine’s shots at the vet. Tangerine’s progress with the litter box. He snuck her into my dorm room last night, and she made biscuits with her little paws on his chest while we watched Eclipse. He keeps saying that he’s still warming up to her, but I’ve seen the pictures he sends. He’s obsessed with her, and so am I, and that couple with the tiny baby we saw at Target a couple of days ago while we were buying Tangerine a proper cat bed has nothing on us.

Currently, though, Tangerine is staring at Cooper as he tries—again—and fails—again—to teach her how to play fetch. I finish scribbling an answer in my lab notebook and peer down at them. I’m on my stomach on his bed, homework spread out around me. He had been working on a paper, but boredom eventually won out, and now he’s on the floor, sitting cross-legged while Tangerine stares at him.

“She’s not going to do it,” I say.

“She will,” Cooper insists. “She was interested in it earlier. Tangy, show Penny what we’ve been working on.”

Tangerine just flicks her tail, blinking her bright eyes. Her collar, which is hot pink and covered in rhinestones since Izzy came with us to Petsmart to buy it, stands out against her now-shining fur. She looks nothing like she did a week ago, all muddied and half-frozen; I swear she’s gained a pound already.

He tosses the toy mouse again, and again she watches it sail over her head with only mild interest. He sighs, scratching her between the ears. “All right,” he says. “If it’s just between you and Daddy, that’s cool.”

I sort through the papers in my binder. The lab report I’ve been working on for the past hour is, to put it kindly, a mess. I had to redo the math in step one approximately seventeen times. And now I can’t find the data collection sheet I need to move on to the next section. “Shit.”

“Something wrong?”

“I left something I need at my dad’s house.” I sit up, biting my lip as I check the time on my phone. “This is due tomorrow; I need to go get it.”

“I can drive you.”

“It’s only like three blocks over.”

“I’ll walk with you, then. You said he went out, right?”

I sigh as I slide off the bed and grab my boots. “Yeah. He wouldn’t say, but I think he’s on a date.”

He grins, snatching up Tangerine for a kiss before depositing her on the bed. “Go Coach.”

I roll my eyes. “I wouldn’t even mind. It’s not like I want him to be alone. But he’s so secretive about it, like he thinks I’ll die if I hear he has a girlfriend.”

“Do you know who she is?”

“I have an idea, but I’m not sure.” I open the door, and Tangerine jumps off the bed rather athletically, running out into the hallway. She adores sleeping on Izzy’s bed.

“Iz, we’re heading out for a few minutes,” Cooper calls.

Instead of answering, we hear Izzy shriek, “Tangy! You can’t jump on my computer!”

He snorts as he leads the way down the stairs. “Do I know her?”

“Yes.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Tell me.”

We bundle into our coats and head out into the cold. I wouldn’t mind driving, actually, but in case Dad is around, I wouldn’t want him to see Cooper’s truck. “I think it’s Nikki.”

“Our boss Nikki?”

“Yep. They’ve known each other for a long time. She trained with my mother. She’s the one who told him about the coaching position at McKee.”

“Huh. Like I said, go Coach. She’s pretty hot.”

I roll my eyes again, but he’s right, she’s beautiful. That’s about as far down that road as I’m willing to get, so I’m relieved when we reach the house. As I unlock the door, Cooper peers around like he’s standing in front of a haunted house, not one of the many perfectly pleasant colonials on this block.

“This is kind of weird,” he says. “I’ve never been to Coach’s house before.”

“I keep trying to get him to host a team dinner here,” I say as I jiggle the doorknob. This is an old house, like most of the ones in this part of town; the front door always sticks because it’s not quite centered in the frame anymore. I don’t mind this house, but I still miss the one we had in Tempe, even if it felt a lot smaller and sadder after Mom wasn’t around anymore.

“Yeah, we always have the winter banquet at Vesuvio’s.” Cooper follows me to the kitchen in the back. On the table, which as usual is covered in binders and stat sheets and the big sketch pad Dad uses to plan out his playbook, I find the data collection sheet I filled out in the lab earlier this week. Somewhere in between shoving around all the crap on the table so we could eat our takeout and grabbing my stuff so I could head to Cooper’s, I totally missed it.

“Okay, let’s go,” I say. I wheel around, practically smacking into Cooper; he’s looking down at the sketchbook.

“That would never work,” he says, frowning as he traces Dad’s messy handwriting. “Jean’s not good at feinting.”