“What? What’s the Santa Maria?”
“You know, Christopher Columbus’ ‘lost’ boat? Are we going right away to meet with your attorneys?” Maybe I could talk to them about the information exchange idea.
“No, we’ll go to the hotel. The lawyers said they’ll probably have an update for me this afternoon. They’ll call soon.”
I tapped the glass of the window, anxious to hear what this update was. “Are we descending yet?”
“We have a little more time,” Nico said. “I have something to show you before we land. CompleteSports sent the interview to my lawyers for them to review it before it airs tonight, and they sent it to me. Want to watch?”
“Yes!” I tapped at his keyboard. “Make it go!”
“Hold on, hold on.” He slid his big headphones over my ears and I stared at the frozen image of him on the computer until it jumped to life.
“I’m here with Nico Williams,” the interviewer started, and Nico smiled at her on the screen. God, he looked so handsome, I thought they should acquit him just for that. I smiled up at the real Nico and he pointed at the computer.
She threw him some softball questions, then moved to what had happened in Florida. “I need to ask you about the persistent rumors that you weren’t the one there to buy drugs that day. Several sources report that two other Cottonmouth players—”
“I’m not going to comment about anyone else,” Nico said. “I was not buying drugs, I do not and have never used them. That’s all I’m going to say.”
“Other news outlets have reported the names,” she started, but he shook his head.
“Sorry, I’m not going to comment on that.”
“Fair enough.” The interview went on. “I’ve been told that at least one Confederation team has expressed interest in signing you for next season.”
“I’d be fortunate to play again at the professional level,” Nico answered. “I hope I’ll be able to.”
“Is there any particular team you’d like to play for? Would you like to go back to the Woodsmen?”
“As I said, I’d be lucky to sign with any team in the Confederation.” He paused. “But I would like to play for the Cottonmouths.”
“Really?” the reporter asked him. She sounded surprised.
“Really?” I asked the real Nico, and he put his finger to his lips. Maybe I had been a little loud. He pointed back to the laptop screen.
“I know I made huge, huge mistakes when I was in Miami. I’m not talking about the charges against me, I mean the really poor decisions I made, how I talked about the coach and some of the players, my behavior in general. I’m very sorry about it, and I’d like to show them that I’m better than that. I think I could do a good job for the team, I’d fit well into their offense, I’d work my butt off. I know it’s a long shot.” The interview Nico shrugged. “Lately, I’ve been feeling like I’m a pretty lucky man, so you never know.”
“Lucky how?”
“I have a great life. I have a wonderful family. They were upset with how I had been acting, as they should have been. I was angry at them for talking to the press but they felt like they didn’t have any choice. They were trying to reach out to me, and I wasn’t listening.”
“But you’ve since made things up,” she suggested.
“We have and I’ve apologized to them all. I let them know that I won’t act like such an…can I say ass on TV?” He grinned and the reporter looked like she might swoon. I looked up at Nico and frowned and he turned my face back to the computer. “As I said, I’m a fortunate man.”
“How else would you say that you’re fortunate? A lot of people would say the opposite, based on what’s happened to you lately.”
“Most of the problems I’ve had have been self-created, but I’m pulling myself back out of that, with Tatum.”
“Is that the woman who you sometimes refer to as your life coach?” the interviewer asked.
“I think she’s more of my teammate. Tatum and I are pulling for each other, working together,” he said. “If you want to use a football analogy, she lets me know when she thinks I’m misreading coverage and running the wrong route, and I do that for her. To fix things, I had to turn around and come back to her.” He laughed. “I guess I’m on a comeback route, right? I’m trying, anyway, and the best thing that has happened from all of this is that now Tatum and I are together.”
“I think a lot of us have seen the pictures.” The reporter passed him a tablet open to one of Nico’s social media accounts, the accounts that Chara managed.
“I don’t really know what’s posted up here,” he told her, and started flipping through. “I don’t…” He stopped, and smiled. “Wow, look at us,” he said, his voice full of wonder. “This one was when we flew back to Michigan from Miami. I had to keep my hand on Tatum the whole way because I thought she was going to kill people for looking at me funny. And this…this one is a picture of my first game with the Junior Woodsmen. It was pretty bad, but you know, I saw her across the field, waiting for me, and it reminded me how lucky I am. Tatum was there for me, and that was the best thing in the world.” He smiled at the tablet. “You can see it, can’t you?”
“What can you see?” the reporter asked.
“You can see in these pictures how much I love her,” Nico answered on the screen.
I took off the headphones and turned to him. “She asked me more about going to jail,” the real Nico told me. “I said no, it’s prison.”
“Do you?” I asked. “Do you really?”
“Honey, of course I do.” He kissed me, an actual kiss on my lips. “I meant what I said. The best thing to come out of this very bad situation was that I have you.”
“You had me for a long time before that,” I told him. “I knew you’d eventually figure it out.”
Nico laughed. “I love you, Tates.” He kissed me again. “Are you crying?”
“Yes, because of course I love you, too. If you had put on your snow boots and gone to the Leviathans without me, you would have broken my heart.”
“I don’t think you would have let me do that. You had way too much faith in me. In us.”
“You did almost break it, when I saw the pictures of you in Toledo. When I saw you with that tall woman at the party at our apartment.”
“There’s no other woman, and there’s no more going out like an idiot in Toledo or anywhere else. I thought I’d see how much I was missing, and I wasn’t missing a thing. That woman put her pasties in my face and I stood up and left. There’s nothing in the world I’d rather have more than you. You got sick and were gone for two nights and I could barely stand it.” He kissed me again, but not so gently.
“Oh!” I said, when he picked up his head. “I finally got tongue!”
Nico put his finger to his lips again, but he was laughing too hard to do anything else, so I kissed him this time. We kept at it, all through the plane’s descent, as people started to get their bags out of the overhead bins, as we walked through the airport, as we got a car to the hotel. “You know this is going to be everywhere,” he murmured to me. He slid his fingers up my thigh, and I loved those little Florida dresses. “I saw a lot of people with their phones up as you were grabbing my ass.”
“Better than the topless shimmying thing of last year,” I said, and he kissed me and reached his hand higher on my leg.
“I really enjoyed that topless shimmying.” He kissed me all the way from the airport to the hotel and before he carried my bag up to the reception desk. “We’re the Von Trapps, checking in,” he told the clerk.
I almost fainted. “Nico.”
He slid his credit card across the counter then looked down at me. “Yes, honey?”
“I honestly didn’t think I could love you more, but the fact that you used an alias to book our room…” I kind of attacked him in the hotel lobby, and he mostly carried me to the elevator and into our suite. When the door closed, my Miami dress came off, right over my head. I reached up to put my arm
s around his neck.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” he told me. “A lot, when I’m alone in my bed.”
“What did you think?” I asked breathlessly.
“I thought…” He picked me up, so that I hung from him. “I thought about your breasts, that you’re always flashing to me. I’m not sure why you always seem to end up showing me so much boob, but I do appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I thought about this little peach of an ass,” he said, his hands moving lower to grip me there, and I wrapped my legs around his waist. “Is the bruise all gone?”
“Yes.” I moved my hips to rub against him.
“Good.” His grip tightened and he kneaded, biting my neck. I realized I could see his face reflected in the many mirrors in the room. I watched him close his eyes and rest for a moment against me, his cheek on my hair. He just looked so happy.
“Nico?”
“Yes, honey?” I saw in the mirror that he smiled as he kissed me.
“No matter what happens, with anything in our future, we are a team, like you said in your interview. I’m always on your side, because I love you so much.”
“I know,” he told me. “I hope you know that I’m that for you. Always, Tates.” He lowered me to stand and turned me so that my back was to his chest. I watched in a mirror as his hands moved to my breasts. He rubbed and squeezed gently, his thumbs brushing over my nipples. I wanted to close my eyes because it felt so good, but I also wanted to see him. He let go for a moment to take off his shirt and to remove my bra. I stood on his feet to get myself even closer to his skin.
“Watch,” he ordered. His hands massaged my shoulders then slid down my front, tracing over my neck and collarbones. I did watch, transfixed by the sight of his long fingers cupping my breasts and sliding back and forth until I stood up on my toes and arched forward to increase the friction. He rolled my nipples between his fingers and then brushed his hands down over my stomach to hold my hips. “This is just you and me, Tatum. This is how it will be between us.” His fingers went between my legs.
I stuttered out his name and held his wrist, still watching. He stroked my thighs and then one finger moved to sweep back and forth in my folds. “Is that good?” he whispered.
I looked at his face in the mirror, intense and flushed, his eyes almost glittering. Then I looked at my own face, my lips parted, my eyes wide and unfocused. I looked like I was going to—“I’m going to come,” I breathed, and he stroked harder across my clit. I watched his fingers disappear inside me and I held his arm and said his name again as flutters of pleasure started down low and then spread through my body, building like waves, making me shake. I pressed myself back against him, pulsing.
Nico’s fingers slid from me and he picked me up and nuzzled into my neck. I could feel him pulsing too and I wrapped my legs around his waist, wanting to feel him inside me. “Do you have any condoms?” I whispered, and bit him, licked him, moved my hand between our bodies to try to touch him.
He put me on the bed and went to his bag, and I watched as he dropped an enormous pile of square wrappers on the nightstand. “I hope you brought all those with me in mind,” I said. “And don’t put out that many if you don’t plan on wearing them all. Don’t tease.”
“I have only you in mind, and we’re using every one of them,” he promised. He stripped off his pants and boxer briefs and if I had thought his ass was impressive…it had nothing on his dick. I reached for it, flexing my fingers and he didn’t laugh at me. He climbed on the bed, took my hand, and put it around his girth. When I rubbed, he moaned, and I reached between his legs to feel him there, to touch him everywhere. I squeezed gently, like he had done to my breasts.
“Yes, Tatum. Yes, do that,” he said, and his face looked like mine, like he was just about to—“I’m going to come,” he told me, and reached for a condom. We put it on him together and he slid up my body, fitting himself between my legs and rocking a little. I locked him in with my arms and legs wrapped around him and then he shifted his hips and was inside me.
“Oh. Oh, oh…what’s that noise?” I gasped.
“It’s my phone,” Nico panted, pumping. “Just ignore it. Oh, fuck, oh fuck…”
“Touch my breasts, like that…but what if it’s the lawyer? You said they were going to call. Oh, God! Yes! What if something bad happened?”
He froze, mid-stroke. “You’re not going to come again with that on your mind. God damn it.” He reached next to the bed for his pants. “Yeah,” he said into the phone, and slid into me so hard that I moaned. Maybe I was actually going to come. He palmed my breast and pulled my nipple, and yes, I definitely…
“More, more,” I said, and he moved his hand over my mouth.
“Thank you for telling me,” he answered someone, and dropped the phone again. I leaned up and bit his neck, then ran my nails over his ass. “Tatum!” He pumped harder. “They dropped the case against me.”
“What?” I moved my hips with him. “Oh, yes! Right there!” My head fell back again and then oh, the pleasure.
“They—dropped—the—last—charge, I’m coming, I’m coming,” he groaned, and he did.
“Nico?” I asked a few moments later.
“Yes, honey?”
“Did I dream that the lawyer called and there are no more charges against you, or did you really say that? I think maybe you made me faint for a second.”
“That was real.” He moved his hips, pulling away from me, and I grabbed his ass again. “Easy does it,” he said, and fell onto his back on the bed. “Well, well, Miss Smith,” he grinned at me. “I think we just sealed the deal.”
“Go back to the lawyer thing. Really? It’s all done?” I demanded.
“Done. I’m free to go. Apparently they just wanted all the excitement and commotion of letting the decision to prosecute get down to the last possible second. And now it’s done.” He breathed out. “I told you I wasn’t worried, but Jesus, this does feel better. As nice as it may be there, I really didn’t want to move to São Tomé.”
“I had other ideas,” I told him. “Stuff about obstructing—”
“Don’t tell me, and move that little peach of an ass over here, right now.”
I scooted over until I was lying on top of him again.
“Look what we have here,” Nico said, and picked me up and shifted me higher. “Now I can reach with my…” The rest of his word got garbled as my nipple disappeared between his lips. He suckled and nipped, one side, then the other, then back.
“Oh, that’s good,” I said, and it got even better when he reached with his hand between my legs again.
I started wriggling, writhing against him. “Can you—do you—are you hard already?”
“For weeks, for you,” he said, his voice strained. “Get another condom.” He put it on this time and gently slid me down his body to move into me. I started to pump against him but he shook his head. “Just stay,” he said, and flattened his big palm across my lower back. “Just stay.”
Nico kept his hand on my back and moved his hips just a little, up and down, but somehow he was caressing every spot, my clit and somewhere inside me that felt so intensely pleasureful I started to shake. “Nico, God!” I tried to move but his hand wouldn’t let me. Up and down, up and down, just that small movement. I couldn’t even make a sound and my hands clenched on his shoulders.
“Look at me, Tatum,” he breathed. “Look.” I met his eyes. “I love you.”
I lost it then and my orgasm overcame me. I drew in air that caught and I came, and came, and came, my head thrown back. Rapture and relief gripped my whole body, from my head to my toes, then slowly released as Nico pumped harder and ground his hips up into mine. I fell down against him, trying to breathe again, crying a little from the intensity.
“Tatum,” he choked, and he wrapped me up tightly, all his long limbs holding me to him. “God, Tatum.”
My heart gradually slowed and I wiped off my eyes. He kisse
d me over and over, pulling me even closer to his body. “You’re such a cuddler,” I said. My voice was hoarse, and I thought I had probably been screaming. “Whenever we’ve fallen asleep together, I wake up with you like this.”
“I never have been before,” he told me. “The minute things were done, I always…you know, we don’t need to talk about what I used to do,” he amended, when I picked up my head to stare at him.
“That’s probably best.”
Nico smiled and kissed me again, softly, then looked into my eyes. “It doesn’t matter, does it? Because we’re the only people on this team, you and me. If you’ll have me, Tatum.”
I sat up, my elbows on his chest so I could really see his face. “This is you asking me to marry you, right?”
His jaw dropped.
“Because yes,” I answered. I had already talked to his dad about the conducting the ceremony and had the seating chart started in my notebook. “Yes, I’ll marry you!”
Nico started to laugh, hard this time. “Tatum Smith, I do love you. And you’re going to keep me on my toes for the rest of my days.”
That was my plan. I had a lot of them, and they all included Nico. We were a team for life.
Epilogue
I wiped my face with the back of my hand and sighed. I was exhausted, but extremely happy.
Nico wiped my face too. “Flour,” he noted, then went ahead and kissed my cheek where his fingers had caressed. “I think it’s perfect, honey. You’ve done it again.”
I looked around El Asturiano Cuatro. It did look good, very close to the original bakery that Lucy’s parents had opened so many years ago. She had already given me her seal of approval on this latest outpost. That was the most important thing to me, since El Asturiano was her family’s legacy—I was just the caretaker.
Well, maybe more than that, since Chara had decided to go into sports marketing rather than take over the bakery. The four bakeries, now. But it had worked out and stayed in the family since I was Lucy’s other daughter, as she liked to call me, and I definitely liked her to call me that, too.
The Comeback Route Page 23