Page 61 of Interference

I nodded. “I get it. I haven’t been in that situation, but I get what you’re saying. And don’t sweat about tomorrow—the host knows about Lily, and he even asked if she needed him to provide a water dish or anything.”

Wyatt sat up a little. “He did? Really?”

“Oh yeah. He loves dogs. If there’s anything she needs while we’re there, just let me know and I’ll shoot him a text.”

His startled expression shifted to a soft smile that made me lightheaded. “That’s… Wow. I really appreciate that. I’ve got a bowl and some treats I can bring with me, though. She’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Perfect.” I took another drink because my mouth had gone dry for some reason. “I think the only hiccup tomorrow will be dealing with Simon, but like I said, that’ll just be in the car to and from. It’ll be fine.”

Wyatt studied me. “How will you be, though? When you’re stuck around him?”

I huffed a humorless laugh. “I’m used to being stuck around him.”

“But the breakup—that’s a recent development, isn’t it?”

He had a point, and I gave it some thought. No, I hadn’t had much time to get used to being around Simon and the team now that we were exes. We’d practiced and played, we’d eaten with our teammates, and we’d traveled, all since Simon had dumped me, but that had been over a fairly brief stretch. There hadn’t been time to let it all sink in and let the shock wear off.

Except…

What shock? Let what sink in?

I met Wyatt’s gaze. “You know what’s messed up?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“The breakup—it kind of came out of nowhere,” I said. “Like yeah, we’ve had problems for a while, but I still thought—anyway, he just dropped the bomb and that was it. We were done. But now that he has…” I sighed, shaking my head. “I thought I’d be a mess because we spent so much time fighting to save something and failed. Now I’m just like, ‘What the fuck were we trying to save?’”

Wyatt straightened a little, but my own words slammed into me like a ninety-mile-an-hour one-timer. Out of nowhere. Right to the center of the chest.

What had we been fighting to save?

No. That wasn’t it.

What had I been fighting to save? Because looking back now, I saw myself pleading with him, arguing with him, begging him to go to a counselor, to fucking talk to me.

And Simon…

I sat back in my chair and swallowed hard. “God, I don’t even know why he hung on this long, you know?” I reached for my water glass as I added a bitter, “To tell you the truth, I think he checked out before he moved out.”

“Damn,” Wyatt said. “I had an ex like that.” He rolled his eyes. “In hindsight, I think he was just hanging on because he liked my BAH.”

“BAH?”

“Housing allowance. It was enough to cover our entire rent, so he didn’t have to worry about anything except utilities.” He huffed a dry laugh. “I finally got tired of it, drove him down to the recruiter’s office, and said, ‘If you’re just in it for the BAH, you can enlist and get your own.’”

I barked a laugh. “Oh my God. You didn’t.”

Wyatt snickered. “I so did. And that’s the story of how my boyfriend and I split up in front of the Army recruiter’s office.”

“Wow. So he really was just in it for the rent?”

“Yep. Didn’t even try to hide it when I called him out.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Did he enlist?”

Wyatt snorted, shaking his head. “Oh, hell no. This was a guy who thought it was the biggest imposition in the world to load the dishwasher.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. He was one of those.”

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