Page 88 of Interference

Wait, what?

I shook the thought away and focused on the chicken I was eating. I did not have a crush on Wyatt. Yes, he was attractive. And sweet. And considerate. And—

I did not have a crush on him. He was just a really nice guy who made my house feel a lot less empty now that Simon had moved out for good. Just because I enjoyed spending time with him—just because I always got a little flutter of happiness when I came home and saw him—didn’t mean anything.

Did it?

Or maybe I was just going insane. That was entirely possible. And that one defenseman had knocked me into the boards pretty hard earlier; maybe I was concussed and didn’t even realize it.

It was also possible I was still overwhelmed with emotions after I’d gotten a weather alert on my phone earlier. It was pretty benign, just letting me know the roads would probably be slick tomorrow morning. That meant the temperatures were going to drop tonight after we’d had a few hours of rain.

I was fine with driving in shitty weather—I had lived in Boston for a while, after all—but what had shaken me to the core was thinking of Wyatt and Lily. The thought of them sleeping out in that made me sick to my stomach. My mind had cycled through the same thing it had every time I’d thought of them out there on the street. What if we hadn’t crossed paths? What if Lily’s skin infection hadn’t given me a reason to insist they should stay longer? What if they’d left after that time was up?

It would’ve been so easy for them to be out there right now, shivering and struggling to make it through another bitterly cold night.

But they were safe, warm, and fed in my house right now, thank God. They were going to be okay. When I came home tonight, they’d be there with my cats. They were fine.

“Hey, Aussie.” Russell jostled me into the present, and he met my gaze across the table. “What was Tandy on your ass about? He trying to dig up rumors or some shit?”

Oh. That.

Despite the way my stomach tied itself in knots over the subject, I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Yeah. Some fan saw me out with Wyatt, and Tandy decided we were on our honeymoon or something.”

The guys at the table laughed. Simon, too, though not with a lot of enthusiasm. Just enough to keep up the act and convince everyone around us, but not nearly enough to convince me.

Ugh. The drive home was going to be long as hell.

Nova poked at some green beans on his plate. “Tandy is shit. They need to keep him out of locker room.”

“That’ll be the day,” I muttered.

Our teammates all murmured in agreement. Everyone in the League hated Tandy. Everyone. But until he crossed an actual line, the League didn’t have grounds to kick him out. One team had already tried, and that hadn’t ended well.

“Maybe we should invite him out onto the ice,” Simon said. “Use his head for target practice.”

“Put him in goal,” Beaus said. “With no pads on. I mean, he’s the one who says goalies are all pussies for wearing that much gear, so let him put his money where his mouth is.”

“Put some pucks where his mouth is,” Nova said.

More nods of agreement.

At least I wasn’t the only one. I still felt weird about that conversation with Tandy, but I didn’t believe for a second he’d actually stirred up any questions among my teammates. They knew he was nothing but a bullshit instigator, so unless he had photographic evidence of me blowing Wyatt or something, he wasn’t going to convince the Bobcats that I was cheating on Simon. Or that Simon and I were having problems. Or that two queer players couldn’t function on the same team, which he’d outright stated after we’d come out as a couple.

“Think I could convince the club to ban him for harassing us?” I gestured at Simon and myself. “Because coming in and insinuating crap about me and a friend kind of seems like harassment to me.”

“I’d back you up,” Russell said. “I didn’t hear the conversation, but Cars told us about it.” He nodded toward Simon. “I think you guys have a case for asking the team to—”

“Not a good idea,” Simon said flatly, and he stabbed a piece of cauliflower for emphasis.

My other teammates exchanged glances. I studied Simon and asked, “Uh, why not?”

He turned a frosty look on me. “Because he’ll just start trying to dig up dirt as retaliation. If he’s banned from the locker room, I guarantee he’ll think that means he stepped on a nerve, and he’s going to keep digging.”

I almost said, “So what? He’s not going to find anything.”

But I didn’t. Because if Tandy kept digging, he would find something. Namely that Simon was no longer living in our house. Instead of catching the big story that Anthony Austin was cheating on Simon Caron, he’d stumble right into the truth—that we’d broken up.

If we just left well enough alone, Tandy would think his fishing expedition had failed, and he’d go looking for someone else to harass.

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