Page 141 of Interference

I pulled into one of the guest spots, and before I lost my nerve, I got up and followed the signs to apartment 3B. Without giving myself a chance to think twice, I banged on the door.

The door didn’t open, but Simon’s voice came through the Ring speaker: “What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk.”

“We can talk in the car.”

I pushed out a breath. “No. That’s not gonna work this time.” I looked right into the lens of the Ring camera. “We can either talk in your apartment, or I can do this out here where all your neighbors can hear it.”

Silence.

Then, footsteps.

I had time for one deep breath before the door flew open.

Simon glared at me across the threshold. “What do you want?”

“We need to talk.”

He eyed me. Then he looked around, exhaled, and gestured for me to come in. “All right.” He shut the door behind me. “Let’s talk.”

I faced him, arms crossed because I didn’t give a damn if I looked confrontational or defensive right now. I wasn’t here to put him at ease. Looking him right in the eye, I said, “All this bullshit between you and me? It stops right now.”

He folded his own arms and leaned against the door. “Is that right?”

“Yes. We have to coexist, Simon. We’re teammates, and we’re both stuck because of the club’s rules. And I don’t know about you, but all this tension and arguing? It’s exhausting.”

His shrug wasn’t nearly as dismissive as he probably intended it to be, and he couldn’t quite hold my gaze anymore. “It would be a lot easier if you weren’t flaunting your new boyfriend right under my—”

“I’m not flaunting a damn thing,” I snapped, but quickly realize that wasn’t going to help the situation. Schooling my tone, I said, “Would it be easier if we drove from your place to practices and games? Instead of you coming by the—”

“It’s my house too,” he hissed.

“Yes. It is. But you left. And Wyatt is there now.” I showed my palms. “What solution would you prefer?”

“Besides him not being there at all?”

“Not an option.”

Simon’s face contorted with all kinds of emotions. Anger, but also deep hurt.

I exhaled. “Simon. You broke up with me. This is—I thought this was what you wanted.”

He chewed his lip and slouched against the door. “When I broke up with you, I thought you’d at least try to win me back, but you already had him waiting in the wings, so you forgot all about me.”

I blinked, trying to make sense of everything he’d just said. “Wait, wait. Back up. First, I did not have him waiting in the wings. It never even occurred to me to get involved with him until after we’d split up.” I narrowed my eyes. “And since you’ve obviously been spying through the cameras, you fucking know nothing started while I was still with you.”

His expression screamed skepticism.

I barreled on anyway. “What do you mean, you thought I’d try to win you back, anyway? What does that even mean?”

“It means exactly what it sounds like,” he snapped. “I thought you’d want us to get back—”

“So you dumped me?” I threw up my hands. “I’ve been trying to fix us since before you moved out! What did you think I was going to do differently once you ended it?”

“You just wanted to talk about shit,” he said. “You didn’t want to be together. You just wanted to nitpick every fucking thing until—”

“I wanted to talk about our problems!” I groaned and shoved a hand through my hair. “Jesus Christ, Simon. Do you think that was fun for me? Trying to talk about shit? I wanted us to get back on the rails, but we weren’t going to get there until we did something about our problems.”

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