Page 33 of Interference

Wyatt’s smile once more lit up the world, and somehow facing the rest of the day wasn’t so unpalatable.

In the garage, the X5 engine idled but didn’t shut off. A second later, my phone pinged with a text.

Simon: Ready to go when you are.

The rock in my stomach got heavier. He was pissed about something, wasn’t he?

“I, um…” I cleared my throat and glanced at Wyatt. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Okay. Go ahead and leave that.” He nodded toward the plate in my hand. “I’ll clean everything up as soon as I’m finished.”

“Nah, it’s fine.” I went ahead and rinsed off the plate. “You cooked. The least I can do is clean up after myself.”

He just didn’t need to know I was also stalling to avoid going out to Simon’s car.

Good God. What happened to us?

The ride to our practice arena in Northgate was miserably silent. Simon hadn’t even bothered with a snide comment after I kept him waiting for a couple of minutes, and I had no idea what to say.

We were halfway across the heavily congested floating bridge when he finally broke the silence. “You didn’t have your head together last night.”

I worked my jaw. Had we been home or on our way home—even in a hotel room on the road—I’d have snapped back at him. He wanted a fight? Fine. Let’s fucking fight.

But we were twenty minutes away from the rink, and there was enough tension between us lately that this promised to be a protracted spat. We could get away with a brief exchange and still have our game faces on by the time we walked into the locker room. If we let it rip now, then at best we’d both be fuming when we got to the rink. Not ideal.

So I took a deep breath and counted to… Okay, not quite ten, but enough that I wouldn’t bite his head off. When I was sure I could keep my voice even, I said, “It was an off night.”

“Uh-huh.” Never had two syllables been laced with more dubiousness and sarcasm. He really wanted to fight, didn’t he?

“I’m good today,” I lied through my teeth. “It was just bad night. You have them too.” I regretted that last part as soon as I said it.

“Yeah, I do,” he snapped. “But at least I don’t dig the team into a damn hole because of it.”

I literally bit my tongue to hold back the words that desperately wanted to come flying out.

Oh, really? You’ve never been the reason our team’s had multiple power play goals against in a single game? And I must’ve hallucinated that night you were in a pissy mood and finally lost your temper and slashed a fucking goalie. Get wrecked, you fucking hypocrite.

Sighing, I rubbed my forehead. I hated that we were like this. I hated how badly I wanted to tear into him, and how much he seemed to want me to do exactly that. Which… fuck. Maybe we needed to. We weren’t getting anywhere by bottling things up and refusing to talk about the hard stuff. I’d been telling myself for a while now that I was a dick for picking fights, but goddamn, maybe we needed to fight—really fight—this time so we could get some of this shit out of our systems. Argue and yell and shout, and then when we ran out of steam, talk things through and get somewhere for a change.

But… no.

Because we were three exits away from the practice arena.

So all I said was, “Today will be better,” and I let him be loudly skeptical about it for the rest of the drive.

I didn’t think I’d ever been so relieved to get out of his car. This part sucked in its own right—we had to put on the face of the happy couple, public affection and all—but at least he’d stop picking at me for a little while.

Once we were inside, we fell into our usual routine. We changed into workout gear, and Simon went for a run outside—two relaxed laps around the building before every practice—while I did some light intervals on a stationary bike. Then we were back in the locker room to put on our gear for practice. Every step of it was such a ritual that it actually helped chill me out. The workout wasn’t hard enough to kick off much in the way of endorphins, but it was meditative in a way. It pulled my focus to hockey, and it warmed my body up a little before I hit the ice.

By the time I was lacing up my skates, I felt good. Not great, but like I could actually play hockey without spending half the game in the penalty box again.

As Simon and I were tugging on our practice jerseys, Russell came up to us. “You guys are coming to Thanksgiving, right? Vanessa is trying to get a final headcount.”

Thanksgiving? Already? Christ, that was next week, wasn’t it?

“Of course.” Simon smiled. “We’ll be there.”

“Yeah,” I said as if the whole holiday hadn’t completely slipped my mind. “Looking forward to it.”

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