37. Anthony

The trip to Portland felt like a dream as I pulled myself together for the first post-Christmas practice. I was used to short trips, some of which such whirlwinds of activity that they felt like hallucinations afterward, but holidays with Wyatt’s family had left a different mark on me. Though we’d only been gone for a few days, I swore it had been weeks since I’d been in my own house. Woken up beside Wyatt in my own bed instead of in the hotel room. Played with and maneuvered around my cats.

Ridden into practice with my ex-boyfriend.

I wasn’t looking forward to that last thing, but it wasn’t like I could avoid it. Sitting in a barstool at my kitchen island, I groaned as the garage door opened. Here we go again.

“You good?” Wyatt watched me over his coffee cup with a sympathetic grimace.

“I’ll be fine.” I sighed and pulled on my hoodie. Then I smiled and put a hand on his back. “I only have to put up with him for a few hours. When I get home…”

Wyatt’s grin almost cancelled out my irritation with the day ahead of me. The long, lazy kiss definitely helped.

The irritated honk-honk from the garage had me sighing and annoyed all over again.

“Just a few hours.” Wyatt brushed my cheek with his fingertips. “I’ll make you forget all about it when you get back.”

“Mmm, now I won’t be able to concentrate.”

“You’ll be fine.” He kissed me again, then nodded toward the garage. “Go. It’ll be over before you know it.”

I made a playfully whiny sound, which got the desired chuckle out of him. That would carry me through this stupid day.

I said goodbye to the cats and headed out to the garage. After a skyward plea for strength, I dropped into the passenger seat of the idling X5.

This was when Simon would normally back out of the garage and we’d hit the road. Instead, he glared across the console at me. “What’s going on with you and Wyatt?”

I blinked. “Um. Why?”

He tsked. “Don’t play games. Just admit you’re banging him.”

“Uh.” I twisted toward him. “How about we start with the part where you tell me why that’s any of your business?”

Simon’s glare hardened. “If anyone finds out, we’re both in deep shit. And your career is in limbo. You understand that, right?”

“Are you threatening to tell someone?”

“Are you admitting there’s something to tell?”

“I’m not admitting a goddamned thing because who or what I’m doing is none of your fucking business anymore.”

“Just stop. Okay?” His lips pulled tight across his teeth. “We both know you’re screwing him, so don’t—”

“You don’t know shit,” I hissed. “And even if you did—seriously, who the hell cares unless you, me, or Wyatt tells someone? We broke up, Simon. We’re done. I can fuck anyone I want to. Including Wyatt.”

“Uh-huh. And you’re on top of that.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Why are you so hung up on this? And why are you so convinced that I’m—”

“I’m not stupid,” he snapped. “I have eyes.” He gestured sharply at the house. “And I still have access to the security cameras.”

“To the—” My words caught in my throat. Wyatt and I had never fucked in view of any of the cameras, but that was about the only thing we hadn’t done with a lens nearby. It just hadn’t dawned on me that my ex would fucking check the cameras. Anger surged in me. “You’ve been spying on us? What the hell?”

He laughed sharply. “It’s my house, too, you know.”

“That doesn’t mean you need to be accessing the cameras just for—you moved out, Simon! You don’t get to just violate my privacy because your name is on the mortgage!”

He opened his mouth to speak, but right then, his phone chimed. He glanced at it, then dropped it back in the cupholder. “We have to go, or we’ll be late.”

I rolled my eyes. For fuck’s sake.

But he was right, and the last thing we needed was to be disciplined for showing up late. Or showing up and getting into a spat. Or showing up after a spat and not being able to concentrate on hockey.

I sighed. We still needed to talk about this, but as I always did, I bit back everything I wanted to let fly. I wanted to throw the fuck down over it and let him know exactly how pissed I was, but as soon as we started up the driveway, I shifted into my usual mode of trying to settle things. We had to be on our game at practice. We couldn’t afford this tension, no matter how fucking pissed I was at him.

Just like we couldn’t whenever I was pissed at him. Or whenever we were disagreeing.

I pressed back against the passenger seat. I hated this. I fucking hated how every time we had some kind of dispute, we had to put a pin in it during our drive to a practice or a game. So many of our fights had died away like this. He’d let me have it, and then about the time I was finally getting a word in edgewise, we’d have to drop it so we could go. Or if I was pissed or concerned about something in the evening, he’d blow me off until the next morning… when we’d have to put it aside again in the name of not being at each other’s throats in front of the team. When I wanted to fight so fucking bad, but instead, I’d shift into peacekeeping and damage control mode so our teammates wouldn’t catch on.

And of course, by the time we finally had the opportunity to address it, he’d wonder why I was still hung up on whatever it was, and he’d want to let it go.

We never hashed any of it out. We never fought the fights that I needed to fight.

Because we were always in the car on the way to hockey when we talked about it. Always. Fucking always.

I faced him and narrowed my eyes. “You’ve been doing this on purpose all along.”

He glanced at me. “Doing what? What are you talking about?”

“This is a ploy to keep me from pushing back against anything. You always want to talk about things on the way to the rink or the arena, but you know I won’t fight when we’re—” I tore my gaze away from him. “Jesus Christ. Seriously?”

“What?” He shrugged with an infuriating amount of dismissiveness. “Do you want to fight before hockey?”

“No! Of course not! And I think you’re taking advantage of that because you don’t want to fight at all.”

Simon huffed. “So you want to fight.”

“I want—” I groaned. “For God’s sake. No, I don’t want to fight. But I also didn’t want to just let things fester when we were together, and I don’t want to do it now. But I always did because you always wanted to discuss it now when you knew I’d do everything I could to defuse it. What the hell?”

He stared at the road but didn’t say anything. He didn’t deny it. Didn’t try to defend it. On brand for him when he knew I was right and he didn’t want to admit he was wrong.

Fury had my fists tightening in my lap. “You just do it to make me back down, don’t you? You know I’m way more willing to smooth things over when we’re on our way in, because I actually give a fuck about us walking in there without all this tension between us. So you fucking bring up that you’ve been watching me and Wyatt on the cameras”—I gestured behind us to indicate the house we ‘d once shared—“because you know no matter how pissed I am over it, we’ll have to—”

“So you want to fight about it?” he threw back. “You want to be going at it when we get there so everyone knows we’re—”

“What the fuck difference is it going to make this time? I am pissed. And I’m tired of this bullshit. So let’s just have it out where—”

“And then what, Anthony?” he growled. “You want the team to find out about us? Huh? Is that what you want?”

God, I wanted to let fly and tell him I didn’t care. Let’s do this right the fuck now and stop pussyfooting around everything.

But… I did care. And I had a hell of a lot more to lose than he did if things got out.

I pressed my elbow beneath the window and rubbed my stiffening neck. “Let’s just get to practice.”

Neither of us said another word for the rest of the drive.

So I was still fuming. I still felt violated. I was still livid.

But I couldn’t say or do a goddamned thing.