Interference (Springfield Cyclones: Steamy Hockey Romances #3)

1. January 15, Saturday

Chapter one

Zoey

Zoey Williams stood in the hallway of her new apartment building, balancing a box against her hip while she dug through her purse for the key.

Her new life smelled like cheap air freshener, cardboard, and industrial cleaner.

The soft echo of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” hit her the second she nudged open the heavy apartment door, followed immediately by a burst of absolutely unhinged giggling.

Zoey froze on the threshold.

Ten feet inside, on the dark hardwood floor of her new living room, her two best friends were waiting.

Waiting, apparently, in formation.

Kira Sergechev stood slightly in front, one hand thrust into the air, hips snapping with the kind of confidence generally reserved for pop stars, professional dancers, and women with no sense of self-preservation.

Her blonde hair bounced wildly around her scowling face as she wiggled her left hand at Zoey and jabbed one finger toward her ring finger.

Beside her, Kayla moved with considerably less violence. Her brown hair was twisted into a conservative bun, her glasses sat low on her nose, and every single step of the choreography landed half a beat late. She looked like a bookish friend being held hostage at a wild bachelorette party.

Kira spun, kicked one leg out, and slapped at the side of her hip exposed by the high edge of her black leotard.

Kayla attempted the same move and nearly took out a floor lamp.

Zoey dropped her purse just inside the door, coffee still clutched in one hand, and laughed so hard her cheeks hurt.

“Oh my God,” she said. “What is happening?”

Kira finished with a flourish, arms up, chest heaving like she’d just completed a triathlon. “Welcome home, single lady!”

Kayla, still recovering from her near-death experience with the lamp, raised both hands weakly. “Welcome home!”

Home.

The word hit soft and strange under Zoey’s ribs.

For one fragile second, she could almost believe it.

It was more than picking up the pieces after a divorce. More than a new apartment, a new job, a new city, and a new license plate still sitting in a bag on her kitchen counter.

This was supposed to be the start of something.

Freedom.

A chance to choose happiness.

A chance to choose herself.

To finally work on her own dream.

She hadn’t realized how long it had been since she’d done something simply because she wanted to. Or how foreign it felt to walk through a door and know no one on the other side needed her to make their life easier.

Her throat tightened.

Absolutely not.

She was not crying during Beyoncé.

“Please tell me you haven’t been doing that for every person who walked past the door,” she said, carefully setting her coffee on the narrow entry table.

Kira’s grin turned wicked. “The better question is how many times we started that dance before realizing it was someone going to an apartment down the hall.”

Kayla winced. “Mrs. Feldman in 6B got a lot more hip thrusting than she paid for.”

“She loved it,” Kira chuckled.

“She looked afraid.”

“Older generations fear power.”

Zoey laughed again and stepped fully inside.

The apartment looked bigger now that she was standing in it, without the realtor’s polished smile.

Floor-to-ceiling windows stretched along one wall, letting in soft late-afternoon light.

The kitchen gleamed with stainless steel and pale stone counters.

Even the locks on the door were new. The building had cameras, a doorman, and an elevator that did not smell like soup.

It wasn’t ritzy, it wasn’t cheap, but it was secure.

According to Kayla, “It was a reasonable investment in your future and not at all a panic palace.”

Zoey wasn’t sure she agreed with the first half, but the second half had started to grow on her.

Everywhere she looked, boxes were stacked in uneven towers.

Some were properly labeled in Kayla’s blocky handwriting.

Most were not. A few had been marked by Zoey during the final packing frenzy in San Jose, which meant they said useful things like MISC?

?, KITCHEN-ISH, WHY DO I OWN THIS?, and DO NOT OPEN WITHOUT WINE.

So far, none of the boxes appeared to contain emotional stability.

Typical.

Kayla crossed the room first and pulled Zoey into a warm hug. “You made it.”

Zoey exhaled against her friend’s shoulder. “Barely. I think the landing took fifteen years off my life.”

“My turn, my turn.” Kira shoved herself in, wrapping Zoey up with the force of a golden retriever fired out of a cannon.

Kira’s untamed hair stuck to Zoey’s lip gloss.

Zoey peeled a strand away from her mouth. “How long did it take you two to learn that routine?”

“Define learn,” Kayla joked.

Kira waved a hand. “Labels are cages.” She squeezed Zoey once more before letting go. “Look at you. New apartment. New city. New job. New life. Now, just need to find you the new man.”

Zoey flinched before she could stop herself.

Kira’s face softened immediately. “Oof. Sorry. Too soon?”

“No.” Zoey forced a smile and rubbed her thumb over the naked place on her left hand where her wedding ring had lived for a decade. “No, it’s fine. I’m good.”

Kayla’s gaze tracked the movement, but she didn’t comment.

Therapists.

Always noticing things.

Very rude as a personality trait.

“Wine,” Kayla announced, as if sensing Zoey needed something to do with her hands before she started unpacking her own internal organs onto the hardwood. “I opened the good bottle.”

“Define good,” Zoey sassed back, using Kayla’s response from earlier.

“The one that was easiest to open.”

“Excellent criteria.”

Kayla disappeared into the kitchen and returned with three glasses filled perilously close to the rim. She handed one to Zoey, one to Kira, then lifted her own.

“To Springfield’s newest and hottest bachelorette.”

“Present company excluded, obviously,” Kira added.

“Obviously,” Kayla agreed, inclining her head graciously. “To single ladies.”

Their glasses clinked.

Zoey took a sip and let the wine settle warmly in her chest.

Single lady.

Bachelorette.

Divorcée.

Fresh start.

All technically true.

None of them fit quite right, yet.

They migrated toward the living room, navigating the maze of boxes and furniture that had been shoved wherever the movers found open floor.

Kayla had clearly already attacked one corner of the chaos, because a small island of order emerged near the couch: three throw pillows, a folded blanket, a stack of takeout menus, a box cutter, and an emergency chocolate bar.

God bless anxious women with systems.

Kira dropped cross-legged onto the floor and dragged a box toward her. “What’s this one?”

Zoey squinted at the marker scribbles. “That says closet, I think.”

Kira lifted the flap. “It’s full of cookbooks, a curling iron, two framed photos, and what appears to be a single roller skate.”

“Then yes,” Zoey decided. “Closet.”

Kayla settled onto the couch and opened a box marked LIVING ROOM. “This one has mugs and tax documents.”

“Also living room,” Zoey said.

Kayla looked up over her glasses. “You’re a nightmare.”

“I packed while legally divorcing a man, quitting my life, moving states, interviewing for a new job, and filling out foster-care paperwork. I consider it a triumph that none of these boxes are labeled FIRE.”

Kira paused mid-rummage.

Kayla’s expression gentled in that dangerous way that meant sympathy had entered the chat.

Ick.

She’d had more than her fair share of those the last year and a half.

Kira pulled out a paperback romance with a shirtless cowboy on the cover and held it up like evidence. “Counterpoint. This one says LIVING ROOM and contains a man named Buck.”

“That was a dark week,” Zoey giggled. “Don’t judge me.”

“I would never judge Buck.” Kira flipped the book over. “Buck has abs and unresolved trauma.”

“Buck sounds on brand for you,” Kayla added dryly.

“I love a forbidden bad boy…” Kira trailed off while reading the first page.

Zoey sank onto the edge of the couch, wine balanced carefully between both hands. “I still can’t believe I’m really here.”

Kayla’s smile was soft. “Neither can I.”

The room went quiet. Not painfully quiet, just full.

Zoey looked around at the expensive apartment, the unpacked boxes, the friends who waited inside it with wine and bad choreography because they knew if she walked into an empty space after a ten-hour trip, she might sit on the floor and never get up.

Her chest tightened again.

It would be very inconvenient if she became a person who cried this much all the time.

She used to be fun, dagnabbit!

Or maybe she had just been busy.

Busy managing schedules, planning dinners, smoothing social situations, organizing team-family events, remembering which wives hated other wives, and making sure Mitch’s life ran like a machine he never had to inspect.

Busy being Mrs. Collins.

Mitch Collins’ wife.

Mitch Collins’ support system.

Mitch Collins’ designated finder of lost cuff links, replacement phone chargers, unpaid bills, and emotional nuance.

It had taken sitting across from her divorce lawyer to realize she had no idea what she wanted when no one else’s needs were in the room. That had been a fun discovery. Not. It was extremely humiliating.

Kayla nudged her knee with one socked foot. “Where did you go?”

“To the sad divorced lady place.”

“Ah.” Kira nodded. “I’ve heard about that place. Terrible neighborhood. Bad parking.”

Zoey snorted.

Kayla’s smile remained gentle. “You don’t have to have it all figured out tonight.”

“Good, because all I currently know is that I own one roller skate and an alarming number of half-burned candles.”

“That’s enough for day one.”

Was it? Zoey wanted it to be. She wanted very badly to believe that moving back to Springfield, taking the Cyclones job, and starting the foster licensing process counted as courage instead of a very elaborate emotional mid-life crisis.

“I keep thinking,” Zoey admitted, voice quieter, “that maybe I’m just chasing the next checkbox.”

Kayla’s brows drew together. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Zoey stared into her wine. “Marriage didn’t work.

Fine. So now I’m doing job, apartment, foster care, independence.

New Zoey. Improved Zoey. Now with 30 percent more boundaries and substantially fewer hockey wives’ drama.

” She gave them a weak smile. “What if I’m not choosing a life?

What if I’m just trying to prove I didn’t waste the last one? ”

Kira’s face lost its teasing edge.

Kayla leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “Those can overlap, you know.”

Zoey looked at her.

“You can want something because it matters,” Kayla said. “And because it helps you prove to yourself that you’re still moving. That doesn’t make the want fake.”

Well. Okay… Zoey swallowed. “I want kids. I know that much. I always did. Even before Mitch. Even before I knew what it would look like. Biological, foster, adoption, some messy version I couldn’t picture yet. I wanted a family that felt like…like a place people could land.”

Kira’s eyes softened.

“And I kept waiting,” Zoey said. “Waiting for Mitch to be ready. Waiting for the season to slow down. Waiting until we had the right house, the right schedule, the right conversation. Waiting until asking didn’t feel like taking something from him.

” Her voice wobbled. “I waited myself right out of my own life.”

Kayla was quiet for a beat. Then she said, “You’re not waiting now.”

No. She wasn’t.

Her foster-care orientation was next week.

She already had paperwork for the application printed and filled out.

Her new job with the Cyclones’ community partnerships team began Monday morning.

If she managed not to get eaten alive by Nina Fontaine, she would be coordinating school visits, charity appearances, youth outreach, and, eventually, the kind of hockey clinic programming she had dreamed about since her college days, back when she believed sports could be a bridge instead of just a business.

It was a lot.

It was terrifying.

But it was hers.

Kira lifted her glass. “To not waiting.”

Kayla lifted hers too.

Zoey let out a shaky breath and clinked. “To not waiting.”