Page 76 of The Player Next Door

Logan ducked out of the rain into the lobby, wishing he’d thought to bring an umbrella. His client meeting had ended early, and it didn’t seem worth it to go all the way back to the office just to leave again, so he’d taken the chance to come home a little earlier than usual. As an added bonus, it meant he had no chance of running into Clare, since she wouldn’t be home for at least another thirty minutes.

But because the universe absolutely fucking hated him, the elevator doors were sliding closed when someone darted their hand out and jumped in with a dramatic sigh.

It was Clare. Of course it was Clare, looking for all the world like a drowned rat, but still somehow the cutest damn thing he’d ever seen.

Christ, he had it bad.

At first he thought she hadn’t seen him standing in the back corner, but the slow crawl of pink up the back of her neck said otherwise. At least they weren’t alone; a young couple with a baby in a stroller stood between them. All they had to do was make it five floors in each other’s presence.

It’s only a minute or two and we have a buffer, he told himself, just as the doors opened on the second floor and the family made their way out.Still just another ninety seconds, Logan thought, completely ignoring the lesson he should have learned about jinxing himself the first time, because not ten seconds later the elevator came to a jolting, shuddering stop.

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Logan muttered. He shoved past Clare without even glancing in her direction and tried to rip the doors open, only to once again see nothing but bare concrete.

He whipped out his phone, still with his back to her, and barked into it the second building management picked up. “Reset it now and call the fucking fire department. West elevator, between floors three and four.”

Logan stuffed his phone into his pocket. His shoulders were tense and he could feel a muscle flickering in his jaw. “It shouldn’t be too long,” Clare said hesitantly. “They’ve been getting better at this lately.”

“Don’t,” he said tightly. “Just—don’t talk.”

The muscle in his jaw was jumping dangerously now and she took half a step back. He hated making her shrink away, but he also didn’t trust himself around her. He still wanted her too much, just as much as he knew it was pointless.

She sighed, and for the first time he noticed a line of red around her eyes, as if she’d been crying recently. He both hoped it wasn’t over him and hated the fact that she might be crying about something else.

“Fine, then. We’ll stand in awkward silence until the fire department comes.”

She shivered, her damp blouse sticking to her skin. It didn’t help that in these close quarters he could smell her perfume, which kept giving him flashbacks to lying in bed with her. Or not lying, as it were.

Logan’s nostrils flared with his sharp exhale. “Don’t do that either,” he growled. “Don’t—don’t act like this is all on me.”

“I didn’t,” she said, exhausted. “I was just pointing out that it’s ridiculous to stand here, five feet apart, not speaking, for the next half hour.”

He rounded on her. “What do you propose we do? Make small talk like you didn’t break my fucking heart?”

Shit.He hadn’t meant to say that out loud. She had a way of doing that to him, it would seem.

“My heart was involved too, you know.”

Yeah, I know.This all would have been a hell of a lot easier if he could pretend she didn’t care, but he had seen the hurt in her eyes that night in the parking lot. Logan knew full well how shitty he had been, hated himself for it, and hated her for making him feel things he thought he’d never have to feel. Logan crossed his arms. “And?”

“And?” she said incredulously. “And?Andmeans you can’t put this all on me.Andit means you don’t get to treat me like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m invisible,” she said, and crossed her arms too.

Logan flinched. “You think you’reinvisibleto me?” he said, running a hand through his hair desperately. “The problem is you’reeverywhere. I can’t fucking escape you.”

“It’s not my fault we live in the same building,” Clare said, curling her hands into fists. “Or did you want to draw up a schedule so we never accidentally cross paths?”

Logan turned away and then back to her, running his hand through his hair again. It must look terrible, but he was beyond vanity at this point. “No,” he sighed, deflating. “I don’t want that.”

“Then what do you want?”

Every instinct in his body told him to turn away from her. If he did that, she would leave him alone. They would stand there in awkward silence, like Logan hadn’t just spilled his guts on the floor, until the fire department came. It was the right thing to do, turning away. It was the practical thing, the smart thing.

But Logan was a fucking idiot. “I just want you,” he blurted out, and then made the absolute worst choice he could possibly make.

He kissed her. It had been barely two weeks since they last kissed but it felt like ten years. It didn’t matter that it was all wrong, that everything felt like some sort of funhouse mirror of all their firsts. Their first meeting in the elevator had been all light banter and charged innuendo, and their first kiss—their first real kiss, the one that changed everything—had been rain drenched and refreshing, a new, exciting beginning of something deeper.