yes, according to researchers, they did meet homo sapiens and interbred

The oldest potential Neanderthal bones date to 430,000 years ago

Anatomically modern humans emerged around 300,000 years ago in Africa, evolving from Homo heidelbergensis or a similar species.

The date of divergence of Neanderthals from their ancestor H. heidelbergensis is also unclear.

my thinking was that if both homo sapiens and Neanderthals evolved from “h. heidelbergensis” than Neanderthals met h. sapiens but not their “ancestors”