Page 3 of Breaking the Ice

Shit. He hadn’t meant to give that away. Not yet. Not until he made it onto the actual porch. More sweat slipped down Zach’s spine. The cotton of his T-shirt was probably glued to his back by now.

He was sure Gavin would really tell him to fuck off now. Lift the shotgun again, maybe. Threaten him the way he’d threatened so many representatives who’d actually made it all the way out here.

But Gavin only sighed, like it was inevitable, and gestured towards the door. “Come on,” he said.

Zach could barely believe his luck. He wondered if he could take a picture of the porch. Prove to Hayes—and everyone who’d doubted him—that he washere.

But he dismissed the tempting possibility. This wasn’t aboutwinning, though that was great too. It was about having the opportunity to make his pitch.

Nobody else had ever done that either.

Gavin had never let them.

He didn’t move towards the door to the cabin, only leaned against one of the columns on the screen porch and waved at the single chair. “Sit,” he said.

Zach didn’t want to sit. He felt shaky with adrenaline and success—and well, something else he didn’t want to look at too closely.

He’d told Hayes he was over his crush, had been over it for a long,longtime, but that wasn’t quite true, was it? He’d just not had anything to feed it for so long it had atrophied, and now there was blood pumping, hard and strong, into it, and it was roaring back to life like it had never been dead at all.

“So?” Gavin said after Zach had reluctantly taken the chair. He crossed his arms over his chest, that threadbare T-shirt barely hanging on for dear life, and even though he was buried out here, in the middle of fucking nowhere, his body was impossibly hotter than it had been seven years ago, when it had starred pretty exclusively in all of Zach’s late-night jerkoff sessions.

“So?” Zach swallowed hard. He needed to fucking focus.

“So why are you fucking here?” Gavin asked.

Suddenly, Zach was reminded of why he’d initially been so nervous. Thepitch.

“I’m the assistant coach at Portland now—”

“What?” Gavin interrupted, looking shocked. “You’re not playing?”

Oh. That would make sense. Gavin wouldn’t know that he’d quit the NHL after six years. Wouldn’t know he’d given up. Gone back to school. Tried to make something out of the mess his life had become.

Zach swallowed hard. “No,” he said.

Gavin actually had the nerve to look pissed now.Morepissed. “Why the fuck did you stop playing?”

“You’re assuming Ichoseto stop playing,” Zach said, even though thatwastrue. He could’ve kept going, for another contract and maybe even another. At least his agent had thought so.

“Don’t be stupid, you were too good for nobody to pick you up,” Gavin said.

Had he been good? Zach tried to think back to a time when he’d believed that was true, before the machinery of pro hockey had worn him and his confidence down.

“I went back to school. Got my degree. Working on my masters, now,” Zach said, looking anywhere but at Gavin’s face. He didn’t want to see the disappointment in his eyes. The resignation.You gave up, he could imagine his old coach saying.You couldn’t hack it. Somehow those words would hurt even more coming from him than they did coming from his own fucking brain.

“What abouthockey?” Gavin demanded.

That was fucking rich, considering that Gavin had buried himself out here without hockey.

“Yeah,what abouthockey?” Zach retorted, his temper shredding under the pressure. He wasn’t proud, but he was kind of a mess here.

Gavin’s mouth compressed together. “Fair,” he said flatly. “So you’re here to recruit me?”

Zach shrugged. Suddenly he wanted to leave very badly. It had been a mistake to come here. To see the ruins of his life reflected back at him in the eyes of the one person he’d admired more than anyone else. The one person whose approval he’d always craved.

“I thought you were going to give me some big speech?” Gavin continued. He started to pace back and forth on the screen porch.

Zach absolutely did not check out his ass in those shorts. He was a grownup, and grownups didn’t do that shit.