Page 4 of Breaking the Ice

“Would it matter if I did?”

Gavin made a face. “Nobody’s ever gotten this far before, and I feel . . .”

“I wasn’t going to go away and you weren’t going to shoot me,” Zach said, suddenlyverysure about that. “Though, if they knew you at all, you weren’t ever going to shoot anybody.”

Gavin choked out a laugh. “How do you know that?”

“Come the fuck on,” Zach said. “I bet there aren’t even shells in that.”

Gavin’s hip collapsed against the pole again and he wasalmostsmiling.

Much later tonight, Zach imagined he’d get himself off to that half-smile and in the morning he’d have to text Hayes and tell him,I fucked up.

“I’m not interested in coming back,” Gavin said primly, his tone at odds with the sly curl of his lips.

Yeah, Zach wasn’t imagining that mouth doing anything at all.

Fuck.

It had been bad enough when Gavin was married to Noelle, his high school sweetheart, who Zach had genuinelyliked, and now it was worse, because Noelle was dead and Gavin’s grief had transformed him into this man that Zach both knew as well as the back of his hand and not at all, anymore.

“What, you’re gonna stay out here in the middle of nowhere androt?” Zach demanded. Because it was such a fucking waste, and suddenly the destruction of it actually really pissed him off.

Nobody would ever see that half-smile again. He’d be the last. He’d be the last one to wonder,what if.

Gavin would never organize another power play, never make anyone bag skate until they were throwing up all over the ice. Never stand implacably behind the bench, or lean in and cajole his players to get their shit together. Never once inspire one of his players to make goals—even if they were goals bigger than they could bite off and chew.

That was such a fucking crime Zach could barely take it.

Gavin didn’t say anything for a very long time. Zach almost worried that he’d not heard him but then he’d practically bellowed it so how was that even possible?

“Sure,” Gavin finally said quietly. With resignation.

The joke was on Zach though, because despite the dark circles under his eyes and the scruff and the too-longhair that looked like he was chopping it off with a hunting knife or something equally ridiculous, Gavin looked so fucking alive.

He wasn’t rotting.

Not dead. Not by a long shot.

“Why?”

Gavin shot him a hard look and fell silent.

And okay, yeah, he didn’t want to talk about it. Well,Zachdidn’t want to talk about it either.

The day he’d found out, he’d crawled under the covers and cried until he’d felt like a dried husk of a human being. For Noelle, of course, who’d been so kind and sweet to him, practically a second mother when he’d been on the team, and for Gavin, who’d lost his touchstone, his soulmate.

Hayes had held him for hours, until he’d been all cried out.

Maybe that had been the beginning of the end for Zach.

He’d gotten over it—how could he do anything else?—but that driving hunger inside him had never felt the same. Noelle’s death had been a rude reminder that hockey wasn’t everything, that once it was over, once Zach was done, he’d have a whole life stretched out in front of him, empty and blank. Waiting for him to fill it withsomething.

But even if he didn’t want to talk about it, Zach washereto talk about it.

“So, that’s it?” Gavin finally spoke up. “You come all the way out here, and that’s all you’re gonna say? That I’m ‘rotting’ out here? Come on, Wheeler, you can do better than that.”

Gavin didn’t remind him again that he’d actually let him onto the porch, and nobody else had ever gotten that far,but then he didn’t have to. Zach could feel the pressure of it. Wanted to rise up and meet it.