Page 43 of Breaking the Ice

Morgan barked out a laugh. “Oh, probably. I won’t be a stranger, so yeah. I expect it’ll happen.”

“I hope you’ll come to town and give our guys something to aspire to,” Gavin said.

“Definitely.” That smug tone of Morgan’s was back. The one that he’d always had, that screamed,yeah, I know just how fucking good I am.

The worst of it was hehadbeen. Probably still was, even though he’d been retired for a few yearsnow.

“Good,” Gavin said. He stood and made approximately thirty more seconds of small talk—but they both knew why Gavin had called and he’d dealt with it so there was no point in prolonging the conversation.

By the time he’d hung up with Morgan, he was already packed up and walking out of the rink, heading home.

He could wait until he got home, ate dinner, and pretended to watch a movie before he called Zach. Or he could just callnow.

It wasn’t hard to know what he wanted to do—besides, wouldn’t it belessbad if he did it now, when he was upright and walking, and not when he was lying in bed?

That was all the justification Gavin needed.

Dialing Zach’s number, he realized as his heart beat just a little bit faster, that the fact that he was needing excuses to call his assistant coach was probably not good.

But then Zach answered, with an out of breath, “Hey.”

Gavin pushed all those uncomfortable thoughts away and focused on Zach.

“Hey,” Gavin said, suddenly and inexplicably happy in a way he couldn’t remember being in so long. “Did I catch you at a bad moment?”

“No, no, I’m just—” He cut off, breathing even harder all of a sudden. “Just finishing up a workout.”

Gavin’s skin prickled with heat.

“I can call back—”

“No, no, it’s all good,” Zach said, and Gavin didn’t want to tell him,the way you’re panting is making me crazy.Is making me think of things I don’t want to think about. That I shouldn’t be thinking about.“What’s up?”

“I just got off the phone with Morgan.”

“Oh yeah?” Zach’s breath was finally evening out, but Gavin still felt infused with heat. Or maybe that was just the air outside. It was hot for Portland, nearly eighty still, even though the sun was going down.

It was a decent enough justification that Gavin’s mind snapped it up, accepting it as fact.

“It wasn’t terrible. He’s not terrible. Wasn’t even unreasonable about it.”

“And here you were dreading it so bad,” Zach joked lightly, even though Gavin had barely mentioned how much he wasn’t looking forward to making the call.

Like he’d justknown, because he knew Gavin.

“Yeah,” Gavin agreed, squeezing his eyes shut.

It had been a very long four years since he’d feltseenthe same way he felt seen right now. It would be so easy to just lose himself in this feeling. But it wasn’t fair to Zach to do that. Not when he didn’t know if he could give it right back.

And he didn’t know—was still partially convinced, in fact—if his ability to do that was completely and utterly destroyed. After all, part of the reason he’d removed himself from people was that he wasn’t sure he had anything left in himself to give to anyone.

“So he’s gonna give Finn some space?”

“So he says,” Gavin said. “Apparently the coach at Syracuse was partially to blame for this whole situation.”

“Yeah?” Zach sounded surprised. About as surprised as Gavin had been. “Finn didn’t mention the coach when I talked to him. I mean, he didn’t mention hisdadeither, but that was sort of a given. He just said he needed to get away. Have a change of scenery.”

“I think maybe Reynolds interfered because he thought the coach was fucking Finn up.”