Page 5 of Breaking the Ice

Where should he even start?

At the beginning, of course. But not Gavin’s beginning. AtZach’sbeginning.

“I didn’t know I wanted to coach, at first,” Zach said. “But I went back to school, and some guy in my econ class figured out I’d played in the NHL. It didn’t take long for him to start trying to persuade me to join their beer league.”

Gavin chuckled. “You didn’t.”

Zach shrugged. “One or two of them had played in juniors, it wasn’tthatridiculous.” But okay, it had been. He’d skated circles around everyone. Had multi-point nights basically every time he took the ice.

“I’m sure your ego was very stroked.” Gavin said it with a straight face, but everything inside Zach went hot and tight.

He pushed the feeling away. He’d neverwantedto want Gavin Blackburn. He only had, helplessly. But back then he’d been eighteen. Now he was twenty-seven. He could control himself.

“But if I wanted to play the way I knew we could, with me on the roster, we couldn’t just go out there and push the puck around. We needed—” Zach made a frustrated noise, remembering how after the first dozen or so games the casual attitude had begun to make him a little crazy. “We needed plays. Practices.”

“You started coaching ’cause you wanted to dominate your beer league?” Gavin was laughing again, and it sounded rough, like he hadn’t done it in awhile. Zach wondered, before he couldstop himself, just how long it had been since he’d had anything to laugh about. Since he’d had anything hewantedto laugh about.

“It sounds really stupid when you put it that way, but yeah.”

“So you started coaching your beer league, and then what?” Gavin might pretend disinterest in hockey, but Zach could see the light in his eyes. Whether it was because of hockey or Zach, hewantedto hear this story.

“A season. Then two. We won the city championship. But then I moved back to Portland for grad school, and I discovered I actually missed it—”

“Of course you did,” Gavin muttered.

Zach wasn’t going to touch that with a ten foot fucking pole.

“The scoring and the bullshit way everyone loved and hated and admired me, yeah, a little, but mostly just the coaching, actually. Coaxing the best out of those guys. Watching them bring that to the ice, every game we played? That I missed. More than scoring over fifty goals in twenty-five games.”

“Jesus,” Gavin said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “How many penalties did you draw?”

Zach laughed. “Enough. Never stopped me.”

“I bet.”

“But that’s the thing, right? I liked playing. Ilovecoaching.” Zach forced himself to meet Gavin’s dark eyes. The way he almost never had, the way he almost never could, starting when he’d been eighteen and then nineteen and in thrall to the most persistent crush in the history of the world. “Then I thought about what coach I’d want to learn from. The coach I’d like tobe most like, and . . .” Zach shrugged, because he knew he didn’t need to say it.

Gavin didn’t say anything. Not for a long time.

Zach let him have his moment. He’d told the truth, yes, but he’d laid it on a little thick, once it had really sunk in that the reason Gavin was really interested was that this pitch wasn’t abouthim. It was about Zach.

That was probably the other thing nobody who’d come out here had ever realized.

“I thought I’d like that story more,” Gavin said flatly, finally.

But he had liked it. He hadn’t liked the ending.

“Lie to yourself if you want,” Zach said, standing up. Suddenly very tired of all this bullshit. The front that Gavin was so committed to. The front he didn’t quite believe. “But don’t lie to me.”

He didn’t look at Gavin as he walked by him.

Hayes had been right; this was a fool’s errand.

Gavin wasn’t rotting out here in the middle of fucking nowhere because he wanted to. He was rotting out here for something else, and until he figured out how to be honest? Well, he was just going to continue rotting and there was nothing Zach could do about it.

He was nearly to the screen door when Gavin’s voice stopped him. “Wait.”

Zach turned.