Page 58 of Breaking the Ice

“Talk about what?” Zach was confused. Hayes couldn’t possibly know what had happened tonight—that was why he was freaking calling. To tell him that he and Gavin had nearly kissedagain.

“Ugh.” Hayes made a horrible disgruntled noise. Like a wet cat.

It suddenly occurred to Zach what Hayes was whining about.

“You didn’t delete the Google alert, did you?”

Hayes made the noise again.

“You deleted it but then youaddeditback?”

“I’m doing it to be informed about Finn,” Hayes said, clearly attempting to find some dignity. Zach didn’t want to tell him he’d left that behindagesago.

“Right,” Zach said. Now he didn’t know whether he should sharehisdrama, not when Hayes was angsting so hard over Morgan.

“He was drafted by the Sentinels and I’m going to be his captain, eventually,” Hayes said, like he needed to explain himself.

“Yeah, probably,” Zach said. And that was going to be a fucking trip.

He could only imagine the meltdown phone calls he was going to get from Hayes oncethathappened.

“Ugh,why?” Hayes asked, even though there wasn’t really a question there.

“Because fate and the NHL hate you?”

Hayes made the dying wet cat noise again.

“Hey, at least I didn’t tell him to his face that he was a friend-destroying asshole,” Zach said.

Only when Hayes went totally silent did Zach realize he’d just made a huge mistake.

“You wouldn’t,” Hayes finally said, quietly.

“No, of fucking course not. I didn’t even talk to him. I didn’t think I could, without punching him in the face.”

“It wasn’t—isn’t—his fault, Zachy.”

“No, of course not,” Zach retorted sarcastically.

“I mean, how else was it supposed to work? We’d have been in the same zip code like what . . .twice a fucking year?”

“And theoffseason?”

“Okay, so twice a year and three months out of twelve. Sounds like a good basis for a relationship.” Hayes sounded like someone was stabbing him slowly in the gut and he just kept fuckingbleeding.

Before, Zach would’ve mentioned that three years ago, Morgan had retired and there’d been nothing stopping him from moving to Tampa and showing up at Hayes’ house and telling him he loved him and wanted to be with him. But he hadn’t.

And that, more than anything else, Zach knew, was why Hayes sounded like he was bleeding out.

Zach would’ve done just about anything to staunch Hayes’ hemorrhage. So it wasn’t too much of a stretch for him to say, “Gavin almost kissed me again tonight.”

“Oh yeah?” And he already sounded better, so Zach kept going.

“He didn’t, of course.Of course. Butalmost? And that’s something, right?”

“Right,” Hayes agreed easily.

“I only had a minor freakout afterwards, when heapologized.”