Page 93 of Breaking the Ice

Zach didn’t want to look down at his watch, but he thought they’d probably wasted at least forty-five seconds.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Gavin took a step closer, and Zach still didn’t move.

“Are you—” Gavin broke off, taking a deep breath. His head tilted back and he looked right at Zach.

“Yeah,” Zach said.

The noises from the team were filtering through the hallway, getting louder by the second. A countdown, Zach realized, his brain finally picking out the numbers from the raucous cheers.

He and Gavin stared at each other. Gavin had to know what he wanted, whathewanted, but he didn’t move. Zach decided that was permission enough.

And then,finally, a final noisy yell.

“Uh, Happy New Year?” Gavin said nervously, licking his lips.

Zach broke first. He stepped closer, his hands rising to cup Gavin’s cheeks. Felt the scrape of his late night scruff along his jaw and tilted his mouth against his own.

Zach was kissing him.

Gavin had known it was coming. He’d known the moment he’d opened the bathroom door and Zach had been standing here in the hallway.

It wasn’t hard to figure out what he wanted.

But what do you want?

That wasn’t so much the question aswhat am I allowed to want?

It was only then, staring at Zach, who had him practically held hostage, not moving, just looking, justwaiting, that Gavin acknowledged to himself that he’d come to the bathroom for exactly this reason.

He hadn’t wanted to watch the clock tick over to midnight and stand next to Zach and just keep fucking pretending that he didn’t want to kiss him.

He wanted to kiss him.

So Gavin kissed Zach back.

Zach’s kiss had been soft, almost hesitant. Like he was asking a question he hoped he knew the answer to.

Gavin tilted his head and kissed him back, deeper.

He didn’t know if the kiss was so different because it was a man, or because it was Zach, but it lit Gavin up from the inside out, electricity humming through every bit of him—to his fingertips and then all the way back to his toes.

Zach gasped into his mouth, and then there was his tongue, sliding against Gavin’s own, as his hands cupped his cheeks and held him there, just for him to kiss.

It shouldn’t have been so good, but it was actually fucking incredible.

Zach pulled back, and Gavin nearly reeled him right back in. He wanted to keep kissing, keepfeeling, and not worry about thinking anytime soon.

But Zach took another step back, lips red and wet, and Gavin’s brain kept short-circuiting.

But one thought stood out from the jumbled, heated mess: he’d been five seconds from grabbing Zach’s arm and dragging him back. Not just into Gavin’s arms, but to the bathroom with its single room and the lock on the door.

With nearly the whole team just outside.

Zach didn’t say anything, and Gavin didn’t knowwhatto say.

He couldn’t pull out thethat was a huge fucking mistakecard, not when he wanted so badly for it to be the opposite.