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It was not the dawn of the new year that Zach had wanted.

He didn’t sleep. Stayed up, sitting in the same spot on the couch he’d collapsed onto the moment he’d walked into his apartment after the worst night of his life.

The best, and then the worst.

But even if it wasn’t what he’d anticipated, what he’d desperately craved, it could still be a new start.

A fresh beginning.

When his alarm blared at eight-thirty, Zach lifted himself off the couch, feeling every one of his twenty-seven years, and hobbled into the bathroom.

He took a long hot shower. Pretended that a few tears didn’t fall, mixing with the water as it swirled down the drain.

When he got out, he didn’t think he could talk about it, still, because even the thought of discussing it made his throat close over with despair and sadness and panic, but he did find his phone and type out a text.

Tried it your way, he sent to Hayes, and I don’t want to talk about it, but it’s over.

It’s over, Zach thought. It’s really over .

He’d never entirely understood why Hayes had cut Morgan off hard and fast. Why he’d refused to accept even the scraps of time they could’ve stolen together, because Zach had always assumed that having something of someone you loved was better than having nothing.

But no, Zach got it now. Something was worse than nothing.

The scraps only made him ache for more, to have everything , and he couldn’t keep going with that bottomless pit of desire opening up inside him all the time. Even if it took the rest of his life to fill it, he had to start now, one shovelful at a fucking time.

There were six weeks left of the regular season and then playoffs, if they made it that far. It was unfair to the team to bail on them now, but the idea of spending the next two months with Gavin like nothing was wrong, like nothing had changed between them, made him physically sick.

Zach had put his teams first his whole life, right up until he’d walked away from the NHL, and that had felt so much like the right decision, at the time and every single day after, he’d sworn to himself he wouldn’t ever go there again.

He wouldn’t carve himself out and leave nothing behind just to satisfy some impossible need that other people had for him.

It was shitty, but he was going to have to walk away.

The email to Sidney was shockingly easy. A handful of polite garbage sentences and there was his resignation, staring back at him from the screen. He could cc Gavin, but then Gavin might take it as a passive aggressive threat to change his mind or Zach was gone.

But Zach loved Gavin and he didn’t want someone who had no love left to give .

In another year he’d be done with his Master’s, and then he could leave this town behind. Really start fresh.

Hayes texted back. What happened? Are you really not going to tell me? Then a second text, coming in nearly on the heels of the first. Are you okay?

Zach flopped back on the couch. This adulting shit was the worst. He wanted to crawl in bed with a bottle of vodka and never leave.

I kissed him. He kissed back, then said no. I’m quitting.

It was the most clinical straightforward analysis of the situation Zach could provide. And somehow it sucked even more than any dramatics he could’ve texted Hayes. Seeing it all there, in black and white, cut him like a knife.

For a long second, he stared at Hayes’ second question, not sure how to answer. Of course he wasn’t fucking okay. Hayes should know better than to even ask.

Finally, he typed out, a letter at a time, slow and deliberate, giving himself a chance to change his mind, but it only felt more right the longer he looked at it: No, but I will be.

He watched as Hayes’ typing bubbles appeared and then disappeared half a dozen times.

Yeah, you will be, he finally said.

Of course, that might just be Zach’s own stupid optimism reflected back at him, because it wasn’t like Hayes had ever really gotten there. But he still might, and if anyone deserved it, it was him.

But it wasn’t just him. They both deserved it.

Zach reminded himself of that one more time and sent the email .

He went to the student gym instead of the staff one, enjoying the feeling of anonymity, of just being another student here, regretting the decisions he’d made the night before. Sweated out all his sadness, and it sort of worked.

Showered, and then hit the library.

He’d turned do not disturb on his phone, and didn’t bother looking at either his inbox or his texts. Though he couldn’t imagine anyone sending him anything he might want to hear. Even if Gavin changed his mind, even if Gavin begged him to come back, Zach knew this was what he needed to do.

Hayes had told him once that he didn’t have to put up with any of Gavin’s baggage—that it wasn’t his baggage—and even though part of Zach still wanted to help him carry it, he wasn’t going to sacrifice his own peace of mind to do it.

Gavin was never going to accept wanting him. He’d never be easy if they got together, and Zach decided he deserved better .

It felt like the righteous decision, the best decision, all the way up until he was done at the library and he headed back to his empty apartment.

He usually filled up the long silences at night with music or a game playing on TV—or his favorite way, which was Gavin’s voice, hushed and intimate as they talked on the phone.

There’d be none of that.

None of that ever again.

The thought struck him and Zach felt unmoored, destroyed. He staggered over to the couch and cried for the second time.

It wasn’t the most terrible day of Gavin’s life, but it felt like it crept into the top five, maybe even cracked the top three, which was a fact Gavin was studiously ignoring.

He only got through it because he knew he deserved it and because he’d learned, the hard way, that tomorrow had to be better.

Sometimes it wasn’t a whole lot better, but even marginally better would be an improvement he’d accept.

It wasn’t better.

It was worse.

His phone rang way too fucking early, just past seven, blaring on his nightstand, waking him out of a listless, restless sleep that he’d only found after he’d blearily seen the clock hit three AM.

Gavin scrambled for it, thinking, for a single heart-stopping moment, that it was Zach.

He didn’t know what Zach would be telling him, but he only knew he wanted to hear his voice.

It was not Zach.

It was Sidney, and he was blustering, clearly upset and ranting so fast Gavin could barely follow what he was saying.

“What’s going on? Slow down,” Gavin finally barked.

“Did he not tell you?” Sidney demanded.

“Did who not tell me what?” Gavin asked flatly.

“ Zach Wheeler. Your assistant coach. Sending me his resignation! He can’t quit now. You’re leading the conference and he’s a big part of that. You told me he runs the power play. Who’s going to fix the second team power play now?”

Gavin nearly dropped the phone. He couldn’t believe he’d never imagined that this could happen.

Maybe he and Zach wouldn’t work out personally but surely he wouldn’t quit this job.

This job he loved that he was so fucking good at.

It had been killing him enough that he’d let Zach down romantically, emotionally.

But now Sidney was telling him that he wasn’t going to get Zach in any way.

He was removing himself from Gavin’s life, completely, and there was suddenly no question.

Solidly top three worst days ever.

That was the only excuse for what Gavin said next. Or at least that was what he told himself.

“Fuck the second team power play,” Gavin snapped.

Sidney made a noise like a dying whale.

He realized he shouldn’t have said it, and he especially shouldn’t have said it to his boss, but he’d been reeling, barely holding it together, and then Zach had just hit him with the knockout punch.

“I mean,” Gavin said, grappling for some kind of dignity, “ I can fix it.”

“Fix the power play or fix your assistant coach quitting?” Sidney asked in a steely voice.

“I . . .uh . . .”

“There’s only one right answer here, and it’s not the fucking power play, though that’s not me saying it’s not a problem,” Sidney said.

Gavin could tell Sidney that there was no salvaging this situation but he couldn’t tell him why. The thought was incomprehensible.

“If he’s quitting,” Gavin said, “I can’t imagine I could change his mind. ”

“No?” Sidney challenged. “I find that very hard to believe. I saw you two less than a week ago, and you were fine. The team’s playing great. Fix this , Blackburn.”

Gavin winced. “I’m not sure there’s anything I can say—”

There was one thing he could do , but he couldn’t imagine that, either. Or, he could imagine it far too well, and that was the whole fucking problem.

“I don’t care. Fix it,” Sidney barked again.

“Maybe you should—”

Sidney cut Gavin off. “When I hired him, I didn’t want to let him go off to the god forsaken place you’d buried yourself in.

I told him he was crazy, that you’d never want to coach again.

That everyone knew that. But he never, ever let it go.

He begged and pleaded and threatened and coerced. He never gave up on you, not once.”

Gavin shut his eyes, guilt swamping his already painfully guilty conscience. He didn’t want to hear this, but there was no way to stop Sidney.

“I can’t believe you’d give up on him this easily, without even trying to get him back. Without even trying to fix whatever it is you two broke.”

It’s me , he wanted to tell Sidney, I’m the broken thing, and I can’t be fixed.

“I’m really not sure there’s anything I can say,” Gavin said diplomatically.

“Find something then,” Sidney said. “What even happened?”

“It’s . . .” Gavin licked his lips. Still tasting Zach there, even though it was heaven and hell. “It’s complicated.”

“Then uncomplicate it! ”

Gavin laughed humorlessly. “I wish it was that easy.”