Page 9 of Melting the Ice

“This year is gonna be fucking sick,” Elliott chattered, listing out all the reasons. All the guys and girls he was going to sleep with. All the frat parties he was going to attend. Normally, Brody might’ve cautioned him to includesomeclassand practicetime in amongst all that, but he was too caught up in his own shit, which Elliott probably knew.

Which Elliott was probably trying to distract him from, come to think of it.

Brody wanted to smack him and hug him.

“You gotta go to class, too, you know,” he said as they approached the opening in the boards.

“You’re no fun,” Elliott said fondly.

“I’m plenty of fun,” Brody retorted. Not thinking of how just yesterday Ramsey had compared him to anun. Everyone was a nun compared to Ramsey—and Elliott too, for that matter, who was making a real effort to follow in Ramsey’s footsteps, but without some of Ramsey’s natural panache—but that didn’t mean Brodyactuallywas.

Elliott shot him a skeptical glance and Brody was just about ready to tell him exactly the last time he’d had plenty of fun—every summer, he and Liz, a friend who lived down the street that he’d gone to high school with, always casually hooked up at least once—when he realized that with Elliott distracting him, they’d made it to the ice and he was skating, as easy and freely as he’d ever skated before.

“See?” Elliott said, grinning. “Not so bad.”

“Ugh,” Brody groaned. “Did everyone know?”

“That you were hiding in the locker room? Of course not.”

Which meant—yes.

Ramsey skated up to him, flicking the puck over with his stick, and Brody grabbed it easily. They’d been partners for two years now, and it came naturally to play with him.

Once he’d gotten here, he realized how much he’d missed it, how much he’d craved that feel of flying over the ice, stick in his hand, his teammates around him, Ramsey at his shoulder, always right where he needed him if he looked.

Maybe Ramsey had been right after all. Maybe being roommates would’ve been a disaster; maybe it would’ve ruined this.

“Hey! Let’s circle up!” A tall man, still fit, with dark hair and a few threads of silver running through the temples, walked out onto the ice, stopping in the center of the rink.

He was Gavin Blackburn, both the old andnewcoach of the Portland Evergreens.

Zach was trailing behind him, but he’d put skates on, and was weaving in and out, blades cutting deep into the ice, making it clear that while he was a coach and a grad student now, he still had the moves.

“I’m Gavin Blackburn, your new coach,” he said. Up close, Coach B had grooves in his forehead, fading dark circles under his eyes. He looked like he’d been through a war compared to the photographs of him a few years ago, before he’d left Portland to go to the NHL.

He’d only coached there for a few years, before leaving abruptly in the middle of the season when his wife, Noelle, had unexpectedly fallen ill and then even more unexpectedly died.

There’d been lots of talk that he’d never return to the ice, that he was finished, that he was holed up in a remote cabin in upper Michigan and refused to leave. That he was becoming a grief-stricken hermit.

But now he was back.

What had pulled him out of his hole, Brody wasn’t sure, but he seemed determined to be present, in any case.

If the rumors of his thick black beard had actually had any truth to them, they didn’t now, because he was clean-shaven,gray eyes meeting each and every player as they came to a stop around him.

“Zach here likes to call me Coach B, so that’s fine,” Coach said. “I think we’ve got a talented crew here, but I think your old coach was a little too free and easy with the rules. Just so you know, I won’t be. I expect your best, on the ice and off.”

Elliott mumbled behind him.

He wasn’t going to be very happy about that. He might be an absolute demon during games—deserving of joining Mal and Ivan on the first line—but he hated practice and rarely exerted himself. And class? Well. If he even went, that was an unusual—and rare—step in the right direction.

“That means,” Coach continued, “that we’re going to be taking practice very seriously. Especially these first few weeks. I expect you to show up ready to work.” He motioned to Zach. “Zach is gonna lead you in the drills, and I can’t say I won’t strap some skates on at some point. I gotta stay young somehow.”

“Oh, you’re young enough, Coach,” Ramsey called out.

Coach didn’t quite break into a smile, but it was far enough from what seemed to be his typical sternness that Brody considered it a win. Though he wasn’t sure if Ramsey would.

Ramsey liked to charm everyone and was usually very good at it.

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