Page 39 of Melting the Ice

“Right,” Ian said sympathetically.

But Dean didn’t want Ian’s sympathy. He wanted his reassurance that these concerns weren’t going to cost him a spot in the first round of the draft next year.

“Well,” he said in a hard voice, “tell me what I can do to fix this.”

Ian tilted his head and regarded Dean for a long, endless moment.

He’d come to this lunch hoping to smooth things over and reassure Ian—so that he could in turn reassure NFL teams—that he wasn’t going to be a hot mess. But this thing with Brody had fucked him up so much, bringing all these frustrating hungers to the surface, hungers he’d never even noticed before. As a result, his temper was shorter than he’d hoped for.

Avoiding Brody for a few days had seemed like a good plan to return them both to the place they’d been in pre-hookup. And it hadmostlyseemed to be working, at least until Brody had shown up at his bedroom door last night, all soft sleepy brown eyes, warm with an emotion Dean didn’t want to identify, and reminded him all over again of how good it had been.

Of how much his body craved a repeat.

Fuck my life.

Why hadn’t he just told Brody he didn’t want to be his experiment? That he didn’t want Brody to behisexperiment?Because he’d been relaxed in a way he never was, which was only partially the booze’s fault—the rest lay entirely with Brody and also his goddamn curiosity.

He’d wondered and let those questions take the reins for the first time in his whole life, and now look at him paying for that choice.

“I’m not sure what to tell you,” Ian said, and there was that blunt honesty again.

Of course, that same tendency to tell the truth was what had attracted Dean to Ian Parker in the first place.

He hadn’t wanted polite platitudes. He’d wanted fuckingresults.

He’d wanted an agent who was going to fight for Dean as hard as Dean had fought for himself. Up until this point, it had been going well. He’d been ready to sign on Ian’s dotted line the moment he could.

But now, ever since the email, he wasn’t sure.

That wasn’t the only thing he wasn’t sure of these days.

Yeah, you were pretty fucking sure you were straight, too.

Brody had destroyed that with one kiss—and Ian had done the same with one email.

Was it any wonder he was reeling and fuckinghiding? Maybe Brody had come to his door last night wanting a repeat, but with everything else shaky in a way that made Dean anxious, he wasn’t willing to risk it.

Too much drama. Too much uncertainty. No matter how much his body craved what Brody had possibly been offering.

“I want to know the truth. I know I can fix this, but you have to tell me how,” Dean said gruffly.

Ian sighed.

“Dean, I said it all in the email. I’m not saying that concern is gonna really scare any particular team away from drafting you,especially not if you keep playing lights out, this season and next. But itcould. Especially if people start talking about it more—”

“You mean like the sports media.” Dean glowered, just thinking of how he’d like to squeeze the life out of some of these bloodsuckers who’d never actually played a down of football yet felt like they could offer endless, pointed analyses ofhisplay. Of who he was as a player. Of who he was as a person.

Ian nodded. “You can’t listen to them, though, you know that. We talked about that.”

They had. At length. And usually Dean was too busy to do it, anyway, but for a time, a whole stretch of his freshman and sophomore year, he’d had a Google alert set up with his name.

That had been one of Ian’s first pieces of advice. Delete that alert. He’d done it, and ithadhelped him focus more on what was really important: his own performance, not what everyone else might say about it.

“I know, but—”

“No buts,” Ian interrupted. He still had that easy, uncomplicated smile on his face, but Dean knew his future agent well enough to know that casual smile hid a sharp brain and a backbone of steel.

You like those things about him.

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