Page 5 of Melting the Ice

“Actually, I’ve already been drafted. Third round, by the Hurricanes.”

“Oh. But you’re still in college?” Dean’s forehead crinkled, the way so many people’s did when Brody tried to explain why some hockey players entered the draft and then returned to play in college.

“Yeah, it’s a developmental kinda thing. And I want to finish my degree. Myparentswant me to finish my degree. So we’re in agreement, at least. But yeah, eventually, I’ll move on.” To what . . .well, Brody knew he was being deliberately nebulous. He was supposed to want to play professional hockey. He was supposed to be thrilled he’d been drafted. Hehadbeen thrilled.

He wanted to play—but when his knee had failed him last year, everything had changed.

He’d started to worry. To wonder.

There was no denying he’d had his future laid out for him from his early teenage years, and it was always what he’d wanted, what he’d worked so hard for. His only rebellion had been his major, the science classes he enjoyed too much to stop taking,but now, suddenly, with too much time on his hands, he’d started to think.

Ramsey would have told him thinking was a bad thing, and Brody shouldn’t hurt his brain by doing it too often, but he hadn’t been able to help himself.

It hadn’t helped that his mother kept dropping hints about medical school. She meant, of course, that he could do itafterhis professional career had ended. She had no idea that he’d started thinking about doing itnow.

Well, he didn’t know what the hell he was gonna do. Brody was hoping a light bulb would switch on and he’dknow, but so far, that hadn’t happened.

Instead, for right now, he wanted to focus on getting back on the ice. Hoping his knee would hold him the way it was supposed to.

“Well that’s cool. I never want to stop playing football.” Dean hesitated. “And I guess you don’t gotta worry about money, no matter what you do.”

“No,” Brody admitted. So much for the guy not noticing their expensive cars or the new Vitamix blender in its packaging, sitting on the kitchen counter.

“Figures,” Dean said, but he didn’t sound annoyed, more resigned.

He didn’t need to say the opposite was true for him. It was obvious.

“So that’s why you play, huh? The NFL? Getting rich?”

Dean shot him a look full of disbelief. “That wrong, somehow?” he demanded to know.

“No. No, of course not. Everyone’s gotta do what they gotta do,” Brody rambled, horribly aware that he’d stepped in his own shit despite being fully aware it was there.

“Right.” Dean turned to go.

“Listen,” Brody said, “I didn’t mean it like that. There’s nothing wrong with doing that.”

Dean gave him a fleeting smile, all teeth. “I know that, pretty boy.”

“Hey, I’m not—”

“Rich boy, then.”

Brody realized then, before he could argue back that he wasn’t pretty, he was ahockey player, and a damn good one too, that Dean was teasing him.

“Then I’m gonna call you big guy.”

“Yeah, never heard that one before,” Dean said, but he was smiling with genuine amusement now.

“Bet you haven’t,” Brody retorted.

Hewasn’tjust pretty, he still wanted to argue. He had a brain. He was more than just the thick, wavy hair he’d inherited from his mom, and the impeccable bone structure from his dad. And he certainly didn’t havetheirmoney, either. Not yet anyway.

But he’d been around long enough to know when a guy was giving him a hard time and when he was teasing, and with Dean, it was clearly the latter.

“Hey, I gotta run to practice. But good to meet you, pretty boy,” Dean said, flashing him one final grin before he turned towards his own room.

Brody finished unpacking, not that it took very long, because it felt like all he wore most of the year was either shorts or sweats, and one of the many Evergreens T-shirts he owned.

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