Fine, he thought to himself, opening a fresh document. As a procrastination tool, he’d done far worse before. I will get this out of my system, and then I will get the rest of my work done.
‘This’ turned out to be four thousand words of what could only be called personal essay. For that length of time, Zack could pretend he hadn’t landed himself in a quagmire of ethical concerns and overall bad choices, and wallow in the atmosphere of this place that he had fallen in love with so quickly. If Zack had been more rational or less overcaffeinated, he would have stuck it in a drawer and pretended it never existed. Instead, he fired it off along with an email to his agent.
After that, he was exhausted enough that he banged out a draft of his article that was at least passable and sent it to Sammy as the sky outside was starting to get light.
He collapsed backwards into his chair and stared up at the ceiling. He fell asleep there, his laptop whirring quietly in his lap.
ZACK WOKE UP AN INDETERMINATE amount of time later to his alarm blaring at him, an overcast sky, and an email from Sammy which merely thanked him for the draft and said he’d get to it soon. Zack wasn’t sure if that was a reprieve or a reminder of the sword hanging over his head.
Tired as he still was, he got to the rink early for his lesson with Aaron. That was a place where he at least knew what he thought and felt. And he needed to tell Aaron what was going on—with the article and with his presence at TCI.
When he got there an all-too familiar figure was out on the ice. Zack watched him, transfixed. He and Brendan were working together, doing footwork side-by-side. While Brendan was a more than capable skater, Zack only had eyes for Aaron. His grace. His power. The smooth flow of his movements. He was a singular creature on the ice, and Zack wanted him.
He wanted Aaron’s body wrapped in his arms again while Aaron tipped his head back to be kissed. He wanted Aaron’s clever sharpness in conversation and to always have a seat next to him at the dinner table at Katie and Brendan’s. He wanted to watch him pursue his dreams, not just this season but next year and the year after that.
He didn’t realize Aaron had finished and skated over to him at the boards until he spoke.
“What’s wrong?”
“We need to talk.” Zack cringed as blurted out the words. He didn’t blame Aaron one bit for the frown that creased his forehead. That was not a sentence anyone ever wanted to hear.
Aaron looked at the clock, then back at Zack. “We have a lesson right now.”
Which was true, but Zack didn’t want to leave Aaron with the idea that the conversation was going to be something terrible. “I know, but—”
Aaron cut him off with a shake of his head. “The way life works here is that skating comes first. Always. Whatever you have to say can keep.”
The idea of focusing on skating for an hour with a conversation looming wasn’t appealing. He realized suddenly that he had no idea what Aaron would think about his staying on here. Maybe Zack had more problems than he knew. But they couldn’t be dealt with now; Aaron’s eyes watched him keenly. This was a challenge. It was not one Zack could fail to meet, especially right now.
“All right,” he agreed. “But can we go get coffee or something afterwards?”
Aaron nodded. “Of course. Now go get your skates on.”
THEY WERE HALFWAY THROUGH what Aaron called stroking drills—Zack tried hard to suppress his desire to make cheesy innuendo about that—when there was a yelp and a hollow boom from the other side of the rink.
Aaron whipped around gracefully; Zack managed to turn without tripping on a toe pick. On the other side of the rink a woman in hockey skates was woozily trying to sit up from where she’d clearly fallen, and judging by the blood trickling down from above her eyebrow, had hit her head.
“Shit, Tasha” Aaron hissed. “You, don’t fall over,” he snapped at Zack, and zipped off across the ice.
Zack knew he could probably manage that. But there was also an emergency at hand involving head injuries and blood. Other than the fact it had happened on the ice, he’d been in enough dicey circumstances that he definitely knew how to handle a situation like this. For one thing, someone who’d hit their head like that should not be trying to sit up.
He looked down at his feet and decided he could get to the other side of the rink on his own, even if his form was terrible. The rush of adrenaline probably helped. There was hearing about injuries—like Luke’s career-ending one—and there was seeing them happen. The sight of blood didn’t particularly bother Zack, but the visceral reminder that skating was a high-risk endeavor jolted him.
As Zack made his gradual way across the ice, Aaron slid to his knees next to the woman and gently helped her lay back on the ice.
“Maddie,” Aaron called, to one of the junior girls nearby. All the skaters had stopped to watch, but were mostly staying where they were when the fall happened, not wanting to crowd.
“Yes?” Maddie stepped forward.
Aaron glanced sideways at her. “Go have Cal at the front desk call the EMTs and show them the way in once they get here, okay? Let’s not have a repeat of that time Deb broke her arm and they got lost.”
Maddie was skating off before he had finished speaking, her braids whipping in the wind of her speed. “I’ll bring back ice!” she called.
“You’re overreacting,” the woman—Tasha—said, as Aaron knelt over her.
“And you’re bleeding all over the ice,” Aaron retorted. “Did you hit anything else on the way down?”
“I’m fine,” she
