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JULY 2025—THE COTTAGE
“I’ve been, uh, making a list of baby names for a while,” Shane said sheepishly while making impressive eye contact with his can of ginger ale.
Ilya couldn’t help but grin. “Of course you have.”
They were sitting on the edge of the dock, Shane sitting between Ilya’s legs as they dangled their feet in the water and enjoyed the Canadian sunshine. Anya, who had tired herself out swimming, was napping in the shade of the porch. It was, by all accounts, the perfect day. He’d had his husband naked and moaning on this very dock not even half an hour ago and Shane had hardly batted an eye. But bring up their future? The children they had both been very clear about wanting? The children who were going to be born in less than 2 months? And Shane got nervous? It made Ilya giddy. “How long?”
Shane didn’t reply; he just tapped his fingers across the rim of his drink.
“How long have you had this list, Hollander?”
Shane didn’t dare look at Ilya. He just sighed. “...the first summer you came up here.”
Admittedly, that surprised Ilya. The first summer he came to the cottage was eight years ago. He’d finally held Shane as long as he’d always wanted to, finally kissed him whenever he felt the urge (which was often), finally told him that he loved him. And to know that the whole time Shane had been thinking about this—what they had clawed and fought and suffered to have together now—that made Ilya more than a little sentimental.
Ilya swallowed the lump that was threatening to take over his throat and wrapped his arms around Shane’s bare chest. “That is a long time,” he whispered against his ear. “You could not have known that we’d ever need it.”
Shane twisted around leveled Ilya a look that he would have found impressive had he not been so focused on not tearing up. He must have been doing a poor job of it, though, because Shane’s face immediately softened as he brought his hands up and absentmindedly stroked his thumbs over the backs of Ilya’s hands.
“I don’t think I would ever have kids if it wasn’t with you,” Shane breathed.
Ilya chuckled to cover the shaky breath he let out and lowered his face to the crook of Shane’s neck for a solid minute. “So what's on this list?” he asked when his breathing had evened out.
“Well it depends on how we decide to hyphenate their last name,” Shane said quickly. “If we go Rozanov-Hollander, then I was thinking—"
“Hollander.”
“Yes?”
“No. Hollander,” Ilya clarified. “Their last name. Just ‘Hollander.’”
Shane swallowed. “Just....‘Hollander’?” Ilya could feel Shane’s heartrate jump where their hands were still interlaced on his chest.
“What? You do not know your own last name, moi chasy s kukushkoy?”
Shane was too shocked to realize that Ilya had just called him a cuckoo clock. “No. It’s just…just ‘Hollander’? Are you sure?”
“My father's name is not the legacy I want for them,” Ilya said simply—like he wasn’t rocking Shane’s entire world. “Your family has accepted me from the day I met them. That is who I want our children to know. How I want them to be remembered.”
Ilya wasn’t sure that he had ever articulated that thought out loud to Shane before—or to anyone. But it was true. It was how he had always felt.
Shane had to see Ilya now. So he extricated himself from Ilya’s arms and turned around so that his knees were bracketing Ilya’s thighs. He still couldn’t make eye contact for fear of combusting, but he took Ilya’s face in his hands and stroked his cheeks. Ilya’s eyes fluttered shut.
“I....don't have a list for that,” Shane admitted, his voice dripping with affection. “But we could make one. Together.”
When Ilya opened his eyes, Shane’s face was so close to his that he could count his freckles. Ilya wanted to kiss those freckles. So he did. And then he shrugged, the familiar mischievous glint returning to his eyes. “Plus, it would be unfair. They could never possibly live up to the name Rozanov. But ‘Hollander’ they can easily surpass.”
“Okay, fuck off” Shane laughed, playfully slapping Ilya’s chest. Ilya wrapped his arm around Shane’s back and pulled his head onto his shoulder.
They sat like that for several minutes, breathing in each other’s sun-warm scent and listening to the gentle lapping of the water against the shore. Anya’s soft snores and the distant humming of boat engines across the lake blanketed them in a rare kind of peace and quiet. Shane traced the outline of Ilya’s bear tattoo, and Ilya thought about the not-too-distant future when they’d bring their children here. It would mean less semi-public sex, of course, and more visits from Shane’s parents to see their grandchildren. More messes to clean up, more mind-numbing children’s cartoons to watch. Less quiet, probably. But more painting nails and playing with dolls and mini-stick hockey in the gym. More laughter. More love.
“I guess we should start a new list,” Ilya whispered into Shane’s hair.
THE NEXT WEEK—THE COTTAGE
“Dobroye utro, sweetheart,” Ilya greeted Shane as he stumbled half-awake into the kitchen.
“Good morning,” Shane groaned. Ilya was standing shirtless at the stove, his pajama pants slung deliciously low on his hips and frying up what smelled like turkey bacon. Shane wrapped his arms around his waist and buried his face in the warm skin between Ilya’s shoulder blades. “Oo uh beh awing ah er,” Shane murmured.
“I know your Russian is not good, but even I can’t understand that.”
Shane pulled his face back just enough that his lips grazed Ilya’s back with every word. “Not Russian. I said, ‘You should be wearing a shirt.’ You’ll burn yourself.”
Shane could feel Ilya’s chuckle rumble through his chest, a sensation that woke him up better than coffee to the heart and made his cock twitch in his sweatpants.
“I will be careful,” he promised, and Shane rolled his eyes, before moving to stand beside Ilya and start the coffee pot.
In the week since their conversation on the dock, Shane had brought over a rolling white board from the Irina Foundation office and written “Hollanov Babies” in large block letters across the top before dividing the rest in half with “Baby Boy” and “Baby Girl.” Coffee mug in hand, Shane glanced at it now and was pleasantly surprised to see that Ilya had scrawled a suggested in the boy column.
Shane’s vision was getting a little worse each year—a painful reminder that your mid-30s was young in the real world but elderly in hockey—but, from here, it looked like “Khaleb.” An interesting spelling, sure, but Shane was just glad that Ilya was contributing something to their list.
Their list. For their twins. Because their surrogate’s due date was at the end of August.
Shane shuddered at how much they still had left to do to prepare their home in Ottawa and the cottage—and themselves—for their arrival.
“Khaleb’s nice,” Shane said.
He could almost hear Ilya’s shit-eating grin as he replied, “Who’s Khaleb? A friend for a threesome?”
“Ew no. The name you added to the board, jackass. For our kid.”
Ilya smacked a kiss on Shane’s cheek as he passed by him with a towering plate of sausage links and turkey bacon. “You should wear your glasses more.”
Shane almost made a comment about Ilya’s apparent glasses fetish when he realized that Ilya was up to something. So, instead, he clamored around the kitchen island for the pair of glasses he thought he remembered leaving there last night. Sure enough, they were tucked under yesterday’s mail (a wad of coupons).
“Oh, fuck you, Ilya!” Shane exclaimed, somewhere between amused and genuinely frustrated to see that his husband had in fact written khleb rather than “Khaleb.” “We’re not naming our kid ‘bread!’”
“Then you will really not like my other suggestion,” Ilya smirked. The hazel eyes that Shane was so unabashedly obsessed with glimmered with humor. He almost didn’t want to look.
Almost.
Then he looked. And he wished he hadn’t.
“‘Vannaya’!? You have got to be kidding me!”
Ilya was full-on belly-laughing now, and the sound made Shane’s toes curl with want even in his agitated state. (Maybe getting laid would help with that, too.)
“Da. Yes. Of course I am kidding. We will not name our daughter ‘bathroom.’”
Shane huffed out a sigh. “I wish you weren’t kidding.”
“About vannaya?”
“About names in general.”
Shane didn’t mean to kill Ilya’s playful mood. He didn’t know why he still got so uptight about things sometimes. His therapist had once suggested that he had some control issues stemming from his high-pressure job and hiding his sexuality and his relationship with Ilya for all of his adult life, and while Shane couldn’t deny that that was an inherent part of who he was, he didn’t think he could blame this on that. He just wanted Ilya to take this a little more seriously. They were about to become parents after all.
Ilya must have sensed the shift in Shane’s mood, because when he came up beside Shane and wrapped his arm around his shoulder to pull him close, he wasn’t smirking.
“I am sorry for not taking this seriously,” he murmured, pressing kisses into Shane’s still-messy hair. “It is just—I do not care what their names are.”
Shane jerked back. “What the fuck, Ilya?”
“No, no, no! Hang on—” Shane felt Ilya take a deep breath and mutter something breathily in Russian. Shane gave him all the time he needed, because Shane needed an answer to this. “Not ‘I do not care’ as in I do not want them,” Ilya said finally. “‘I do not care’ as in their names could be ‘Bluey’ and ‘Bingo’—or ‘bread’ and ‘bathroom’—and I wouldn’t love them any less.” Ilya smoothed Shane’s hair to kiss his forehead. “I just want them to be here.” Kiss. “Healthy.” Kiss. “With us.” Kiss.
Shane’s breath hitched with every kiss, culminating in a whimper that he might have sense to be embarrassed by later but likely wouldn’t. “That is the hottest thing you’ve ever said to me, so we need to either sit down and eat breakfast or go fuck on the couch.”
Ilya was already dancing his fingers along the hem of Shane’s T-shirt, so his choice was more or less clear. “But, moya lyubov', I worked so hard on our breakfast,” he grinned as he peeled Shane’s shirt up over his head.
Shane whined as Ilya mouthed at his newly-exposed collar bone. “We can reheat it,” he choked out.
Ilya walked Shane backward, his lips not breaking contact with Shane’s skin until he was pushing him over the back of the couch. “Mmm, we do have a microwave.”
“Air fryer would be—” Shane panted as Ilya gasped as he fiddled with the buttons of his pajama pants “—better.”
“Yes,” Ilya hummed in absentminded agreement. “Air fryer.”
Some absolutely deranged part of Shane thought about adding “air fryer” to the board, but then Ilya had his mouth on him, and his mind, finally, blissfully, shut up.
LATER THE SAME DAY
“So I was thinking about vannaya,” Shane said a few hours later. They were still partially clothed and still on the couch, indulging in a very rare lazy day. Ilya would never tell him, but he was glad Shane was getting softer in his old age.
Actually, he might tell him. He liked seeing Shane get worked up when he called him old.
“Why could you possibly still be thinking about vannaya? Did I not fuck you good enough?”
Ilya also liked seeing Shane blush like he was right now. But, to Shane’s credit, his voice was steady as he told him to shut the fuck up.
“No! Obviously, we can’t name our daughter vannaya, but it got me thinking. How do you feel about ‘Vanya’ as a name?”
Shane was looking up at Ilya with his big brown doe eyes, and Ilya almost felt bad for the face he made at his suggestion.
“Too Russian,” he scowled.
Shane scoffed. “Well, I hate to break it to you, but you’re Russian, Ilya. So they will be Russian, too.”
“Technically only one of them will be Russian,” Ilya pointed out. “The other will be you.”
They had ended up going the IVF route when they decided to have children. Originally, they had wanted to adopt. Ilya, specifically, had wanted to adopt a child from Russia, but the country had been closed to same-sex international adoptions for over a decade, and it wasn’t like the most high-profile gay couple in professional sports could exactly hide their marital status on the paperwork. So, when that plan had fallen through, they had considered local adoption in Ontario, and it was still an option as far as Ilya was concerned, but, ultimately, they had decided to try IVF: one egg donor, one embryo with his DNA, one with Shane’s, and one incredible surrogate named Maria. And while it was going be pretty clear which twin had Shane’s DNA and which had Ilya’s, they had elected not to know until they were born. Which was soon, as Shane had been saying for the last 6 months.
“Hey,” Shane said, running a finger down Ilya’s jaw to force him to look at him. “I can’t blame you for not wanting our kids to know your family. I wouldn’t even blame you if you didn’t want to tell them anything about Russia. But if you do, if you want them to know about the good parts—about your mom and playing hockey and Moscow in the summer when everything’s in bloom—then I want that, too.”
Ilya smiled. Shane was trying so hard to understand him, but the truth was, there were things about his relationship to his homeland that even Ilya didn’t fully understand. Like the fact that they could take their children to see Shane’s childhood home in Ottawa but they were unlikely to ever take them back to Moscow to see St. Basil’s Cathedral together or take a walk down the Moskva River as a family. And Ilya had been to enough therapy to know that it was okay if that brought up mixed feelings. It didn’t mean he had to like it, though.
“I know,” Ilya assured him. “And I will think about it. I promise.”
He took Shane’s hand, and Shane smiled so his freckles pulled across his cheeks and into the crinkles that were forming at the corners of his eyes.
“I want you to pick their names,” Shane said, breaking their comfortable silence.
Before Ilya could respond—or protest—Shane continued. “I trust you. If their jerseys are going to say ‘Hollander’ on the back, then I want you to decide what we call them. Even if that’s ‘bread’ or some shit.”
“You will pick their middle names?”
Shane shrugged. “Sure, I guess. If you want me to.”
“I do.”
“Okay then,” Shane smiled again. He smiled a lot more now than when Ilya had first met him. Ilya liked that.
“Do we shake on it or…?”
Shane laughed. “Just kiss me.”
Ilya did. Gladly. But when they broke apart, his face was serious.
“But ‘Vanya’ is still too Russian. I had a teacher in grade school named Vanya. Awful woman.”
EARLY AUGUST—THE COTTAGE
“I picked their names,” Ilya said. They were lying in bed together, naked and well-fucked, and Ilya figured now was as good a time as any to tell Shane that he had made a decision.
Shane lifted his head off Ilya’s chest so fast he nearly headbutted him in the face. “Really?” he asked. He sounded like Hayden’s kids on Christmas morning. It made Ilya smile.
“Da.” He didn’t say anything else, mostly to tease Shane, but maybe a little bit because he knew they were on the precipice of something huge.
“Were you planning on telling me what you picked or did you just want to announce that you had decided?”
“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” Ilya sing-songed. He would, of course, but it was too much fun to ruffle Shane’s feathers.
Not sure whether he was falling into Ilya’s trap or rising to the challenge, Shane reached up and poked Ilya’s cheek. “Tell me.”
Ilya grinned with his whole face. “No.”
“Tell me,” Shane poked him again.
“Hmm,” Ilya pretended to think about it for a second. “No.”
Instead of poking Ilya’s cheek this time, Shane kissed it. “Please tell me.”
“You know I love it when you beg, Hollander,” Ilya whispered. “But still no.” Ilya wanted to see how much he could get from Shane. His dick wasn’t quite ready for another round just yet, but it was nothing that a little making out couldn’t solve.
Shane kept kissing down Ilya’s face, his jaw, and onto his neck, punctuating each kiss with a word. “Ilya. Pretty. Please. Tell. Me. What. You. Picked.”
By the time he got to “picked,” Shane had backed halfway down the bed and was kissing Ilya’s stomach, and Ilya was sure that he was about to get at least a blow job out of this little game.
But Shane had other plans for once. He pressed his lips above Ilya’s belly button one more time and blew a hard raspberry into his stomach, making Ilya call out.
“What the fuck, Hollander?”
Then Shane pounced, straddling Ilya and started tickling him. “Tell me now, Rozanov! I won’t stop until you do!”
He had discovered a few years ago that Ilya’s armpits were especially ticklish, so he started there and worked his hands up and down Ilya’s torso, both of them laughing hysterically the whole time.
Ilya knew that, objectively, he could buck Shane off of him. Or at least immobilize one of his hands. And, yes, this was just one more dumb competition between them, but Ilya was having fun. Silly moments like this with Shane gave him a kind of glee he should’ve felt in childhood but never did. They healed parts of him he hadn’t even realized were broken.
Finally, when Ilya felt like he genuinely couldn’t breathe from laughing so hard, he caved. “Okay, okay. Fucking stop, Hollander. You win!” He grabbed Shane’s hips and tried to push him off. Shane, for his part, went willingly, and then they were laying side-by-side again, tangled in bedsheets, and breathing heavily.
“Sofiya,” Ilya said, and when Shane didn’t push, continued, “It is popular in Canada, so everyone can say it. But I want to spell it the Russian way: S-O-F-I-Y-A.” Ilya wanted to joke that it was a boring name for a boring country, but since marrying Shane, he found himself strangely—or maybe not so strangely—enamored with Canadian things. And, on top of that, he knew no child of his, blood relation or not, could ever be boring.
Shane wasn’t sure if he was still out of breath from their tickle fight or if he was having a panic attack or if he just genuinely had his breath taken away hearing his husband talk about their daughter. He decided it was probably the latter. “That’s perfect. It’s beautiful.”
“Spasibo.” Ilya rolled over so he was facing Shane and kissed his nose. “And it means ‘wisdom,’ which I’m sure she will need, because it is unlikely that she will get it from my side of the family.”
Shane nodded, a teasing smile on his lips. “You do like fast cars and McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches more than a person should.”
“It is sausage between pancakes, Hollander. It is just like a regular breakfast, but more efficient. You love efficiency!”
“I love my arteries. We’re not getting any younger, Ilya.”
“Pffft, is fine. Crosby is 38.”
Ilya was acutely aware that he wasn’t getting any younger, even more so than Shane realized. Because, with every birthday, he was closer to one that his mother never saw. There was a time not-so-long ago where he wasn’t sure he would make it there either. He had his 38th birthday marked in his phone for that very reason.
“I just want you to be around for a long time to watch Sofiya grow up.” Shane rolled her name around on his tongue like he was testing it, which, Ilya supposed, he was. It was a name they would both have to get used to saying a lot. It was surreal to think about.
“And Maksim,” Ilya added.
“Yeah, of course. And Maks—” Shane blinked, realizing what Ilya had done. “Maksim? That’s his name?” He wasn’t accusatory or judgmental, just awestruck and almost reverent.
“It means—”
“‘Great,’” Shane supplied.
“Da. ‘The greatest.’ Because I hope he will be the greatest he can be at whatever he chooses to do.”
“And it kind of reminds you of Mad Max, doesn’t it?”
Ilya shrugged. “I like cars. We established this.”
“Sofiya and Maksim,” Shane whispered.
“Sofiya and Maksim Hollander,” Ilya whispered back. “I can’t believe they will be here this month.”
Shane smiled, then groaned. “I can’t believe I still have to choose their middle names.”
“Good luck, moya lyubov'.”
THAT EVENING
Shane had stolen away to the home office, his mind reeling with the events of the day. In truth, he was always going to be happy with whatever names Ilya picked for the twins, because, like Ilya, he couldn’t imagine not loving them—but he’d be lying to himself if he said he wasn’t the tiniest bit relieved that he had chosen familiar-sounding names. He would also be lying if he said he hadn’t been brainstorming middle name options this whole time.
On the piece of notebook paper in front of him, Shane had two columns. Originally labeled “boy” and “girl,” he had crossed them out to say “Maksim” and “Sofiya.” On Maksim’s side there was only one name. It was the first one that Shane had thought of, and truth be told, it was the only one he had ever considered. He had wanted to use this name for his son for years, since the day he proposed to Ilya. And it just so happened to sound good with “Maksim.” Sofiya’s middle name was a little trickier. There were so many girl names to choose from, but he wanted it to mean something to them, just like Maksim’s middle name did. He wanted something just as perfect.
Shane looked at his current list.
“Sofiya Yuna.” It had meaning, for sure. Any girl named after Shane’s mom was sure to grow into the strongest, smartest woman in the world. But he didn’t love the way it felt to say out loud. The soft “a” in “Sofiya” too clunky with the “y” in “Yuna”
“Sofiya Rose.” He liked it. It sounded great together. He had even played around with spelling it “Roze” as a nod to “Rozanov.” But the issue was, of course, Rose Landry, Shane’s kind-of ex-girlfriend and very good friend, and he didn’t foresee being able to separate Sofiya from that connection.
“Sofiya Lily” and “Sofiya Jane.” These ones were mostly throwaways—ideas that had crossed Shane’s mind that he couldn’t get rid of until he wrote them down. It was, though, funny to think about naming their daughter after the code names they had used for the better part of a decade. He didn’t like the way “Sofiya Lily” sounded, though. Her middle name needed one syllable or more than two syllables to flow with “Sofiya.” “Sofiya Jane,” then, could work. It wasn’t a no.
The last name on the list was Shane’s favorite: “Sofiya Ilyana.” He thought it sounded magical, like their daughter was a princess or a fairy. And he loved that it was a feminine version of “Ilya.” He wasn’t afraid to admit that he was a little obsessed with him—in a totally normal way for a person to be obsessed with their spouse. Ilya was kind and smart and caring. He was strong and careful. He was everything to Shane. He probably wouldn’t admit until they were both retired, but somewhere deep down, Shane knew that Ilya was the better hockey player, too. Shane put an ungodly amount of effort into his diet plan and workout regimen just to be about as good as Ilya was without all that. So why would he not want to name his daughter after his favorite person in the entire world?
That thought solidified it for Shane. And the thing about Shane was that once he made a decision, he wanted to run with it. So he got up from his desk to go find Ilya.
Ilya was sitting on the couch with feet propped up on the coffee table reading an ESPN article on his phone while a Toronto Blue Jays game played on the TV.
“I picked their names,” Shane announced as he walked in, repeating exactly what Ilya had said to him earlier.
Ilya’s jaw dropped before he schooled his face back into his trademark crooked grin. “No. No way. So fast? You must have cheated.”
“How can you cheat at making a decision?”
“Because you are bad at making decisions,” Ilya said. “So you must have cheated.”
Shane threw himself down on the couch and put his feet in Ilya’s lap. “Do you want to hear their names or not?”
“Are you going to tickle me if I say ‘no’?" Ilya grinned while playfully pinching at Shane’s insanely defined calf muscle.
“Maybe,” Shane grinned back.
“Later,” Ilya said. “Tell me.”
Shane exhaled. “Maksim Elijah and Sofiya Ilyana.”
Ilya took a breath. Shane took a breath. Shane waited. Ilya said nothing. Shane scanned his husband’s face for any sign of emotion, but Ilya’s hazel eyes were stoic.
“I know what you did,” Ilya said after what was either ten seconds or twenty minutes or an hour. Shane raised an eyebrow at him. “I have the Internet, too. ‘Ilya,’” he pointed at himself, “is the Russian version of ‘Elijah.’” He gestured to Shane. “You did the Russian thing.”
Shane blushed, and that was all the confirmation Ilya needed.
“I am confused,” Ilya said.
“Why?”
“Why not use your name for Sofiya?”
Shane shrugged. Truthfully, it hadn’t even really crossed his mind. “I didn’t want to. And, besides there aren’t a lot of good girls names you can derive from ‘Shane.’ Do you want her middle name to be ‘Shayna’? Or ‘Shannon’?”
Both Shane and Ilya wrinkled their noses.
“Then you could have used your name for Maksim. Or your father’s name. ‘Maksim David’ sounds good, yes?”
Shane begrudgingly nodded. “Yes, but—”
“But you didn’t.”
“I didn’t want to,” Shane repeated. Ilya leveled him an unimpressed look that demanded he say more, so Shane continued. “I want her to be named after you.”
Ilya tapped on Shane’s shins as an outlet for his anxious energy. “But what if I want her to be named after you?”
“Not the deal, Rozanov. You pick their first names. I pick their middle names. And you picked that they would have my last name. We shook on it.”
“We kissed on it,” Ilya reminded him, his eyes full of warmth and want and love.
“Even more binding, then.”
Ilya groaned. “I hate how good you are.”
Shane fucking winked and it made Ilya want to take his clothes off right then. “I can be bad. We both know that.”
“Do not try to distract me, Hollander. I am trying to be nice.”
Shane nudged Ilya with his foot and smiled. “You’re right. This doesn’t happen often.”
Ilya reached his hand out, and Shane took it. “You give too much of yourself, moy zefir.” And if Shane had been a marshmallow, like Ilya said, the heat in Ilya’s gaze would have been enough to melt him. God, Shane loved him so much.
“And you ask for so very little in return,” Ilya continued.
“I asked you to give up your whole life for me and come play for a shit team so we could be closer,” Shane mumbled. “I asked you to keep us a secret for years so I could stay in my safe little bubble.”
Ilya squeezed his hand. “And then your best friend outed us, and now we both play for that shit team that is not so shit anymore.” He gave a sad smile. “Stop beating yourself up. It all worked out. Is not your fault.”
Ilya might as well have punched him in the stomach. Had his therapist suggested that he was still subconsciously punishing himself for the way he and Ilya had been outed? Yes. Did Shane think naming their children after Ilya was an attempt to make up for that? No.
Not really.
Well.
Maybe?
Shane doubled down on the “no,” which might have been convincing if his foot wasn’t shaking in Ilya’s lap. “I have my parents. I have Hayden and Jackie and the kids. Rose. But most importantly, I have you and Maksim and Sofiya. That’s all I need. Everything else is just superfluous.”
“Superflu—?”
“Extra,” Shane clarified, waving his free hand around in the air. “More than I need.”
“I do not know about that,” Ilya teased. “What about the hot tub? The pool? The jet skies, Shane? Those are needs.”
Shane rolled his eyes. “Ilya.”
“You do really enjoy our blender, too. Ten different settings for your crazy health smoothies. Is that soo-per-floo-us?”
“Ilya.”
“And the drawer in the nightstand,” he purred. “The one full of toys? Are those more than you need, Shane?”
“Fuck you, I was trying to be romantic.”
“So am I. And I am happy to fuck you.”
“I’m yours,” Shane said, his voice husky with desire.
Ilya pulled Shane up by their joined hands and quickly closed the gap between their lips. “YA tvoya.”
“I am not letting this go,” Ilya said when they broke apart.
“Goddammit, you’re like a dog with a bone, Rozanov,” Shane groaned, collapsing back onto the arm of the couch. “Let it go.”
“No.”
“Ilya.” Shane hit him with a throw pillow.
“Shane.”
They stared at each other, unblinkingly, for several seconds, waiting to see who would break first.
It was Shane. It was always Shane. “We’ve been over this,” he said. “No good ‘Shane’ names for girls.”
“What about that—that Canadian singer? The ‘let’s go girls’ woman.”
Shane chuckled. “Do you mean Shania Twain?”
“Yes! What if I want her middle name to be ‘Shania’?”
Shane laughed despite his commitment to being frustrated. “‘Sofiya Shania Hollander’?” He stuck his tongue out. “No. No way.”
Ilya relented. “Yes, okay. Bad example. But there must be—” Ilya’s voice tapered off.
“Hmm?” Shane prompted.
“What about ‘Jane’?” Ilya said so quietly that Shane could barely hear him. “It was the name—”
“—that you had me saved as in your phone,” Shane finished. Then he laughed far too loudly for the situation. “You’re fucking kidding me, right? Like, this is another prank, isn’t it?”
Ilya looked genuinely confused and a little hurt at Shane’s outburst. “If you don’t like it, we don’t have to use it,” he said stiffly.
Shane sat up and pulled Ilya toward him. “God, no. I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean to offend you. I just—hang on one minute, okay?” He kissed the top of Ilya’s head and darted out of the living room.
Thirty seconds later, he came back with a piece of paper that he thrust into Ilya’s hands. “Look. This was my list.”
Ilya glanced Shane’s messy scrawls and snorted. “‘Sofiya Lily’ does sound bad," he agreed in the softest voice Shane had ever heard him use. “But I’m glad that you thought about yourself a little bit.”
Shane was standing behind the couch while Ilya read over the rest of the list. “Can I change my answer?” he asked after a few minutes. Ilya looked up at him, and Shane smiled. “Can we call her Sofiya Jane?”
Ilya beamed up at him now. “I would like that,” he said.
“Me too,” Shane admitted, coming around the couch. Ilya pulled him into his lap and kissed him hard. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“I’m glad you remembered who you are, Hollander,” Ilya murmured into Shane’s neck. “Is not much space in the trophy room after we combined our awards.”
Shane nipped at Ilya’s jaw. “Oh, I think there’s room for a few more Stanley Cups.”
Ilya grunted in assent as he pushed Shane flat onto the couch.
Yes, there was definitely enough room for that.