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It had been a while.
Ilya was 90 degrees over the ice, facing off against Shane Hollander. Like clockwork, if not for the fact that he was desperately trying not to think about the last time they were here. It played in Ilya’s mind in flashes, as if he was rapidly tapping his phone screen and skipping through a video in 10-second intervals. He relived the brutal collision and the terrible crunching sound that came with it. Even the gasps from the audience were cut off, filled only by silence as Shane laid there, unmoving and unwell. Ilya lingered there for what felt like days, his blood as cold as the ice beneath his skates. He refused to leave the rink. It didn’t matter that the referees were shouting at him. It didn’t matter that Shane’s battered hand came up to touch his arm, that he was worried about all the wrong things. “They can see us.” Ilya didn’t care. The last thing Ilya cared about was anything but Shane.
Then there was the hospital visit, after a prolonged and sleepless night of scrolling the Internet and finding no useful updates about Shane’s health. The relief Ilya felt was immeasurable. He finally felt warm again when he touched Shane’s hand. He was high as a kite, and he invited Ilya to spend a summer together, for once. “Will you come to my cottage this summer?”
Ilya considered it. More than that, he dreamed about it. He could only imagine how beautiful Shane would look in the sunlight, when Ilya could stop and stare and not worry about other people seeing him fall in love in real time. Would Shane cook for him? Would Ilya walk into the kitchen area of this cottage and see Shane standing in front of the stove, wearing his shirt, covered in little marks Ilya had sucked into his skin the night before?
It was private, Shane said, and no one would bother them for two weeks. Ilya could live the life he’d been dreaming about since he was 18 for two straight weeks.
It was so easy to live in the fantasy for a while after the accident. Second only to stumbling across the body of his beloved mother, seeing Shane get hurt was the scariest thing Ilya had ever witnessed. The whole situation left him at a crossroads, though.
Ilya and Shane had been dancing the line of something; their entire relationship was a well-choreographed dance. For a couple years, they’d been messing up their routine. They took turns losing their footing or forgetting the moves. They didn’t even catch each other; they caught themselves, and they kept going without implementing any corrective measures. Ilya ignored Shane for six months, and then they fell right into each other after that award show. Shane went and dated Rose Landry, and then they rekindled their snuffed-out flame. Shane confessed that he liked Ilya, that he could, and that he wanted to, envision a future in which they got to be something more—in which they didn’t have to dance anymore.
“Would you want to be? If we could?” More than anything, my love. I want to be something with you. I want to be anything with you.
After that night, Ilya decided he needed to break things off.
“Maybe,” Ilya said of the cottage, even though he knew he couldn’t do that. He’d procrastinated for long enough. He’d let himself have too much for far too long, and he’d dragged Shane down the well with him.
He didn’t go. Even when Scott Hunter kissed his lover on the ice, Ilya didn’t go to the cottage. He sent some witty text to Shane, and he stayed in Boston. The balance and the rush of disbelief and relief didn’t matter. This is really possible? Could this be it, my future with Shane? Kissing him on the ice after winning because he’s mine, and I want the world to know, and that’s okay? I can have hockey, and I can have Shane? It didn’t matter; he flew to Moscow anyway. He’d been a wishful dreamer all his life. It was well past time to grow up.
Scott Hunter still played hockey, despite his age and his sexuality. He got shit for it, sure. He was flooded with “old, gay man on the ice” comments — and some far more colorful language from fans and haters and media alike — but he still played, and his lover was safe. According to Scott, they weren’t just safe; they were happy. The adversity didn’t matter. They were happy. Scott still played, and he still loved, and he was happy.
Ilya had talked to Scott a lot more than Shane the past few months. In fact, he’d received radio silence from Shane. From “Jane.” Ilya had sent a dozen texts to no reply. He knew why; it would be impossible to forget that night in Montreal.
So much for not thinking about it.
“Shane Hollander,” Ilya said. He tried to catch Shane’s eye, a task that was difficult on a good day. On a bad one, it was impossible. Shane stared at the ice and waited for the puck to drop. He didn’t smile. He didn’t respond to Ilya at all, even when Ilya provoked him, “We will beat you today.”
The puck dropped, and Shane scooped it away in the blink of an eye. The chase was on.
The whole night, Shane played recklessly. He was constantly chasing the puck as if he was the only Metro on the ice, and he shoulder barged whichever Raider was in play, even Ilya. Worry zapped through Ilya like lightning every time he saw Shane’s previously-fractured collar bone ram into one of his teammates. At the very least, Ilya had a game to focus on, so he didn’t spend every second remembering the moment Shane hit the ice all those months ago. For a second, Ilya thought he’d died right then and there. That was long enough to know he never wanted to believe he lived in a world without Shane again.
Although, on a technicality, he did live in a world without Shane. His thoughts and his feelings might revolve around Shane for the rest of his life — he was slowly starting to accept that as fact, not just dramatics — but he’d taken himself right out of Shane’s universe. Shane wanted nothing to do with him anymore.
Near the end of the game, Ilya caught Shane in the corner of the rink for a moment. His worry was bubbling up and over, “You will get hurt—”
“Fuck you, Rozanov.”
Shane didn’t look at Ilya for the rest of the game.
The Metros won. Ilya was distracted; Shane was full of grit; the luck of the night was weighted toward Montreal — whatever. All Ilya knew was Shane played the entire game with tears in his eyes.
Ilya expected it to hurt. He expected Shane to be angry. Years ago, though, he expected Shane to just be a casual fling. Clearly, Ilya was not clairvoyant, nor was he good at making the right choices.
In the weeks leading up to the pre-season that followed Shane’s injury, Ilya spent countless hours sitting in front of his mother’s grave. He didn’t speak out loud to her, but it was nice to sit in her presence as he mulled over the hardest decision of his life. He was a stubborn man who had already decided to break things off with Shane because things had grown too serious. Shane admitted he felt it, too. Ilya couldn’t let that happen.
But he wanted to. God, he wanted to. His desire for Shane had manifested into something physical. It had become the atoms that formed Ilya Rozanov, that let him breathe and think and exist, and he would spend the rest of his life wanting to be anything with Shane Hollander. He could try to move on all he wanted, but he would always love Shane. When he died, and his body returned to the earth as dirt and soil, the trees that grew from his essence would love Shane Hollander, too.
Ilya severed their relationship early on, before the season started. Selfishly, he gave himself one last night. He spent hours taking Shane apart, mourning him with every kiss and every touch before Shane even knew what was going on. He savored the way Shane tasted and the way he felt. He memorized the cadence of his breath, the rate of his heartbeat, the sound of his voice when he said Ilya’s name and when he begged for more. Ilya tucked it all away in a corner of his brain that he would only touch when he missed Shane the most. He prayed he wouldn’t end up like his father—God forbid a pitiful disease take away the one thing he would let himself have of Shane Hollander.
Since then, Ilya hadn’t been able to forget the night. The way Shane looked at him—so confused, so heartbroken. It reminded Ilya of how he felt sitting on his couch after Shane left him because he’d been foolish enough to call him ‘Shane’ instead of ‘Hollander.’ Ilya had been so meticulous and so careful, foolishly trying to take the next step because he thought it was all possible back then. He thought they could be something without having to be everything. How stupid was he?
Ilya was sick with guilt. Shane looked completely destroyed. Tears welled up in his eyes, and he was angry, but he was also so fucking sad. He got dressed quickly. Ilya watched his clothes unfold, and he thought about how he’d never see that again. He’d never watch Shane neatly lay his folded clothes down before they had sex again. One day, he might forget about that habit completely.
It was far too late to take it all back. Maybe that was a good thing. It was dangerous, what the two of them were doing. It was dangerous, what Ilya wanted from Shane, what Ilya wanted for the rest of his life. There was no space in the world for a gay, Russian hockey player.
If Shane was a woman . . .
No. Ilya wouldn’t love him the same. Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander were special because they met through hockey, because they were two boys-going-on-men just trying to make things work, because they were rivals as much as they were something else.
Ilya wanted the world to be different. He didn’t want Shane to be different.
Ilya brooded over the situation for hours after the game Shane played entirely in tears, until it was 21:00 and he decided he couldn’t just sit in his hotel room and think anymore. He would go crazy. He would text “Jane” again, a moment of weakness, a moment of giving in to the desire that had become him, that had become the blood in his veins and the thoughts in his head and the uncoordinated way he navigated the world.
By 22:00, Ilya had walked into a small, unassuming bar accompanied by no one and really only wanting a drink, some body heat, the knowledge that he was doing more than sitting in another hotel room thinking about Shane Hollander. He needed to move on. He needed to go out and see the world, as ugly and unaccepting as it was. He needed to be normal.
Karma was a funny thing, one of those beliefs that Ilya didn’t pay any mind to until he met Shane. When Ilya messed up with the love of his life, the karmic layer of the universe punished him. He didn’t get more than halfway through a glass of vodka before he spotted Shane—his love, his universe—standing with a group of people on the opposite side of the bar. Shane was chatting, laughing, and sipping on something dark.
Ilya needed to leave.
Ten minutes later, Ilya was on his second glass of vodka, and his intense stare had only left Shane for seconds at a time. He had no desire to be caught; Shane had been too upset for too long, and Ilya’s presence only irritated him more. That was the only thing keeping Ilya rooted to his spot. His fingers ached like they wanted to jump off his palms and hold Shane themselves, emotions be damned. He kept them firmly rooted around his second, then third, then fourth glass of vodka, consumed by huge gulps between seconds upon minutes of staring at the group of people Shane was with.
Ilya recognized Rose Landry, but he didn’t recognize anyone else. He certainly didn’t know the blonde guy who kept touching Shane’s waist. He was way too close to Shane, and he’d made himself way too comfortable, sipping from Shane’s drink, bumping hips with him, loosely holding his elbow like he was Shane’s fucking wife, or something.
Through him and his bold actions, Ilya saw a glimpse of what could be. If he was braver, if he was smarter, if he had been born anywhere as, as anyone else. If the world was a little different, a little more accepting, a little more willing to turn a blind eye and just let be what could be.
For an hour, Ilya sat and stared and thought about how much worse this was than seeing Shane with Rose Landry. At least that was normal. That was what people expected. Superstar Shane Hollander dates beautiful movie star — of course he did. But superstar Shane Hollander lets some blonde guy hang off his arm all night? Why? Who was he? What did they mean to each other?
Ilya let himself hope that this guy was just flirty and clingy and that he meant nothing to Shane. For hours, and through so many glasses of vodka the bartender stopped serving him, Ilya convinced himself of this. But, when Shane left around midnight, the guy followed him. No one else did.
The thoughts spinning around Ilya’s inebriated head were impossible to fight. Shane had left, and he had left discreetly with someone. With another guy. Certainly, they were going back to Shane’s hotel to fuck. Shane was going to pull him in, hot and heavy, and let some other guy stick his tongue down his throat. He was going to meticulously fold his clothes in front of someone else. He was going to open his legs for someone else. Another man’s name was going to roll off his tongue, filled with pleasure only Ilya had given him.
Truthfully, if Ilya had stumbled out of the bar any quicker, he would have confronted Shane. He would have made a messy scene right in front of this blonde guy and anyone else who was on the street. Shane would hate him even more because Ilya would scream every single emotion he felt into the chilly, midnight air. Shane and that blonde guy were gone by the time Ilya burst out of the bar, though.
A cab took Ilya back to his hotel room, where Ilya lost every ounce of vodka he’d chugged at the bar. He narrowly avoided shattering the bathroom mirror, and he smoked three cigarettes on the balcony. The whole time, Shane was probably opening up to another man, letting someone else see him the same way Ilya saw him. His mouth formed around the head of another cock. His fingers curled around the locks of hair on someone else’s head. His chest arched up against another heartbeat.
Was he better than Ilya? Was he more experienced? Did he say Shane’s name? Did Shane say his?
Ilya didn’t get much sleep that night, nor did he find much with which to distract himself. Instead, he drained his phone battery searching for answers. He looked up Rose Landry and tried to find out who all of her friends were. None of them looked familiar—none of them were the guy that Shane went home with. She didn’t star in any movies with him. She didn’t sit near him in interviews. As far as Ilya could tell, he was a nobody who hung around a group of movie stars. Had he simply approached them, and they all let him hang around? Was he a stranger who Shane went home with? Didn’t he know that was dangerous? Wasn’t he trying so hard to keep his sexuality a secret? Why the fuck would he take another guy back to his hotel?
Who is he? Ilya blearily typed at one point, when he was on his fifth article about Rose Landry’s life and no closer to finding out who that guy was. Maybe he could make the guy jealous. Maybe, if ‘Lily’ popped up on Shane’s phone, the guy would bail. But that was assuming a lot—that the guy would care, that Shane even had his phone on, that Shane hadn’t blocked him weeks ago.
Ilya erased the message. Was he good? He erased that one, too. Are you okay? Thirteen quick punches to his backspace button. I miss you. Eleven more. I’m sorry. The final ten.
The question plagued Ilya for weeks. He continued scouring the Internet, looking through Rose’s friends and diving into their circles, too. It was unhealthy. It was obsessive. It was everything Ilya was trying not to be. He was trying to let go — wasn’t that the point of breaking up with Shane, of depriving himself of Shane’s touch, scent, voice, everything?
He couldn’t let go. It was the most impossible task he could undertake, it seemed. The anger drove Ilya to a number of goals, climbing closer and closer to the 50 he promised himself to surpass—but he couldn’t even celebrate his accomplishments unless he was in front of a camera and flirting with the interviewer behind the mic, the way people expected him to. Behind the scenes, he was falling apart like wet paper, and it was taking everything in him not to text or call Shane. Why would he? Shane — “Jane” — wouldn’t answer him anyway.
During Ilya’s weeks-long search for any information about this guy, he didn’t see Shane’s name pop up in the news. Clearly, only Ilya had seen that guy follow Shane out of the bar. It gave him a twinge of hope, thinking maybe, just maybe, their leaving in quick succession was a coincidence. Maybe Shane went back to the hotel all by himself. Maybe he went to sleep alone, and he woke up, and he took the next flight out, and he went on to play against other teams in cities across the U.S. and he didn’t sleep with anyone at all.
Whatever happened — and Ilya was dying to know what happened — he and Shane ended up in the only position they’d seen each other in for weeks, bent over the ice as they waited for the puck to drop.
“Shane Hollander,” Ilya said, hoping and praying that he managed to keep the emotion out of his voice.
“Ilya Rozanov.”
Ilya was still pitifully hurt, but he smiled. In that moment, he was a goner. In that moment, he was in love. Perhaps he had been all along — because all it took was Shane saying his name, as monotone as the ice was cold, for Ilya to view him fondly.
“Will you beat me today?”
Shane still didn’t look at him, but he smiled, too. “Sure will.”
Shane was far more focused during the game. He wasn’t aggressive; he played as he always did, with clarity and skill that only someone who practiced until they were perfect could harbor. He still avoided looking at Ilya, but it wasn’t as pointed as it was before. It had Ilya wondering—was Shane happy because he had someone else? Was it easier to be near Ilya because he was moving on? Could he smile now that he was fulfilled in ways he’d only ever been fulfilled by Ilya? Did he fill the gap?
Ilya was once again caught in a loop of his own wrongdoings. To make matters worse, he was wholly determined to find out what had happened between Shane and that unnamed blonde guy that night.
Ilya made it back to the hotel in record time, just so he could sit in the lobby and wait for Shane to return. His plan was strange and obsessive, unhealthy and unfair, but he waited patiently anyway. He spotted Shane as soon as he walked into the lobby, and he watched Shane walk to the elevator. The setup of the elevator was quite dangerous, in Ilya’s opinion. It was completely clear and completely visible to those in the lobby below. It gave Ilya the perfect view of Shane smiling at his phone as the elevator climbed . . . and climbed . . . and climbed . . . and dropped him off on the 12th floor.
Ilya dove into the next elevator that opened. This is weird. He hit the button to the 12th floor. This isn’t fair. He tapped his fingers against the railing. Shane doesn’t want to talk to you. He watched the numbers rush by — 7, 8, 9, 10. You’re the one who ended things. And yet he hustled through the halls of the 12th floor desperately looking for Shane.
It wasn’t hard to spot him. He was standing in front of his room, still texting as he dug through his pocket for his room key. This was Ilya’s last chance to turn around, to stop himself from being the crazy, obsessive, sort-of-kind-of-ex that Shane didn’t deserve to have to deal with.
“Hollander!”
Shane jolted. He whipped his head in Ilya’s direction, wide eye filled first with confusion, then disbelief. The distance didn’t make it harder for Ilya to read him. Up close, Ilya could see even more—the anger, the annoyance, the red tint on his cheeks. Ilya hadn’t seen his freckles this close in weeks.
“Did you fucking follow me here?” Shane whispered. He glanced behind Ilya and behind himself, wildly and worriedly looking for witnesses. “Are you out of your mind? What if somebody saw you?”
“No one saw me,” Ilya assured.
“How could you possibly know that?” Shane hissed. He glanced up and down the hall again, then opened his hotel door and shoved Ilya inside. For a moment, Ilya was home. He had no connections to this hotel, but home had become any little corner he and Shane could hide away in. The room smelled like Shane’s cologne. His clothes were folded at the end of his bed. His phone dinged with the special, shimmery sound he’d set for text notifications.
The split second of familiarity ended when the door slammed shut, and Shane whirled around to point a furious glare at Ilya.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Shane said through his teeth.
“Who was that?” Ilya asked. Shane narrowed his gaze, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Last time we played, in Boston. You went out, a guy followed when you left. Who was that?”
Shane blinked at him a few times. “Were you watching me?”
Ilya’s tongue was weighted with bitterness, but he narrowly dodged saying something sarcastic. He knew this situation would only devolve if he didn’t watch his mouth, and he wanted answers. The ambiguity of that night was eating him alive. “Who was he?”
“Why do you care? What do you want?”
“I want to know who that guy was,” Ilya pressed.
Shane rolled his eyes, but he caved. “His name’s Logan. He’s my boyfriend.”
Ilya stopped breathing.
“Boyfriend?” He gasped like he was drowning. He was, wasn’t he? His jealousy and his grief were combining, filling his lungs with something like liquid. He was an idiot. He was a fucking idiot. He expected this—and yet. And yet. It hurt like a stab wound, like a gunshot, like the time Ilya had fallen out of the tree in his backyard and hit the ground with a thud so loud his mother heard him. There was no one to save him, this time. No one was around to hold Ilya and coax the breath back in his lungs. All he had was his own regret and his own voice in the back of his head telling him: Good. Now Shane isn’t an option, even behind the scenes. You can move on.
“Rozanov?”
“He is hockey player?” Ilya asked in a rush.
“No. He’s one of Rose’s friends. He’s a big fan of my team.”
“Fan? You are dating fan?” That was so out of character for Shane, so reckless. “You’ve lost braincells?”
“Fuck you, Rozanov. I can do whatever I want.”
“Do you hear what you’re saying, Hollander? You will date fan? You will be gay with some guy who has nothing to lose?”
“His family is homophobic, too. He has stuff to lose,” Shane said. “Why am I even explaining this to you? You have no right to be in my business.”
“You are stupid, Shane Hollander,” Ilya said coldly. “This guy will, he will, he’ll use it against you.” There was a word Ilya was looking for, one he couldn’t find in English as he frantically stuttered through his concern. At least he could keep Shane safe. This fucking blonde guy . . . “He will date you and ask for money later and you will not say no because he knows big secret.”
“God, Rozanov, you think it’s impossible for someone to actually love me?” Shane snapped.
“Love.” There went Ilya’s breath again, stuttered out in a scoff instead of a gasp. It had only been a few months. He and Shane had been fucking for years. And this guy, Logan, loved him? “You think he loves you?”
Shane faltered for a moment. His flame sputtered, then settled, dark red instead of white-blue. “Is that so fucking hard to believe?”
You’re so easy to love. I think I’ve loved you for 10 years. I think I was born to love you. Logan. How could he love you more than I love you?
“Yes.”
Shane stared at Ilya for a prolonged moment, an unmarked stretch of time in which Ilya heard nothing but his heart beating frantically in his ears, about to burst out of his chest.
“Why do you even care?” Shane asked weakly.
Ilya scrambled for an explanation. There wasn’t a good one. There wasn’t one that made this situation any better, for Ilya or for Shane.
“Your secret is my secret,” is what he settled on.
“No, it isn’t.” Shane drew in a long breath. “You think if I get outed, I’ll tell the world we hooked up? I’m putting you behind me, Rozanov. I’m pretending we never happened.”
Ilya couldn’t get his head above the water for more than a few seconds at a time, it seemed. His voice cracked over his next words, desperate for a gulp of oxygen, “You will forget 10 years?”
“What else do you want me to do?”
Break up with him. Come back to me. I’ll beg on my knees. I’ll fix it. I’ll never hurt you again.
“You are good player, Hollander. Your career—”
“Rozanov,” Shane said sharply. “Stop. Whatever this is, it needs to stop.”
“Hollander.”
“Get out,” Shane said. He cracked open his door, and he stepped aside to clear a path for Ilya to walk out of his life again, this time by Shane’s command. “I have an early flight.”
“Hollander.”
“Leave. Please.”
Ilya stood his ground for another second, searching his brain for anything else to say, searching Shane for any sign of hesitance, for any sign of anything. Shane wouldn’t look at him, and Ilya didn’t have any more arguments.
Did he linger outside of Shane’s hotel room for a few moments after the door clicked shut? Sure. Was he worried about getting caught? Not really. Nothing mattered much anymore. He’d made the worst mistake of his life. What was one more?
He should have been brave. He should have gone to the cottage. He should have never let Shane go. What was he thinking?
He wasn’t. He wasn’t thinking; he was running away from it all. And now, he only saw Shane when their backs were bent over the ice, a repeat cycle of waiting for the puck to drop.
“You look like hell,” Ilya muttered into the little bit of space between them, weeks after their last painful encounter. Shane actually glanced at him, a short-lived look of sad, teary eyes.
“Thanks.”
Something was different. It wasn’t Shane’s appearance . . . not really. It was the way he held himself. He wasn’t outwardly confident on a good day, but he never looked flat-out defeated like this. It was as if he was gunning for his first ever Stanley Cup and had just lost in an overtime battle—which had never happened to him, but the weight on his shoulders looked the same. He was more upset than Ilya had ever seen him, perhaps second to that night out in Boston. The teary eyes, the wobbly mouth, the shaking fingers, the broken whispers. Shane was actively climbing to the same emotional peak right there on the ice.
Ilya’s worry was too intense to be anything but earnest. “Are you okay?”
Shane’s emotion was too intense to ignore—but he could lie. “Fine.”
Shane played like shit. He missed multiple passes, whizzed the puck past the goal, and couldn’t keep up with Ilya. Worst of all, he didn’t react when he messed up. Ilya had never seen him so distracted from hockey in his life. Ten years, and Shane had never played so badly. He’d been injured, upset, a rookie, and he’d never played so poorly.
The Raiders won, a sweeping victory that Ilya pretended to celebrate. He was happy, sure. But it was hard to enjoy the spark of life when Shane skated off the ice with his chin against his chest and his shoulders at his hips, a weeping heap of a man.
It was stupid and it was useless, but Ilya texted Shane as soon as he could:
Want to talk about it?
Room 1648
Ilya knew Shane wasn’t going to show up. He stayed up well into the night anyway, sipping the hotel-supplied vodka and scrolling through his phone aimlessly. He didn’t take in a bit of information that his eyes skimmed across. He glanced up at the top of the screen every few seconds, hoping for a text from “Jane,” even if it was just a Fuck off or a middle finger emoji. He got nothing.
A few minutes after midnight, just after he’d lit up a cigarette, Ilya swore he heard a few gentle knocks on his door. He considered that he was fooling himself, projecting his ruthless, wishful thinking onto a hotel door. He got up anyway; he put the cigarette out; he followed the noise and he prayed his brain wasn’t messing with him. It had done enough of that. Ilya needed a break.
Funnily enough, Shane looked more shocked that Ilya had opened the door than Ilya was that Shane had actually come to his room.
“You’re not asleep,” Shane said.
“I was waiting,” Ilya admitted.
Ilya stepped aside, and Shane walked in without hesitation. He kicked off his shoes as he walked, leaving them a foot apart and strewn messily away from Ilya’s door. As Ilya fixed his shoes, Shane made a beeline for the bed. He sat at the end of it, facing Ilya. He settled for only a second before he crinkled his nose.
“You’ve been smoking in here,” he said.
Ilya dared to crack a smile. Of course Shane would notice. Of course he would comment. Of course, so much had changed, but Shane never did.
“I paid for room, no?” Ilya asked lightly.
“Well, no,” Shane said, also with a gentle tone to his voice. Ilya chuckled, “Someone did.”
Shane didn’t laugh, but he didn’t seem particularly annoyed that Ilya was laughing.
“You did not play well today,” Ilya commented.
“Yeah. Only way you can beat me. You’re welcome.”
Ilya rolled his eyes. He didn’t retaliate, though. There was a reason he’d invited Shane, one that wasn’t so selfish, for once.
“What is it?” He asked. “Something big must have happened to distract Shane Hollander this late in season.”
“Yeah,” Shane said after a silent moment. He kept his eyes on the carpet, though he brought his hands together to hold onto himself tightly. “You could say that.”
“Will you tell me?”
“We broke up.” Shane said it in a rush, as if he couldn’t wait to get the words out—or because he knew he wouldn’t say them if he wasn’t quick.
Happiness, then guilt, passed through Ilya in a whirlwind movement, a tornado of thoughts that picked up emotion along the way. Shane was destroyed, and Ilya was happy? But that meant Logan was out of the picture, out of Ilya’s way. That meant Ilya could do something about this; he could make Shane happy again.
He tried the only way he knew how, the only way he’d communicated with Shane through the years. “He got bored of you?”
Shane shot him a dirty look. “You are such a fucking asshole.”
Ilya relented, raising his hands to show that he was surrendering. “He will not tell anyone?”
“No,” Shane muttered.
Are you sure? Ilya didn’t say it. He knew enough about ice to know he was standing on a thin layer, and he knew enough about Shane to know he wasn’t looking to be comforted through laughter. Not now. Not yet. Not when Ilya had broken his trust and had severed the strength of their relationship.
“So you ended on, what is it, good terms?” Unlike us.
“Yeah. Sort of, I guess,” Shane said. Ilya waited for him to say more, to fill the silence. Shane shifted uncomfortably, but he spoke, just as Ilya predicted he would, “It was my fault.”
Ilya hummed, and he waited again.
“We were about to, uh.”
Ilya could imagine. He had imagined, unfortunately. Someone else put their hips between Shane’s legs. Someone else slipped their cock into Shane. Someone else heard Shane whimper and whine and ask for more.
“And I said . . . the wrong name.”
Ilya’s jealousy faded into amusement, sudden and screeching, pulling at the corners of his mouth.
“The wrong name,” Ilya repeated. His heart reached out and punched at his ribcage, a nudge in the right direction. Did he say your name? Ask him, was he thinking about you?
“You called him Rozanov?” Ilya tried to keep all the desperation out of his voice. He hid it beneath a joking tone, the same way he hid everything else. Were you thinking about me? Please tell me you were thinking about me. Please, please say you were thinking of me.
“Ilya,” Shane said.
“Yes?”
“I called him Ilya.”
The smile hit Ilya’s mouth like a freight train, and he slapped his palm over it. He disguised it as laughter. He laughed even harder when Shane threw a pillow at him. He was happy; he was so happy. Shane was angry at him, but he was still thinking about him, even if it was on a subconscious level, the kind that had him slipping up when he felt so good he couldn’t think. There was hope; there was a chance. Maybe Ilya didn’t have to give up his wishful dreaming, after all.
“He was pissed,” Shane said, then tilted his head to the side. “For a while. He looked you up afterward, and he said he understood why I wasn’t . . . over you.”
“Big compliment,” Ilya said, even though he couldn’t give a fuck less what Logan thought of him. He walked toward Shane, stopped just in front of him. He didn’t reach out yet. “You agree? I am too hot to let go?”
Shane shook his head—not disagreeing, just tired of Ilya’s antics. Ilya took a step closer. His knee bumped against Shane’s, and he reached out to run his palm over the back of Shane’s head. “You missed me, huh?”
“Fuck you.”
“Hm, wrong. Is ‘fuck me,’ that’s what you should say.”
“Fuck off,” Shane said instead.
Ilya shifted even closer. Shane didn’t move away. He didn’t flinch when Ilya touched him. He slid back on the bed because Ilya climbed onto it. He laid against what remained of the hotel pillows because Ilya crawled on top of him. He voluntarily reached up to hold onto Ilya’s shoulders. He flashed those pretty, brown eyes at Ilya. He slid his fingers into Ilya’s hair. He was right where Ilya wanted him—for the past few months, for the past 10 years, and for the rest of their lives.
“You’re an asshole,” Shane muttered with no anger. He barely even applied volume to the words, and they were all swallowed up by Ilya’s tongue anyway.
“Ask me again,” Ilya muttered into Shane’s mouth. He dipped his tongue against Shane’s, coaxing the words out, begging for them, “Ask me to come to cottage.”
Ilya wanted to see him say it. He pulled back, and he smiled when Shane chased him. He pressed his thumb against Shane’s chin, held onto his jaw softly, directed Shane to look at him. He waited. Shane glanced between his eyes, and Ilya patiently waited.
“Will you come to my cottage this summer?”
“Yes,” Ilya said quickly. I’m so sorry I ever said no to you. I’m so sorry I ever left you alone. He wordlessly spilled the apologies into another kiss that Shane hungrily responded to. Shane’s hips rolled up into Ilya’s, a desperate move accompanied by an even more desperate sound.
“You missed me?”
“Yes,” Shane whispered. Ilya reached back to pull Shane’s leg up and push his thigh out, giving him more room to grind into Shane. Shane gasped, and his chest tilted up against Ilya’s heartbeat. Ilya would never let that heart syncopate to someone else’s. He would never let that mouth moan someone else’s name. He would never let that body shake and shimmer and curve to the will of someone else. Ilya would never fuck this up again.
Shane stayed in Ilya’s hotel room that night, despite the early flight they both had to catch. They stayed up talking about the season —
“How many games have you lost because this guy upset you, huh?”
“More than I want to admit,” Shane sighed. He flicked Ilya’s nipple. “You distracted me, too.”
“Sorry,” Ilya muttered into Shane’s hair.
— and about Logan —
“He was asshole?”
“No. He was really nice, actually. His dick was bigger than yours.”
Ilya cursed, and he dug his fingers into the meat of Shane’s thigh to make him laugh.
“You call me asshole,” Ilya said. “Hypocrite.”
“You are one.”
— and about the two of them.
“I keep coming back to you,” Shane said sleepily. He tilted his head back, kind-of-sort-of looking at Ilya from where he was settled against Ilya’s chest. “Like you’re a drug or something.”
“You are the drug,” Ilya argued. “I have had, uh. I don’t know the word.”
“Withdrawals?”
“Sure,” Ilya guessed. “It was hard. I was crazy.”
“Yeah, you were. You watched me at the bar. You followed me to my hotel room. You were basically stalking me.”
“Bar was an accident,” Ilya said. “And hotel is stupid. Why would it have clear elevator? It was too easy to see where you went.”
“But you were waiting to see where I would go, weren’t you?”
“. . . Yes.”
Shane laughed fondly, sleepily. “Creep.”
Shane fell asleep in Ilya’s arms, mere hours before he had to get up and back to his hotel room if he had any chance of making his flight. Ilya stayed up all night, buzzing with joy and with the determination to memorize every inch of Shane’s skin on his own, every rise and fall of his chest, every twitch and sound he made in his sleep. This time, Ilya did it simply because he loved Shane. He had no plans to mourn their relationship again. He had no desire to let Shane slip out of his grasp again — or, worse, push him away willingly.
It would be difficult. The world, the distance, their communication gaps, the uncertainty, the revamp of their relationship. But it would be worth it. Shane would be worth it.