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“Hunter.” Ilya smiles, wide, warm, and absolutely full of shit. He reaches for his water glass and raises it in a little toast. “You look very good tonight. I am happy we are sitting next to each other.”
Scott settles into his chair, adjusting the napkin across his lap with the kind of patience that comes from years of practice sitting across from people who want to get under his skin. He gives Ilya a look. Kip calls it his “senatorial” face, which is not a compliment.
“Rozanov.” Scott lifts his own water glass and tilts it back toward him. “You say that every year. And every year I’m pretty sure you had something to do with the seating chart.”
Scott takes a sip and glances toward Kip beside him. It’s a wordless check-in that has become second nature these days. But Kip doesn’t even look up from his conversation with the woman to his left.
Damn.
Well.
Scott turns back to Ilya, because you don’t leave your flank open with this man.
Ilya stares into his own water as he rocks the glass, ice clicking softly.
“Of course I do the seating chart. Is my foundation.” He pauses, tilts his head. “Well. Mine and Shane’s. But if I leave it to Shane, he puts you next to someone easy. And then you relax, and you get boring, and I have to watch from across the table. And I am not doing that this year.”
Ilya takes a slow sip of water, watching Scott over the rim of the glass.
“Besides,” Ilya continues, setting the glass down and smoothing his tie. “I like to keep you close.”
Scott snorts.
“Because.” Ilya waves a hand. “You are getting older. Slower.”
“I had thirty-one points last month,” Scott says mildly.
Ilya hums. “Yes. Very impressive. For your age.” He leans in just enough to be irritating. “I tell Shane, I say, ‘Look at Hunter. Still out there.’”
Scott raises a brow.
“Like a—what is the word,” Ilya continues, tapping his fingers together. “Ah. A cockroach. Cannot kill him.”
“That’s really beautiful, Rozanov. Thank you.”
Ilya winks, combing his artfully disheveled hair back into an even more disheveled state.
Scott’s gaze drifts to the seat beside Ilya where Shane is talking with someone from the league office. Shane has his hand on the back of Ilya’s chair, thumb sliding along the narrow bar at the back of the chair, like he’s trying to keep Ilya in his place even while he’s still in it. Shane is nodding at whatever the league guy is saying with the particular attentiveness of a person who is constitutionally interested in other people.
“So. How is the season?” Ilya asks cheerfully.
Scott considers him. “Fine.” He sighs. “Power play’s been inconsistent. We’re figuring it out.”
“Mm. And the new kid? The one they drafted. The center.”
“Carmichael?”
“Yes. Him. Shane says he’s good.”
“He’s fast.”
“Fast like you were fast, or fast like actually fast?”
Scott gives Ilya a flat look.
“Come now, I’m kidding,” Ilya says, entirely too sincerely, which is disarming. “You’re very distinguished. You have the little—” He gestures vaguely at Scott’s temples. “The silver. Here.”
“I don’t have silver.”
“You have a little. In the light.” Ilya leans closer, squinting. “Maybe is the lighting in here. Shane picked the venue. He has good taste. In most things.”
Scott refuses to touch on that. He reaches for his water glass instead, and the silence between them fills with the ballroom’s own noise. Silverware clinks against porcelain, someone’s laugh carrying from two tables over, and the string quartet Shane probably handpicked is working its way through something soft and classical that no one’s really listening to. A waiter appears and begins pouring the wine.
“Kip looks good,” Ilya says, eyes on the Chardonnay filling his glass.
Scott stills. Not because the comment is strange—Ilya has always been weirdly, casually generous about Kip—but because of the way he says it so matter-of-fact.
“He does,” Scott says carefully.
Scott glances at Kip beside him. Kip is laughing at something the woman next to him said, his whole face open and bright, the way it gets when he’s charmed by someone. He’s wearing a cornflower suit, sapphire cufflinks, and white leather shoes that Scott helped him pick.
“That did not happen,” the woman says.
“I swear on my life. And I looked exactly that stupid.”
Scott catches himself and looks away. Ilya is waiting for him, chin resting on his hand.
“You know, I always think, if we had played together—”
“Oh, God.”
“Same line. You and me.” Ilya’s voice is wistful in a way that is entirely performed. “We would have been beautiful.”
“We would have killed each other by October.”
“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “But what a September.”
Scott can’t help but smile at that. And Ilya laughs in return. It’s real and low and warm, and it turns Shane’s head. Kip also glances over and takes in the scene. He catches Scott’s eye and gives him a look that says, very clearly: You’re enjoying this. I’m not helping.
Shane, as if summoned by some deeply honed survival instinct developed over years of dealing with Ilya Rozanov in public, finally lays a hand on Ilya’s shoulder.
“Ilya.”
Ilya lifts his head. “What.”
“You’re doing the thing.”
“I am not doing anything. I am having conversation. Hunter and I are catching up.”
“You’re doing the thing where you corner someone at dinner and don’t let them breathe for forty-five minutes,” Shane says. He smiles at Scott warmly, a little apologetic. “Hey, Scott. Good to see you.”
Scott feels something in his shoulders loosen. “You too, Hollander. Great turnout tonight.”
“We’re really happy with it.” Shane’s hand is still on Ilya’s shoulder, and Ilya has tilted toward him, like a needle finding north. “We’ve already passed last year’s total from the silent auction alone.”
“That’s because of signed stick,” Ilya says. “From me and Shane together. People go crazy for it.”
“People go crazy because it’s for a good cause,” Shane says.
“Yes, and also because of stick.”
Kip turns fully now, drawn in by the conversation. He leans into Scott’s space. “The stick was a nice touch. Kind of romantic, actually.”
Ilya’s eyes sharpen. “You think so?”
“Two rivals, signing the same stick for charity?” Kip grins. “Yeah. A little.”
Scott watches Ilya’s face do something complicated. Pleased, but also careful. Shane’s hand slips quietly from Ilya’s shoulder.
“Well,” Ilya says, recovering smoothly, “we are very good at narratives. Ask Shane.”
Shane narrows his eyes at him.
Kip laughs, and Scott feels it land somewhere warm. Under the table, he finds Kip’s knee and squeezes once.
“So,” Kip says, leaning forward with the particular brightness he gets when he’s about to be genuinely curious about something, “how did you two decide on the foundation’s focus? I mean, I know about—” He pauses, respectful. “I know it’s personal. But the specific programming, the partnerships with the treatment centers… that’s all thoughtful work.”
Shane’s expression softens. “Ilya did most of that.”
Ilya waves a hand. “Shane is being modest. He—”
“I’m not!” Shane turns to Ilya, and something crosses his face that Scott recognizes because he’s caught it on his own, and oh.
“The research, the outreach to families, the stuff that actually makes it work—” Shane’s voice has picked up, the way people’s voices do when they forget to be careful. “That was all him.”
A chair scrapes back two seats down, and a voice cuts through like a skate blade on fresh ice.
“Sorry, sorry—am I late? I’m late. I know I’m late.”
Jay Andries drops into his seat across from them with the particular gracelessness of a man who has already been to at least one other event tonight and possibly a bar in between. He’s wearing a tuxedo that fits him beautifully, because Jay has always had money and taste in exactly that order. He was a defenseman. Played twelve years in the league, retired three seasons ago, and has since reinvented himself as a hockey media personality with a podcast, a bourbon brand, and absolutely no filter.
He also played a season in Boston with Ilya.
And two in Montreal with Shane.
“Rozanov!” Jay aims a finger-gun across the table. “Beautiful event. Really. The flowers? Chef’s kiss.” He mimes it. “And Hunter—Jesus, you’re here too? They let you out?”
“Jay,” Scott says, with the practiced neutrality of a man who has sat through many post-game press conferences.
“Hollander.” Jay points at Shane. “Looking sharp, buddy. Looking real sharp.” He holds the look for a beat too long, then swings his attention to Kip. “And you must be—no, wait, I know. Kip. Right? The better half.”
“That’s what I keep telling him,” Kip says easily.
“Smart man.” Jay flags down a server. “Scotch. Neat. Whatever’s good.” He turns back to the table, settling in with the energy of someone who has never once read a room and decided to be quieter. “So what are we talking about? The foundation? Hockey? Who’s sleeping with who?”
The table goes very, very quiet.
Scott feels it like a change in air pressure. Across from him, Ilya’s smile doesn’t move, but something behind his eyes goes flat and watchful, the way it does on the ice when someone is coming at him from his blind side.
Shane doesn’t react at all. Which is its own kind of reaction.
“We were talking about the treatment center partnerships,” Shane says smoothly. “Ilya was just—”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, the mental health stuff. No, that’s great. That’s really great.” Jay nods vigorously, accepting his scotch from the server without looking. “Seriously, man, I’m not being a dick. My sister went through some shit like that. Anyway. It matters. I donated. I’m here. I support it.”
He takes a long sip.
“I just also think it’s funny.”
Ilya’s voice drops half a register. “What is funny.”
“You two.” Jay gestures between Ilya and Shane with his glass. “The whole thing. The rivalry. You’ve been doing this, what, seven years now? And now the foundation, the joint appearances, the signed sticks—”
“Eight,” Shane says quietly.
“Eight! Eight years of ‘Oh, we’re just two guys who respect each other, who found common ground over a cause.’ And people eat it up! The league eats it up. PR gold.” Jay leans back, swirling his scotch. “I mean, I was in that locker room, Hollander. Both locker rooms, actually. I’ve seen things.”
“Jay,” Shane says. His voice hasn’t changed at all. It’s still warm. But his hand has moved to the table, and his fingers are pressed against it.
“I’m just saying.” Jay holds up both hands in surrender, grinning. “The chemistry. Come on. You can’t tell me nobody else sees it.”
Scott looks at Kip. Kip looks at Scott. Something passes between them that is less a conversation and more a rapid tactical assessment.
Ilya laughs. It’s the wrong laugh. Scott has heard Ilya’s real laugh—low, surprised, warm—and this isn’t it. This is the one he uses in post-game interviews when a reporter asks something stupid.
“Jay, you are drunk,” Ilya says cheerfully.
“Little bit,” Jay agrees. “Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
“It means you are talking too much at a charity dinner for my mother,” Ilya says, and the cheerfulness doesn’t waver, but the temperature at the table drops. His smile is hollow. “Which is something you have always been very good at. Talking. Even when you were playing, you were talking. I remember. I think sometimes you talked more than you skated, which would explain the plus-minus—”
“Ilya,” Shane interrupts.
Jay takes another sip of scotch. “Alright, alright. Touched a nerve. My bad.” He raises his glass. “To the foundation. To Irina!”
He drinks.
The whole table breathes a sigh of relief.
But Scott is watching Shane. Shane, who has yet to pick up his wine glass. Shane, whose jaw is set in a way that looks like calm but isn’t. His gaze is on a centerpiece filled with white lilies, neatly arranged and immaculate.
Then there’s Ilya, who is looking at Shane now the way Scott looks at Kip when Kip is hurting and trying to hide it.
Which is to say: like nothing else in the room exists.
Kip leans into Scott’s ear. His breath is warm. “Did you know?”
Scott thinks about every interaction he’s catalogued over the past eight years. Ilya’s hand on Shane’s back. Shane always knowing where Ilya is in a room. The way they never, ever sit too close, except for how they’re always, always orbiting each other.
“I think,” Scott murmurs back, “I’m the last person who should have missed it.”
Kip nods.
Jay, oblivious or reckless or both, is already flagging down another scotch.
The second scotch arrives and the previous moment seems to settle.
Jay turns to chat with the woman next to him. Conversations resume while a string quartet shifts into something by Debussy. Shane leans over to say something quiet to Ilya, and Ilya nods once, small and tight, and then puts his public face back on.
The first course arrives. Some kind of seared scallop with microgreens and a foam that Kip will be making fun of later in the car. Scott picks up his fork.
“So, Hunter!” Jay has swiveled back. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“Oh?”
“Yes! On the record. Well—” Jay waves his hand. “Not on the record. I’m not recording. Probably. I mean, my phone’s in my pocket, who knows what it’s doing.”
Scott sets his fork down.
“The captaincy thing.” Jay leans forward, elbows on the table, scotch dangling from his fingers. “You’ve had it for what now… six years?”
“Seven.”
“Seven! Right. Seven years!” Jay whistles. “That’s a long time to carry a room. And I mean—you’ve done it. Even got a cup! The whole legacy thing. But I had Marchetti on the podcast last week—”
“I don’t listen to your podcast.”
“Nobody does, that’s not the point! Marchetti said something interesting. He said the game’s moved past the old model of captaincy. The stoic guy, the lead-by-example guy, the ‘I’ll-block-a-shot-with-my-face’ guy.” Jay gestures at Scott with his glass. “Your whole brand, basically.”
Now Kip is frowning.
“He said the new generation wants vulnerability. Openness! They want a captain who talks about feelings, who creates space, who—and this is a direct quote—’doesn’t just demand respect but earns emotional trust.’” Jay air-quotes this with the hand holding the scotch. Some of it sloshes onto the tablecloth. “And I’m sitting there thinking, well, that sounds like the opposite of Scott Hunter.”
The table has gotten quiet again. Not the whole table. Just their end. The radius of Jay’s damage.
“That’s an interesting take,” Scott says. His voice is level.
“I mean, look—you came out. That was huge. That was a massive moment for the league, for sports, for everything. You and Kip, the whole—” Jay gestures between them. “Beautiful. Changed lives. And I’ve said that publicly, you can check.”
“Okay.”
“But that was, like, years ago. And since then you’ve kind of… settled into it, right? The elder statesman thing. Now you’re the guy who shows up to these dinners, shakes hands, writes checks. And meanwhile the kids on your team—Carmichael, Dubois, that Finnish kid—”
“Jalo.”
“Right, him! They’re out there playing a different game. Literally a different game. And I just wonder sometimes if you know what that looks like. From the outside.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah! It’s like you’re holding on, man.” Jay says it without malice, which somehow makes it worse. “Like you’ve built this perfect career, the relationship, the reputation, and you’re white-knuckling it because you don’t know who you are without it.”
Ilya mutters something in Russian. He takes a meaningful sip of wine before refocusing his attention onto them.
“Jay,” Ilya says.
“Mm?”
“You retired because your knees were finished and no one offered you a contract.” Ilya picks up his wine glass. “Hunter is still playing because he is still one of the best. These are different situations. You understand this, yes?”
Jay blinks. “I’m not comparing—”
“You are comparing. You are always comparing. On your podcast, at these dinners, in every room you walk into. You compare yourself to people who are still doing the thing you cannot do anymore, and you make it sound like philosophy.” Ilya sips his wine. “Is not philosophy. Is jealousy. And it is boring.”
Jay’s mouth opens. Closes. Jay looks to Shane, maybe expecting an ally, but Shane is studying his plate with the intense focus of a man who has chosen not to intervene.
“Jesus, Rozanov.” Jay laughs, but it’s thin. “I was just making conversation.”
“Then make better conversation. We are at a dinner for my mother. She is the reason we are all here. Talk about that. Or talk about the weather. Or talk about your bourbon, I don’t care. But do not sit at my table and try to take apart a good man because you are three drinks in and you miss being relevant.”
Someone at the far end of the table laughs at something unrelated.
Jay takes a very long sip of his scotch.
Scott should say something. He should be gracious. He should do the Scott Hunter thing and make everyone comfortable again. Instead he sits there, because Jay’s words are lodged somewhere behind his sternum and he can feel them settling in the way things do when they’re partly true.
Kip leans in. Close enough that his lips brush Scott’s ear.
“He’s wrong,” Kip murmurs. “And Ilya just obliterated him for you, which means you owe a Russian man a favor, and I know how much that’s going to bother you, so I’m going to enjoy this for a while.”
Scott almost laughs at that. “I’m fine,” he says.
“You know what we should do,” Jay announces, moving right along. “We should do a thing. For the podcast. All of us. Rozanov, Hollander, Hunter—maybe even Kip, people would love Kip—”
“No.”
Scott shuts that down immediately.
“You didn’t even hear the pitch!”
“I think I’ve heard enough.”
“It’d be great content! Four guys at a table, couple of drinks, talking about the game, talking about life after the game, life during the game—” Jay’s eyes slide sideways toward Ilya and Shane. “Talking about what people don’t see. Behind closed doors. The real—”
“Jay.” Ilya sets his wine glass down. “Can I ask you something?”
Jay brightens. “Shoot.”
“Do you know where the silent auction items are displayed?”
Jay blinks at the pivot. “Uh. Yeah, I think they’re in the foyer? By the—”
“Yes. The foyer.” Ilya nods thoughtfully. “So you have seen the display case? The one near the coat check, with the glass front?”
Jay squints. “I... think so?”
“There is a program in there. A printed program, from the very first year of the foundation. My mother’s photograph is on the cover. Shane had it framed.” Ilya glances at Shane. “What frame was it, the walnut or the—”
“The walnut,” Shane says, without missing a beat, because Shane Hollander has never once in his life failed to back a play.
“The walnut. Yes.” Ilya turns back to Jay. “I need it brought here. To the table. I want to show Hunter something. There is quote inside, from my mother, about—” He waves his hand vaguely. “About perseverance. About not giving up even when people tell you that you are finished. I think Scott would appreciate it tonight.”
The dig is surgical, but Jay clearly doesn’t seem to feel it.
“Oh,” Jay says. “Yeah, sure. I can—”
“I would go myself, but I am host. I should stay.”
“No, totally. I got it.” Jay pushes back from his chair. He straightens his jacket. “Display case by the coat check. Walnut frame. Printed program.”
“First year,” Ilya confirms. “It has a pale blue cover. You will know it.”
“Pale blue. Got it.” Jay points at the table with both fingers as he backs away. “Don’t start any good stories without me.”
He disappears into the crowd.
Kip waits exactly four seconds before laughing. “There is no program in a display case.”
Ilya takes a long, satisfied sip of his wine. “No.”
Shane’s lips press together in a way that could be exasperation or could be the effort of not laughing in a room full of donors. “Ilya.”
“What? He will look for five minutes, maybe ten. He will ask the coat check girl. She will be confused. He will wander. Maybe he finds the bar again, maybe he finds the exit. Either way, this is better.” Ilya takes a sip.
“You sent a grown man on a scavenger hunt,” Scott says.
“Yes. And you are welcome.”
“... Thank you,” Scott says warily. “For what you said.”
Ilya’s expression flickers. “He was being an asshole.”
Kip reaches for his wine. “For what it’s worth, I thought the cockroach comment was worse.”
“The cockroach comment was affection,” Ilya says. “That is how I show love.”
“Terrifying,” Kip says. “But noted.”
Shane coughs into his fist.
And Scott can’t help but laugh.
Kip is smiling beside him. Shane finally reaches for his wine, and the string quartet has shifted into something lighter.
Shane shakes his head, but he’s smiling now too, and now his hand has drifted back to Ilya’s chair.
Scott watches the thumb hook absently over it, and he thinks about all the years he and Kip spent hiding. The careful distances. The calculated touches. The way you learn to love someone in the spaces between what people are allowed to see.
He wonders how long Shane and Ilya have been doing this.
He wonders if they’re tired.
The main course arrives. Jay does not return, which suggests he’s either found the bar or gotten lost in the coat check area. Either way, no one seems inclined to send a search party.
Later, during the speeches, Scott watches Ilya take the stage to talk about his mother.
Ilya pauses at the podium, looks down at his notes, then seems to abandon them entirely. He says something in Russian—a soft sentence—and then: “My mother would have liked this room. She loved beautiful things. She loved when people gathered together to help each other. She did not always believe she deserved to be helped herself.”
The room goes quiet.
Scott’s throat tightens. He thinks about his own mother, about all the things that go unsaid in families.
Under the table, Kip’s hand finds his and holds on.
Ilya clears his throat, and when he speaks again, that familiar edge is creeping back. “So. You are all here tonight because you have big hearts. Or because you have big wallets and your accountant told you this is good for taxes.” A ripple of laughter. “Either way, Irina Foundation is grateful. Shane and I are grateful. And my mother—” His voice catches, barely. “She would be grateful too.”
Applause fills the room. Ilya steps away from the podium with a nod, and Shane is already on his feet, meeting him halfway, one hand on the back of Ilya’s neck as he leans in to murmur something private.
Kip leans into him. “They’re going to be okay,” he murmurs. “Eventually.”
“Yeah?”
“I think they’ve got people who see them.” Kip’s thumb traces a circle on Scott’s wrist. “That helps.”
The applause remains warm.
Scott raises his glass toward the stage.
Shane’s hand is still on the back of Ilya’s neck when Ilya looks across the room and catches it.
And this time, his smile is real.