Chapter Text
January, 2021
Tampa, FL
Shane. You were the best thing in my life.
I love you. Always. Maybe from the first time I saw you.
I am only thinking about you right now.
Whatever happens, I am with you. Safe in your heart. I believe it.
Hours later, on the balcony of the hotel room he shared with Zane Boodram, who he’d left to sit on one of the beds and cry to with his wife on the phone in private, Ilya Rozanov looked down at his instagram messages, exhaled a careless plume of cigarette smoke, and took another drag. Even drunk and chainsmoking, at his most morose and self destructive, he couldn’t quite muster the strength to delete them.
Maybe that was because of the little voice in his head that said Shane Hollander had only followed him on Instagram to be tagged in a promotional post after they presented at the MLH awards all those years ago, so of course he would never read them. It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the stupid, pathetic hope that he would.
The last Instagram post from user ShaneHollanderHockeyPlayer was dated April 21, 2017. It was a picture of him for Speedo’s summer lineup. He was smiling in sunlight, chest bare, wearing swim shorts that were intended to be athletic, not sexy. That was Hollander’s whole thing, though. His charm.
All of it, everything about him was just gone. From Ilya’s life. From hockey in general.
The misery in his belly curdled. Thinking about Shane Hollander hurt in a way uncomfortably similar to losing his mother—both taken from him for reasons beyond his control, both losses he’d been forced to suffer alone.
Ilya had tried to tell himself he’d already lost Shane: to Rose Landry, to his own stupid pride for making light of the situation, to Shane’s fear and insecurity (when Ilya was feeling especially angry), but it didn’t matter. He could close his eyes and see the news on that random day in June, the image of it on the television, the beautiful anchorwoman and some washed up former player acting like they knew something even though no one knew anything.
Contract Terminated. No one from the MLH or Hollander’s camp available for comment.
How many texts had he sent before the horrible, gut wrenching finality of calling only to hear: We’re sorry, the number you are trying to reach has been disconnected. Please hang up and try again? It had to be a hundred, at least.
And then, earlier, when he thought it was all over, he hadn't even really thought about it, about what he was typing with shaky fingers. His blackened, shriveled heart had kicked his brain aside and taken over, saying all the things Ilya never would have said if he thought he'd have to live with them.
He reached for the bottle of shit vodka he’d gotten from the bar, ignoring the way he spilled some when he poured. He sipped, then stopped and threw back the whole glass. The only option he had were to get so drunk he passed out before he started crying and couldn’t stop.
Idly, he wondered if he was depressed. He squeezed the cross at the base of his throat until the points stung his fingers, thinking of his mother.
If he was, he wouldn't be surprised, not that he could get depression right either. Death didn’t seem to want him yet, so what did any of it even fucking matter?