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Breathing Room by Rachel Matteo (Rachel_Matteo)
Fandoms: Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Heated Rivalry (TV)
26 May 2026
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Summary
Shane Hollander arrives in Vegas with a question he hasn’t spoken out loud.
It isn’t complicated, exactly. It’s just the kind of question that requires honesty he isn’t sure he’s ready for - about what he and Ilya Rozanov have been doing for the past few years, about what six months of silence after Sochi actually meant, and about whether any of it is worth staying close to or whether he finally needs to go.
He gets his answer in a locked bathroom at the NHL Awards.
Ilya spends the summer convinced that Shane is fine. Upset? Yes. Angry? Definitely. But Shane always felt things fiercely despite what everyone said about him when he had his back turned. He’d calm down over the summer and then he’d be there like he always had been. He fills the silence with discipline and routine and the comfortable certainty that later is still available to him.
He’s wrong.
By the time Ilya understands what he actually lost, Shane is already gone; and Ilya is left trying to find a way back to someone who closed the door long before Ilya had ever thought to just walk through it.
Series
- Part 1 of The Distance Between Us