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In retrospect, Shane knows that he should have stopped it before it even started.
Whether or not he wanted to admit it, the way he had felt when he saw Rose sitting across from him that night offering to share her fries couldn’t compare to the feeling of a glance across the ice from Ilya.
It was like comparing a candle to a forest fire.
That was part of what appealed to him about Rose at first of course.
He always felt in control with her. It was never passionate in the way that had scared him with Ilya, which he was grateful for in the beginning.
He didn’t realize how bland his life would start to feel without that passion.
Every day since September felt a little dimmer.
He found himself resenting himself for running out of Ilyas house, Ilya for making him fall in love with him in the first place, and, sometimes in the middle of the night, Rose, for being so beloved by everyone that he felt like he had no choice but to marry her.
Whenever he let that thought cross his mind, he felt sick with shame.
He was marrying a perfect woman and he was angry at her for it.
He knew that it needed to end.
She deserved so much more than a future husband who was relieved when he heard that would be traveling to the UK to film her next movie and he wouldn’t have to grit his teeth through sex with her for a whole 6 months.
He didn’t deserve anything.
He was sure that Ilya hated him now. He had gone from refusing to look at Shane at all during games to staring blankly through him.
He hadn’t spoken a word to him in 6 months.
Shane had looked forward to All Stars, hoping that being on the same team would give him an excuse to at least speak to Ilya.
Even if all he got back were insults, it would be something.
Instead, Ilyas father had died and Shane had spent the whole weekend feeling like he was on display.
Not Hollander, captain of Team East, but the star of the tabloids and the man who pulled Rose Landry.
He hated every second of it.
The whole time, an unsent condolence message sat in his text thread with Lily.
He didn’t know what he would do if he sent it and Ilya told him to never contact him again.
Or even worse, if he just didn’t reply at all and made it clear that the door was closed.
He thought back to the call that he had made the night he proposed to Rose.
He had gotten blackout drunk to try and quiet the voice that was telling him he was making a mistake, and when he woke up, he had proof that he had called Lily but no clue what was said.
It seemed like Ilya had answered and Shane tormented himself imagining what he could have said.
Did he tell him to fuck off? To leave him alone? That he had ruined anything that may have existed between them?
Or did he ask Shane not to marry Rose? To choose him instead? To say fuck it to the league and the press and his friends and family and Vladimir fucking Putin and run away together?
Shane knows that if Ilya had, with his inhibitions down and only his emotions driving him, he would have gotten on a plane to Boston and left Rose behind with nothing but a note.
Maybe he should have. It would make a mess of his life, but it couldn’t be much worse than it already was.
He had already thought about ending things with her and reaching out to Ilya several times, and every time he had backed off after considering what it would cost him.
The respect of the hockey world, the image that his mom always reminded him was so important, the chance to be normal.
His fears had won out.
He had endured choosing a wedding planner and a date, toured venues and discussed menus and invitations and press coverage, forced himself to keep a straight face while his mother gushed about how excited he must be.
It was an article that Hayden sent him about writing your own vows that ended up breaking him.
It talked about telling the other person why you love them, why you’re choosing to spend your life together, and what you want to promise them for the future.
All Shane could think of was standing up there and telling Rose that he loves how no one mocks him for not picking up puck bunnies anymore now that they’re together, that he’s choosing to spend his life with her because it’s the life his parents envisioned for him and he can’t bear the thought of disappointing them, and that he promises that he’ll try not to make it her problem that he’s in love with someone else.
He saw himself standing in a tux (custom Armani of course, because marrying Americas Sweetheart Rose Landry meant becoming a part of her brand deals,) performing the role of the perfect husband ecstatic to be marrying his beautiful bride, secretly imagining Ilya in her place so he could get through the ceremony.
Winning more cups and bringing her on the ice to show off like another trophy, looking the other way in the locker room when the other guys passed around nudes of their girlfriends, playing the role of the perfect prince of hockey like his parents always wanted him to, and then retiring and realizing that he’s 40 years old and has nothing left for the second half of his life because he wasted so much time pretending to be someone he’s not.
What the hell was he doing?
The illusion shattered.
Great, shaking sobs racked him. He struggled to gasp out breaths as his shoulders shook with the force of it. He cried like he was 5 years old again, before he had learned that hockey players aren’t allowed to be sad.
He knew that whatever else happened, he had let this go way too far and he couldn’t let it continue.
He just needed to figure out what the hell to say to Rose, and eventually, everyone else.
As tempting as “change his name, ghost everyone, and move to Yellowknife” was as an option, that would take away hockey, and he didn’t think he could bear to lose the last thing in his life that still made him feel anything.
A small part of him knew that he could always engineer a scandal to make her dump him, but that would only make things worse with his parents.
They’re going to be upset enough when he tells them that he can’t marry Rose because he’s gay, a face that would make him a pariah on the team they were so proud that he was drafted by; adding “had a video leaked of him getting a blowjob from a stranger at a gay bar” (a solution that he had briefly considered for dealing with his increasingly distracting sexual frustration) would not help.
Not to mention the reception he would get in the locker room after that. He knew very well how the Metros felt about cocksuckers.
He hoped that if they did ever find out about him, it could at least happen in a less humiliating way.
He was going to have to be the one who ended it.
He had used Rose to try and turn himself into someone who he’s not and was about to tell her that their entire relationship was a lie because he was too much of a coward to admit that he’s not attracted to women. The least he could do in exchange was finally tell the truth.
He took out his phone and opened his text thread with Rose. It was downright chaste compared to what Ilya used to send him; she had stopped trying to sext him months ago when he had never been able to bring himself to respond with more than a few halfhearted emojis.
He had jerked off to those old sexts in the “Lily” thread more times during his relationship with Rose than he wanted to admit.
Every time he did, he felt filthy.
“Hey babe,” he opened.
The nickname had never sounded right to him, but it was what the other guys called their WAGS and he had figured that if he was going to try and have a girlfriend, he was going to do it right.
“I have something I need to talk to you about. Do you think you could come by for dinner tomorrow night?”
That would give him enough time to think about what he wanted to say and what his next steps should be.
He knew that he should dread the call to the wedding planner letting her know that they were canceling, but just thinking about it made him nearly dizzy with relief. It was like the wedding was a boulder pinning him down and he was finally able to roll it away.
It was his mother who he dreaded breaking the news to. He knew that he would need to before word got out to anyone else; as his manager for everything except for hockey (a compromise that they had come to early in his career,) she was the one who was working with the lawyers to draft the prenup and fielding inquiries from the press.
He pointedly avoided thinking about how she would react to the part where he was breaking things off with the woman who she had told him she was thrilled to welcome as a daughter, and how she would feel if she knew that he preferred his rival who she referred to as “a dirty son of a bitch.”
He was relieved that they didn’t live together so there would be no need to find a new place; the plan had been for him to stay in Montreal during the season and have her spend time with him as her filming schedule accommodated and then live at her house in LA during the offseason.
He had talked about how excited he was to spend more time with her in the summers, but he had privately dreaded having to leave his cottage behind.
At least now he wouldn’t lose that refuge.
The idea of asking her to spend the summer with him there instead of at her house never felt right to him. The cottage was a place for him to just exist without his masks, and that was not something he felt like he could ever do in front of Rose.
The only person who he dared to allow to see him like that was Ilya.
He stopped that train of thought before it could even begin.
He needed to talk to Rose. Maybe then he could start making things right.
He laid awake for hours that night, and when he finally did fall asleep, he dreamed of curly blond hair and strong hands around his waist.
Shane spent the entire day thinking of worst case scenarios for how this conversation could go.
Rose had a huge, dedicated fanbase who called themselves the garden; one word from her and he would become public enemy number one to them.
She was much more popular than him; outside of hockey his fame primarily derived from their relationship. He had never cared about that before, but he could lose deals, have his reputation trashed in the media, and face a hate campaign on social media.
He just had to hope that she wouldn’t try to use her platform against him. She was kind, so there was a good chance that she wouldn't say a word against him to the press, but if she did, he couldn’t blame her.
He could deal with all of that as a consequence of his decisions as long as it didn’t get in the way of hockey.
He knew that he mattered too much to the league to be thrown out entirely. He had two cups, an Olympic medal and more awards than he could count; his jersey sales dwarf anyone elses other than Ilya and Scott Hunter.
That didn’t solve the problem of the Metros.
There is no way that they would let him keep the C once he found out the truth. He would be lucky if they tolerated his presence anymore.
He had thought for a while after he met Rose that he could escape it, but it still chipped a little piece of him away every time he heard one of them call an opposing player a faggot or listened to Theriault accuse them of skating like a bunch of fairies.
It was bad enough that he was mixed; chirps calling him a diversity hire had followed him for his entire career and he knew full well that they weren’t just jokes. Being gay on top of that was going to make them turn on him.
Hayden and JJ may like him enough to still support him even after he comes out, but if they knew who he was in love with, that would change fast.
He was going to have to either keep his mouth shut and keep being careful or find a new team.
Maybe the Admirals; he heard that they had a friendly locker room and didn’t tolerate slurs. San Jose supposedly had more liberal management and even did Pride Nights but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to move all the way to California.
In his heart, he knew that the Raiders had what he really longed for, but after the way Ilya had ignored him when they played each other this season, he didn’t think he wanted him to show up on his team.
Selfishly, he didn’t think he could survive it if he did come to Boston and Ilya made it clear that he didn’t want him there.
Deciding what to do about his career would need to wait, because Rose was going to arrive any minute.
Time to own up to it.
“Hey babe,” Rose said warmly, leaning over to kiss him. “That smells amazing! I’m so glad that X Squad is done now and I don’t have to be sewn into that stupid costume. I missed food.”
“I made salmon with a hot honey glaze,” Shane replied.
It wasn’t strictly in his diet, but he felt like he owed it to Rose to at least feed her something that tastes good before he tells her that she’s wasted the past 7 months of her life on a closet case.
“I talked to the wedding planner. She said that the resort in Palm Springs had a date open up next August. Caroline had her first wedding there and said it was absolutely incredible; they were only married for 3 years but at least the pictures looked good.”
Shane had no idea how to respond. Sorry but someone else is gonna get to have that date because the thought of us having sex even one more time makes me want to die is probably not the best way to break it to her.
“We can talk about it while we eat,” he said instead.
He felt like a fucking coward, but what else was new.
Rose chatted about the new period drama she’s set to go work on soon in the English countryside (“you’ll have to come see it; the manor that they’re letting us use for filming is incredible. It was built in the 1600s!”) while Shane finished the food.
He made affirmative noises but mostly refrained from saying anything. He was grateful that Rose was willing to fill the silence for him.
There was a buzzing under his skin.
It wasn’t the pure dread that he had felt the first time Rose had taken off her dress and expected him to follow her to her bed.
It was something more complicated than that. Fear, but also a twisted sort of anticipation, like he had figured out how to cut his way out of a trap.
He was immediately disgusted with himself for thinking that. Is it really a trap if you set it for yourself and walk right into it?
He plated the salmon and roasted broccoli.
“Let me know what you think. Hayden said it’s really good.”
God, Hayden. He may end up being the most upset about this out of anyone.
He was starstruck by Rose when they first met and tried to convince Shane to bring her on double dates as much as he could, beaming at her from across the table every time she spoke.
If Shane didn’t love Jackie so much, he would seriously consider giving Rose Hayden’s number after this was all over.
“This is amazing!” Rose exclaimed.
She was always bubbly and enthusiastic. It was how she charmed everyone she met so easily.
Deep down, in the places Shane didn’t like to acknowledge, sometimes he found it exhausting.
The two of them ate in amicable quiet punctuated by occasional comments about work.
“So what did you want to talk about? You seem kind of distracted.”
Shane took a breath.
Time to blow up his life.
“Rose, you’re such an amazing person, and it’s nothing you did, but I can’t marry you.”
Complete silence fell over the room.
Rose closed her eyes and Shane was momentarily terrified that she was going to burst into tears.
Instead, she looked straight at him and addressed him in a cool, businesslike tone.
“Who is she?”
Shane had no idea how to reply. It was true that he was in love with someone else, but not in the way she was probably imagining.
There was no pretty, patient girl on the side waiting to take her place as Mrs. Shane Hollander like he had seen happen with other guys in the league dozens of times before.
Just a 6’3 Russian with a fearsome slapshot and beautiful blue eyes who may not even want to speak to Shane.
“It’s not like that-“ Shane attempted to retort. His voice sounded weak and unconvincing in his ears.
Something that he couldn’t read shifted in Roses expression.
“It’s a man isn’t it?” she said in a slightly softer tone.
Shit.
To his horror, tears started swimming in his eyes.
“I’m sorry. I tried so hard, I thought maybe I could be different. I just can’t help it.”
“Hey, no. This isn’t something you can change about yourself, and it’s not something that you have to in the first place. It’s just a fact about who you are.”
She subtly wiped her eyes and Shane felt guilt lance through him.
“I just wish you hadn’t made me part of whatever fucked up conversion therapy you were trying on yourself.”
He felt nauseous.
“I know that it’s not enough, but I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve any of this.”
“I don’t,” Rose replied bluntly, “but we don’t always get what we deserve.”
She gave him a knowing look and Shane felt like she was seeing right to the core of him.
“I’ve wondered if something is up before. You never really seem like you’re into it when you touch me. When we’re in bed, it feels like your mind is somewhere else. Half the time you won’t even look at me. I almost said something, but then you proposed and I guess I got caught up in the romance of it all. And it was romantic, but it wasn’t real, was it?”
Shane shook his head minutely as he thought back to the proposal.
He had flown the two of them to Paris for a spontaneous weekend trip when they both had a few days off and surprised her with a diamond in her favorite color.
He had said all of the right things and smiled for the picture that went on both of their Instagrams, but the whole time, he felt the same way he did when he filmed commercials.
And that night, he had gotten drunk and his first reaction to his inhibitions being down was to call Ilya, not Rose.
“Why did you even propose to me if you knew that you didn’t want to marry me?”
Shane didn’t know how to answer that in a way that wouldn’t sound horrible. Maybe because it was.
“I just felt it was what I was supposed to do. Everyone was so happy for us, and I always felt like I would eventually have to get married anyway so I may as well marry someone beautiful and impressive who everyone loves.”
“So you wanted to use me to impress other people,” she said flatly and Shane flinched. He wished he could say that wasn’t true.
“I don’t know if you remember this, you’re Canadian. You can marry a man just as easily as a woman if you really feel like you have to have a trophy spouse to show off at games.”
Shane felt a spark of irritation. He may be the one in the wrong, but it bothered him to hear her talk about his dilemma so flippantly.
“I can’t just be with a man for the same reason I need to get married in the first place. Hockey players aren’t allowed to be gay. You can party and hook up with a lot of women, or you can have a wife and a family, but you have to pick one.”
Rose scoffed. “I’m sorry, but all because the other guys do it doesn’t mean it’s some sort of law.”
Now anger was flaring up for real. Shane knew that he had no right to be mad at her but he couldn’t stand hearing something that kept him awake at night trivialized like this.
“You don’t get it! There’s never been an out player in the NHL! I’ll have to leave the Metros when they find out about me because there’s no way they’ll want me in their locker room anymore. I won’t be able to say anything publicly even if I want to because I would probably be called into the commissioners office for ‘focusing on politics instead of hockey.’ They may not cut me, but they could do a lot to make my life harder.”
He willed himself to calm down. Rose certainly has the right to be annoyed with him after how he screwed her over.
“I’m sorry; I know it wasn’t fair to you to use you to try and hide. Just please know that I had real reasons.” He didn’t want to think too hard about what hockey had taken from him. It had always demanded a lot, and it had to be worth it.
“I’m sorry too,” Rose said quietly. “You’re right; Hollywood is different. I don’t understand what it must be like.”
Neither of them said anything, but they didn’t move either. It still felt like there was more they had to talk about.
“Have you been with another guy? Like for real? Or is this some sort of love from afar situation?”
Shane thought of Ilya in this kitchen, putting a bottle of high end Russian vodka in his freezer “so that it’s there if I need it,” and his heart clenched.
“I was seeing someone for a while. He’s not out either, so it was casual, but I eventually started to have feelings for him.”
“Did you tell him?” Rose asked.
Shane huffed a bitter laugh. “God no. Our situation was very…complicated. I didn’t think there was any point.”
“I didn’t sleep with him while we were together,” he made sure to clarify. “We actually haven’t spoken since before I met you. I’m not a cheater.”
“That got a small smile out of her.
“I hate to admit it but I know. You’re an infuriatingly good guy.”
She paused. “And I’m glad that you told me now instead of later. It would be a lot more embarrassing if we ended up getting divorced because you were having an affair with another player or something.”
Shane felt like there was a pit of ice in his stomach.
It must have showed on his face, because realization dawned on her face.
“Holy shit, he’s a hockey player too. Is it someone on your team?”
“God no,” Shane exclaimed. He could barely stand to be in the same room as some of the guys on the Metros, never mind a relationship.
“Oh thank god. I don’t think I could live with myself if I had to say I got dumped for Gil Comeau. Is he a good player? Hot?”
Yes to both.
As much as Shane wanted to brag that he had pulled the other best player of their generation, he couldn’t put Ilya at risk like that.
“I really can’t say who it is. He could be in danger if he was outed without a chance to prepare.”
Rose raised her eyebrows.
“Are the locker rooms really that bad?”
Maybe.
“Not from his team, from his home country. They have laws against people like us where he’s from.”
Rose frowned. “You are really doing this on hard mode.”
Shane let out a sound that was half a scoff and half a laugh.
“Believe me, I know. I tried so hard to not feel it anymore for a reason.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
That was the question Shane kept getting stuck on.
He would obviously need to tell everyone that the wedding is off, but beyond that, he had no idea.
What should he give as the reason he ended things with Rose? He owed the truth to her, but what about his parents? Hayden and Jackie? Ilya?
He wants to come out, to stop letting his secret control his life, but the potential consequences still made him pause.
And, most importantly to him, what could he even begin to say to Ilya to make things right? Was it even possible?
“I don’t know,” Shane managed. “I wish I could see the future so I would know what will happen if I come out.”
“Wait, you’re not coming out?” Rose sounded surprised. “Is it because of what you said about the league? Because if I’m going to be dumped because my fiance is gay, I at least want sympathy points.”
Shane smiled in spite of himself.
“I haven’t decided yet. But yes, because of the league, and because of my team, and because hockey players aren’t supposed to be gay. They aren’t supposed to be Asian either, which I’ve been reminded of my whole career, and I don’t know if I can add ‘likes men’ to that as another reason to stand out. My parents worked so hard to give me these opportunities too; I don’t want to throw it back in their faces because I can’t be normal.”
“Shane,” Rose said. “It sounds like all that you’re thinking about is hockey and other people's opinions about you as a hockey player. What about the rest of your life?”
“There is no ‘rest of my life.’ Hockey is who I am. It’s the only thing I’m good at.”
He didn’t like the undercurrent of bitterness that he could taste with those words.
“No it’s not. I may have missed a pretty big thing-”
Shane snorted, glad that Rose already felt she could joke about their doomed relationship.
“But I still like to think that I know you pretty well, and there’s so much more to you than just your career. I just think that you’ve focused so much on it that you’ve lost track of the rest of your life, and that’s something you really need to take another look at.”
She leaned forward and Shane was relieved to see some of the old warmth in her eyes.
“We may not be together anymore, and frankly I’m going to need some space after tonight, but I do want you to be happy. I don’t want this to have all been for nothing. So before I go, I want you to promise me that you’re going to do what really is best for you. Not what other people expect, not what you think will be the easiest choice, but what you actually want.”
She smiled wryly. “If TMZ is going to run articles for weeks about how sad and pathetic I am now that I don’t have a man, I at least want to be able to say that I lost you to the life that you should have been living all along.”
She took his hand.
“You’ve always been good at making things happen when you’re really determined to. Apply that to your situation with this guy and at least give me the gift of being able to tell people that my ex fiance dumped me for his future husband because he decided to stop letting society keep them apart and it was all very dramatic and romantic. It’s a lot less embarrassing to say ‘true love prevailed and I had to let him go’ than ‘I totally missed that he wasn’t attracted to women.’”
Shane felt tears pooling in his eyes again. “I will. I’m so sorry, but thank you so much for being this nice about it. I did love you, even if it wasn’t in the way I thought I was supposed to.”
“I know.”
She hugged him and Shane smelled her floral perfume for the last time. He thought of Ilyas usual aromatic, woody scent and felt a pang of longing.
“Take care of yourself, Shane Hollander. The next time I hear about you, it had better be from people with rainbow avatars Tweeting about how brave you are for coming out.”
“Goodbye Rose.”
Shane closed the door and collapsed on his couch, completely drained.
The stage of his life where he worked so hard to hide from himself and think about how everyone else will react before he does anything is finished.
He has to decide who he wants to be moving forward.
Do what is really best for you.
He would need to talk to his mom, and determine how much to make public, and try to get in contact with Ilya and let him know how he feels.
Maybe even bring him to the cottage and let him become part of the most private parts of his life. The thought made him feel giddy.
He could see the future that he hoped for and knew exactly where he needed to be to make it happen.
Boston.
He pulled out his phone and opened his contact to his agent.
“Hey Farah, it’s Shane Hollander. I have something I wanted to talk to you about…”