Archive of Our Own

If there was one thing neither of them wanted, it was for their son to grow up to resent them or the sport they played. They didn’t want their careers to overshadow his life. It wouldn’t be fair, and it wasn’t the reason they’d brought him into the world. They hadn’t wanted an heir to their hockey legacy, they had wanted him. 

Shane loved hockey. He’d always loved hockey — and until Ilya, he probably would've said he loved it more than anyone or anything. Of course, then he’d turned seventeen and met Ilya, turned twenty-four and loved Ilya, turned thirty-three and had both of them eclipsed by Makar Hollander-Rozanov. 

Shane also loved his parents. Really, he did. But it wasn't until he was thirty-five, watching his own two-year-old discover the world, that he realized he'd never really gotten a childhood. Not a real one. Not in the same way other kids did. 

By eleven, NHL scouts already knew his name. Before that, every spare hour had been spent trying to make them notice. At fifteen, he'd been pulled from school so he could devote even more time to hockey. By eighteen, he'd been drafted, signing endorsement deals and smiling for cameras. Before most people knew who they wanted to become, Shane was captain of the Montreal Metros. 

And somehow, even after all of that, it still hadn't been enough. Not for his parents. Not for his mother. They wanted him to be bigger, better, more. 

Ilya's relationship with his parents hadn't been better. He wished he'd had more time with his mother. Wished she'd been there the night he lifted the Cup over his head for the first time, the day he was drafted, the first time scouts started talking about him. He wished she'd gotten to meet Shane. To meet Makar. 

As for his father, he’d spent years wishing for… less. Less cruelty, less control, less sickness. Ilya had spent most of his life wishing for less of him. 

For Ilya, hockey was never just a sport. It was an escape. He liked it, sure. Maybe he loved it most of the time. He didn’t really know. What he loved the most was that hockey brought him Shane. It got him out of Russia. Eventually, it brought him the life and family he’d always wanted. 

Sometimes, though, he hated that he'd needed it to save him. That it had taken leaving one home to finally find another.

They wanted better for their children. Needed better. It was hard enough shielding Makar from their careers as it was. They already spent too much time on planes, in hotels, and at rinks. They weren't about to force him into a hobby he didn't love, and they certainly weren't going to force him into a spotlight he never asked for. 

The conversation started the day Makar learned to walk. 

He’d been nine and a half months old — early for most babies. As his parents, they had been thrilled. They had a healthy, curious son, and not only was he hitting his milestones, but he was speeding through them like he couldn’t wait to explore the world on his own. Watching him wobble across the living room felt like proof that they hadn’t completely failed him. 

But no one else was focused on that part. 

No. Of course they didn’t. 

It wasn't enough that Makar was walking. He was a Hollander-Rozanov. If he could walk before his first birthday, surely he could skate before it, too. 

Yuna had been thrilled, constantly trilling about how they were going to have yet another first overall draft pick in the family in “a few short years.” David had gone on about how agile he was, how strong his legs must be, how he belonged in skates. Svetlana never stopped asking if they would still love him if he ended up on the Metros. 

Obviously. They would obviously still love him if he ended up on the Metros. Or if he ended up in Los Angeles. Or if he never played hockey. Or if he lost his fucking mind and became a professional cave diver with face tattoos. 

It didn’t matter. None of it did. 

Makar was their son. 

Their son. 

“I don’t want to put him in hockey,” Shane mumbled one night, about five minutes before they both passed out from the exhaustion of having a ten-month-old. 

Sleep was still rare. Makar didn’t wake as much in the night anymore, but they were recently back to their normal hockey schedule. Alarms at five, baby at six, practices and games filling the day before they came home to parent until they collapsed into bed.

Six hours of sleep counted as a good night now. It was a luxury compared to the two-hour stretches they'd survived when Makar was a newborn.

Ilya let out a relieved sigh, his entire body practically sagging. “Thank God,” he whispered. “I do not want this either.” 

Shane closed his eyes and fought the immediate urge to fall asleep. Insomnia was less and less of a problem now that there was a baby in the house. “I don’t want to force him, and I don’t want him to hate us or hockey because we made him do it.” 

“I do not want him hit against boards and losing teeth before he has grown them all.” Well, that was one reason. There were also the concussions and bruised ribs and broken arms that Ilya didn’t want to even imagine. Makar was so little, and so fragile, and Ilya didn’t enjoy the knowledge that eventually, regardless of whatever sport he might play, he’d get hurt. All kids did. “And I do not want him to deal with the pressure.” 

Shane let out a long breath and nodded. Yeah. That was it. Makar would never just be another kid lacing up skates. He would be Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov's son. 

The pressure would be too much for him. He was still young, and there was no way to know what he would be like when he grew up, but the pressure on him would be nothing like it had been on them. 

Ilya and Shane had been generational talents, scouted and watched from their early teens and still scrutinized every single day. Every shift they played was picked apart and analyzed. Every mistake they made was treated like the worst of their careers. Parenthood had only made that spotlight brighter. 

People spoke of them in the same breath as the word greatness, but until their debuts — hell, until the first time they’d hoisted the Cup — no one had expected it from them. They had been allowed to prove themselves. 

It would be different with Makar, and they both knew it. 

From the first game he played in Timbits, people would expect him to have a perfect record. They would measure him against generational talent, dismiss his successes as inevitable. Before he ever touched a competitive game, people would expect him to be better than either of them ever was. He would spend his entire childhood trying to catch up to careers that had taken decades to build. 

Makar would never know the joy of being average. 

“We can’t completely avoid the ice, though,” Shane groaned. That was also true, and they both knew it. Hell, Makar had already been to the practice rink. Ilya had skated around with him on the ice while Shane very tensely followed behind in case they fell. “He’ll be around it all the damn time.” 

Ilya shook his head and shifted closer, tugging Shane down until his husband was resting against his chest. “Being on the ice is not the same as playing hockey,” he supplied. “We teach him to skate, but we never put him in hockey. Not unless he wants to play hockey.” 

For a moment, Shane stayed silent. Ilya didn’t push him — never did. He knew when Shane needed a moment to process something. 

And Ilya, Shane knew, had a point. They didn’t need to keep him away from the ice rink or skates altogether. They just needed to make sure they weren’t pressuring him. They could put him in other sports when he started school — or art, or theater. If he wanted to play hockey, then he could play hockey. 

“So we just… wait until he asks?” Shane asked. 

“Yes.” 

And that was it. The decision they had made for their son, with no one else’s opinion. Because no one else got to decide how they raised him, and no one else knew what was best for him. 

He was their son. 

It became increasingly clear that their private decision was for the best when Makar turned one. 

Despite having a dinosaur theme for his party, nearly everyone showed up with gifts wrapped in hockey-patterned paper. Harris attempted to make it a Centaurs’ social media post before getting shut down with no wiggle room. Yuna and David had bought him a little pair of ice skates, which unknowingly took a milestone Shane and Ilya had been looking forward to away from them. And Hayden — Hayden had gotten a very expensive hockey-stick-shaped cake instead of the cheap grocery store one they had requested. 

So in the middle of the party, already pissed about how everyone had focused everything on hockey, Ilya had to run to the grocery store for a cake that Makar could actually dig into with his hands. It was his first birthday, dammit, and he was going to dig into the first cake he’d ever seen in his life. He didn’t understand hockey yet! He understood frosting!

Shane wondered, while he tried to keep the party going on his own and not explode at everyone they knew and cared about, if people would have done this if they’d had a girl. Would she have gotten hockey-themed things for her first birthday? Or would people have actually listened to them when they said it was supposed to be dinosaurs? 

For fuck’s sake, there were dinosaur balloons. Dinosaur plates. Tiny plastic dinosaurs scattered across the tables. Shane had spent an embarrassing amount of time arguing over whether the cake should be green or blue because, apparently, dinosaurs came in both.

The questions never stopped. Every time someone saw Makar, they asked the same thing — when are you planning to put him in hockey? Shane and Ilya never gave an answer. Sometimes they changed the subject. Sometimes they reminded people that Makar couldn’t even tie his own shoes. Other times, they simply told them to stop asking.

They taught him to skate when he was three. Unfortunately, he was a natural. The fact that he could skate better than he could walk just made everyone ask even more insistently. 

It didn’t get better when they put him in school. Now, instead of just their friends and family asking them, it was parents and students asking Makar. He didn’t see anything wrong with the question, of course, because he was four. Shane, however, nearly lost his mind on his child’s teacher because of it. 

“Parent’s Day” at school was awkward. The teachers checked Shane and Ilya's travel schedules weeks in advance, determined to find a date that worked around the hockey season. It wasn’t like hockey player was a career the kids could just choose. Even if they worked hard for it, there was no guarantee they’d actually end up as a professional. Half of breaking into the profession was luck. 

Still, it became increasingly obvious that the effort wasn't really about making sure Makar's parents could attend. It was about making sure everyone else got to meet two famous hockey players. 

And even more strangers wanted to ask Makar if he was going to “follow in their footsteps.” 

Makar didn’t seem to know what that meant, which meant they were doing something right as his parents. He had no idea that everyone wanted him to play hockey. In fact, when he’d been asked the question, he’d looked down at his sneakers as if they were asking about literal footsteps. 

Hockey was what they did for work. If the other kids didn’t know that their parents worked at some stuffy office building, then Makar could be oblivious about what it meant for them to be athletes. 

Shane was the dad who carried him in from the car when he fell asleep. Ilya was the papa who made dinosaur pancakes. Hockey was just what they did to make money — at least by Makar’s standards. 

They returned home that night as if they’d returned from war. “I am going to kill the next person who asks him about ice,” Ilya grumbled. 

Shane wasn’t sure what to do except hum in agreement. “He’s going to get it his whole life,” he said softly. It wasn’t a new realization, just one he wished he didn’t revisit every three months. “The best we can do is shield him from it.” 

And shield him they did. 

For the most part, they kept him away from the ice if there were other people around. They brought Makar to the rink once a month, maybe, when they didn’t have anyone to watch him during practice. They arrived early so Makar could skate first, laughing his way around the empty ice long before the professionals stepped onto it. They never wanted him to feel like he was tagging along because his dads had to work.

During the holiday break, they always brought him to the canal. It was the only time they put him on the ice in front of other people. In the winter months, they were all bundled beneath scarves, hats, and oversized coats — it was easy to blend in there. Nobody looked twice at them. Nobody stopped to ask if Makar was the next great Hollander-Rozanov.

When Makar was six, Ilya retired. He had gotten to the age that he could ask why his dads weren’t around, and he was too old to bring with them on road trips. 

At the age of thirty-eight, Ilya had been nursing a knee injury for longer than he should have. His body was giving out on him, unable to do the things he’d previously been able to, and his mind was always back at home. 

He was done. They all knew he was done. After they lifted one last Cup together, nobody asked if he was coming back for another season — they knew he wouldn’t. 

Shane didn’t retire that year, though he thought about it. He had spent almost his entire career thinking that he and Ilya would play together until the end. Until both of their bodies collapsed on the ice and they had to be dragged off in the middle of a game. They had shared so much of their careers with each other that it seemed wrong to end at different times. 

But he had more in him, and Ilya could tell. In fact, it was Ilya who told him to re-sign. “You’re not finished,” he’d said. “You are still happy out there.” 

Shane didn’t argue, though he wanted to. Ilya was right. His body had a few good seasons left in it, and Ilya refused to let him walk away just because he wasn’t ready to keep playing himself. 

The next few years were hard. They put Makar into art classes because all he ever seemed interested in was coloring. Ilya began working on the Irina Foundation full time, occasionally doing brand deals if he had a free weekend or he genuinely liked the campaign. Shane was still playing, still on the road half the time. 

Art seemed good for Makar. He adored his instructor, happily spent hours sketching at the kitchen table, filled the refrigerator with crooked dinosaurs and colorful spaceships. His drawings only seemed to improve every week.

As his parents, they hadn’t deluded themselves into believing he was Picasso just yet, but he definitely drew better than most six-year-olds. More importantly, he loved doing it. 

Uncle Luca was one of Makar’s favorite people. If Makar was at the rink, there was a good chance Luca wasn’t on the ice, but sitting next to him instead. He taught Makar how to shade, how to draw faces without making them look lopsided, and — after many enthusiastic requests — how to turn his dinosaurs into dragons.

Makar adored him. 

Milo Boodram, just three years his elder, was basically Makar’s best friend. They did almost everything together, from homework to swim lessons to sneaking cookies from Cassie’s bake sale tray. They were practically brothers, arguing about crayons one minute and snuggling on the couch for a movie the next. 

Milo Boodram was put into hockey. As were most of the other kids from the Centaurs players. And Jade and Arthur Pike. 

Makar still hadn’t asked about it, though they were well aware that he’d started to notice. He was six, but he wasn’t oblivious. The awareness only grew as he got older. 

It was at a barbecue, the first time Makar actually said anything about his friends playing hockey. The kids had all been running around in the backyard, tackling each other in the way they always did. The adults had long since given up trying to figure out if they were playing or fighting — usually it was both. 

Shane had been stretched out on the couch with Wyatt, half paying attention to the game on TV, when Makar came in to get a Band-Aid for something he didn’t need a Band-Aid for. They were in that “stage” where a bandage healed every superficial wound or hurt feeling, whether there was blood or not. Shane carried around Ninja Turtles Band-Aids because those were Makar’s favorite, and Wyatt always indulged the “injury” by saying he might need two whole bandages.

“Jacob and Teddy said they can’t come to my birthday,” Makar told him, worrying his lip between his teeth. 

Shane gently thumbed his lip free. He had been trying to get Makar to stop that recently — only because he had his first loose tooth and he didn’t want it to pop out. Shane was illogically convinced he was going to swallow it. 

“Why not, Bug?” Shane asked, smoothing out the Band-Aid on his son’s very much not bleeding elbow. 

Jacob and Teddy were the Boyle boys, and despite being much older than Makar, they always pulled him into their schemes. If they were building a fort, Makar was the lookout. If they were causing trouble, Makar was their enthusiastic accomplice. There was never a barbecue these days where the three of them didn’t try to steal the entire dessert table. 

“They love the indoor jungle gym,” Shane said. “I thought they’d be excited.” 

It was the first time they were letting Makar have a party outside of their backyard. He was turning seven and hadn’t stopped asking about it since a kid in his class had started bragging about her own party at the indoor play center. Ilya had caved after about three days. Shane had come around after only a week. 

“They said they have hockey on Saturdays,” Makar mumbled. 

It hit Shane in the gut. Not because Makar was mentioning hockey for the first time, but because it was the first time it was taking something away from him. 

Shane swallowed the knot in his throat and reached up to smooth the curls off Makar's forehead. Across the couch, Wyatt was pretending not to listen. Shane appreciated the effort, but switched to Russian anyway. There were unexpected benefits to having a trilingual child — privacy during public conversations was never much of an issue for them.

“Are you upset?” he asked. 

For a second, the little one seemed to think about it, lolling his head from side to side in a motion that he must have learned from one of his fathers. “Yes. I want them to come.” 

Shane took a deep, sad breath and gently brushed his knuckles over his son’s cheek. “We’ll ask Papa if we can move it to Sunday instead.” 

The conversation was mostly over after that. Makar never stayed in one spot for long these days, and he had already been antsy to get back outside after his pit stop for an injury that was actually just a grass stain. He thanked his dad and then bounced back outside like nothing had ever bothered him in the first place. 

For the first time, Shane found himself wondering how long it would be until Makar started to hold on to those negative feelings. He wondered how much longer he'd be able to fix things with a hug, a Band-Aid, or a change of plans. How much longer until the world handed his son a problem that Shane couldn’t fix. 

“You’re doing good,” Wyatt said beside him. 

Shane was still staring at the window, where his son had thrown himself into Ilya’s arms with a wide grin on his face. And yeah, they were doing good. They had a healthy, happy little boy. He wanted for nothing and asked for even less. 

But Wyatt didn’t have kids. Didn’t know what it was like to realize you couldn’t protect a child from the world forever, or what it was like to know the entire hockey world had already started imagining a future your son hadn't chosen for himself. 

So he just shrugged, picking up his beer and leaning back on the couch. “We’re doing our best,” he said instead of agreeing. 

For two more years, things continued mostly the same. Shane stayed on the team, Ilya stayed at home, and Makar stayed healthy and happy. Still, they hadn’t caved and put him in hockey, though people were becoming more and more insistent. 

They had stopped letting Makar go over to his grandparents' without one of them present. The first time Yuna ignored their wishes and took Makar onto the ice without asking, they lost their minds. Shane had yelled at her until his throat was raw, and it ended with both of their husbands demanding they take space from each other for a month to cool down — it was a long month. 

The second time it happened, they issued an ultimatum: they stop putting Makar out on skates, or they lose privileges to see him. She didn’t get to decide that her opinion was more important than their parenting decision. 

The third time it happened, they followed through on their promise. 

After that, they started having friends watch him. It was a revolving door. Every single one of them claimed it wasn’t a big deal. 

First the Boodrams, who put him on the ice with Milo. Then the Dykstras, who put him on the ice with Suzie. Surely, they thought, Luca would be safe — because they trusted him to just sit there and draw with Makar — only to find out that he, too, had put him on the ice. 

Eventually, they became so desperate that they drove two hours to leave Makar with Ruby Pike. She was seventeen now, definitely old enough to watch an almost-eight-year-old. Most importantly, she was the only Pike child who didn’t play some kind of ice-related sport. Jade and Arthur played hockey, and Amber was trying out figure skating. Ruby had left hockey for dance years ago. 

Still, Makar had ended up on the ice. Some plan between Jade and Hayden that had Ilya so mad that he left a sponsor dinner early just to pick up their son. 

That night, Shane spent hours researching babysitters in the greater Ottawa area. They decided on a fifteen-year-old named Sylvie. She had never been skating. She didn’t know the difference between ice hockey and field hockey. She couldn’t drive to a rink even if she wanted to. Sylvie was absolutely perfect, and was the primary babysitter for Makar from then on. 

And then one night, nearing the end of Shane’s last season before retirement, Ilya found himself sitting in the stands with his son. The Centaurs were winning — of course they were, Shane was on a tear this season, trying to break all his own records. 

Ilya had gotten Makar candy and nachos and a whole soda for himself. All the things Shane never wanted him to have, and would certainly yell at Ilya for later. It didn’t matter now. Not when Makar was sitting there with the biggest smile on his face, cheering every time he ended up on the big screen and yelling at the refs when one of his uncles got checked too hard. 

Ilya missed it, sometimes. He missed skating up to the ice and teasing Makar through the glass like Shane had done during warmups earlier. He missed the noise, the routine, the feeling of blades cutting across fresh ice. 

But for the most part, he was exactly where he wanted to be, right next to his son in the crowd. And when he looked over at his son — face sticky, nacho cheese somehow on his sleeve, grinning so hard his cheeks had gone pink — Ilya couldn't imagine wanting to be anywhere else.

“Papa,” Makar said, somewhere between the second and third period. The fans around them had stood to stretch their legs before play resumed. Ilya, as always, turned his whole body towards his son. “Why don’t I play hockey like the rest of the kids?” 

Ilya felt his stomach sink. He’d known for a while that this conversation was coming. Every year, more kids at school asked him when he was going to start playing — more of his friends started comparing their own tournaments and trophies while he stood in the background. Now that he was older, Makar understood that there was something fundamentally different about how his parents had treated hockey around him. 

Ilya took a deep breath before he answered. He’d been practicing this conversation for almost two years now. “We never wanted you to feel like you had to,” he said, grateful that they’d taught their son Russian and no one could eavesdrop. “It won’t be easy for you — worse for you than the others because of me and Dad.” 

For a long moment, Makar just stared down at the ice. He’d known how to skate for so long, known hockey even longer. In all honesty, no matter how much they tried to prevent it, he’d grown up on the ice. At the very least, he’d grown up at the rink, in locker rooms and on benches. In offices and trophy rooms, and the gym that was only open to the players. 

He was quiet for so long that Ilya wondered if he’d said something wrong. 

But then Makar asked, “What if I want to?” The question came in English, the switch so fast that it took Ilya a moment to process the change. 

And then he did process. 

He just didn’t really know what to do with that. 

“You want to play?” he asked eventually. If he was honest with himself, there had always been a small, selfish part of him that hoped Makar would fall in love with something else. Art. Music. Science. Anything that didn't involve flying pucks and emergency room visits. Hockey was so violent, and Makar was so… so not. “Really?” 

Again, Makar seemed to think about it. “All my friends like it,” he said. That much was true. Milo Boodram had really come into his own as a winger, much like his proud father. Jade, though more of a cool older cousin than a friend, was being scouted by the PWHL and universities alike. Even the kids who didn't play competitively had taken skating or hockey lessons. “You and Dad like it.” 

Ilya smiled. “We do,” he said, and let the agreement settle between them for a moment. “But that doesn’t mean you have to.” Honestly, Ilya didn’t like hockey all that much when he wasn’t the person on the ice. Now that it was just Shane, Ilya found himself worrying more often than not, tending to his husband’s bruises in the middle of the night while Makar slept the last few hours before school. “You can play if you want to, Bug, but I want you to understand what that means before you decide.” 

Makar finally looked back at him. It was strange. There wasn't a single drop of Shane's DNA in him, and yet somehow they shared the very same anxious expression. His bottom lip disappeared between his teeth, and he couldn't quite hold eye contact.

“What does it mean?” 

Ilya’s heart ached. God, what didn’t it mean? 

“It will never be the same for you as it is for your friends,” Ilya said. Maybe it was harsh, but it was still kinder than anyone else would be. “If Milo has a bad game, he has a bad game. If you have a bad game, they will ask what is wrong with Shane Hollander’s son. They will compare you to me. And to Dad. They will expect you to be better than both of us, and that will be hard. Very hard.”

That isn’t fair, he could practically hear the thought in his son’s head. 

Makar’s eyes flicked back over to where the Centaur’s tunnel was, as if he expected Shane to appear at the mere mention of him. 

It wasn’t enough. Ilya didn’t think there was anything he could say that would accurately describe the kind of pressure Makar would be under. 

“They will not be nice if you fail at this,” he continued. And that, he knew, was harsh. He tried to remind himself that he was protecting his son, but he also knew he’d be curled up in Shane’s arms later and comparing himself to his own father. “And you will get hurt. A lot.” He smiled, as if there was humor in that. As if it wasn’t one of his worst fears as a parent. “Bruises and broken bones. You will lose teeth.” At least, for a while still, it would only be his baby teeth. They would still grow back. “You can do whatever you want to, Dad and I will always cheer louder than anyone else, but you must know that hockey will be much more difficult than other things. And you need to choose it because you love it.” 

Makar was silent, and for an agonizing second, Ilya thought he’d pushed it too far. He wanted his son to understand the gravity of the pressure he would face, but he didn’t want to talk him out of it if it was something he really wanted to do. He didn’t want to crush his son’s dreams before he ever got the chance to figure them out. 

Then, his son’s beautiful eyes looked up at him. As he often did, Ilya saw his baby. The first steps, the first word, the first time a Band-Aid inexplicably fixed a tantrum. His sweet, gentle, young boy. The person he would burn the world down to protect.

“I want to play,” Makar whispered. 

Ilya closed his eyes for the shortest moment. There it was. The answer he had secretly hoped would never come. And yet, when he opened his eyes, he was already smiling. 

Later, when Shane asked, Ilya would deny this with a completely straight face. The smile was not about hockey. It was about Makar. About how he’d chosen this for himself and managed to trust Ilya with that decision. 

Ilya slipped an arm around Makar's shoulders and pulled him close, pressing a kiss into the mess of curls at the top of his head. “Then you will play,” he said. They’d have to convince Shane still, of course, but he didn’t expect much of a fight. Besides, he was pretty sure Shane wanted their son to play — wanted to be the hockey parent who cheered too loudly and got kicked out of games for heckling the refs. “You want to be center, like your dads?” 

Makar sank down in his seat an inch, squeezing his cotton candy close to his chest. “Actually…” he mumbled something that Ilya had to ask him to repeat. Twice. “I want… I want to be like Uncle Wy.” 

Uncle Wy. 

Wyatt. 

Wyatt Hayes. 

Ilya thought he might pass out. 

“You want to be goalie?” he asked, and he wished he didn’t sound as scandalized as he did. Really, truly, he’d support whatever Makar wanted. He did not think that included raising a goalie. “Really?” 

Makar just shrugged, though Ilya could tell he was more nervous than he wanted to admit. “He’s cool. Like superman.” 

Of course. Of course his son wanted to stand in front of rubber flying at alarming speeds. Because the flailing bodies on the ice weren't dangerous enough, apparently. 

Ilya took a deep breath. “You are sure?” he asked. To which Makar nodded again, emphasizing just how sure he was. Ilya was becoming aware that the universe had a fucked up sense of humor. 

Dammit. Ilya was going to have to raise a goalie. 

And he’d be the best damn goalie there ever was, they’d make sure of that. Shane would have him in the basement doing yoga every morning. Ilya would practice blocking shots with him after school every day. They’d buy him the best pads money could buy and take far too many pictures of him swimming in the oversized equipment. 

Ilya hung his head with a sigh and then squeezed his son’s shoulders once. “Okay,” he agreed. “We will talk to Dad and then call Uncle Wy on next off day. You can start Hockey 1 next season.” 

Ilya swore he’d never seen his son look so happy.