Archive of Our Own

XXXXX

Shane’s first month in Ottawa, he keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It doesn’t.

Nobody bats an eye when Shane steps in the shower. Nobody blinks when Ilya leans across the boards during a practice and kisses his cheek. Nobody stares or goes quiet when they walk in together in the morning, still half-tucked into each other from the car.

He didn’t know how much Montreal had cost him until he was somewhere that stopped asking him to pay it.

And Shane finds himself actually connecting with his new teammates, which feels a bit surreal.

Luca Haas is nineteen and carries himself like he doesn’t want to be noticed.

Shane recognizes it instantly—that particular frustration of being good enough on the ice but never quite loose enough off it. You can be the best player in the room and still feel like a kid standing on the outskirts of the social circle, because you don’t laugh at the right times, don’t land the jokes right.

Nobody teaches you that part. You just fail it, over and over, and wonder what’s wrong with you.

So Shane starts staying on the ice after everyone else clears out, teaching him some drills to improve his backhand shot. Tells him things nobody told Shane at nineteen. You’re allowed to be seen. You’re allowed to ask for advice. Shane watches Luca relax, bit by bit, week by week, and it does something for Shane that no goal or trophy ever has.

Holmberg, LaPointe, and Young are a different animal entirely—all three are a mix of frat boy energy with golden retriever earnestness. They’ve decided, without his input, that he’s theirs. They trail behind him, going quiet and reverent when he talks statistics, always angling to sit near him at meals. They love Ilya too—everybody loves Ilya—but Shane is not Ilya. It should be exhausting. It’s the opposite. Nobody who acted like this at Shane’s own high school would have looked at him twice, and now three of them fight over who gets to sit next to him on the bus, and he’s endeared every single time.

Hayes is the one who actually sees him, though. He’s the one who clocks it first when a room gets too loud, too many voices stacking up at once, and finds some unremarkable reason to pull Shane out of it. Nothing that draws a single eye. Just an exit, offered before Shane has to ask for one.

On the ice, they’re still a bit clunky—a team still being built, not the ruthless machine Montreal was, is. Shane used to think he needed that polish, that rigidity, to feel like the game meant something. Turns out what he needed was people who wanted him to succeed. He’s not the captain here. For the first time in years, he doesn’t have to hold the whole room up on his back—Ilya does that, easy and sharp and generous, the kind of captain you idolize in sports movies, a figure that genuinely inspires. Shane gets to just play. Gets to watch his husband be brilliant at this. It’s a rest—a relief—he didn’t know he was allowed to want.

Early one Tuesday morning in November, with Ilya’s arm slung heavy across his ribs, Shane realizes his jaw doesn’t ache from constant clenching. He’s forgotten what he felt like without the low hum of bracing running under everything—years of it, Montreal and worse, being outed in the ugliest way it could happen, watching teammates who’d known him for years decide, overnight, that no, they don’t know him at all. He’d thought that tension was just what his body was.

Now he knows what it was. It was armour. He’d worn it so long he forgot how much it weighed.

It comes off slow and then all at once, and some days the relief is dizzying, like standing up too fast except the too-fast is happiness. He loves their house. He loves their new team. He loves—still, more than he has words for—that they get to just be together now. Not scraping together stolen hours between road trips and calling it a relationship.

He thinks about the previous year sometimes. How hard the distance had been on Ilya too.

Shane was heartbroken when he learned exactly how much Ilya had struggled while Shane was too caught up in his own pain.

Thankfully, the Centaurs had stepped up to support their captain.

But no one more so than Troy.

Ilya has told Shane, unprompted and warm, how much that friendship means to him. How he’d count Troy among the best guys he knows.

Shane is grateful for that. Genuinely. And if Troy was there when Shane couldn’t be, that matters. That’s real. Shane will always be grateful to Troy for that.

And then Troy’s face is actually in the same room and something in Shane’s stomach ignites into flame. A sucking, hot pull of anger that has nothing to do with what he’s choosing to feel.

He knows it isn’t fair. Knowing doesn’t put it out.

So he does what he’s always done. Goes quiet around Troy. Answers in one word. Finds somewhere else to be. He can feel Ilya’s eyes on him across the room sometimes, that small crinkle between his eyebrows, and hates that too—hates that he can’t just decide to be fine.

He tells himself he’ll try harder tomorrow. Troy’s clearly different now. Softer. Genuinely good to Ilya, to all their teammates. Shane can see all of that and still not get his nervous system on board.

Why can’t I just let it go, he thinks.

And underneath that, quieter: why should I?

He watches Troy sometimes, welcomed, easy, and thinks about how strange it is that the years that cost Shane almost everything cost Troy so little. Troy gets to arrive here changed and be embraced for it. 

Shane is happy for him. He is.

He just doesn’t know yet what to do with the part of him that isn’t.

XXXXX

Shane’s been running through the list in his head since six that morning, the way he runs through a pre-game checklist.

He’s laid the drinks out across the kitchen counter in metal ice buckets. Five kinds of beer. Two kinds of cider. Sparkling water, soda, the fancy ginger kombucha for Lisa, who’s currently deep into her gut health era. A bottle of good red, white, and rosé for the WAGs and whoever else wants to partake. The freezer’s stacked with spare ice bags, and he’s ordered an absurd little assortment of petit fours for dessert, currently hogging an entire shelf in the fridge.

The food takes longer. He did the math on it three separate times—who’s dairy-free or gluten-free, who (Holmberg) is currently vegetarian to please their yoga influencer girlfriend.

He has two trays of chicken parmesan, his dad’s recipe. His mom’s warm potato salad, heavy on the mustard and herbs. And the kale salad, which is really its own small project—massaged soft, tossed in a gochujang-yuzu vinaigrette he adjusted twice this week until it landed exactly right. Sweet, sour, sharp, all at once. He wants the veggie offerings to actually be good. Not the sad crudité plate nobody touches.

It’s the middle of January. Ice thick on the back step. No eating outside tonight—not that it’s stopped Ilya, who’s been out on the deck since five in just a flannel and a half-zipped coat, refusing every offer of help, tending a small forest of chicken and beef skewers like it’s a personal insult that anyone would suggest cooking indoors in this weather. A plethora of vegetables too, charring slow at the cool end of the grill.

Shane keeps catching himself at the window. Watching him work in the cold, ears gone pink, and feeling this quiet burst of joy in his chest. That’s his husband. Cooking, for their team, in their house. Together.

And sometimes, Shane just has to take a moment, a breath, and remember. This is real. This is his.

It feels like too much sometimes.

There’s a low thread of nerves running under all of it—first time the whole team’s been in the house at once—but it doesn’t sit heavy on him the way it used to. Nobody here is going to be upset if something’s a little imperfect. He knows that, even as some old part of him keeps checking the towels anyway, straightening the same stack of napkins for the eighth time.

By seven the house is full.

Hayes is sprawled sideways across an armchair with a plate balanced on his knee, already deep in an argument with someone about a call from Tuesday’s game, gesturing so hard he nearly loses the plate twice. Someone’s queued a playlist of bubblegum pop—and currently Young and LaPointe are singing along to “Candyman” by Aqua.

Holmberg is talking to Ilya about his girlfriend’s latest extreme cleanse. Ilya, arranging skewers onto a tray, doesn’t even look up.

“What exactly is a yoga influencer?”

“Well basically, she wears workout gear and looks good on camera.”

“Ah. So she does Shane’s job. Probably not half as well as my precious pomidor does it, though.” He says it so seriously that Holmberg actually pauses to consider it.

“Ilya, oh my god, stop.”

Shane leans against the counter with a beer he hasn’t touched yet and lets himself just watch it for a second. This is usually the part of hosting that wrecks him—too many bodies in his space, too much noise, the itch to control it.

Tonight there’s none of that. Just an easy, low warmth moving through the house, like everyone in it already knows how to be careful with what he and Ilya have built here. He didn’t know, before this team, that this was a thing a room could feel like. He’s still getting used to how much he wants to hold onto it.

That’s where he is—soft, unguarded, thoughtful—when Troy comes up to the food with Harris beside him, and everything in Shane goes rigid at once.

Troy’s saying something to Harris, easy, mid-sentence. He grabs for the tongs by the chicken parm, and then he pauses. His hand hovers. He glances up at Shane—quick, almost sheepish, an awkward little smile tugging at his mouth like he’s this demure, shy houseguest.

Something in Shane’s chest ignites. Fast. Hot. A balloon of burning pressure inflating behind his ribs. For a moment, Shane actually sees red.

“Don’t worry,” Shane hears himself say, easy, almost pleasant. “It’s chicken. Not dog.”

It’s out of his mouth before he can rethink it.

And the strange thing—the thing he’ll turn over later—is that he doesn’t feel the regret he expects to feel. No shake in his hands. Just that heat, licking up through his chest, and underneath it, something almost like relief.

Troy goes rigid. The tongs are still in his hand. He looks at Shane like he’s been bitchslapped across the face.

The room goes still. Not gradually, all at once. Wyatt’s sentence just dies, mouth still open around the next word. Luca’s fork hangs in the air halfway to his mouth. The music seems too loud now, Britney Spears begging someone to give her a sign.

Ilya, over by the door with a beer in each hand, just looks confused. Genuinely, openly confused.

“Shane,” His voice comes out low, careful, his eyes scanning the way everyone has gone quiet. “What does that mean?”

Shane looks at Troy. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t raise his voice.

“I’m just letting Troy know he’s safe to eat it,” he says mildly. “It’s chicken. Not dog.”

Nobody moves. Troy’s face has gone a kind of gray-white, his jaw working like he wants to say something. Wyatt’s eyes flick from Shane to Troy to Ilya and back.

Shane will think later, that this is the most silence he has ever heard in a room full of hockey players.

It’s Ilya who breaks it. Hands the beers to Chouinard and Dykstra, claps a hand on Wyatt’s shoulder, and asks—out of absolutely nowhere—whether he’s seen the trailer for some movie coming out in spring. It’s such a strange, deliberate non sequitur that it does the job. The room starts moving again. Not easily. In pieces.

Troy sets his plate down without taking the chicken. He walks out into the hallway without another look at Shane. Harris follows him.

Shane goes back to it—refilling the ice buckets, wiping down a ring of condensation on the counter, making sure the second tray of chicken parm actually makes it out of the oven on time. Puttering. Being, if nothing else, a good host.

He doesn’t notice Ilya’s come up beside him until there are two hands on his shoulders, gentle but sure, turning him and steering him—up the stairs, past the trophy room, into their bedroom, the door closing behind them with a soft click that still manages to sound final.

Ilya doesn’t let go right away. His hands slide down Shane’s arms, settle around his wrists, thumbs moving slowly against the inside of them—grounding, the way he does when he can feel Shane starting to leave his own body.

“Shane.” His voice is strange. Not angry. Lost. “I am trying to understand what that was.”

Shane doesn’t answer. Part of him wants to apologize for making things so awkward with the team, especially during their very first hosting opportunity. It’s not fair to Ilya. None of this is fair to Ilya. The other larger part of him wants to scream until his throat is torn to pieces, to cry and lock himself in the bathroom and break things until he can rid himself of this burning, all-consuming feeling. A feeling he can’t even name. It just hurts and burns and lives inside of him like a parasite.

“I do not understand.” Ilya says it plainly. “I do not know what this means. But the way everyone reacted—” Ilya tilts his head, his touch gentle and soothing on the delicate skin of Shane’s wrists. “Can you help me understand, sweetheart?”

Shane’s eyes are fixed on the duvet cover. He is reminded that Ilya grew up in another country and doesn’t always have the context for certain things. He wants to answer. He does. But the words are sitting somewhere behind his sternum in a solid block, and he doesn’t know how to bring them up without something in him coming apart on the way.

Ilya watches him not-answer for a long moment. Then he sits, slow, on the edge of the bed, and pulls Shane down with him—not forcing, just a steady weight of invitation—until Shane’s tucked against his side, Ilya’s arm heavy and warm around him, one hand rubbing slow circles at the base of his spine.

It helps. It always helps. Some of the white noise in Shane’s head goes quiet under his husband’s grounding touch.

“Shane,” Ilya’s hand gently cups his cheek and tilts his face up. Shane blinks and a couple of tears escape his wet eyes to race down his cheeks. Ilya captures them, thumbs them away with aching gentleness. “Solnyshko, my sunshine, please. I do not understand. I want to help you, and Troy too. Please, help me understand.”

Shane breathes. In. Out.

“Take your time,” Ilya says quietly. “I am not going anywhere.”

“Troy was an asshole to me,” Shane finally says. It feels like his voice is coming from far away, cold and flat. “Every time we played each other. For years.”

Something shifts in Ilya’s face. “Yes,” he says, slower. “He was an asshole to me too, back then. He told the team about it last season. Said he felt so trapped, closeted, under Kent, that he didn’t feel like he had a choice but to go along with it.”

“Well.” Shane’s jaw tightens. “He was racist to me, Ilya. Not just chirping. He said awful things about my heritage. About my family. About my face. For years, he made me feel like I was less than him because I’m not white.”

Ilya opens his mouth and nothing comes out for a second. “What—what kind of things?”

Shane looks past him, at the wall, because it’s easier than looking at him for this part. “Comments about my eyes. About whether I could even see the puck. Jokes about takeout, about rice, every time we’d pass each other at a faceoff—always something. Doing an accent when he talked about my mom, like it was hilarious. Telling me I only made the league because some team needed a diversity headline, like I hadn’t out-worked every white kid in my junior team twice over. It wasn’t one bad night, Ilya.”

Shane tells him, first, about a particular game, Toronto vs Montreal at home in the Bell Centre. It was Family Night, and the jumbotron had rotated pictures of the players with their families. There was one of little Shane, maybe just three years old, squeezed between his parents, and Milly, his dad’s golden retriever that had passed away when Shane was only five.

Troy had taken one look at the photo, and burst out into mocking laughter.

“Is that picture from before your mom cooked that dog for dinner?”

Kent had found that hilarious, and the two of them had almost keeled over on the ice from laughing.

It didn’t stop with that. It became a bit. A callback.

Troy, skating past on a line change, low enough only Shane would hear it: “Woof.”

Dallas, at the handshake line, leaning in like he was offering something kind: “You going to grab dinner from the pound tonight, Hollander?”

“Heard you volunteer at the Humane Society. That where you get takeout?”

Shane came to dread whenever they flashed Yuna and David on the jumbotron during a Montreal vs Toronto game.

“Your mom is pretty hot, for a dirty j*p. You think she’d be down to fuck? She does prefer white meat.”

“Your dad ever tell you how he got your mom? Order her out of a catalogue, or did she just show up on a boat?”

“Your mom still doing nails, or she move up to a massage place by now?”

He’s never told his mother. Not one word of it.

The idea of her hearing what they’d said—about her, jokes that flattened an entire piece of her identity into something ugly and animal—still cracks something open in his chest, even now, even years later, sitting on the edge of his own bed with his husband’s hand moving slow against his spine.

“I didn’t—” Ilya stops. Tries again. “He used to call me commie, but it wasn’t—” His voice catches. “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t for years. It wasn’t about who my family was.”

“No,” Shane says quietly. “It wasn’t.”

“I did not know,” Ilya says, and it comes out smaller than Shane’s ever heard him. “I am so sorry. I am so sorry, solnyshko. I had no idea.”

“You’ve never had to.” No accusation in it. Just fact, laid down plain. “You’ve never had to sit with the idea that half a room thinks you don’t belong before you’ve said one word. I’ve had to earn every inch of this career twice. Be better. Cleaner. More disciplined than every guy around me—because if I wasn’t, it was never ‘Shane had an off night.’ It was ‘that’s what happens when you let guys like him in.’” His voice thins further. “I’ve been the best player in this league for years. And I’ve still had to prove I belong in every room I walk into. Every year. Over and over. In a way you never have.”

Ilya’s staring at him now, something breaking open behind his eyes.

“I would never have hurt someone the way Troy did because I couldn’t be who I wanted to be. You would never do that either. Whatever Troy was carrying, being closeted on that team—I understand the pressure, the pain of it, we both do, much better than most people would. But every single time he opened his mouth, he chose it. And maybe he regrets it now. Maybe he’s genuinely different. But he still traumatized people in the name of protecting himself, and it wasn’t just me.” Shane leans his head into the crook on Ilya’s neck, suddenly so exhausted. “I watched him do it to JJ, too. I heard Troy say things to him on the ice that went so far past the line. It wasn’t a one-time thing. It was who he was, for years, to anyone who wasn’t white.”

Ilya’s quiet for a long moment. When he finally speaks, it’s barely above a whisper. “I want to help,” he says. “I do not know how. I have never gone through anything like what you have just told me, and I do not want to pretend I understand how that feels. But I want to know what I can do. I can start putting distance between us, especially off the ice, if that’s what you need—I will not feel right until you feel… safe. That matters more to me than anything with Troy.”

Shane opens his mouth. Nothing comes out.

He’s too far inside it now—the flashbacks, the words still sitting raw in his throat, everything he’s just said out loud for the first time in his life—to reach for an answer to a question this big. He’s starting to float away from his body.

Ilya seems to understand that before Shane does. He cradles Shane close, cards his fingers through his hair.

“Can I offer you some options?” Ilya asks, gentle. “You do not have to decide anything right now, my sunshine. Just tell me which direction feels closest to right, and we go from there.”

Shane nods, face still firmly tucked away.

“I can talk to him. Tell him how you feel, in your words or mine, whichever you want.” Ilya’s thumb moves against his shoulder, slow. “Or I tell him to leave you alone completely—give you space, no pressure, until you are ready to talk to him, if you ever are. Or I just start quietly building distance, so you don’t have to see him more than hockey requires. I tell him: be professional, be fine in the room, but don’t expect friendship. That’s fair. That’s more than fair.” He presses a kiss to the top of Shane’s head. “Or I tuck you into bed, throw our teammates out, and then I come back and hold you tight, and we figure out the rest tomorrow.

He tilts Shane’s head up gently. Shane scrunches his eyes shut tightly. Being seen feels like too much right now. He shudders violently when Ilya kisses away a tear.

“What would you like me to do? I will do it.”

Shane’s throat is too tight to answer.

“I am so sorry,” Ilya pulls him in closer instead, one hand cradling the back of his head, and just holds him. “I am so sorry you had to carry that. It is not okay. None of it was ever okay. You do not have to face this alone. Not anymore. I am here. I am right here.”

Shane can’t hold it back any longer. He fists his hands frantically into Ilya’s flannel shirt, clawing at him to pull himself closer, to hold on tighter, as the sobs wrack his frame violently.

Ilya just holds him through it. Rocks him, slow, murmurs something low and broken in Russian against his hair that Shane doesn’t need translated to understand. “You are my family,” Ilya murmurs, low, into his hair. “You know that. Yuna is my family. I cannot undo what he said to you. I cannot take any of it back. But you are never going to carry this alone again. Not ever again.”

XXXXX

Troy’s got one skate half-unlaced, head down, and he looks up when Ilya’s shadow falls across the bench. He already knows this isn’t going to be a conversation about line changes.

“We need to talk.”

Troy nods, his heart beating frantically in his throat.

Ilya doesn’t sit. He leans against the wall, arms crossed, and he just looks at Troy—intense enough that Troy’s hands start to shake on his laces.

“I did not know.” No preamble. “Shane told me last weekend.”

“I—” Troy gives up on the laces and hunches forward with his elbows on his knees. “I just wish I could put the past behind me and move forward. I just wish I could take it all back. I’m a different person now.”

“How would Shane know that when you have never once apologized or acknowledged what you said to him, what you did to him, for years?”

“I know, okay, Ilya? I know I fucked up. I just—”

“You are making it all about you, how you feel, what you want and need. Have you ever thought about what Shane might need?”

Troy silently looks down.

“He does not owe you forgiveness.” Ilya’s voice is level. Colder than Troy’s ever heard from him. “I need to say that first, because I think somewhere in your head you have been waiting for him to get there on his own. He does not have to. You hurt someone, badly, for years, and you never once acknowledged it. He was never obligated to just let that go. You should not have believed he would.”

Troy doesn’t argue. He just nods, small. “I want to apologize to him. I’ve been thinking about it for longer than he’s been on the team. I just—I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know which words to say… I just don’t.”

“Then you figure it out, Troy. You do the work and you figure it out.”

“Does this change us? You and me.” Troy hates himself for asking, but the words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. “Are you mad at me?”

Ilya’s quiet for a long moment, like he’s actually weighing the question.

“This was never about you and me,” he says finally. “But since you’re asking—yes. I am angry.” His jaw tightens. “I am angry that the person I love most in this world had to carry that for years, on top of everything else he has had to carry, and I did not know. I should have known, but I did not understand the extent of it, because it is never something I had to deal with myself. I am angry that you were one of the people who hurt him. I am not going to pretend that does not sit strange in me, knowing you were there for me during one of the worst years of my life, and knowing that you hurt my husband so deeply. Both of those things are true. I do not know what to do with that yet, honestly. I am still figuring it out.”

“If he asked you to stop being friends with me—”

Ilya’s gaze sharpens to a razor point, and Troy’s words die in his throat.

“Then I would stop being friends with you. But he never would ask. That is not Shane. But if you ever hurt him again or our friendship causes him pain in any way, I would stop being friends with you. It will never be a contest between you and Shane.”

Troy winces, “I know that… I would never hurt him again. I’m so sorry for all the harm I’ve already caused him. I want to be friends with him. I want to move forward. That’s all I’ve wanted for a long time. I was ashamed the whole time I was doing it. Every single time. I never believed any of it—not for one second—and I said it anyway.”

“Then you know what you should do. I should not have to be the one to tell you this.”

Troy drags a hand down his face. “He’s not the only one, Ilya. There were others. A lot, if I’m honest—Dallas had us going after everyone. But Shane—we went harder at Shane than almost anyone. Dallas hated him. Genuinely hated him, because Shane was better than every guy on our roster—better than him—and Dallas was so fucking jealous. So it wasn’t just chirping. It was targeted.” His voice catches.

Ilya finally sits down on the bench on the other side of the room, directly across from Troy. Troy feels the distance as if they are separated by an ocean.

“I have been trying to actually understand this,” Ilya leans his head back, his blue eyes thoughtful. “Talking to people. Listening more than I used to. And the thing I keep coming back to is—an apology is not the finish line, Troy. It is not even really the point. The point is what you do every single day after it. Whether you say something the next time you hear someone say something racist instead of staying silent or laughing along because it is easier for you. Whether you actually use whatever weight you have in the spaces you are in to make it different, better, for the kids coming up behind you. That is how it actually changes. Not one conversation. Everything after it.”

Ilya rises to go, then stops.

“I want to be able to still call you my friend,” he says, quieter now, something rawer underneath the anger. “I want that. But I do not know how to do that yet while I am still this disappointed in you. So do the work. Not for me. Because it is actually right. And we will see where that leaves us.”

XXXXX

Troy catches Shane after the morning skate, once the room’s mostly cleared out. Ilya’s in a meeting with Wiebe. Shane’s got his bag packed, and he goes still when he sees Troy hovering by the door instead of leaving with everyone else.

“Can we talk, Shane?”

Shane could say no. He thinks about it—really thinks about it, weighs it the way he weighs everything—and then he sits back down on the bench instead.

“Okay.”

Bood eyes them both from the door. “You good, Shane? You want me to stay?”

Shane shakes his head. “We’re good.”

Bood offers him a smile, nods shortly at Troy, before he leaves them alone.

Troy doesn’t sit right next to Shane, he leaves a healthy distance of space between them.

“I was awful to you.” His voice is unsteady from the first word. “For years. I said things about your mom, about what you look like—vicious things, Shane, things I’m ashamed of every time I let myself actually remember them. I told myself for a long time it was Dallas, that I was just surviving that room the only way I could. But that’s not the truth.”

Shane watches him silently, his hands folded neatly in his lap.

“I’m not going to ask you to forgive me. I don’t think I’ve earned that, and I don’t think it’s mine to ask for. I just needed you to know I know what I did. I’m not confused about it. I don’t think it was nothing. I want to be able to move forward with you. To prove to you that I can be a good teammate, and a friend, if you ever want to give me that chance. I am so fucking sorry for everything that I said to you.”

He stops. Swallows.

“That’s it. You don’t owe me anything back.”

Shane is silent. Long enough that Troy starts to rise.

“Wait.”

Troy stops.

“I appreciate that,” Shane says. “I mean it. But I need to ask you something.”

Troy nods.

“Zane.” Shane watches his face carefully. “He’s been your teammate for over a year. Have you ever apologized to him?”

Troy’s jaw tightens. “No. He never brought it up, so I never—” He stops himself, hearing it out loud. “I let that be the excuse. That’s not really an excuse, is it.”

“No,” Shane says. “It’s not. He deserves it whether he ever asks you for it or not.” He holds Troy’s eyes. “What about JJ?”

Something in Troy’s face goes gray.

“No,” he says.

“Then he needs this too,” Shane’s voice doesn’t rise, but it goes very flat. “I heard some of what you said to him. So if this is really about becoming a different person, it can’t just be about me. I’m not the only one you owe this to, and honestly—if I’m the only one you ever say it to, that tells me exactly what this actually is. Because if the only people you ever say sorry to are the people you’re forced to see at work almost every day, that’s not remorse. That’s damage control.” He holds Troy’s eyes. “I’ll think about your apology. I want to be clear about that—I’m not throwing it back at you. But it has to be real, all the way through, not just where it’s convenient. Otherwise I’m going to keep my distance, and I’ll have every right to.”

“It’s not damage control.” Troy’s voice cracks on it. “I don’t know how to say it to them.”

“Then figure it out,” Shane says, not unkindly. “The way you figured out how to say it to me. I’m not telling you this to make it harder. I’m telling you because if you actually mean any of this, it has to be bigger than just making things easier between us.”

Troy nods, slow, something visibly settling into him. “I’ll talk to them,” he says. “I should have talked to them, and you, a long time ago.”

Shane nods, and something in his own chest loosens, some small real degree. He stands, slings his bag over his shoulder, stops at the door.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever fully forgive you, Troy.” Shane says it plainly, without cruelty. Just honesty. “Maybe that’s not something I owe you.”

He looks back at Troy over his shoulder and offers him a small smile.

“But I hope you keep becoming someone worth forgiving anyway.”

XXXXX