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1. Four Seasons, Boston
Luxurious hotels were certainly a perk of being a professional athlete on one of the most legendary teams in the league, but staying in them could still get old. Road trips became exhausting fast, and so did plane rides, and so did being stuck in Boston during a blizzard and camping out in the lobby of the Four Seasons because most of the regular bars and restaurants had shut down for the storm. At least there was alcohol and hors d'oeuvres from the hotel’s restaurant. But, as the Montreal Voyageurs gathered in a semi-secluded section of the lobby on plush leather sofas, the atmosphere between them was about as dour as the weather outside.
It didn’t help that they had just lost a game against the Boston Bears.
“I just want to go to a club, get fucking wasted, forget I ever stepped skate on the ice, find a girl, and fuck her until I forget the rest of my life, too,” one of the reserve defensemen grumbled. “Is that too much to fucking ask?”
“It’s a shame,” JJ Boiziau agreed. “So many good clubs here, even better restaurants, and we are missing them, stuck behind glass.”
“And we don’t even have a game tomorrow,” Sorren Miitka whined. “We would have actually had time to sleep off the headache.”
“Yeah, but even if we were lucky, we still would have been flying with hangovers,” Hayden Pike pointed out. “Right now, we just have to hope our flight doesn’t get fucking cancelled.”
“Nope, wrong again, Pike!” the defenseman said. “Right now, I have to get on Tinder and see if I can find a girl who’s willing to brave this weather to come visit me. I’ll make it worth her time,” he leered.
“I guess I’ll be sleeping in the hallway,” Drapeau said flatly.
“You aren’t going to find a girl in Boston,” Hayden scoffed. “The only women who would want to hook up with you are hardcore hockey fans, and in this city, that means the Bears. They would literally burn you alive. Do not tell them where you are sleeping.”
“He has a point,” Miitka said. “I’ve never had less game than I do in Boston. They fucking hate us here.”
“You never have any game at all,” Boiziau laughed, and Miitie rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “Just don’t tell them you are a hockey player! Know your city, know your landscape. We are not all Hollander, not every girl here will recognize you.”
“I don’t know, man,” Hayden said. “Shane seems to be the only one of you who actually has a shot tonight. Who are you texting over there, Captain? Shane? Hollander!”
Shane jerked away from his phone, looking up like a frightened animal. “Uh—yes.” He blinked. “Sorry, could you repeat that?”
Hayden was clearly miffed. He looked at Shane’s phone, then raised an unimpressed (though neatly trimmed) eyebrow. “Who are you texting?”
“No one,” Shane said quickly.
“Right,” Hayden drawled. “And would that be the same ‘no one’ you were texting last week? You know, when you,” he used his own phone to mimic Shane frantically slamming down his phone on the bed. He had already told the team about that little freak out, so everyone laughed. “I mean, that must have been some text.”
“It must have been some picture,” Boiziau laughed.
“No! No, it was a news update,” Shane said quickly, looking away. He was a terrible liar, and everyone on the team knew it, including Shane. When he did choose to lie, it was usually just an unspoken request for them to drop the subject. “It was about Carter-Lewels transferring to Tampa. I just wasn’t expecting it.”
Another night, his teammates might have been more willing to let the matter drop, but they were all bored and frustrated. Miitie leaned forward. “Were you, like, scheduling a date with this girl last week? Plans disrupted by the storm, I guess.”
“They’ll have to stay inside instead,” Drapeau snickered.
“No! No, actually,” Shane stood, unfolding himself from the corner of the couch he had been tucked into. His beer sat on a low side table, untouched. “Actually, I, uh, I’m turning in early.”
“Right,” Hayden said dubiously. “Should I sleep in the hallway, then?”
“No!”
His phone buzzed. Shane scrambled to tuck it into his pocket, not even reading the notification, but it slid out of his hand and scattered across the floor.
The guys all lunged for it like it was a puck in the last five minutes of the third period and they were down by one point.
Drapeau won the face-off and held up the phone triumphantly. “‘One-six-two-three’!” he crowed, reading from the notification blurb. “Who the fuck is Lily, Hollander?”
Shane snatched his phone back with lightning-quick reflexes they seldom saw displayed off the ice. It was blink and miss it, and then the phone was gone, disappearing into his pocket. “No one,” he said, but his cheeks were red. Another thing about Shane Hollander’s nonexistent skills of deception: he blushed when he lied.
“One-six-two-three,” Hayden repeated, frowning. “That’s not our room. None of our rooms were booked on the sixteenth floor.”
Shane stood still, not moving. He looked frozen.
“Oh my god,” Hayden said. “Captain, are you breaking curfew?”
“To go to another hotel?” Miitie asked.
“And meet Lily there,” Boiziau cooed. “How sweet! They have been planning this all week, and booked the room in advance! No paltry snowstorm will slow down our captain!”
“That’s not—no, that’s not,” Shane stuttered. “Um, that is… something else. I’m just going for a walk.”
“I thought he was going to bed early,” Miitie whispered.
“What?” Hayden laughed incredulously. “Right now?”
“Yes.”
They all turned to the large dark windows, with snow blasting against the sides and piling up in the corners.
“Some girl, huh?” Drapeau asked.
“No, I just need some air,” Hollander insisted, shuffling his feet.
“Well,” Hayden drawled, “I’m not gonna rat you out, Captain.”
“It isn’t curfew yet!”
“Yes, yes, get out of here,” Boiziau said. “Someone deserves to get laid tonight after that clusterfuck, and it’s not going to be any of us. We’ll live vicariously through you.”
“It’s not,” Shane said. “I’m not-”
“Just go!” Hayden said, and Shane was apparently tired of being in their vicinity, because he took the direction. He abruptly turned on his heel and started walking away, moving almost as fast as he could on the ice. Hayden shouted after his fleeing back, “Tell Lily I said hi! Here’s hoping she can keep you warm!”
Shane hunched his shoulders as the team’s laughter followed him into the night.
2. Pike Residence, Montreal
“It was so nice of you to come and help,” Jackie gushed. The girls were already taking a nap, tucked into their beds, and Arthur seemed happy enough in Shane’s arms: all of them were fed, the house wasn’t a wreck, and there was a minimal amount of excess glitter spilled in the kitchen from the crafting project she had set up for them. “Really, Shane, you’re a lifesaver, I hope you know that.”
Shane smiled and ducked his head. He was so confident and poised in interviews, but if it didn’t have to do with hockey, he could not take a compliment to save his life. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Honestly, the twins are much nicer to me than they are to Hayden.”
Jackie sighed, exasperated. “And who knows why! It’s not like you’ve ever put your foot down with them—I always have to be the bad guy in this house. Hayden always chickens out or starts laughing. Oh well, at least he changes the diapers. Can I get you something to drink, Shane? A snack? I don’t want to send you off if you haven’t had lunch, and I’d love to catch up.”
She liked Shane. She liked him a lot more than most of the guys Hayden had met in the NHL, partially because Shane reminded her of her husband. And partially because Shane was also willing to change diapers when he had babysitting duty.
They sat at the island counter with a platter of vegetables between them as Jackie mopped up the rest of the glitter. Shane munched on carrots and celery sticks and they chatted casually about the season. He did not set Arthur down, and Arthur looked content to stay where he was.
Shane looked good with a baby in his arms. He was such a sweet guy. Jackie worried that he was lonely. Hayden said that she was projecting her maternal instincts onto him because of his babyface. (Although, really, she didn’t feel very maternal at all about Shane. He looked very, very handsome holding Arthur.)
“You’re so cute,” she cooed. “Can I take a picture?” Shane allowed her, although his smile was strained. Jackie couldn’t help but feel that he still looked better here, or at least more comfortable, than he did in all his fancy photoshoots and ads that now played every time they watched any NHL game, no matter who was playing. She had heard the guys making fun of Shane for those ads, as if they all hadn’t filmed one at some point or another. And even if she didn’t feel very maternal towards Shane, he did make her protective instincts flare up.
“Do you want kids, Shane?”
He blinked slowly. “I don’t know,” he said, but his hands, large and rough like Hayden’s, were cradling her baby naturally, and she thought maybe he knew more than he was letting on. “Definitely not right now.”
“No, of course not. That makes sense. Are you seeing anyone at the moment?”
“Um, no.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful! Or, I mean, not wonderful, but I was just talking to Sasha—Sasha as in Miitie’s ex-girlfriend, we still keep in touch—and she was telling me that her sister is moving to Montreal next month. Isn’t that exciting?”
“Um. Yeah. Yeah, that’s… exciting. For her.”
“And Shane, she’s going to want to meet some new people. You know, everyone needs a little company now and then.” She shimmied a little, feeling energized from a day away from her beloved spawn. She had gone to the mall for some absolutely essential back-to-school shopping, then to the spa for an equally essential massage, and then for a very, very long drive, taking the scenic route on the way home, the windows cracked so she could feel the breeze blowing through her hair.
And Shane hadn’t called her with an emergency a single time! Not once!
She owed him, big time. “And Leslie—do you remember Leslie?”
“She’s your-”
“My cousin, yes! She was here during the playoffs. Well, Shane, I don’t like to tell tales out of school, but she told me that she thinks that you are absolutely gorge-”
Arthur whined. Shane jumped off his barstool and began walking soothingly in circles, heading toward the living room as he bounced the baby in his arms. “You’re okay, Artie, you’re so good,” Shane said.
Jackie trailed behind him, smiling. They settled on the couch.
“I just think it would be nice to see you with someone,” she said.
Shane grinned at her. “My mom would agree with you. But, uh, I’m focused on my career right now. I’m working all the time, really. I don’t have time for anything else.”
Jackie nodded. She glanced at her baby, who was staring at Shane rapturously. She decided to hedge her bets. “Hayden mentioned a Lily? Someone you knew in Boston?”
Shane gave her a look of alarm.
“Oh, I just meant that maybe if you showed me a picture,” she pressed, desperately curious about the only girl (only person, really) who had ever been linked with Shane, “or told me a little about her, then I would know what kind of girl you liked, for when you feel like dating again—or even for something more casual! Your type, I guess.” She put a hand on his arm. “We just don’t want you to be lonely, Shane.”
“I don’t have a type,” Shane said very seriously, but most guys said that because they believed it was the politest thing to say.
“Maybe not looks-wise, but everyone has characteristics they want in a partner. Is she a good cook? Does she dress well? Is she athletic, like you, and is exercise and nutrition something she values?” She was really pushing it now, and poor Shane looked like a deer in headlights.
“I mean—I don’t know. I don’t know about any of that.”
Jackie frowned. “You don’t know if she dresses well?”
“I just don’t know her that well. She has a… style. Kind of… punk? That’s not right. I don’t know. Never mind. I actually don’t know her very well. She’s just a friend. Who I don’t know very well.”
Jackie looked at him. Shane sighed.
“It’s true,” he muttered defensively.
“But this girl’s number was in your phone? You still have her number, right?”
“Yes. But I don’t really know her.”
“Alright,” Jackie said. “How did you get her number?”
Shane considered this, staring at the baby in his arms. “She gave it to me. We met, like, once. Once or twice. She gave me her number and that was pretty much it. I’m not even sure her name was ‘Lily.’ I might have… misheard.”
Jackie hummed. Shane looked intently at the baby in his arms.
“I don’t,” he muttered defensively. “We don’t, like… hang out. We don’t do anything together.”
Was there something sad in the way he said it, or was Jackie projecting again? In the past, Hayden had accused her of being project-oriented. She wanted things to make sense, and she wanted the people she cared about to be happy. Shane and Hayden’s friendship was simple, but she knew how much Hayden valued having him on the team. They were both level-headed, quiet, unobnoxious men, and in the world of professional athletes, sometimes that made them the outliers. Shane was someone Hayden could relate to, someone he could talk about his problems with, and he was a good captain and a good friend. But Shane, from what Jackie could tell, didn’t seem to have any friends outside of the league—even really outside of his own team. While that wasn’t uncommon for the men she knew in the NHL, it still wasn’t particularly healthy.
Shane bounced Arthur in his arms. He was so much more confident around babies than most of the single guys she knew, even though Shane was an only child and, as far as she knew, didn’t have any close family members. He dangled his fingers in front of Arthur’s face, smiling at the baby, and Jackie’s heart melted and thumped hard at the same time. She watched her baby reach up and grab his fingers, cooing in delight when Shane let him catch them, and thought about the baby girl in her stomach. Well. She would need a godfather, wouldn’t she?
Preferably a godfather with a girlfriend.
“You just started doing yoga, right? Hayden mentioned. We should find a class to attend together, at least during the summer. It would be fun! And I bet there are tons of women in those classes who would love to get to know you. Someone, you know, closer to home.”
Shane sighed.
3. Belmont Park Hospital, New York
Hayden tried to stop his leg from bouncing, but it was hard. He was, admittedly, pretty uncomfortable. Not just because of the hard plastic chair he was sitting on, or the distractingly cold air. “Chilly in here, huh?” he attempted, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Shane glared at him. He was sitting, shirtless (and, for a professional athlete, Shane was usually fully dressed, so Hayden was a little distracted, sue him) on the hospital bed, still wearing skintight athletic leggings and hockey socks, which were the only things protecting him from the frigid air. It was not enough, though, because his nipples were pebbled. Hayden felt a little guilty, and he felt extremely sympathetic. Seriously, they were practically purple.
Not to mention, well. The bruises.
“Don’t,” Shane said, tone as short as Hayden had ever heard it.
Hayden ripped his eyes away from where they had once again drifted to the constellation of love marks on Shane’s chest and collarbone, little purple and pink bruises, each obviously the size of a pursed mouth, speckled with burst capillaries. It was crazy distracting, actually.
Was this why Shane usually wore an undershirt, even in the locker room? He used the same showers as the other guys, but sometimes he seemed to take forever to undress. Hayden had sometimes wondered if he was shy—and, he supposed, maybe that was true. In a way.
“Man, no worries, I totally get it.” Hayden looked pointedly at the far wall because there were no windows in the little room. “... We were in Boston three days ago, after all.”
“Shut up,” Shane said. It was almost a growl.
Hayden really, really tried to focus on the wall.
Shane shifted on the bed, rolling his shoulders (and even his shoulders were littered with hickeys), then winced. “Goddamn it,” he said, gently lifting his bandaged forearm into his lap. “I think the local anesthetic is wearing off.”
Hayden winced, not wanting to look at the bandages or think about why they were there.
Shane chuckled. “For a guy who plays a contact sport where we sprint around on knives carrying giant clubs, you are surprisingly squeamish.”
“Hey,” Hayden said weakly, but it was unequivocally true. He fucking hated blood. He hated hospitals, too, although he’d been forced to get better about that once he had so many kids. He had to get over a lot of his squeamishness when the twins were born and during Jackie’s pregnancies. Vomit, shit, barf, all of it, Hayden had mostly overcome. Of course, he didn’t like it, and he wasn’t quite as inured to it as some parents were, but he could deal.
Blood, on the other hand? No way.
He wouldn’t have been here if Shane hadn’t been his closest friend. He probably wouldn’t have been here anyway if either Yuna or David Hollander had been in attendance at their son’s game. He would much rather be back at the hotel, content with the knowledge that Shane was with his parents, than sitting here, trying not to look at the bandages holding Shane’s wrist together.
Then again, considering the fucking plethora of hickeys scattered across Shane’s olive-toned skin, he was probably pretty happy that his parents weren’t here. The team, their coach, and the management were all going to give him enough shit as it was. The injury was sustained in the last thirty seconds of the game, so most of them had been off the ice and in the dressing room when the team doctor had stripped Hollander’s upper body to assess the wound over Shane’s protestations.
Obviously, everyone was gonna give him shit. Shane was so prim and taciturn about his conquests that any opportunity to give him shit was usually seized with both hands. The fact that they were recently in Boston, well.
Shane had done this to himself.
Everyone knew Shane had a regular hook-up in Boston. Hell, by now, other teams in the league probably knew about it. It was not unusual for a guy to have a girl in one of the cities they visited regularly, but it was so out of character for Shane Hollander of all people. And it was funny, because his Boston girl seemed to be the only person he ever really hooked up with, from what Hayden could tell.
And that was kind of sad, too, considering that they only went there a few times a year and it was literally in a different country, but, oh well. What was he gonna do?
Stare at the wall and try to ignore Shane biting back winces of pain.
Hayden felt pretty bad, even though his skate was not the one that had cut Shane.
It was the very end of the game, and they had been up by two points already, but Shane had been on one all night. Fired up and ready to go, with that little bit of extra concentration that pushed him over the line from excellence into true stardom. When Shane got like that, everyone felt it. It was what made him such a good captain, even though he was new to it. Shane, though he was known for his calculated plays and steadfast work ethic, exuded a very specific kind of unique charisma. He was the type of guy who made his teammates want to play better, not just so they wouldn’t be overshadowed, but for the pure joy of keeping up. The Voyageurs had played as if there was a fire under their asses that night.
Shane had scored five fucking goals. Five. Annoyingly enough, it wasn’t even the first time he had done it, but it was the first time this season, and he had done it at the end of the second fucking period. It felt like the entire arena was holding its breath, waiting to see if it would become a mythical six-goal game.
JJ had scored at the top of the third period. By then, the New York Mainlanders had no hope of catching up, but the energy on the ice hadn’t let up. Hayden was convinced that Shane had not stopped grinning for the entire second half of the game, and not in a cocky way, just in pure, unadulterated enjoyment. The love of the game.
Then they were down to the last minute, six-two. Shane was speeding down the rink as fast as he had ever gone. Hayden’s lungs were burning with the icy air, a smile of his own stretched across his face as he raced down the other side of the rink. For once, he felt like he could see the play spelled out across the ice, the way Hollander always said he could, like ESP or some shit.
Shane had looked over his shoulder at Hayden, grinning that incredible, white smile, two massive defenseman on his ass, and then, bam, he’d sent the puck rocketing across the ice, straight into the open cradle of Hayden’s stick, and Hayden shot it into the net before the goalie could even turn to face him.
Hayden’s hands had flown into the air in victory, elated to have scored in such a legendary game, eyes fixed on the instant replay on the screens.
So he hadn’t seen the collision. He heard it first.
Shane had been knocked into the barriers by one of the defensemen after he slid the puck to Hayden. In the videos he watched later, Hayden saw Shane bouncing off the wall smoothly, only to get plowed into by the second defenseman, whose path had been clear a second earlier. They hit the ice in a tangle of limbs, taking down the other defensemen with them, but it was not a hard fall, and no one’s head had slammed into the ice or the barriers.
Hayden had been watching when blood splattered across the ice. One of the player’s skates ended up on top of Shane’s arm and scraped from his wrist to the bottom of his elbow pads, a long gash that had immediately started bleeding like crazy, summoning a swarm of medical teams to his side within seconds.
A shitty way to end a legendary game (literally, legendary: Hollander was now one of less than ten NHL players to have ever scored five goals in a single game more than once). Hayden had almost vomited when he had skated over, compelled to check on his captain, and seen the way Hollander’s sleeve gaped open around the wound.
And now he was here, valiantly keeping him company and not making fun of his hickeys at all, even once, because Shane had twenty-something fucking stitches in his forearm and the nurses had only just decided that he didn’t need a goddamn blood transfusion. He was even holding onto Shane’s stuff, his phone and his bag, which smelled rank after the game despite all of Shane’s expensive hygiene items.
“Um, so,” Hayden said, eyes bouncing around. He was really trying not to think about whether Shane’s nipples looked so purple because he was cold, or because they were also bruised. “Um, how about that game? Crazy, huh?”
Shane really was not in the mood.
The phone in his lap binged with a notification. Hayden glanced down on instinct, thinking it was Jackie responding to his last update, and he read the text before he realized that it was Shane’s phone.
Lily
That’s a lot of blood on the ice hollander
Shane flinched, then winced.
“Oh, um, sorry.” Hayden sheepishly handed Shane his phone. He appreciated the effort Shane clearly made not to snatch it from him. “Don’t worry, it’s just Lily.” He couldn’t help the tease in his voice, and he laughed when Hollander glared at him. Shane set his phone aggressively on the bed next to him, making a point of not responding immediately, and Hayden cooed, fluttering his lashes. “What? It’s cute that she cares about you.” He let his eyes drift to the bruises. “Or maybe she’s jealous— now she’s not the only one who’s marked you up recently.”
Shane huffed, face turning red, which was actually a relief. It was proof that there was still blood in his body. “She is not-”
His phone buzzed. They both glanced down automatically as the screen brightened, the text clearly visible.
Lily
You still have enough blood left to get hard for me tonight?
“Ugh.” Hayden couldn’t help the noise of disgust that tore out of his throat as Shane scrambled for his phone, flipping it upside down and nearly knocking it off the mattress. “Gross, dude, gross! Who is this girl? How the fuck is she so horny for you all the fucking time?”
“She’s not—I mean, she’s just joking,” Shane said, chasing the phone further down the bed as it slid over the thin sheets. “Actually, she meant something else, um—she meant—she meant-”
“Seriously, who the fuck sees someone bleeding out on the ice-”
“I was not bleeding out-”
“-and thinks, ‘I need me a piece of that?’”
“I guess, you know, hockey girls, uh, don’t they, don’t they like violence? Um, right?”
Hayden stared at Shane, mouth open. From anyone else, it wouldn’t have been a half-bad argument. From Shane Hollander? It was weak as hell. As if Shane Hollander was into girls who liked violent men beating each other up. Shane looked sheepish that he had even suggested it. Except, Hayden thought, looking back to the phone Hollander was trying to pick up with his weakened left hand, apparently he did. “No, that’s enough. Seriously. I have to know, you have to tell me right now. Who the fuck is she? I don’t know anything about this girl except her first name—fuck!” He jumped to his feet, spotting the blood now seeping through the long ream of bandages wrapped around his forearm. “Dude, you fucking tore your stitches! Um, nurse! Doctor!”
And beneath the racket and the reemergence of the medical team, Hayden could have sworn he heard Shane sigh in relief. And he definitely saw him type something in response before he slipped the phone beneath his pillow.
4. Shane’s Apartment, Montreal
“Sorry, guys, I gotta take this,” Shane said, ducking out of the room. He lifted his phone to his ear and then disappeared through the hallway door door.
“Mama’s boy!” Miitka whooped.
Hayden smacked his arm. “Are you stupid? That, folks, was a classic Shane Hollander Booty Call Exit. Trust me, I’m very fucking familiar with it.”
“In the middle of his own party, too,” Boiziau laughed.
“You guys think it’s Rose Landry?”
“Shane swears they’re just friends,” Hayden said, “but I don’t know why a friend would be calling at-” he checked his watch “-one thirty in the morning.”
“Quick, someone get a glass!” Boiziau joked. “We can put it up against the wall and try to listen in.”
For a moment, they silently considered this proposition.
“I’m just kidding,” Boiziau said. “It would probably be more effective to lie on the floor and listen under the crack in the door.”
They glanced down the hallway. A seam of light was visible beneath the door Hollander had ducked through, and they could hear Hollander’s muffled voice but no legible words.
“It’s probably Lily,” Miitka said.
“It’s always Lily,” Drapeau agreed.
“Lily?” Wilson asked. He was the Montreal Voyageurs' newest rookie, and the reason Shane had decided to invite the team over to his house; he claimed they needed to bond, and his apartment was the biggest one close to the rink. Wilson was exceptionally tall and particularly thin for a hockey player, but he was as fast as a rocket on the ice. “Does Hollander have a girlfriend?”
The team laughed. “Hollander has something,” Miitka said. “Some girl he’s always texting, she lives in Boston—he always, always dips from team dinners and celebrations when we’re in Boston. You’ll see.”
“I’m starting to think the girl is fucking married or something,” Koch, the oldest player on the Voyageurs, chimed in. “Hollander is way too secretive about her for anything else to make sense. It’s gotta be an affair. I’d put money on it.”
“Shane would never fuck a married woman,” Hayden said.
Koch pulled out his wallet and waved it in the air. “Put your money where your mouth is!” He threw forty dollars on the table.
Hayden grumbled but lifted his hips and wiggled his wallet out of his back pocket. “Shane is shy,” he said. “It’s just because of the long-distance thing—Jackie thinks he wants to commit and Lily probably doesn’t.”
“No, no, I believe the gossip rags,” Boiziau said. He pulled fifty-eight crumpled dollars from his pocket, counting them aloud, and threw them on Shane’s coffee table. “It is Rose Landry, for sure! There are a million pictures of them together, and Hollander has never been papped with a girl before her. He wants to be a movie star.”
“I’m pretty sure Hollander prefers lilies,” Drapeau said, dropping two twenties onto the growing pile. “In fact, I think they’re his favorite flower. I bet they are together and exclusive, and they’ve been intentionally keeping it secret from the paparazzi.”
Miitka added forty dollars without explaining himself.
They all looked up when the door opened. Shane stepped out, a sheepish look on his face. “Sorry about that,” he said, walking through the room and into his kitchen, where he took another ginger ale from his fridge. He didn’t seem to notice the pile of money on his coffee table, or the way the entire team was staring at him.
“Who was that?” Hayden asked, sipping his drink and trying to appear unbothered.
Shane blushed, tucking his phone into his pocket. “My mom. She realized she double-booked me for two advertising gigs next month and she needed to get it sorted out asap.”
Happily, Miitka leaned forward and pulled all the bills into his lap.
5. TD Garden Arena, Boston
Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander were on the same team again for the All-Star games. It always felt a little unfair when that happened. Undisputably, they were two of the best current players in the world, and no one ever talked about a top-five without including them, but when they were together? Perhaps it had to do with the announcement that they had not considered each other rivals in a long time, or the charity work they did together, which was, after all, the purpose of the All-Star games, but on the ice, on the same team, they moved in tandem, like a perfectly oiled machine. Like art.
They flew.
The puck moved between them like it was on a string, each end held in their hands. All they had to do was give the string a little tug, and the puck seemed to fly into the cradle of their stick, and the smallest, subtlest twitch would send it across the ice to the other. They didn’t have to look at each other to know where they would be, if that meant near the goal, ready to make the shot, or behind them on the ice, protecting them from interference.
They won the first round of the single-elimination knockout tournament without breaking a sweat. It was like dancing. It was everything the fans could have possibly wanted out of an All-Star team.
Several of Shane’s Montreal teammates were in the stands, watching the game. Boiziau had been drafted by the fan ballots into the All-Star game, but his team had already been knocked out. Jackie and Hayden were there, watching as the voracious hockey fans they both were, ready to enjoy a mini-vacation while their children were at their grandparents’ house. Wilson, Miitka, and Drapeau filled out the rest of the team’s attending roster.
The opening rounds of the tournament were less than half the length of a hockey game, just twenty minutes with the puck in play, so it felt like only seconds had passed before Hollander and Rozanov’s team inevitably won with far more ease than they should have against some of the best players in the NHL. They skated a victory lap together that turned into another mini-competition: Hollander and Rozanov, shoulder to shoulder, flying around the rink as fans cheered, screamed, and booed, both of them grinning at each other, the cameras zoomed in to capture the moment of competitive camaraderie between the former rivals.
Eventually, they split up, Rozanov gliding to one side of the rink. He was getting plenty of boos from the mostly Bostonian crowd, still bitter that he had left their team, but he met Cliff Marlow on the other side of the ring, and they crashed into each other in an embrace.
Hollander skated the opposite direction, toward the seats at the base of the arena, as his friends filed down the steps. Boiziau opened the team bench for them without any objections from the other All-Star players, letting the Montreal Voyageurs (and honorary member Jackie Pike) greet their captain on the ice.
“Guys!” Shane said, laughing as he skated up. He tried to spray them with ice chips as he came to a stop. “What the hell? Why are you all here? Don’t you have better things to do with your off-season than watch more hockey?”
“Nope,” Drapeau said.
“Sadly, no,” Boiziau said. Despite being eliminated, he was practically vibrating in his seat, an ecstatic grin twitching at his lips. He looked like a little kid on their birthday, glancing surreptitiously at his teammates. “We had to come celebrate you, Capitaine! Your big game—and in Boston, no less!”
“That’s right, Boston. So… is Lily here?” Miitie asked teasingly, shoving his shoulder over the barrier. Shane balked. The team laughed. “Is that why you played so well, huh, Hollander? Got someone to show off for? We were sort of hoping she would be in the audience.”
“We were really hoping she’d be,” said Drapauer, “or else we’re all out, like, fifty bucks for nothing."
“Incoming!” Hayden hollered as he and JJ both ducked behind the barrier and hoisted something over the wall.
“Capitaine! We have bought you a gift for your wonderful performance while we are in Boston!” Boiziau exclaimed, well aware that cameras were swinging in their direction as he and Hayden dumped an enormous bundle of dozens of flowers into Shane’s arms. Shane wobbled under the weight and barely caught it in time to save it from the ice, and the force slid him back on his skates a few inches before he quickly adjusted his stance. “A bouquet of your favorite flowers for our favorite capitaine, for you to give to your mysterious favorite girl!”
“I told them,” Jackie said, grinning, “that a girl named Lily would probably prefer any other kind of flower. How unoriginal.” She rolled her eyes. “But they said it was your favorite, Shane, so I had to let it slide.”
Shane wasn’t looking at the team. He stared into the mass of flowers that obscured his entire torso in vibrant shades of green, magenta, and cream, so much livelier than the metal and plastic arena around them. The lilies were clearly the focus of the arrangement, with at least two dozen open blossoms shooting up through a mass of vivid greenery and small decorative flowers, baby’s breath and white daisies.
A few closed bulbs were also arranged throughout the bouquet, each an earthy yellow-green, promising to blossom soon. Soon. Shane looked up and away, maybe at a camera or just into the middle distance, somewhere across the rink.
The enormous bouquet filled his arms and draped over his padded elbows, a few buds already lost to the ice from the rough transfer from JJ’s arms to his own. The bouquet must have cost hundreds of dollars; the wild explosion of flowers reached from Shane’s elbows to the base of his chin. One particularly prominent lily, white at the tips but deep magenta in the center, speckled with dark dots not unlike Shane’s own freckles, rose above the rest almost to the tip of his nose. He took a deep breath, eyes still fixed on the opposite side of the rink. The chill temperature of the rink dulled most scents, but the lilies were so voluminous in number that they still filled the air with their sweetness.
“Since you won’t tell us anything about her, we figured we’d have to ingratiate ourselves with her first,” Hayden said, reaching across the barrier to clap Shane’s shoulder. “Or, you know, you keep it. Whatever works.”
“Thanks, guys,” Shane said softly, smiling genuinely beneath the stadium lights. “I love it.”
Cameras were snapping, lights were flashing, and almost every fan in the stands had their phones out filming. He took off his helmet, balancing it on the barrier, and then Shane dipped his face into the bouquet, nose bumping one of the closed buds dotted throughout the flowers. He took a deep breath, eyes closing. Someone muttered, “Wow, you really do like lilies,” and Shane looked up with a grin.
“I do.” Again, he looked across the ice. “You’re right. They are my favorite.”
+1. Monks, Ottawa
When Hayden and Jackie visited Shane in Ottawa for the first time after—after everything, Shane brought them to Monks.
“If fucking Scott Hunter can own a gay bar,” Ilya Rozanov, Shane’s fucking husband, and it had been years, but Hayden was literally never getting over it, “then I can fucking too.”
They brought their teammates along, the newly re-energized Ottawa Centaurs, now proudly the formerly worst team in the NHL. With Shane and Ilya playing for them, it was no surprise that their play had improved, but Hayden was impressed by the progress he had seen from their other players and from their new rookies. Jackie agreed with him, and, she had added slyly, Wyatt Hayes was almost as cute as Shane.
Almost.
“He doesn’t own this place,” Shane told Jackie and Hayden as he led them to a cluster of bar-height tables near the back. Other patrons perked up when they saw the hockey players walking through, and some cheered or whooped, but no one bothered them; clearly, they were regulars here. “He acts like it, though.”
Hayden scoffed. “Rozanov is so cocky, he walks into every room like he was the one who fucking built it.”
Jackie elbowed him. “Nice thoughts only, babe.”
“No, no, I am not builder,” Ilya said, pulling out two stools with a screech against the hardwood floor. Shane took the first one without even a thank you, just sat down, like he was used to Ilya pulling out his chairs for him. Hayden glanced at Jackie. She raised her eyebrows. He pulled out her chair first. “That is Shane’s job, he is basically architect, project manager type. He built the cottage,” he said proudly.
“And it’s so beautiful, Shane,” Jackie gushed. “I’m so glad we got to visit.”
“Who would have thought?” Hayden said. “Me, willingly visiting Ilya Rozanov on my weekend off.”
“You just wanted weekend away from your very loud children,” Ilya said. Hayden glared.
“Next time we come, we’ll bring them along,” Jackie chuckled. “You’re their favorite babysitters, after all, and they’ve missed Shane ever since he left Montreal.”
“Yeah, bring the whole caravan next time,” Shane smiled.
“We will.” Jackie’s grin widened. “Do you remember that day you were babysitting, and you were holding Arthur, and I thought to myself, ‘I absolutely must find this man a wife so that he can have a baby of his own’?”
“I remember you trying very hard to set me up with a lot of women,” Shane said, a smile coming easier to his face than it would have a few years ago.
Everyone laughed, and Jackie groaned. “I was so oblivious! I was convinced that you were hung up on Lily, of course, and couldn’t be with her because of the distance. I thought I needed to help you get over her, ugh. Such an idiot.”
“He was hung up on Lily,” Ilya drawled. “Didn’t want to be with anyone else, yes?” Shane rolled his eyes. But he let Ilya rest a hand on his thigh.
“It was years, man,” Hayden said, sighing. “Years and years of the same game. ‘Who’s Lily?’ ‘No one.’ ‘Who is the contact on your phone named Lily?’ ‘Uh, I don’t know.’ Oh my god, I don’t know what I even thought was going on between you two, but even then, it was messy.”
“Who’s Lily?” Wyatt asked, ears practically perking up like an overgrown dog.
“Oh god,” Shane groaned, covering his face. “You really didn’t have to bring this up, you know.”
“No, she really, really did,” Hayden said, delighted. He looked over the faces of the Centaurs. “None of you know? Really? Wow, I thought the entire league would know by now.”
“It’s embarrassing,” Shane muttered. “And we’re, you know, allowed to have secrets. We’re very private people. I am, at least,” he quickly corrected. “Ilya never gave a shit how obvious he was, even when it could have ruined his life.”
“Whatever,” Ilya drawled. “What is life without risks? Some risks are worth it, you know,” he said, and everyone at the table could see the way his hand slid higher on Shane’s thigh.
Shane knocked him off as Wyatt asked again, “But who’s Lily? I’ve never heard of her.”
Ilya tilted his head back, smiling at Shane.
Shane tapped his knuckles on the table anxiously, then sighed. “Alright, fine. When we first started hooking up, Ilya and I put each other in our phones under pseudonyms—fake names,” he said to his husband, “as girls so that we could text each other without being, you know, outed. And I guess it worked, because I really did not want anyone to know about Lily regardless, but my entire team found out, anyway.”
“For the record, the brilliant idea was all mine. I picked the names. Good thing, because my team found out, too,” Ilya said. “About Jane.”
“To be fair, you were not very subtle,” Shane said. “I’m pretty sure you were bringing me up all the time in front of them, just to brag.”
“Do you think you were subtle?” Hayden burst out, and the team laughed.
Already, color was rising in Shane’s cheeks and the tips of his ears. “I was more subtle than him,” he said, pointing at his husband, who smirked. “He was—he was showing off scratches in the locker room and—”
“Literally everyone has seen your hickeys, Shane,” Jackie interrupted. “Even me. I saw them once when your shirt rode up too high, because they were on your hipbones. Who the hell has hickeys on their hipbones?”
“Why are you asking me?” Shane spluttered. “I didn’t leave them there!”
“You guys are lucky that they’re already out,” Hayden told the Centaurs. “It was torture, Shane was so weird about it! He would be in bed, smiling and giggling at his phone, practically swinging his feet, and then he would just bald-faced lie to my face about why! And we all knew it was a girl—well,” he glanced at Ilya, “we knew he had a partner in Boston, I mean. Every time we were in the city, he’d be on his phone all night and then, whoosh, he’d disappear. He even broke curfew a few times, and let me tell you, Shane Hollander does not do that.”
Jackie giggled. “He’s not even mentioning the sexting,” she stage-whispered.
“Oh my god, the sexting!”
Troy Barrett laughed and slapped the table. “Trust me, even though we’re literally on the same team, we still all have to put up with the sexting. At practices when either of them is injured, even if someone’s just in another part of the building-”
“Blushing, giggling, biting their lips,” Dykstra said. “It’s nauseating.”
“I know,” Hayden agreed, feeling enveloped in the camaraderie of making fun of his former captain. “Shane would practically throw his phone across the room whenever he got a picture—and ugh, I do not want to think about what the fuck you were sending him, Roz.”
“Usually my cock,” Ilya said helpfully.
Everyone booed. Except Jackie.
“And the innuendos!” Barrett groaned. “The puns! Oh, man, you think it was bad then? You do not even want to know the things I’ve heard about ‘getting it in the goal.’”
“Ilya told Shane last week he was going to put his puck in his net,” Luca Haas moaned. “I need, like, ear canal bleach.”
“That isn’t half as bad as the time I overheard Roz say they weren’t gonna use a net,” Dykystra said, covering his eyes.
“Oh my god,” Shane muttered.
“I’ve heard more about Hollander’s ‘five hole’ than any man should,” Boodram announced.
“Two-man advantage!” someone quipped.
“Shane Hollander’s playoff ‘beard’?” Jackie suggested.
“Okay, those last three aren’t even real,” Shane blurted. “And the rest were all Ilya! Don’t blame me!”
“As if you don’t encourage him,” Boodram scoffed.
“I do not!”
“You blush and laugh and you give him this look,” Barrett said. He demonstrated by biting his lower lip hard, flicking his eyes down, then slowly dragging them up. Everyone laughed, Ilya the loudest of all of them. “I’d say that counts as encouragement.”
“Yes, he’s right, that is very encouraging,” Ilya said, leaning closer to Shane’s ear, giving him a slow grin.
Shane bit his lip and looked at Ilya through his lashes, then blinked and fell back in his chair, covering his face as the team burst into laughter. “I—I do not do that.”
“You literally-”
“Okay, well, we’re out now! We can be as obvious as we want,” Shane objected loudly. “And, frankly, I think we’re still pretty conservative.”
“Oh yeah,” Ilya drawled, dragging his hand higher again. “I would call this conservative.”
Shane grabbed his hand and dragged it onto the table this time, lacing their fingers together as a guise for holding Ilya’s hand away from his crotch. “I mean, we don’t really do PDA. We’re not that kind of couple,” he said, looking pointedly at Jackie and Hayden.
“His hand was literally just on your upper thigh,” Jackie said, unimpressed. “You literally live in a glass house, Shane. You should know better.”
“Besides, it doesn’t have to be straight up PDA for it to be obvious,” Hayden said. “You were so weird, dude,” he laughed. “You would, like, announce yourself whenever you were leaving, insisting that you were visiting a friend instead of just bouncing. Like, I’m not your mom, dude! I wanted you to get laid, in fact.”
“I was trying to be subtle,” Shane insisted. “I didn’t want any rumors.”
“Sorry to break it to you, but subtlety is not your strong suit.” He took a sip of his beer, then nearly snorted it out his nose. “Do you remember, when we won the second Stanley Cup, we were the first back-to-back season winners in two fucking decades, and you were in the locker room on your phone, grinning like an idiot. I was spraying you down with champagne and you could barely be bothered to look up. Yeah, real subtle, dude.”
Ilya slung his arm over the back of Shane’s chair. “I would love to see you sprayed down.”
“You,” Shane said, pointing a finger in his face, “shut up.”
“My team knew all about the girl I was hooking up with in Montreal,” Ilya told them proudly. “I told them Jane was a fake name in my phone, so they called her Montreal girl instead—that would make me your Boston boy, no?”
Shane shoved his shoulder. “No, it would make you my Boston girl. Why am I always the girl?”
“You know why.”
“Shut the fuck up-”
“Boston boy sounds better,” Ily said. He popped his lips out on the alliteration. “I like it.”
“Well, you’re not in Boston anymore, so you can’t retroactively call yourself that.” Shane squeezed his hand. “You’re a full-blown Canadian, now, Rozanov. Citizenship and all.”
“That was my plan all along,” he drawled. “My true childhood dream had nothing to do with hockey. I wanted to live in Ottawa, for sure.”
“You love Ottawa!”
“I love certain things in Ottawa,” Ilya said. “But Jane will always be my Montreal girl, so I can still be your Boston boy.”
“This is extremely demeaning, you know.”
“No, it isn’t. You like it.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Okay, you love it.”
“Well, I-”
“Enough!” Hayden shouted. They both snapped back, having been leaning in closer and closer until their mouths were only a few inches apart. “I am trying to enjoy my fucking beer, for Christ’s sake! Give it a rest.”
“Welcome to our lives,” Boodram said, clapping his shoulder.
Shane glanced at Ilya. Ilya was already looking at him. Shane smiled, and Ilya was already smiling. “My Boston boy,” he mused, quiet enough not to be overheard. Ilya tilted his head. “You’re right. That doesn’t sound half bad.”