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i.
Most of the year runs together, a blur of hockey and everything that comes with it, the race towards the playoffs and then that final bone-grinding sprint.
Here, now, Ilya doesn’t want a single day to run into another. He wants to be able to line them up, dip into them again and again, every single one lit with the glow of Shane’s undivided attention. But the days keep turning like cartwheels, one after another.
On the second to last morning, he takes another swim in the lake while Shane watches from the dock, his feet dangling in the water.
Ilya has always loved the water in all its forms, ice and otherwise. Maybe in another life he was a sea creature, something that belonged to the ocean. He likes to float on the top, weightless, and then dive until the light fades and it feels like his lungs will explode. Shane eyes him warily when he comes back for air. It seems to annoy him that Ilya insists on going somewhere without him.
This time, when Ilya surfaces, spitting out a mouthful of mossy-tasting lake water, Shane calls from the shore, “You know there’s snakes and shit in there.”
“Snakes up here too,” says Ilya, waggling his eyebrows at Shane’s crotch.
“Jesus Christ,” says Shane, eyes rolling.
Ilya paddles towards him, nudging his nose into Shane’s knee until he opens his legs and he can bury his head in Shane’s lap, arms wrapped around his calves.
Shane runs his fingers through the damp ends of his hair. Ilya feels like a well-loved dog. He resists the urge to shake, let out a bark, settles for clamping his mouth down on Shane’s fingers. Good boy.
When he finally heads to shore his hands are white and ridged, and the skin is fragile, almost porous. He pulls the towel Shane left for him tighter around himself. It feels like if Shane touches him, he might disintegrate.
“Are you packed?” asks Shane.
“Nyet,” he says, keeping his eyes on Shane’s mouth, angling himself so Shane is trapped between him and the kitchen island.
Shane is bare chested, skin summer-gold. His fingertips have started tracing abstract shapes on his stomach, circling the bruises from the night before, already starting to fade. In a few days, they will be gone entirely. Any soreness from his dick will be gone by next week. Soon their bodies will be wiped clean, blank slates again.
“Just think, this time next year, you’ll be driving home to Ottawa,” says Shane.
Ilya can’t imagine it, not really, but Shane can and that’s enough.
“What if they are not interested?” he asks.
It’s the first time he’s allowed himself to voice this thought. He doesn’t like to spot flaws in their plan; better to have faith. Or at the very least, show it.
“Of course they’ll be interested. You would be the best thing to happen to Ottawa sports in – you would be the best thing that ever happened to Ottawa.”
“Not every team likes my reputation. And I am expensive. If they say no, what would we do? Would you play for a New York team? Would I go to Toronto?” he asks, even though he doesn't know if Toronto is even any closer than Boston. His understanding of Canadian geography is limited to the distance between stadiums and airports.
Shane frowns at him. “I don’t – I think New York’s cap – look, there’s no way Ottawa will say no."
"This is going to work. It’s a good plan,” he says.
Shane’s strong arms tighten around Ilya’s waist, pulling him close until their hips are pressed together, adding, “And nobody is going to fucking Toronto.”
His face is fixed with his trademark look of blunt-edged determination, the same one that carried his team to two Stanley Cups. Somebody else might find it overwhelming to be the subject of all that focus, but Ilya is used to absorbing the expectations of others.
“One year,” says Ilya. He’s lived through a lot of bad years. He was twelve once, and after that he was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.
One year. One year to remake himself into the boyfriend Shane needs him to be. For one more year, he will be Boston’s Ilya Rozanov.
Ungrateful boy, loyal to nothing, his father always said, and maybe it was true. Next year he will sell himself to another country again. But he never knew until now how sweet it could taste to give himself away for nothing at all.
ii.
Shane’s childhood home in Ottawa is tucked away at the end of a quiet drive without any sign of security. The house looks cared for, but not grand. If Shane is transferring money to his parents every month, this isn’t how they’re spending it.
Some part of Ilya wants to judge them for it, but the larger part of him is glad that Shane’s childhood has been so well preserved. He can imagine that each groove in the wallpaper is a spot where a tiny Shane banged a hockey stick against the wall. He tries to remember the color of the walls of his home before Polina changed everything to her taste, but his memories are shapeshifters, unreliable at best, devious at worst.
At the dinner table, Shane sits in what must be his regular seat, running his hands along the familiar grooves of the wood grain. He holds his knife the same way as his mother does, finger resting on the spine.
The more time he spends with Shane’s parents, the more he sees them in Shane: Yuna's relentless work ethic, the way her mouth tightens when she’s disappointed; David's good-natured, seemingly endless well of questions. He wonders which traits from his parents are reflected in him and hopes Shane never sees them.
After dinner, Shane and Yuna disappear into the study to discuss some new endorsement opportunity. “Give me five minutes,” Shane says apologetically, knocking his shoulder against Ilya’s, less affectionate than whatever public goodbye he gives Hayden Pike.
“Double booked again,” says David with an amused sigh. “Do you like puzzles?” he nods at the corner table, covered in a mostly-finished puzzle of a mountain scene. Tiny candy colored skiers dot the snowy trails.
“I have never done this,” he admits as David pulls out a chair for him.
He watches David pick out all the remaining dark colored pieces and does the same. In the background, he can hear Shane’s voice rising and falling, like a white noise machine.
“Did you and Shane use to do this together?” he asks because it seems like safe ground.
“Oh, no, almost never. Shane never really liked anything that wasn’t a competition. He and Yuna prefer Monopoly.”
He and Shane could make it into a competition, Ilya thinks, and even though he doesn’t say it out loud, it must be written on his face, because David looks like he’s holding back a laugh.
“Does your family have any game traditions? We could introduce something new into our repertoire.”
His father liked to test how quickly he could berate his mother into tears; whether she could make it through a full meal. He and his brother bet over who could fuck the girls on their street first. With Sasha and Svetlana, he played a version of vodka roulette where the loser stripped and when they ran out of clothing, they had to bring somebody to orgasm.
“We are not really games people,” he says, sliding in a piece of a frosted tree branch. Even the use of the present tense is a lie.
Minutes later, Ilya pushes the last piece in – the honor is yours, David said, and it strangely does feel like an honor. They admire the puzzle for a whole minute before David starts sweeping pieces back into the box. Watching the wood top emerge, wiped clean, makes something contract in his chest.
By the time Yuna and Shane reappear, David is plucking out the corner pieces of his next puzzle. Shane settles into the chair next to Ilya, knee brushing knee, thighs not quite pressed together. If somebody walked in right now, they wouldn’t look at them twice.
“Mom was just telling me that this week’s Man in the Crease was all about your contract.”
“I am very hot topic,” says Ilya.
“When will you let Boston know you won’t be re-signing?” asks Yuna.
“That is question for my agent,” says Ilya, aiming for polite, but maybe not quite getting there. In his experience, parents and contracts are a toxic mix.
“You told him that you want Ottawa?” asks Shane.
“Of course,” says Ilya. “He thinks Calgary would be a better fit, but–” he reaches out and pinches Shane’s thigh–“he does not know that there is no Shane Hollander in Calgary.”
Shane’s lips curve into a small smile. Yuna frowns, like she’s spotted something; maybe the selfish vein that runs all the way to the core of him.
"You don’t think you’re screwing them over by not saying anything now? Boston must be planning their whole acquisition strategy around you,” she says.
"You think they have not gotten their money's worth for me?" he scoffs.
"Of course not, that's not what I meant," Yuna says, a tiny crack in her usual composure. It’s the first thing Ilya has said to her that is less than respectful.
"I want to win another cup for Boston," he says. "That should be their strategy too.”
Yuna’s mouth opens and closes, like she’s not sure if she’s already gone too far, but the silence coming from Shane is notable.
“Do you agree with Yuna?” asks Ilya, eyes fixed on the stillness of Shane’s profile, only his nose twitching, like a rabbit in a field hoping he won’t be spotted.
“No! I mean, I’m a little surprised I guess, but I understand why you don’t want to tell them yet. You’ve earned the right to do what you want.”
Even if he couldn't see the spots of color high on his cheeks, Ilya would know he’s lying. Shane feels the bonds of obligation more than anybody else Ilya knows. Or maybe they feel them the same, but only Ilya knows how to cut the strings.
He almost says, I thought I am doing what we want, but resists. Somewhere in this house, there's probably still an Ilya Rozanov voodoo doll.
“Whatever you do, it will generate a lot of controversy. It’s already getting attention,” says Yuna in a careful voice.
“I do not mind controversy,” he says with a wink.
“Oh my god, stop,” says Shane, bumping their shoulders together. Ilya nudges him back, eager for any excuse to close the space between them. “They just stopped hating you for that shit.”
“Stop what?” he asks.
Shane rolls his eyes and grabs his hand, giving it one quick squeeze.
Later that night, their long legs tangled together in the bed intended to fit one teenage boy, Shane apologizes for his mom.
“I don’t mind,” says Ilya honestly. He doesn’t point out that it could be worse. “She’s not angry with you?”
“She’s not mad at anybody, she just, ah, never really gave up on the idea that hockey is like this noble pursuit. She wants everybody to play by the rules, in the right way.”
“Mm, you believe this also, I think,” says Ilya. He tries not to think about all the years when Yuna would’ve seen him that way; a player without a proper code.
“Maybe,” admits Shane. “Less than I used to though.”
For his honesty, Ilya tweaks his nipple through his shirt, hard enough to make him squirm. He can almost make out the dark circles through the thin cotton.
Shane tries to push him, but there’s nowhere for either of them to go. Ilya elbows him back and they end up wedged against the wall, his dick pressed against the strong curve of Shane’s ass, his hand cupping his groin. Shane warned him twice that there would be no fucking in his parents’ house, and he’s a good boyfriend, he’s going to listen. But fuck is very specific.
“How many times did you jerk off in this bed thinking of me?” Ilya asks, pressing his teeth down on the rubbery skin of Shane’s earlobe.
“Zero times, asshole.”
Shane’s eyes shine at him through long, dark lashes. Even through Shane's thick sweatpants, he can feel the hard outline of his dick.
“Hmm, Yuna would be disappointed to know she raised a liar.”
“Shut up,” Shane says, the end of the word turning into a low grunt as Ilya’s hand squeezes down on his crotch.
“You never imagine getting lost, ending up in the wrong locker room with me? The rest of the team is gone, and fuck them, nobody else is half as good as us. Only you deserve to be pushed down onto the bench–”
“My parents are just down the hall,” says Shane in a strained voice, eyes closed, rocking into Ilya’s palm.
“I will be quiet,” whispers Ilya. “But I cannot make any promises for you.”
Ilya lets his mouth run, whispering in excruciating detail every filthy thing teenage Ilya imagined doing to Shane while Shane’s hips thrust against his hand, first slow, like maybe he doesn’t want Ilya to notice, and then picking up speed, his breath coming out in short, staccato huffs.
Ilya’s dick strains towards Shane’s ass, like a compass pointed north. He tugs down Shane’s sweats, frees himself from his briefs, and starts fisting the shaft, letting the tip nudge between Shane’s ass cheeks.
“Fuck,” Shane mutters, his hand working now too, and it’s only a few more thrusts until they’re both on the edge, Ilya’s crotch pressed against Shane, Shane nearly flat against the wall, so close he can’t distinguish between their groans, and then he’s coming into his hand in hot spurts.
His come drips through his fingers, pooling in the dips above Shane’s ass and running down his hips.
For a minute, he keeps his head buried in the back of Shane’s neck, pressing wobbly kisses into the knob of bone there. Then Shane wordlessly wipes them both clean with his own briefs and rolls him away from the sticky spot.
“God, I hope my parents didn’t hear that.”
“I think they know we fuck,” he says.
“That doesn’t mean I need them to hear us. Jesus, Ilya.”
They’re face to face now, sharing the same stale air. The tight fit means that Shane will fall asleep with his mouth wedged into his armpit, that Ilya will wake up to a dried ring of drool on his chest. He doesn’t mind; it’s the cramped, too much closeness he can’t always bring himself to ask for.
“Your parents seem very happy,” he says.
Their faces are so close that each word makes Shane’s hair sway like seagrass.
“About us?” Shane says, brows knitting together.
“Just, in general.”
Part of him hopes that Shane will correct him, explain that his parents go through ups and downs, that yes, there were some ugly decades in there, but they know how to put on a show for strangers.
Instead, Shane simply says, “They love each other,” like this is an absolute truth, the beginning and the end of the story.
Ilya’s father loved him. His mother loved him. He loved them both. That was love, he wants to warn Shane. That was also love. And look what happened.
iii.
Ilya turns the television on and then off again before flinging the remote to his side.
The whole evening stretches out ahead of him. Shane is on an airplane, sleeping probably. At some point the plane will land and he will call, but that’s still hours away. Ilya hasn’t eaten yet, and that will take ten minutes, fifteen if he really stretches it. Jerking off is another thirty minutes, maybe.
His phone is buzzing with messages. Mostly from his teammates, a handful from his regular hookups, who know from instagram that he’s back in town, and assume he’s not spending a free night on his couch. Until this year, he never met boredom he couldn’t fuck his way out of.
Ilya turns the phone over and closes his eyes. His body feels restless like it’s being pulled in every possible direction.
He tries to imagine what Shane would do with a free friday night: watch hockey probably, tape review or a live game, read hockey books, do yoga stretches. Unless he has Ilya’s dick in his mouth, Shane never stops being a hockey player. Even then, he sometimes wonders if he, Ilya Rozanov, is so entangled with hockey that Shane has convinced himself that their sex is hockey-adjacent. How different is he really, from Shane’s yoga instructor or his physical therapist or his acupuncturist. Shane has probably accounted for semen in his macros, researched how sex helps optimize dopamine pathways and improve focus.
His dick pulses. It’s not the sexiest thought he’s ever had, but it’s not unappetizing.
Ilya jerks off to the image of facefucking Shane’s pink, open mouth in an empty locker room. He skips dinner in favor of sinking deeper and deeper into the couch, like it might swallow him up.
He wishes he could tell Svetlana that he’s so committed that even his fantasies are monogamous now. For some reason, he thinks she might believe him.
When Shane finally calls, he answers through a yawn. Shane sounds surprised. “I kinda figured you’d be out with your team.”
“Nope,” says Ilya, yawning again.
Shane is still talking; first, about his next game, then, the movie he watched on the plane, his new headphones, some house listing in Ottawa, trade waivers. Ilya shuts his eyes, letting himself float in the warm bath of Shane’s voice.
Through a sleepy haze, he realizes that Shane is saying something that requires a response. There’s a funny tone to his voice.
“It feels like, maybe, you’re not going out with your team as much as you used to. You don’t need to do that for me.”
“It’s not for you, Hollander,” says Ilya. “Is for me. I don’t want to.”
It’s a lie, a small one, barely even a lie at all.
Ilya doesn’t know how to shape the words so they don’t sound like a betrayal. He could go out; he would like to go out, to douse his brain with noise and vodka. Except alcohol makes him want to fuck. Winning makes him want to fuck. Losing makes him want to drink. Which makes him want to fuck. Around and around it goes.
“I know you said no this summer, but you can still change your mind,” says Shane, pausing, and then mumbling, “About other people I mean.”
Before he left, Shane told him he would understand it if he wanted to sleep with other people—just girls— while they were so far apart.
“We won’t see each other for months sometimes,” Shane had reminded him, as if he had not already made them a shared color coded calendar. Blue for away games. Red for home games. Green for Shane days.
Ilya hated the offer. Not because he minded the idea so much but because of what it said about him. Shane knew him, mostly, loved him, mostly, but didn’t trust him.
“That’s not what I want,” says Ilya, trying to infuse confidence into his voice.
He doesn’t want anybody else. He’s a changed man. He can do it, he knows it. There’s an emptiness at the heart of him. The rest of him is just camouflage. He can be anybody Shane needs him to be.
iv.
It’s a green day. A Shane day.
Shane is here, somewhere, down a long hallway in an almost identical locker room. Ilya feels like he could do a back flip. Or howl at the moon. Or best of all, he could step out onto the ice and carve it into anything he wants.
Cliff is lecturing one of their rookies, still a teenager, on the perils of a long distance relationship with some yoga influencer he met in Spain. “You’re in the honeymoon stage,” he warns him, with all the wisdom of somebody whose relationships crash and burn during the playoffs every year, like clockwork.
Across the locker room, Beck, who’s been married basically since he entered puberty, says, “You’re rich, kid. If you want it to work, fly her ass here.”
Ilya has never had anything to contribute to these discussions, other than chirps, so technically nothing has changed.
“Don’t listen to these assholes,” he says, pushing past the rookie a little harder than necessary to get to his gear.
“Okay, and you have better advice?” asks Marly, arms loosely folded across his chest.
“Yes. Break up with her. Find nice Boston yoga girl.”
Marleau snorts. “Cap will sleep with anybody who stands still long enough.”
“Who says she has to stand still?” asks Ilya with a leer.
Underneath his nerves feel chewed raw. On another afternoon, it might throw off his pregame rituals, but today, nothing can fully puncture his happiness.
It’s a green day. A Shane day.
The ice always feels better when Shane is on it. And it’s their best type of game: close, transcendent, trading point for point. He loves the crowds on these days; it doesn’t even matter whose fans they are. They’re here for their rivalry, their greatness, for them.
After his first goal, he glides right by Shane to blow him a kiss and Bolziau tells him to fuck off, looks like he might seriously throw a punch. It would be worth it; he would pay that price. He would give so much more, he wouldn’t even hesitate.
After his second goal, he checks Shane into the boards, hard, so there will be bruises to kiss better later. Both the pain and the comfort given with love. Asshole, Shane mutters, voice muffled by Ilya’s body, but that’s said with love too.
Boston wins. It’s their year.
That evening, Shane is on his knees for him before the door fully closes behind him. For a little while, he wants nothing more than this; Shane’s hands gripping his ass and the sweet, steady suction of his mouth. Shane hums as he takes him deeper, his face nearly pressed up against his groin. He makes so many quiet happy noises during sex. Ilya wants to bottle them up; carry them with him all the time.
Eventually, he pulls Shane off; he came here to get fucked and Ilya’s not going to disappoint him. They stumble into the living room, leaving a trail of clothing behind them like breadcrumbs. Shane is still working on peeling off his pants and Ilya’s shirt is looped around his neck when they tumble into the couch.
On the television behind him, he hears the sounds of a missed goal, and for a second, he can sense Shane’s distraction, feels him peering around Ilya’s shoulder at the screen. It’s so very Shane. It makes Ilya want to pull him into his lap and fuse every inch of their skin together.
“Up, up,” he says, with a clap of his hands. “To the bed.”
“Mm, stay,” says Shane, working to get his mouth back around his dick. Ilya tries to drag him up, but Shane resists, hands locked in a death grip around his thighs.
“I think I honestly might be too sore for sex,” Shane admits. “My hips are fucked. And we’re playing tomorrow and Wednesday.”
“That never stopped us before,” Ilya points out. He’s fucked Shane through bruises, a rotator cuff injury, and once, memorably, a loose, bloody tooth.
Shane dips his shoulder, half a shrug.
“Were there times before? That you didn’t want to?”
Ilya sinks back into the couch and Shane finally looks up from his crotch.
“I don’t know, we saw each other so little,” says Shane. He must think Ilya needs to be placated because he offers, “I always wanted to. Maybe I shouldn’t have though.”
It shouldn’t bother him. It’s not like they always had sex. Sometimes they just exchanged blowjobs or handjobs or rubbed up against each other like they were still teenagers, letting the delicious friction build and build. Once he fucked Shane’s sweaty thighs until he came so hard that his vision exploded into white starbursts. So it shouldn’t bother him, really.
“You could’ve told me.” He doesn’t want to sulk through any of these precious minutes, but he can feel it in the shape of his mouth anyway.
“Maybe.” Shane sounds skeptical.
It’s a reminder of how differently they saw those years. How powerless they both felt; how they both assumed the other must be the one with the power.
“C’mon, Rozanov,” says Shane, nudging him. “Maybe a hot shower will help my hips. I still smell like a locker room. Did I leave pjs here last time?”
“You wear my shirt or nothing,” says Ilya.
Shane just grins and pushes his shoulder, which turns into Ilya shoving him back, and both of them racing towards the shower. Once the water is on, Shane leaves a trail of damp kisses down his chest, before slowly sinking down to his knees. For a moment, Ilya holds the head of his cock against the curve of Shane’s cheek, watching the fat beads of water roll down his face like tears.
His lower lip is already ajar and when Ilya nudges it with his cock, his mouth falls open, and Ilya pushes inside. Shane takes over then, head thrusting, while Ilya moans increasingly deranged Russian at him.
After, Ilya wraps them both up in thick towels, and returns the favor, and they both fall asleep like that, tangled up in the towels and each other.
Ilya didn’t know what he wanted when he got on that flight to Ottawa. Just that he wanted. But maybe if he’d known what to ask for it would have been this. A warm, steady glow in his chest, like a lamp had been turned on. A daily good morning photo of Shane’s sleep-creased face. An extra key on his fob. A growing collection of shirts in Ilya’s closet. He feels like some dark bird, collecting bits and pieces of somebody else’s life, hoarding this strange mix of treasures that would look like trash to anybody else: shampoo and customized foam rollers and metro-branded socks.
He thought it would be harder to hide their secret, now that it has substance and shape, but he finds himself hugging it tighter than ever, keeping it safe from prying eyes. It seems impossible to believe that the world will let him keep this.
v.
He wakes up from the dream still shouting in Russian. The details are already slipping away, more feeling than memory; misty shapes in a bottomless dark.
Ilya checks his phone. It’s only midnight, but it seems like he’s already used up his night’s supply of sleep. The dream is stuck to him like honey. His limbs feel heavy with it.
Last year, he couldn’t sleep because he had fallen in love with Shane Hollander and he would lie in the dark thinking of him sleeping, his beautiful solid arms and legs wrapped around Rose Landry’s delicate body. And now, Shane loves him in all of the same ways, and he’s still lying in the dark, imagining Shane somewhere else. Sometimes it feels like he’s doomed to live a world away from everybody he loves; separated by an ocean or the MLH or the veil between the living and the dead.
Ilya closes his eyes. Opens them. “Fuck it,” he says.
After a moment’s deliberation, he grabs the keys for the Porsche GT he bought in a bright, fuck you red when Sveta told him if you’re going to get a stand-in for your dick, don’t sell your dick short.
The rumble of the engines soothes the buzzing in his ears, shaves it down to something he can ignore.
He revs the car again, imagining his neighbors all groaning in their beds, but this time next year, they won’t be his neighbors anymore.
When the radio comes on, it’s tuned to local sports, and they are, surprise, surprise, discussing him. “It’s hard to imagine Rozanov in any other uniform,” says one host in a deep, calming voice. “Other teams might have more cap space,” says another. “Maybe Rozanov needs another new car.”
He flips stations until he finds one playing something that’s vaguely familiar from the locker room. Following instinct, he roars onto the highway. He likes how he can sense the exact shape and feel of the road through his fingertips. Every fast, curving turn settles something in his chest. He knows the car’s limits, and he’s right up on the edge of them.
He pushes down on the accelerator, imagining it for a second, the car flying free of the highway, past the concrete barriers.
His phone vibrates and he hits the button to flip it to the speakers.
“Just calling to say g’night,” Shane says, his voice thick and cozy with sleep.
Ilya slows down, following an exit sign to turn off the highway onto the residential back roads. For a second, in the ocean-brined fog, it almost feels like he’s back in the dream.
Ilya pictures Shane in his hotel in Vancouver, brushing his teeth or reading sports news. He wants to be there, a fixture of Shane’s rigid routine, as permanent, as unobtrusive as his alarm clock; and he wants to be on the other side of the world. He wonders whether other people feel like this, whether it is possible to live like this forever.
The road is rattling loudly, pocked and rutted like a teenager’s skin.
“Are you driving?” asks Shane. “Isn’t it like one in the morning there?”
“Mm. Couldn’t sleep.”
A pause. “Everything okay?”
“Fine, just woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep,” he says, then admits, “I was dreaming of the cottage.”
He doesn’t say, I was at the bottom of the lake. It was freezing. You were gone.
In the background, he can hear the sound of Shane’s electric toothbrush.
“My agent called today with another offer from Boston,” Ilya says.
The whirring stops. Shane's voice is cautious. “Are you having second thoughts?”
“No,” he says firmly.
He feels deadly serious about their plan, but so far, nobody in these negotiations is taking him seriously. Not his agent or his coach or the Raiders’ management. And his instinct is to obey. At the end of the day, he is still his father’s son.
Shane yawns again. “I gotta go, early skate. You should head home too. Don’t you have practice tomorrow morning?”
“I’m almost home,” says Ilya.
It’s another lie, a small one, inconsequential. Even if you piled all his lies on top of each other, they would barely amount to anything.
Shane hangs up and Ilya opens the throttle. He’s driving north. If he keeps going, he might end up in Montreal. Or he might take the next fork east and drive until the road meets the ocean. He could be running towards Shane or away from him. It’s too early to tell.
vi.
By the time Boston makes it to Ottawa, the Centaurs’ season isn’t technically over, but it’s already been written off. Half the fans look like they’ve stumbled in by accident. The other half are wearing Hollander jerseys.
They’ve never discussed this aspect of it. David Hollander’s colleagues will wear jerseys with 81 embroidered on the back. Shane’s high school friends will cheer Rozanov’s name in bars. Maybe all they’re doing by setting Ilya’s life on fire is laying the groundwork for a new rivalry.
Once the buzzer goes off, Ilya gazes around the rink, trying to imagine a reality where this is home. The idea of Ottawa usually fills him with the warmth he associates with Shane; here, now, he feels none of it.
“What’s with all the Hollander jerseys?” asks Marleau.
“He’s from Ottawa,” he says.
The you fucking moron is unspoken but implied. Ilya is sort of shocked to realize other people don’t know it’s his hometown; haven’t spent the last decade hoarding every single precious crumb of Shane Hollander knowledge.
After Ilya changes back into his suit, he ducks out of the locker room to wander the corridor while he waits for his uber to maneuver through the stadium traffic.
There are dustballs rolling in the corners and the stench of sweat permeates the air without the chemical overlay of bleach, like even the janitors are just going through the motions.
Shane was here a few days ago, cruising to an easy victory, and he’ll be back again in three weeks. He can’t shake the thought that this hallway, the nameless fans, get so much more of Shane than he does.
“Looking for something?” asks Marleau, a few steps behind him.
“Just looking around,” says Ilya, swiveling sharply so they’re facing each other. Cliff is still buttoning up his shirt, as if he sprinted out of the locker room. “Next year, I will play here.”
The admission is unplanned. He just wanted to know what it would feel like to breathe life into their plan. And apparently what it feels like is a hot brick in his stomach.
Marleau comes to a complete stop. “You’re joking.”
“Yes. Joking,” he says and Cliff’s eyes narrow.
“It’s a pretty weird joke, Roz. Even for you. You haven’t signed yet. Everybody’s asking me what’s going on.”
Rozanov shrugs, kicking at the closest door-frame. There’s a streak of something orange and sticky on the ground. “Lawyers. Agents. You know how it is.”
“For the rest of us, sure, but you? You’re really telling me the team is being cheap? For Ilya fucking Rozanov?”
“I’m not saying shit. Don’t be a fucking idiot, Marly. You know I can’t talk about contract negotiations.”
The rest of the team pours out of the locker room doors, disrupting what he now realizes was Marleau’s half-assed attempt at an intervention.
“You off somewhere, Cap?” asks Miller.
Connors answers for him. “Haven’t you heard that Roz loves Canadian girls?”
Ilya grins and says nothing, already turning towards the exit. He can feel Marly’s eyes on him the whole time, but all three Hollanders are waiting for him. Shane’s been sending photos since before the game started, carefully avoiding faces in favor of platters of food, a tinsel wrapped tree, a new puzzle; snapshots of the life that’s waiting for him outside these doors. A life on loan that he intends to earn.
vii.
From across the table, in the dim light, Sophia reminds him of Svetlana.
Her outfit is bare but tasteful, showing off a long splash of smooth skin. There’s a shiny pendant nestled into her chest. Once upon a time, he would’ve enjoyed seeing it bounce between her tits.
She doesn’t believe he’s a professional hockey player until she googles him, and then one eyebrow, shaped into a perfect arch, moves up, her body moving fractionally closer.
He likes to be recognized, to lean into his reputation, but sometimes this is fun too. He can be anybody: the bad boy or the golden boy. Tonight, though, he’s looking for easy, believable, and it’s more believable when he’s exactly what he is. Not good, maybe, but a good time. A good fuck. A good story to tell your friends the next morning.
Her phone is still out, glowing bright in the dark bar, and she’s skimming through the latest news, all swirling around his contract: Extension Rumblings: Will Ilya Rozanov Stay in Boston?, 2026 NHL Free Agent Midseason Predictions. Further down, there are other kinds of headlines: NHL Star Linked to Stunning Model, Reality TV Star’s Latest Boytoy.
Don’t believe those, he almost says. He’s a changed man. It’s just that nobody’s noticed yet.
“Sorry, I’m usually more of a basketball girl. But I guess I can make an exception this time,” she says, crossing and recrossing her legs. She has a beautiful deep voice. It would sound nice moaning his name.
“Basketball!” he says in mock outrage. “Ah, so you have no taste in sports, but maybe you have better taste in men?”
His flirting is rusty, so lucky for him, he is handsome and famous. This life is just a suit he wears, but it looks very good on him.
She smiles, glancing at him from under long fluttering lashes. Her smile is nothing like Shane’s, would not remind him of Shane except that everything good reminds him of Shane.
Her hand moves to his thigh. Her mouth could be on him in minutes, seconds, maybe, if he says the right things.
Ilya asks her if she’d like some fresh air, and she follows him out, her breasts pressed against his back. Marleau gives him a thumbs up as they pass.
After the summer away, cocooned in his Canadian paradise, he thought it would be hard to walk back into his Boston skin but it was so easy, maybe too easy. And each time he goes out, he likes to bring these flirtations a little closer to the edge of the cliff. This is the first time he’s walked outside with one of them, the first time anybody has tangled their fingers in the hem of his shirt.
Tomorrow he will assure himself that it’s just misdirection for his teammates, who are convinced he’s fucking around almost as much as ever. And maybe it’s fun to get a little hard before he crawls into his empty bed to have phone sex with Shane.
But more than either of those things, he wants to know when it will finally happen, the thing that Shane can’t forgive. He knows it’s in him somewhere, mouth open, waiting. It’s electrifying. Nauseating.
Sophia sways slightly, looks right at him, waiting for him to move into her space. She’s so tiny. His hands could almost circle her waist. For a second, Ilya places them there, testing. Her lips are red and sticky-shiny, perfect in every way, except one.
He steps back.
“Sorry, early practice,” he says, slipping away towards the fleet of jostling taxis.
In the car he discovers two missed calls from Shane. It’s later than he thought. His thumbs are suddenly too large and awkward to open his phone. He’s also maybe drunker than he thought. He finally manages to punch in the right password and hits the last dialed number.
“Jane!” he says a little too loudly, making his driver roll his eyes. “Hi baby.”
“Where are you?” Shane asks.
“Mm, sorry, was out with the team. But all yours now.”
“Well, I’m about to head out. It’s Hayden’s birthday,” says Shane, like this is a reminder rather than the first time he’s heard of it. “Before you say something rude about Hayden, please don’t. I thought you were gonna call me earlier.”
His voice is strained with something. Not anger exactly but anticipation of anger to come. He’s like a fucking bloodhound, sniffing out guilt from five hundred miles away. He knows Shane sometimes peeks at his teammates’ social media, and he can’t help but wonder if he made an appearance on somebody’s instagram story.
“Call me when you get home. I don’t care how late,” says Ilya, keeping his tone light.
“Okay, I gotta go,” Shane says.
Even after Shane hangs up, Ilya keeps the phone clutched in his hand, waiting for the anxiety sparking in his stomach to settle. It’s just a moment of uncertainty, not even a fight. But they won’t see each other for weeks. Without sex to soothe their nerves, a fight might not heal clean; the infection could spread beneath the skin. He wants to see Shane, kiss him, to let his goodness suck all the rot from his life.
Ilya closes his eyes, picturing where he would touch Shane if they were in the same room. Maybe his hand would cup the back of his neck, or he would press a kiss to his thigh. If they were together he could fix this in seconds, defuse Shane with the right touch, like a CIA agent in an action movie; cut the red wires, cross and twist the yellow ones. When it comes to Shane’s body, he knows where all of the traps are laid.
Ilya calls back an hour later, the phone pressed tight against his face. “Love you,” he says. “Love you so fucking much.”
“I know,” says Shane, “I know. I love you too.”
It’s noisy wherever he is. Ilya’s bedroom suddenly seems very quiet. Or maybe it is just that his heart is too loud, knocking against its cage.
Calm moments always make him feel like throwing rocks into a lake, making the water churn. He used to think it was because he didn’t like the calm. Now, he’s not so sure.
At two am he calls again. Shane doesn’t pick up.
He knows the rules, no voicemails; they have to love each other quietly and without a trace. But it feels like something is filling his chest, like if he opens his mouth wide enough, something deafening and shrill, like the scream of a kettle, will come out.
Shane calls him back in the morning to complain about his two beer hangover. Even without video, Ilya can imagine the sleep lines on his face, the soft valleys and peaks of dark hair.
Whatever storm he imagined has passed. He tries not to think about the things he can’t see, the small hurts under their skin that neither of them know about yet.
viii.
All year, this month stood out like an oasis. The All-Stars weekend and then an away game in Montreal; time enough, finally, for them to gorge themselves.
Until the week before, when Ilya takes a nasty fall on his wrist. It’s a clean hit, just a bit of bad luck. No blood, no scars, nothing sexy to show for it except a revoked ticket.
“Fuck,” says Shane when he facetimes him. “Fuck.”
“Skip it,” suggests Ilya. “We’ll both hide out in Montreal for the weekend.”
“I don’t–I don’t know.”
But it’s on the calendar, Ilya almost says. A whole long weekend of green in a sea of red and blue.
He offers instead: “I can come to New York. You stay with me at night, sneak away during the day. Skip all the bullshit parts.”
He almost points out that the entire thing is bullshit, that everybody knows that; everybody except Shane, who can never ever say no to a single bone hockey throws him.
The furrow between Shane’s eyes deepens. “Wouldn’t that be obvious? I feel like that would be obvious.”
He chews his bottom lip, his face twisted up in thought, like there’s a maze with an exit at the end and he just needs to find the right path out.
With an assist from Shane’s libido, Ilya wears him down eventually. It’s New York, there’s always a reason to be there. In a sea of seven million people, he will be just another tourist not playing hockey.
Ilya books the fanciest penthouse he can find. They get there a full day before the rest of the players arrive, almost enough time to take the edge off.
A hotel room isn’t new, obviously, but a hotel room with nowhere to be, nowhere to go, is new. They fuck and sleep and fuck again and order every meal in, until the sheets are sticky with crumbs and lube.
And it’s easy to fill the time when Shane is gone. He ubers to Brighton Beach to stuff himself on the food of his childhood, and for one second, with his eyes closed, surrounded by the familiar rhythm of Russian voices, it almost feels like Moscow. The week before, his brother had texted him to ask, are you coming home this summer? He didn’t respond, unable to accept or reject the assumption behind the question.
But here, for a moment, he wishes he could say, yes, of course, where else would I be?
On the way back, he makes the mistake of listening to a sports podcast and his contract comes up in the first five minutes. I’m hearing that Boston has concerns about the impact of his lifestyle on his career longevity, says one host. The other wonders about the truth to the rumors that Boston was looking for more of a team player.
Ilya turns the podcast off.
Later, he walks through central park, pictures himself strolling there with Shane, who might be able to identify the small birds chittering at him, the big goose eying him, contemplating violence. He wonders sometimes if this can possibly be worth it, but the choice was made for him a long time ago. This is how he knew it was love all those months ago; Shane came with him everywhere.
Nobody recognizes him. Being here, he can almost understand Scott Hunter. It’s easier to imagine being out in a place that doesn’t give a shit about you; where the city’s hopes and dreams don’t rise and fall on your season.
He shuts down that line of thinking. Better to contemplate their giant bed and the massive, private terrace he paid extra for. So far Shane has refused to poke his nose outside, but he has faith in his ability to talk Shane into things involving his dick.
But when Shane finally comes back, Ilya can tell that all of the ease from the day before has bled away. There’s something wrong with the shape of his mouth, the slope of his shoulder.
“People were wondering where you were. Nobody thinks you’re really injured,” Shane says, tugging at his tie. “They all think you’re fucking models in Miami or St. Barths or whatever.”
“Ahh,” says Ilya, settling back against the plush headboard. “So you’re angry.”
“I’m not angry,” says Shane in a pissy tone. He sits down at the edge of the bed, still pulling at the knot.
“You’re angry because some asshole thinks I’m doing something I’m not doing. Because I am here. Waiting for you.”
Ilya raises an eyebrow at him but Shane’s gaze is fixed down at his tie. He’s pretty sure that Shane would normally find this hot which makes him think there’s something else he’s not saying.
Ilya reaches over and frees the tie, slips open the first button of Shane’s shirt, and untucks it from his pants with a hard yank.
“You are jealous of these imaginary girls,” he says, moving to the second button, and the third. Shane is very still now, tracking Ilya’s hands carefully.
“You and girls is not exactly imaginary,” he says.
“True,” he smirks.
It’s not a flavor Ilya likes often, but every once in a while, jealousy is a nice spice to include. A little suffering is just the price of love. Shane should know that by now. And his lips are so beautiful when he sulks.
Ilya unbuttons the rest of Shane’s shirt and slips it off his shoulders. The season is starting to take its toll. There’s a mottled bruise from a stick across his chest and a purple starburst on his shoulder. He can count more of his ribs than he could this summer. If they shared a kitchen, Ilya would be sneaking carbs onto his plate every night and feeding him protein bars in his sleep.
He tries to push these thoughts away; he doesn’t like to dwell on impossible things, especially not when there are so many good possibilities at hand.
“You want me to fuck you like I used to fuck those girls?” Ilya asks, smirking.
“No,” Shane says, and it’s almost convincing. It might convince somebody.
Shane’s cheeks are blotched pink. Ilya gets a smug jolt of pleasure from making the flush deepen and watching it spill down his bare chest.
“Good. Would be impossible. Beautiful women need to be charmed, Hollander.”
“I can be charmed,” mutters Shane.
He gives him a surly look until Ilya leans in for a slow kiss, all soft lips. The second Shane melts into it, Ilya pulls back. He unbuttons Shane’s pants and slides his hand under his briefs, grabs his half chubbed dick, giving it a gentle tug up before he snaps the waistband back.
Shane winces.
“Maybe if you were a girl you could pretend. But this always gives you away.”
“You’re such an asshole,” says Shane. The acid in his voice doesn’t match the dreamy expression on his face.
“Tsk, tsk, not very ladylike, Hollander.”
He slides his hand back down, closing his fingers around Shane’s dick, squeezing and stroking him all the way hard.
Their sex yesterday was closer to relief than anything else; a drink after a long game, absorbed so quickly, it was like it barely happened. This time, Ilya wants to fucking feast.
“I’m going to fuck you hard,” he says. “You can handle it.”
Ilya claps his palm down on Shane’s thigh with a satisfying smack. His dick feels heavy, pulsing, like his heart has taken up residence there.
After a moment’s hesitation, he maneuvers Shane onto his back, torn, like always, between the universe of conflicting choices. He wants to see the long fluid lines of Shane’s back, strong forearms, the arch of his throat, his dick, stiff and annoyed looking, like Shane after a bad game.
With one hand, he tugs on Shane’s lower lip until it opens, and he can slip one finger inside, offering his empty mouth something to work on. Shane’s teeth graze the delicate bones, his cheeks hollowing out as he sucks in. Ilya’s free hand traces the line of Shane’s cock, down the soft skin to his ass. The first finger always seems to annoy Shane, like he thinks llya is being a tease. Hurry the fuck up is written all over his face.
Ilya rips open a condom and rolls it onto his dick, reaching for the lube to slick it up. It takes a moment longer than usual because his hands aren't entirely steady. He pushes Shane’s knees back, using one hand to guide his dick in. Ilya loves watching his cock disappear into Shane, like a magic trick. He flexes his abs just to see how the lines of his stomach ripple.
Svetlana once caught him staring hypnotized at his own dick during sex, and she laughed so hard she almost fell off the bed. Shane wouldn’t laugh, he thinks. He would love it. He would probably come immediately.
As if he can hear Ilya’s thoughts, Shane lets out an impatient groan.
He slides in the rest of the way slowly, so they both feel every inch of it. So tight, always, like a glove.
He has one hand on Shane’s hip, the other tangled in his shower-damp hair. Shane is pushing back to meet him with every stroke, panting. Ilya leans down to kiss him, once, twice, three times, right on the edge of sloppy, muttering curses under his breath. Shane gives the occasional yeah, there, fuck, but mostly just lets out moans that Ilya feels with his whole body.
“There are no girls in Miami who want my dick the way you do. Yes?” Ilya asks, lips curled almost into a sneer, hips thrusting.
“No,” says Shane in a strangled voice. He looks wrecked. His groans are coming out fast and wet, like he’s trying to breathe through water, and his hand is working his dick frantically.
“No?” asks Ilya. His hips stop.
“I mean yes,” says Shane, still grinding back on him, eyes glassy, a deep velvety black. He looks like he’s not even totally sure what language they’re speaking. “C’mon, that’s not, don’t–don’t stop.”
Ilya grips his knees and leans in to push him deeper into the mattress, wanting to be closer somehow, everything in rhythm, effortless, like the open ice is in front of him. He wants them to come together, to be at the same place at the same moment.
“Mine?” he asks and he plans to say it meanly, keep the knife under Shane’s skin, but it comes out shaky.
“Yours,” says Shane, like it’s easy; like it costs nothing at all.
He’s so close. His body is shaking. It feels like his skin is on fire, like a fever breaking, the end of everything. Shane finishes first, melted into the mattress, while Ilya moves like a piston, then gasps and collapses into Shane’s chest. Heart still thudding, Ilya mouths at Shane’s pec, feeling Shane shift underneath him.
He sucks a dark thumbprint of a bruise into the warm skin below Shane’s collarbone.
“Next time anybody asks where Ilya Rozanov is you can show them this.”
“Fuck off,” says Shane, a smile twitching on his lips.
Shane shoves a hand down at him and Ilya dodges it, giving him one more hard bite, before he moves to open-mouthed kisses, just a sweet tease of teeth, leaving a wet trail on every stretch of empty skin he can find.
ix.
Alexei’s texts start to increase in frequency. He’s testing the waters, Svetlana warns him more than once. Maybe, he says, although he doesn’t think it’s that. When there’s no path forward, the only way left is back.
The strings of obligation are gone, but they grew up in the same pot; shared the same muck. Somewhere out of sight, their roots are still gnarled together.
In March, Alexei writes, when I woke up this morning I thought I smelled mama’s syrniki.
When the text comes in, Shane is curled under his arm, one hand tucked into the pouch of Ilya’s hoodie. He recognizes the name, if not the rest of the cyrillic letters, and wrinkles his nose.
“You can ask the question, Shane,” he says after a few seconds of silence, watching the uncertainty play across his face. There’s only a trace of irritation in Ilya's voice, the rest of it submerged.
“Does he text you often?”
“No,” says Ilya honestly.
“Do you want him to stop?” Shane asks, as if this is something he can take responsibility for. He would, Ilya thinks, if he asked. He would find a way. The knowledge fizzes electric in his chest.
But he doesn’t want the texts to stop. And this was the deal they had made: he would hand himself over to Shane completely and Shane would remake him.
So he tells Shane, “He is remembering mama’s cooking.”
“Did she like to cook?” Shane asks. He's always eager for new facts about his mother, as if they could someday be relevant.
“Sometimes, yes. When she was in the mood.”
In some moods, her syrniki filled the house with the heady smell of pan-fried butter and cheese. There was a month, where he woke up every morning and found a stack of pancakes waiting in the kitchen, already cold, butter congealed, lacy edges gone soft. Like they had been sitting there all night. So much waste, his father had said, so Ilya ate them all just to prove him wrong. He can’t remember if Alexei ate them too, and it bothers him a little.
“I wonder what made him think of that,” says Shane, his head moving to Ilya’s shoulder, where it fits perfectly.
He glances at Ilya through his dark lashes and gives him a smile that makes the bottom fall out of his stomach.
“I do not want to guess,” says Ilya and it’s only a lie because he doesn’t need to guess. He remembers that month too.
And he understands why Alexei needs confirmation. Other than the moments shared with Svetlana or the games caught on tape for scouts, Ilya’s childhood has taken on the quality of a dream. Sometimes he could almost believe none of it happened. Maybe it’s a gift: a clean slate.
Two weeks later, Alexei writes, do you remember the house we rented that summer in Novorossiysk? with the quarries?
Yes, Ilya responds, thinking of bodies falling one after another. The plunge into nothing, lasting just long enough for a kick of panic, and then the cold slap of the surface. Water rushing everywhere, the color of tar, too dark to see his own pale legs below him. Nearby, another boy screamed. He’d call it laughter, but in that moment, Ilya knew better.
Later, he would pay for the day with his father’s rage. Ilya’s body was a shared asset, too valuable to dash against a rock. If it broke, it should break on the ice.
But before that, he jumped into the lake again and again; just a body, clean and sure, a knife in the water. Ilya was the youngest, strong and fearless as any of them. Thirteen and nothing keeping him on shore.
x.
When his agent calls with Boston’s best and final offer, Svetlana is sitting next to him on the couch, twirling her fork into his pad thai. She’s wearing a baggy t-shirt that belongs to him and he can’t remember if she arrived in it or if she plucked it from his closet.
After a moment’s hesitation, which she immediately clocks, he leaves the phone on speaker. It is a matter of pride between them that they have no secrets. Or didn’t, anyway.
“I just emailed over Boston’s latest offer,” his agent says. “You should really take a look.”
“I already told you. I’m not signing with them.”
He’s silent for a moment. “I kind of thought that was just a negotiating tactic we were trying.”
“Not tactic. I told you this.”
“Ilya, I don’t understand,” his agent says, and now his tone is impatient, the voice of somebody who has known Ilya since he was fifteen, who didn’t blink when he had to deal with demands from Ilya’s family, the rookie year scandals, the sex tape bribes. “This is a good offer. An amazing offer. They want you. Badly. But their patience is coming to an end.”
“I will look,” says Ilya reluctantly, ending the call with a hard tap. He drops the phone to the side and kicks his bare feet onto the coffee table.
Svetlana gazes at him like a cat that has finally cornered their prey.
“So the rumors are true,” she says and Ilya says nothing.
“All the money is on the big cities. New York. Los Angeles. Vegas. Me, I think, Ilya is loyal, Ilya loves Boston. There’s only one thing he’d leave for. One thing Boston doesn’t have.”
She leans forward. Her sharp eyes are narrowed. It’s the same expression Ilya sometimes has during a face-off; it tells his opponents, don’t bother, he looked into the future and they’ve already lost.
“My money is on Canada,” she says.
Ilya wonders sometimes if he would love her more if she did not remind him so much of himself. They clawed themselves out of the same pit; they have the same dirt under their fingernails.
“You are not rich enough? You must place silly bets on my life?” Ilya says in faux outrage, his hands pressed to his chest.
He can feel the rapid flutter of his heartbeat under his palms. He hasn’t denied anything.
Svetlana is quiet, waiting for him to offer something. When he doesn’t, she tries again. “Would it be easier for you if I pretended not to know?”
He shrugs. In the background, there’s a sudden cheer as somebody scores on the television.
“I know it’s not what we talked about––” he begins.
She waves him away. “Oh, Ilya, those were children’s dreams. Cars and money and fame. But blowing up your whole life?”
“We still love cars and money,” he says, mostly to use the we, to remind her that for now, he still belongs to her too.
He lets himself slip sideways into her lap, her long, elegant fingers moving automatically to his hair. It’s been a long time since he was touched by anybody but Shane. It’s nice to hold somebody and not be consumed by it.
“What happens when you fuck this up?” she asks.
“You have no faith in me,” he says, even though, maybe it’s the first time he sees it clearly.
If he does this thing, this crazy, romantic gesture, Shane has to stay. It would be heartless, uncanadian, to leave Ilya alone in a foreign country on the league’s worst hockey team.
“Seriously, show me that you’ve thought this through. What happens if you break up? What’s the back-up plan?”
“No back-up plan,” he says.
“So this has to work,” she says and he nods.
“Are you upset?” he asks. It’s the kind of question Shane might ask. Between them, it doesn’t land quite right.
“Yes, I’m pretty fucking upset, Ilya. Does it change anything?”
If he apologizes, she might slap him. Nobody wants the bones without the meat, her father used to say. So all he can offer is, “Ottawa is not far. I will come back.”
He tries not to think of Shane’s color-coded calendars. There’s no color for weekends in Boston. They’ve never discussed how Svetlana fits into the version of their life that Shane is painstakingly constructing; the version of Ilya that will be born in Ottawa.
Ilya never believed in the possibility of transformation. He moved across multiple continents and his life operated in a different currency, a different time zone. A new language came out of his mouth. The ice never changed. His mother stayed dead. The fundamentals were the same. He was still his parents’ son in Boston.
So transformation is for other people; but maybe Shane is one of those people and if Ilya stays close enough, binds himself tightly enough, fate won’t be able to tell the difference.
For a moment, her fingers tighten on his hair and then loosen, return to combing through his curls. He keeps his eyes closed. He’s not sure he wants to see whatever is written on her face.
Svetlana pushes his eyelids up until he’s forced to open them. Her thick hair falls into his face as she peers down. For a second, there’s something like regret in her eyes.
“You think I’m angry because what? We will not be neighbors anymore? I do not get the chance to be your third wife? No.”
“You’d be a very good third wife,” he tries.
“Of course I would,” she says. “That’s not the fucking point, Ilya, and you know it.”
“What else could we do, Sveta? This is what people do in relationships, yes?”
“What do you know about relationships? Who are these people you are talking to?”
“Marly, mostly.
She elbows him in the gut before she asks, “But why are you the one who has to leave?”
“A Canadian passport would be good for me,” he says.
She lets out a long, annoyed sigh. Somebody else might think she was giving up, but he knows she will be back with a new angle. They have known each other for a very long time.
“Boston will be very sad,” she says, offering an olive branch, even if it’s a little half-hearted. “When they are not furious.”
The loss of the city’s loyalty bothers him more than he wants to admit, but maybe less than it should. He hasn’t lost the fans’ attention; he will never lose that. Next year, they will scream and boo and burn his jersey, but it will still be his name in their mouth. It’s so close to love.
He’s not sure she would understand; Sveta, who always called his father a controlling asshole, because she didn’t see the reflection of Ilya’s mother in him. His father knew that Ilya could be strong enough, he just needed tougher skin. A little push.
His father loved him. His father hated him. It could be worse. His father never thought of his brother at all.
“I will miss Boston too,” he says. “More than it will miss me, probably.”
xi.
In April, Shane somehow manages to stitch together a whole thirty-six hours in Boston before the playoffs kick off. It’s both not enough and more than Ilya allowed himself to hope for.
Montreal is on a hot streak, almost guaranteed to win their conference. Meanwhile, Boston’s once promising season has fizzled out, and they’re limping into the playoffs. Ilya’s ribs are fine, but whatever glue holds the team together is dissolving. Rooms keep going quiet when he walks in them. As far as he knows, Marleau hasn’t said anything about Ottawa, but he’s giving him a lot of funny looks.
He’s been waiting for Shane to ask him why none of his passes are connecting, when he lost his room, but maybe he already knows, and doesn’t want to be reminded of what Ilya is giving up for him. Which means he’s surprised when he finds Shane standing in front of the open fridge reading something about the Raiders on his phone.
Ilya lets his hand drift to Shane’s lower back; it makes his fingers twitch to have him in the same room, but out of reach. He looks down and sees his name in the headline of the email.
“You have alerts for my name,” he says, delight filling him like a balloon.
He looks at Shane and realizes instantly he’s misread something, and his joy curdles into fear.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“It says you haven’t responded to Boston’s last counter-offer,” Shane replies. His voice is calm, but unfamiliar.
“Okay,” says Ilya, dragging out the first syllable.
There’s a squirm of unease in his chest that makes his accent thicken. “This is the plan, no? I do not say yes to Boston because I am going to Ottawa to become a Canadian and play terrible hockey while Shane Hollander sucks my dick.”
Shane flinches. His eyes are glossy, still fixed on the phone.
Ilya tries again. “You knew they were making me offers.”
“I didn’t know you were making offers.”
“This is what agents do,” says Ilya, making an open palmed gesture. He runs his hands through his hair, blunt nails raking into his scalp.
Usually, there’s nothing he loves more than feeding Shane’s irritation until it blooms into anger, his cheeks flushed like two shiny apples. The redder he is, the longer it takes for Ilya to burn his anger off, to draw it out of him with his hands and his mouth. But he’s discovering now that there is a certain point where Shane goes pale and cold instead.
“So you looked at their offer,” Shane says.
Shane’s not looking at his phone anymore but he’s not looking at Ilya either. His eyes are fixed on a point that seems disconnected from the space they’re in, like maybe he’s in a different room entirely.
“Of course I looked. It’s a lot of money.”
Shane exhales sharply, like he’s taken a bad hit. He turns on his heel, eyes hunting for an exit. He strides over to the patio doors and yanks at the handle that always sticks. Months before, when Ilya pushed to sit by the fire pit he had never used, Shane had rejected the idea out of hand. No sitting outside, even surrounded by walls and security cameras. So it takes him almost a full minute to figure out how to tug the handle down.
When the door finally slides open, Shane briefly meets his eyes. “Don’t follow me,” he warns.
There’s a jolt of copper in his throat, but Ilya resists the instinct to storm after him. He sits down. He stands up. He puts Shane’s unopened lukewarm soda back into the fridge. It’s fine. He’s good at leaving and even better at being left. There’s no possible outcome he hasn’t already lived through.
And he knows all about fights. The ones that explode into violence, and the ones that simmer and stew for days and weeks and years, that settle in the bloodstream.
Shane left once; he could leave again. Anybody can leave at any time.
Ilya grabs the closest set of keys and storms to his car, not looking around in case Shane is still out there somewhere. He peels out fast, but he doesn’t make it out of his neighborhood; he barely even gets past the gate. He’s not sure what’s worse: that he wants to leave or that he wants to knot Shane’s chest to his, tie them so close that separating would mean slicing through the rope, taking blood and skin with it. Shane deserves somebody who knows, probably. Who can reflect that warm steadiness right back at him; who doesn’t have one foot on the brake and the other on the pedal.
His body seems very heavy. The windows are tinted and the light is bleeding away. It’s almost like being back in the lake. He tries to remember what it felt like to swim to the surface, to take in that first lungful of fresh air. Maybe Shane is waiting for him on the other side here too.
He contemplates the shape of his breath. His fingers tighten around the stick until his joints ache, a circle of crescents etched into his palm. He can leave anytime he wants. But there are some things you can come back from. Things you can come back to.
When Ilya walks back inside, he can make out a blurry Shane-shaped outline through the glass doors. Ilya slides the door open and sits down in the chair next to him.
“You’re here,” he says.
Shane looks at him. Ilya thinks of his mouth as his to open on command. Now it’s thin, closed tight. “Of course.”
“I left,” Ilya admits. He doesn’t say, I couldn't get past the next block.
“I knew you’d come back,” Shane says. Although he couldn’t truly have known, because at any given moment, even Ilya doesn’t know where his feet might take him.
The sun is slipping below the horizon. The last light of the day bathes Shane in a red glow that blurs all his angles. Makes him soft again. He asks very calmly, “How much?”
“What?”
“If you’re making offers with your agent, you must’ve talked about it. The number it would take to keep you here.”
“We never discuss a number,” says Ilya. “I tell him get me fucking Ottawa. He tells me I should think about Calgary or Toronto. I say I am only going to play hockey in one terrible Canadian town and that town is Ottawa. He tells me I am very funny. I’m fucking trying, Shane. Nobody believes me.”
Shane visibly deflates, collapses forward, his head between his knees, like his anger was the only thing keeping him upright.
“I know. I don’t–I don’t blame them,” he mumbles. His face is carved into a hard line, except for his dark eyes, suddenly swimming with tears.
Ilya hasn’t made it past Shane’s earlier comment, still working his way through the logic of it. “You think there is some amount of money I want more than I want you? Fuck,” he says. “Fuck.”
He’s thinking now about all the times Shane asked him about contract negotiations, moving, timing, and suddenly, the pieces click together, a shape emerging.
“You don’t think I’m going to do it.”
“I do,” says Shane. “I just—“ his voice sputters, out of gas. “Are we just kidding ourselves with—”
Ilya cuts him off. “Fine. I will sell my house tomorrow, okay? I will sell everything. No problem.”
He will sell his home, his things, his cars, even if that is the move that pushes Svetlana over the edge of their friendship. He can be one of those crabs living out of their own shell; or no, he wants to crawl into Shane’s shell, doesn’t want to live in anything that isn’t part of both of them.
Ilya pulls his phone out, and types a message to his agent: I am only signing with Ottawa. If you talk to anybody else I will fire you. He shoves the phone in front of Shane’s face and hits send.
“You didn’t have to do that. Can you just. Just–” Shane groans, and stands up, wedges himself into his lap. The chair creaks under the weight of four hundred pounds of professionally honed muscle.
“Can I kiss you?” Shane asks.
“Yes,” says Ilya. Finally, a promise he knows he can keep.
Shane’s hands on his face are cold, even his mouth lacks its usual warmth.
“Hollander, you’re an icicle,” he says.
The air is barely above freezing. Technically, it’s spring, but winter is fighting back, holding on tight. Shane was sitting out there for hours in nothing but a fucking shirt. Ilya is stricken with regret; he should’ve brought him a jacket, no matter how angry he was. If it had been the other way around, Shane would never have left him outside in the cold.
Ilya has failed every person he’s been responsible for, most of them in catastrophic ways; it was selfish of him to think this would be any different.
He tries to stand up to go inside, and find something, a blanket, food, anything hot, tea, coffee, but Shane senses it, and pushes down harder on his knees, pinning him in place.
“You’re warm,” Shane says, pressing another soft kiss against the edge of his mouth. “Stay,” he says. “Just, stay.”
“Okay,” says Ilya, kissing back and making soothing noises, as if Shane is panicking, sliding his hands under his shirt. Shane’s skin is cold except for the places where Ilya is touching him. He decides that means he needs to touch him everywhere. “Okay.”
xii.
Boston is kicked out of the playoffs in an embarrassing sweep, and once it’s the off-season, there’s no reason to look at a calendar so he doesn’t. Time disappears like water spinning down a whirlpool. It’s a spring sun now, butter yellow, but it doesn’t make his skin any warmer. Some days it takes a very long time to fall asleep. Others it takes a very long time to wake up. It feels like his brain is swimming through syrup.
Somehow it’s not until he’s staring at his plane ticket to Ottawa that he realizes that May is almost over.
The day of her death is seared into his memory, but her birthday is gone. He knows it was in May. There was a song that she loved about springtime. He remembers her twirling around the kitchen singing the chorus. She was always very quiet, very still in winter, but by the time May rolled around, she was so vibrant; he could almost believe winter would never come back.
It’s a good reminder. That it is only the leaving that people truly remember.
He calls Alexei once, twice, but he doesn’t pick up. What were the odds that his brother, brains scrambled by years of intentionally forgetting; of drugs and alcohol and sleepless nights, would even remember? It’s just that there’s nobody else to ask.
Svetlana is in Greece or Croatia, somewhere with yachts and a glittering sea. She always has wanderlust this time of year. He calls her anyway and hangs up at her voicemail.
He doesn’t call Shane.
Shane doesn’t call either. He doesn’t know that Ilya has picked today to realize that he no longer remembers the date of his mother’s birthday. He’s still riding the wave of the playoffs, heart on the ice, body flying from coast to coast. Ilya has been downgraded to receiving texts on delay, like dating by telegram. The WAGs must know how to keep themselves busy. Next year Ilya will be lucky to make the playoffs at all.
When Svetlana calls him back, he hasn’t made it out of bed yet; the soft duvet wound around him like a straitjacket. Svetlana sounds as if she’s just waking up too, even though she’s hours ahead of him.
“Are the men in Croatia sick of you yet?” he asks.
His throat is so dry that his voice only just scrapes out. She’s quiet for a second, something rustling around her.
“Is something wrong or did you just think I missed your morning attitude?”
“Mmm,” he says. The phone is wedged between him and the pillow, his sweat-slicked cheek stuck to the screen.
“How is your goodbye tour going, Ilyusha?”
“It was a very short tour,” he says dismissively. “Everybody is very angry with me.”
“What did you expect?”
He knew this would happen. And yet, he thought maybe they would see it as another kind of chirp, a strange practical joke on his own life; there goes fucking Roz again. But that has not been the reaction. So he jumped without thinking. Another critique from his father that he has fulfilled. He wonders if it will always feel like this; his father’s voice in his head without even the hope of redemption.
“Have you talked to your boyfriend?” she prods when he doesn’t answer. They’ve still never said his name, like it creates some shine of deniability.
“No,” he says. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“Come to Turkey,” she suggests. “You can buy me a new bikini.”
“You know I can’t.”
“I’ve had many boyfriends and yet I’ve never forgotten how to have fun.”
“Sveta, I’m flying to Canada any day now,” he says and she makes a clicking noise against her teeth.
“I hope you haven’t told him you think he’s going to lose this series–”
“I’m not an idiot,” he interrupts, and she barely pauses.
“But you’re right. They will probably not make it to next week. Vancouver is too physical for them.”
“Do you remember any of my mama’s birthdays?” Ilya asks. He can’t quite bring himself to voice the question he called to ask.
“Ilya,” she says, sounding both impatient and terribly sad. “I barely remember my own birthdays.”
“I can’t remember,” he mumbles. His whole face is squashed into the pillow case; it tastes like ripe morning breath and unwashed hair.
“Call Shane,” she says and hangs up.
He scrolls through his texts with his brother, searching for a sign that one of them was sent on their mother’s birthday as a gentle reminder. But all he sees is his brother doing exactly what he’s doing: stringing memories together like pearls, as if maybe together they will create something beautiful. Something he can carry with him.
Ilya burrows deeper into his bed. Shane said he was going to call after morning practice, and he will ask questions if he notices Ilya is still in bed so any second now he will really need to get up. It’s just that the blanket weighs so much, like the whole world is kneeling down on his chest.
It’s fine. It’s heavy but that’s why he trains so hard. It will feel lighter when Shane is there, he knows it will. Soon it will be nothing but Shane days, green days, one after another.