by Rachel Reid
“Lovers,” Ilya offered.
Fuck, way to choose the grossest possible word, Ilya.
Well, there was no going back from that word. Shane could only wait for the aftermath.
“But...you hate him,” Mom said.
“No, I...I don’t. I mean. Sometimes I do, kinda. But mostly I...love him. Actually.”
“You...what?”
Shane’s heart was racing. “Can we just...sit, maybe? I’m sorry. I know this is a lot at once. I didn’t want this to be how I told you. At all.”
No one said anything for a moment, then his father nodded and gestured to the living room furniture. His parents sat together on the couch. Shane and Ilya sat in separate chairs facing them.
“Shane...” Mom began. “I think we both...suspected...that you might be...gay.”
“You did?” Shane had not been expecting that.
“Yes, well. We didn’t know for certain, obviously. We just thought it might be a possibility.”
“Geez. I had no idea you thought that.”
“We know you pretty well,” Mom said. She gave him a small smile, and that one tiny gesture made Shane want to weep with relief.
“What we did not suspect,” Dad added, “was that you were...friendly...with Mr. Rozanov here.”
“Ilya,” said Ilya.
“Ilya, then.”
“It’s...a long story. And it doesn’t even make sense to us,” Shane said.
“None,” Ilya agreed.
“When did this happen?” Mom asked. “Wait, was it the All-Star Game? You were on the same team—”
“No,” Shane said. “It was...already going on then.”
His father blew out a breath. “You sure fooled us. And...everyone else.”
“So when?” Mom asked. She seemed desperate to figure out the timeline of this thing. Shane could see her mentally replaying the past several seasons in her head.
“Since, um, our rookie year,” Shane mumbled.
He didn’t think his parents could possibly look more shocked than they already had, but they definitely looked more shocked at this news.
“You can’t have been...since your rookie season?” his mother gasped.
“No,” Ilya said. “That’s not right. Was before that.”
Not helping, Ilya.
“Before that?” Mom asked.
“A little before,” Ilya clarified. “Summer before.”
“You’ve been...in love this whole time?”
“No!” Shane said.
“God no,” Ilya said at the same time.
“But then...” Mom started. “Oh,” she said. And blushed. “I see.”
“Anyway,” Shane said. He was blushing even more than his mom. “The point is, we’re...together. Sort of. Or we’d like to be. If it wasn’t basically impossible.”
For the first time, the looks of shock left his parents’ faces and shifted to something like sympathy.
“I just don’t understand,” his mother said. “How could this have even happened between you? Weren’t there any nice men in Montreal, Shane?”
“Probably,” Shane muttered.
“Do your teammates know about...this?” Dad asked.
“No! No, no one does. No one. This is top secret, all right?”
His father stood up. “Would anyone like a beer? I could use a beer.”
“Yes,” said Ilya.
“Definitely,” said Shane.
“Is that the strongest thing we have?” asked his mom.
Shane took the break in the conversation as an opportunity to look at Ilya. He seemed to sense Shane’s eyes on him, and immediately turned to give him a questioning look.
How do you think this is going so far?
Not bad, right?
Not bad.
His father wordlessly handed each of them a can of Sleeman beer. He lingered in front of Ilya, but returned to his place on the couch without saying anything.
“I just...” Mom said. “I just can’t believe any of this is real.”
“I know,” Shane said.
“All this time,” Dad said quietly, almost to himself. “You’ve been holding this secret inside. The whole time.”
“You didn’t ever...” His mom sounded suddenly horrified. “You didn’t ever let him win, did you, Shane?”
“God, Mom! No!”
Ilya laughed. “He does not need to let me win.”
“I would never,” Shane said quickly. “The team comes first. Always. And besides, I like beating him.”
Mom was frowning at him, not quite believing his words.
“When you and Dad play Yahtzee, do you let him win?” Shane asked desperately.
“Never,” Mom smiled, maybe understanding. She seemed to relax.
“Is your plan to just keep doing this? Keeping this a secret? Until you retire? Forever?” Dad asked.
“Maybe. I mean, yes. Probably.”
“Oh, Shane.” His mother looked so sad.
Dad shook his head. “Honestly? I don’t see another way. I wish I did.”
“I know,” Shane said miserably. “We know. It’s not something we can announce.”
“I have to say,” Dad said, “I’m surprised about you, Ilya. You’ve always had such a reputation as a, you know, a ladies’ man.”
“Is not untrue,” Ilya said.
“Ilya likes both,” Shane said.
“Oh,” Mom said. His parents exchanged a concerned look. Shane was about to change the subject—because this was way too uncomfortable—when Ilya spoke.
“I have been with lots of women. That was not...fake. But...” He looked at Shane, and Shane held his breath. “I have only been in love with one person.”
And suddenly Ilya looked very blurry through Shane’s eyes. Shane swallowed down the urge to cry, and said, “Me too. Just one.”
Shane’s mother covered her mouth with her hand. She tapped her fingertips against her upper lip, and Shane knew she was about to go full Yuna Hollander on this situation.
Sure enough, a moment later she clapped her hands together and jumped up from her chair. “All right, so what’s the plan?” she said. “We’ve got a problem, let’s solve it.”
Shane glanced at a bewildered-looking Ilya. He gave him a small smile. They had Yuna on their side now, and Shane couldn’t imagine a better ally.
“First of all,” Yuna said, “have you talked to Scott Hunter?” She said the name like it physically pained her to speak of the evil man who had stolen Olympic gold from her beloved son.
“I have,” Ilya said. “But not about...us.”
“I emailed him,” Shane added. “I just, y’know, said I appreciated his bravery, or whatever. I didn’t tell him about me. Or about Ilya.”
Yuna was tapping her lip again. “He probably couldn’t help. Not with this situation.”
“He would probably be very confused about us,” Ilya said.
“Confused is a word for it,” Dad said. His shock seemed to have ebbed completely, replaced by something that looked a lot like amusement.
“I will say that, what Scott did, when he, um, kissed his boyfriend?” Shane couldn’t believe he was saying this. He hadn’t even told Ilya this. “That changed something inside me. It was...huge. It made me...want to try. Made me want to be braver, and to let myself try to be happy.”
He looked at the floor until he couldn’t bear it anymore, and then he glanced over at Ilya. Ilya’s eyes were softer than he’d ever seen them.
“Yes,” Ilya said. “Me too.”
Shane cleared his throat. “We have one idea.” He told his parents the Ottawa/Montreal plan he’d outlined for Ilya the night before.
“That,” Dad said, considering, “isn’t bad.”
“You would leave Boston?” M
om asked, stunned. “For Shane?”
Ilya didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
She frowned, as if she couldn’t believe anything he was saying was real.
“Oh my god!” Shane exclaimed. “You’re actually conflicted, aren’t you, Mom?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re bothered by his lack of loyalty to his team!”
“Well!” Mom said, as if that was a perfectly reasonable way to react to the fact that Ilya was so madly in love with her son that he was willing to throw his whole life into upheaval.
Shane turned to Ilya. “My mom, by the way, cares about hockey a little too much.”
Ilya snorted. “Now I know where you get it.”
Shane was about to flip him off, but remembered his parents. And then it all kind of hit him: his parents were here. With Ilya. The secret was out and they were all talking about Shane and Ilya as a couple.
And Shane suddenly felt a little light-headed.
It was all happening so fast: their confessions of love, being discovered by his parents, making plans for the future...
Oh god oh god oh god.
“Shane?” It was Ilya’s voice, all concern. Shane felt a hand on his shoulder, and then he realized that he had his head between his knees. “Are you okay?”
Shane inhaled and exhaled slowly, keeping his head down.
Ilya’s hand moved to Shane’s knee as he crouched beside him, seeking his eyes. “Shane?”
“I’m okay,” Shane said weakly. “I’m just...freaking out. Don’t worry about me.”
Ilya took his hands and rubbed his thumbs soothingly over the backs of them. “We are good here, yes?” he said. “Your family is here. And your boyfriend. And we are okay here.”
Shane raised his head slightly. “Boyfriend?”
Such a ridiculous word. Such a ridiculous, wonderful word.
Ilya shrugged and grinned. “I think, yes?”
“Yes.”
It was really too bad they were in his parents’ living room, and that his parents were definitely staring at them, because Shane wanted to jump into Ilya’s lap and kiss him into the floor.
“Since their rookie season,” Shane heard his mother say. “I can’t believe it.”
“Looking at them now, I kind of can,” his father said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
They left Shane’s parents’ cottage with a promise to come for dinner the following evening.
Ilya wasn’t sure how Shane felt about everything that had just happened, but he thought it had gone surprisingly well.
“Holy shit,” Shane said. He hadn’t even turned the engine on; he was just sitting in the driver’s seat with his forehead on the steering wheel.
“It was okay, yes?” Ilya offered.
“I don’t know. Do you think it was? Fuck. That was really weird.”
“Well. Now they know.”
Shane blew out a breath. “Yeah.”
“We should go home.”
Shane nodded against the steering wheel before sitting up and pressing the ignition button.
Ilya spent the entirety of the short drive back to Shane’s cottage wondering if it was weird that he’d just called Shane’s cottage home. He knew his grip on the English language was tenuous, but referring to a place he was staying for two weeks as “home” wasn’t weird, was it?
If it was weird, Shane wasn’t saying anything about it.
Shane actually didn’t say anything at all during the drive back, other than a few muttered curse words. His hands were tight on the wheel. When they got back to the cottage, he dropped his keys into a bowl and strode into the living room with a hand in his hair.
“I need some air,” he said, and he walked outside to the patio, leaving Ilya alone in the house.
Fortunately, Ilya had packed just the thing for this situation.
He went to the freezer and pulled out the bottle of vodka he had stashed there the day he’d arrived. It was the good shit, distilled in small batches and impossible to buy outside of Russia. He grabbed two glasses and carried them and the bottle outside.
“Is maybe a good time for this,” he said, holding up the bottle.
Shane turned warily, and snorted when he saw the vodka. “The last time I drank that stuff was in Las Vegas. You remember?”
“Yes,” Ilya said, carefully pouring a couple of inches into each glass. “But you did not ever drink this stuff. This vodka is special.” He handed Shane one of the glasses.
Ilya closed his eyes as he took his first sip, enjoying the contrast of the frigid temperature of the liquid and the fire of the alcohol as it slid down his throat. Perfect.
He opened his eyes when he heard Shane sputtering and coughing.
“Oh, wow,” Shane said. “That is strong. I might need some cranberry juice or something.”
“If you mix that with cranberry juice I will drown you in the lake.”
But Shane, seemingly unable to concentrate at all, was already taking a second sip. “This has been the weirdest day of my life.”
Ilya wanted to tell Shane that it had been one of the best days of his life. It had been awkward, sure, but Ilya felt that, if he hadn’t quite been already, he would be welcomed into Shane’s family, and that was no small thing. In fact, to Ilya, who had barely been welcome in his own family, it was huge.
He wanted to tell Shane that the closest he felt to home was when he was with him. It didn’t matter if it was in a hotel room, or Ilya’s apartment, or at that weird hideout building Shane bought in Montreal, or here at Shane’s cottage; he was himself when he was with Shane. He’d left Russia, he was uneasy in America, and he’d spent his entire adult life drifting between continents and between lovers.
But now he had been reeled in by this annoying Canadian, and all that he knew was that he wanted to stay. He wanted to anchor himself to Shane and just...stay.
He couldn’t say any of that—literally, he could not possibly come up with the English words to articulate any of the things he was feeling at that moment. So instead he plucked the vodka glass from Shane’s hand and sat it on the table next to his own. Maybe alcohol wasn’t the thing Shane needed right now.
He wrapped Shane in his arms, and held him. He nuzzled into Shane’s hair and breathed him in.
“I love you,” he murmured, because he could say that. After so fucking long he could finally say that.
Shane tilted his head up and studied Ilya’s face with questioning eyes. “I love you too,” he said. “Are you all right?”
Ilya nodded, and leaned in to kiss him.
It was exactly how Ilya had secretly always wanted to kiss Shane: a shameless display of adoration and care. Their tongues slowly caressing as Ilya held Shane’s face in his hands and brushed his hair with his fingertips.
His heart flipped and tumbled helplessly around in his chest. There would be no going back from this. From any of this.
“I keep thinking about logistics,” Shane said when they broke apart, as if Ilya hadn’t just poured his heart into that kiss. “Like, the earliest you would be in Ottawa would be the season after next, when your contract is done with Boston, right?”
Ilya did not want to talk about any of this right now.
“Yes. Probably.” He nibbled behind Shane’s ear, hoping to distract him.
“So just over a year from now you’re in Ottawa, and then we wait, what, another whole season until we announce the charity? It would have to be that long, right?”
“Mm,” Ilya said. He really didn’t care.
“So that’s a year and a half or so until we can announce the charity. Which is the same as announcing our friendship,” Shane said as Ilya slid his hands into the back of his shorts and pulled him closer.
“And then what?” Shane continued. “How many more yea
rs do you think you’ll be playing?”
“Fuck, Hollander,” Ilya groaned. “I don’t fucking know.”
“I’m just trying to get an idea of how long we’ll be—what are you doing?”
Ilya had dropped to his knees, and he felt it was pretty obvious what he was doing.
“I am celebrating,” Ilya said. He tugged Shane’s shorts down until they hit the wood of the deck. “You should join me.”
“Now? My head is racing! How can you even be thinking about sex right now?”
“Because it is a beautiful day. And we are alone. And I met your parents. And I want you to calm the fuck down. And I love you.”
“Oh.”
Ilya leaned in and took all of him in his mouth, enjoying the novel sensation of the soft flesh resting on his tongue.
“Oh, fuck, Ilya,” Shane gasped.
That’s more like it.
He wanted to fuck Shane. Right here on the deck. But that would require stopping so he could go inside to grab lube and a condom. Stopping was unappealing.
For now, he put all of his efforts into taking Shane apart.
“You’re way too good at that,” Shane sighed.
Ilya hummed his agreement.
The thought hit him that this was it. This was going to be his sex life now. No more meaningless—but undeniably hot—one-night stands. No more booty calls while he was on the road. He was going to give it all up for this chance at something lasting. For the chance to hold the heart of the beautiful man who was exhaling Ilya’s name like it was the most important word in the world.
Ilya had no problem giving it all up. He would give up so much more, if he needed to.
“Ilya. God, Ilya. So good. Don’t stop. I love you.”
In response, Ilya reached for his hand and tangled their fingers together. I love you so much. Don’t leave me.
“Oh. Yes. Fuck, yes. I’m gonna—oh, holy shit, Ilya. Fuck, fuck...”
Ilya squeezed his hand as Shane pulsed and spurted into his mouth. Ilya swallowed and licked him clean with long, lazy strokes of his tongue.
“Fuck. Get up here,” Shane panted.
Ilya rose to his feet, pulling Shane’s shorts up with him, and Shane hauled him in for a very sloppy kiss.
When they broke apart, Shane gazed up at him with sex-drunk eyes.