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He rolls off of Rose, peels the condom off and ties it.
"Did you…"
She laughs, a little breathy, "Not yet, fuck, Shane, come on," she rolls to her side, grabs his hand, and guides him to touch her.
He tries. He does, but the angle is weird, and she's helping him, but he can tell that whatever she needs, he isn't doing it.
"I'm sorry," he says eventually. "You can…"
She kisses the side of his mouth, and does something mysterious with her hand, pulls his hand to her breast, where he does kind of know what to do. Eventually she gasps and trembles and goes lax and Shane feels nothing but relief.
She snuggles into him. Rests her head on his chest, her hand on his stomach. He tugs a sheet up over them.
"So…" she says, gentle but unflinching. "That was…"
"Not great," Shane accedes.
"Yeah."
"Sorry,"
"It's okay. Learning curve, that's normal."
Shane nods.
"Your ego bruised?" She asks.
"I guess," he shrugs. "I'm sorry it wasn't good for you."
Rose pushes up to kiss him and then props her head on her hands to look down at him. "Practice makes perfect," she says with a grin.
Shane blanches.
Rose sits back. "Okay, that wasn't the reaction I expected."
Shane closes his eyes. "Sorry, I…"
She swings her legs over the side of the bed. "Do you have a shirt I can borrow?" Her voice is just skating past brittle as she stands up and walks over to the bathroom.
He goes to his dresser and pulls out two pairs of sweats and two shirts. He pulls one set on, and sets one on the bed for Rose. He looks at it for a few seconds, thinking about how Ilya'd tossed his clothes at Shane the afternoon he'd last seen him off the ice, how it felt being wrapped in a shirt he knew had lived next to Ilya's skin. How sometimes he still slips that shirt and those pants on when he's wishing someone would touch him.
He wishes that being with Rose did anything to satisfy that bone-deep need.
Shane is looking out the window by the time Rose finds him.
"Do you want some tea?" he asks. It feels tentative between them in a way it never has before. He knows why. He wishes he hadn't been optimistic enough to think this would work. Wishes he hadn't given in to the idea that maybe he was attracted to at least one woman, and it was Rose Landry. Wishes he hadn't told himself that fate had lined it up so they could meet. That things could be easy now, in this one small way. Wishes he hadn't gotten so invested in everyone's excitement for him, about them.
Hayden is going to be so disappointed. His mom, his dad. His fans.
"Sure," she says, and tucks her hand into his.
He joins her in the living room once the tea is brewing, she's in one corner of the sofa, her legs underneath her.
Shane sets the two cups of tea, the timer, and a dish for the teabags on the coffee table before he sits down. He doesn't want to look at her.
"So was that…" she shrugs, and Shane already knew that her 'cool girl' persona was more than just media hype, but if he hadn't, he would now. "Your first time?"
Shane is shocked into a laugh. "No."
"Oh thank God," she says, "Not that…I mean, just, I thought you'd have said."
"Yeah, no, I…"
"So, what then?" she asks, voice a little high, a little uncertain. "I mean, I don't want to be too up on myself, but I haven't gotten any complaints before, so are you, like…"
She frowns a little bit as she examines his face, lets the moment hang.
Then she says "Not attracted to me?" at the same moment Shane says "I'm gay."
Her spine straightens and she gives a little "Oh!"
Shane frowns then. He hadn't really meant to say it, but it's just been so much lately, so much pretending and ignoring questions and outright lying, and he's tired of it. This woman just let him inside her body and he didn't like it, didn't want to be there, and he doesn't want her to think that it's something about her. Something about her that made him want to shove her as far away as she could get.
He knows how that feels. Knows it intimately from long acquaintance, and it's…
Well, it's not her. It's him. It's completely and entirely him.
"You can't tell anyone," he says, eventually.
Rose rolls her eyes. "Thank goodness you said that, because I was thinking of calling up my publicist and telling her that my highest profile romance was actually my third appearance in the role of 'beard,' and when could we get out the press release?"
Shane rolls his own eyes at that.
"I won't. Obviously."
"Okay." He presses his lips together. "Okay. Thanks."
"So, was that your first time with a woman?"
Shane nods, tightly. They've talked at some length about how hard he finds it to talk to people, to make connections. Though of course he didn't tell her about the puck bunnies he brought back to his room his rookie year and his fumbling attempts to interest himself in them. None of that succeeded to an extent that he'd call it anything at all.
"But you've had sex with men?"
Shane pulls his mouth to one side. "Not really," then at her raised eyebrows, he continues: "I've had sex with one man."
Rose, who must have had some kind of professional training on how to say something just by carefully rearranging the corners of her eyes and her mouth, makes a kind of shrugging, skeptical expression.
"I've had a lot of sex with one man."
"Ohhhh," she says.
"It's over, though. He doesn't… well, he likes women, too? I guess. So he wasn't ever going to be—" Shane hasn't let himself think about this. How different it must be for Ilya. How whatever Rozanov wanted, whatever he felt, couldn't possibly be the same wild desperation Shane has been trying to stop himself from giving in to. He bites his lip. "It wasn't ever really anything, and it's over now."
"Shit," she says.
Shane nods.
The timer goes off. Shane takes the tea bags out of their mugs, hands Rose hers, takes a sip.
"This sucks," Rose whines eventually. "I really liked you."
Shane sips his tea, lets the heat and the crisp grassy flavor relax his shoulders. "I don't know if it helps, but if it was going to be anyone, I'm pretty sure it'd have been you."
She flips her hair over her shoulder and vamps. "I mean, obviously."
It's so endearing, so cocky, that it makes him want to kiss her. Makes him want to put his head on her chest and cry.
It's something Ilya would do.
"We can… I mean, I am pretty excellent in the role of beard. We don't have to break up yet, publicly, if you don't want to. We can split amicably once I'm back in LA. Stay friends."
Shane isn't sure what he did to deserve Rose. She's so good.
"You don't have to," he says.
"Oh, I'm not doing it for free. I'm taking your comp tickets whenever you're in LA, and whenever you make the playoffs. You're going to be stuck with me for good, Shane Hollander."
That makes him smile. And then it makes him sad.
Because she's the first person he's told, and she'd be completely justified in being mad, being mean. But he knew, somehow, that she'd be kind.
And that knowledge, that kindness, makes him worry whether he's right about the other people in his life. The other people he's only recently realized that he will, one day, have to tell.
The ones he's frozen with fear about telling.
His parents. Hayden. His fans.
Because he isn't a liar. Even though he's been lying to everyone he knows for years. He's tried to keep the lie small, tried to keep it in the realm of logistics and omissions, tried never to even think the truth to himself.
And now that he's thought it — now that he's said it— he knows that he won't be able to stand it, that he's pushed down the first in a long line of dominos and he can't see where the cascade will lead to.
"Ok," he says. He brings his mug up to his face and breathes in the steam, focuses on the heat in his hands, the moisture as it gathers on his face. The scent of the tea, the give of the sofa behind him. He catalogues the moment, calms down the panic building in his chest.
"So who's the guy?" Rose asks after Shane sets his mug down on the coffee table.
Shane shakes his head. "I can't say."
"Oooh," she says. "Another player?" She closes her eyes and he can see her running through team rosters in her mind to compile a list of players who aren't married or publicly partnered. "Poole? Yakobson? Oooh, Hunter? Breakup fight?"
Shane laughs. "I'm really not going to say. But," he pauses, narrows his eyes. "It isn't Hunter. That'd be fucking weird. He's like, my dad's age."
She raises an eyebrow, "He's eight years older than you."
"He was drafted when I was in AAA Elite. I studied his tape when I was in Juniors. Also he's definitely not gay."
Rose smiles indulgently. "So what I'm not hearing you say is that it isn't another player."
Shane wishes he still had his tea so he could pretend he was thinking about the tea, and not how much he wishes he could tell her, tell Hayden—tell anyone—everything.
"I don't want to talk about it," is what he says instead. Because there would be too many lies, too many details to change, too much to keep track of. And he can't do that to Rozanov. Can't run the risk of making it impossible for him to go home. Even if Shane wishes that he were more important to him, meant more than than a good mouth, an eager fuck, he can't. He won't.
Rose sets down her mug and slides over into Shane's side. "Can I stay over?"
"If you want? I have a guest room."
"Perfect," she says. "See if I can get photographed on my way out tomorrow, keep the buzz going."
He rolls his eyes and smiles.
He shows her to the guest room, makes sure there are pillow cases and towels and toiletries. He grabs a toothbrush and toothpaste from the hall closet, and when she says "Night, Shane," from the en suite, he closes the door.
In his bedroom, he strips off the sheets, and tosses them in the laundry basket. He undresses on his way to the shower.
When he's toweled off, he puts on a different pair of sweats and a different shirt—touch soft and warm. He puts on fresh sheets, throws the comforter over the bed and climbs in.
The collar of the shirt still smells like Rozanov's detergent.
Shane wishes it were less comforting.