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May 2019 — Montreal
Shane Hollander is the best hockey player in the whole league. Shane Hollander has one and a half million followers on Instagram. Shane Hollander has a contract with Reebok, Calvin Klein, and Ginger Ale. Shane Hollander has three Stanley Cups.
But far more important to Shane Hollander than what he has is what he doesn’t have.
Sometimes Shane thinks it was all just a dream. That it’s only some fantasy, because what proof does he even have that it really happened? There isn’t even a single recording of Ilya’s voice, moaning, Hollander. There’s no photo of them except those from the clown shows, where what happened backstage is invisible. Nothing shows the brush of the shoes under the table, nothing captures Ilya’s hand sliding over Shane’s ass for a fraction of a second, nothing documents their fucking in the hotel room. There’s nothing at all to prove it was ever real.
But Shane Hollander remembers. He remembers very well the way Ilya Rozanov has always said his last name, with that thick Russian accent. To Ilya, he’s always been Hollander—almost never Shane.
He remembers the way their tongues met, teeth almost crashing into each other, kisses so fierce and hungry it felt like they were trying to swallow one another whole. Even now, Shane can still taste on his tongue the faint salty flavour of Ilya Rozanov’s cock.
And Shane Hollander can tell you exactly how good it feels to have Ilya Rozanov inside his ass. He could tell you it’s the most incredible sensation in the world—to have that thick cock buried deep, and those big hands digging hard into your hip bones.
And even better, Shane can tell you how much he loves Ilya Rozanov’s sharp jawline, the dimples that appear in his cheeks when he smiles, and those eyes that only ever go soft—truly soft—when they’re looking at Shane.
In the end, Shane can even draw the map of all the moles on Ilya Rozanov’s body.
Shane’s phone is the only evidence that he didn’t lose his mind.
There are messages from Lily in his inbox. He tried to delete them. He couldn’t. For two years, there hasn’t been a single new message from “her”. No wonder why, Shane blocked this number after this conversation. But still, he cannot stop noticing that “her” name keeps sliding lower and lower in his inbox, becoming less and less relevant, but during shameful, lonely nights, Shane reads them over and over again.
Room 1410.
How many times can you cum in 1 hour?
Promise? I still want that asshole… And yes, is proper grammar.
Shane came out to the team. They didn’t take it badly, but Shane regrets it anyway because now they’re trying to set him up with some nice guy. Those guys are nice, indeed. Handsome. Sexy. Muscular. The kind of guys you can introduce to your parents.
They don’t smoke. They eat healthy. They don’t treat Shane as a shit.
The one problem is that none of them is Ilya Rozanov.
It’s Hayden Pike who tells Shane during a casual call. They talk about nothing and everything—Jackie and the babies—and Shane tries to pretend he cares, but then Hayden just casually drops this news like it’s nothing.
“You know that Ilya Rozanov retired?”
He’s almost thirty. It’s not an age for retirement yet. Shane knows that.
But Shane also knows how much pain it causes just to see each other, and sometimes he wonders if Ilya feels that too.
“Oh really?” he tries to sound indifferent, though some emotion slips through. It wouldn’t be that strange to show it—after all, they’re rivals. They can’t stand each other. They hate each other. At least, that’s what their teams think, what their friends think, what the whole world thinks. Ilya Rozanov is the asshole, and Shane Hollander is the golden boy—perfect, modest, good, brilliant.
“Yeah. He’s…” The next words hit Shane with an impact he didn’t even know he could still feel. A dull pain in his chest, bile rising in his throat—even though he’s on a fucking perfect healthy diet—and some kind of squeezing in his stomach. A knot, maybe. What is he? Dying? Is he ill? Is he disabled? Is he coming back to Russia? “…getting married.”
“Oh.” This news Shane shouldn’t react to. Yet, this news makes tears spring instantly to his eyes, but he covers his mouth with his hand so no sound accidentally escapes that would betray how much it affects him. “To whom?” he asks quietly.
“Svetlana Vetrova.”
Oh. She’s a friend of Ilya’s, probably. Presumably. He mentioned her once or twice. Shane has never met her. They never met each other’s friends. Why would they? They were never a couple.
They were something worse.
“Happy for him,” Shane replies. He sounds like a robot.
“Are you joking? I feel sorry for her… She doesn't know what kind of shit she is getting into. Anyway…”
Hayden keeps talking, a stream of words that Shane listens to, but doesn’t really hear anymore. He’s staring at one single spot on the wall. Eventually, Hayden stops speaking, but Shane feels like he’ll never get up from this couch again. If he weren’t on fucking healthy diet, he would think he is dying right now. Probably that’s how people feel before death, because Shane can’t imagine feeling any worse.
Shane can’t imagine that his hands could tremble more, than he would struggle with catching breath more, and that his whole body would feel more like it’s shutting down.
He will die because of this news.
***
April 2017 — Montreal
This memory—when Shane believed they could be something, even though they never would be—is foggy at best. Him in the hospital with a fractured collarbone and a concussion, his drug-addled mind ensuring that, to this day, Shane doesn't clearly remember Ilya's last touch on his cheek.
But he hears his voice.
“You scared me.”
Shane regrets tripping on the ice. He regrets it not just because it kept him off the rink, but sometimes he wonders—maybe if he hadn't fallen, he and Ilya Rozanov would still be something.
Maybe they would have become something more.
“Don’t go to Russia. Come to my cottage this summer,” he hears his own voice, so sweet and naive.
And here is Ilya Rozanov, though Shane can’t quite see his face clearly anymore.
“Hollander… You know, I can’t do that.”
“We can have week or two…”
“Maybe. Maybe.”
That crooked smile.
Ilya Rozanov is a liar.
Because he never came to his cottage that summer. And not any other summer either.
***
May 2019 — Montreal
They’re talking about it everywhere.
On every news channel.
Every person he speaks to suddenly is very interested in the fact that Ilya fucking Rozanov is getting married. This weekend, apparently. In three days. In seventy-four hours.
Shane’s mom mentions it casually during a phone conversation.
“Who would’ve thought he’d retire so quickly?” she says, completely clueless. “And settle down.”
At first, Shane does nothing. Going into self-destruction isn’t really his thing. It was Ilya who smoked, who drank, who fucked around. Shane isn’t like that. Shane does yoga, drinks healthy smoothies, and practices meditation. He locks himself in his home gym and tries to just breathe—in and out, in and out as his yoga instructor taught him—and float away from his body. He needs to stop feeling like himself.
The problem is that his body doesn’t want to float away. His body keeps coming back to the sensation of those thick fingers on his cheeks, of those chapped lips on his mouth, and the warm whisper in his ear.
Hollander.
Why do I care, Shane keeps asking himself. After all, it doesn’t change anything. They haven’t fucked for two years. They broke up, kind of, though, how can you break up something that was never a thing?
And why does this ‘never a thing’ hurts as if someone tore his heart right out of his chest?
Maybe Ilya was right that it was destroying them. Maybe he was right, because Shane has always had one true love, and that love has always been hockey.
***
May 2017 — Ottawa
Ilya writes less.
Ilya doesn’t joke anymore.
Ilya no longer talks about sex.
One day Ilya calls, and breaks Shane’s heart.
“Hollander… we can’t do this anymore.”
He says it like it’s simple. Like it costs him nothing. Like the words aren’t tearing his own chest open.
“What do you mean?” Shane asks, voice already thin, even though he knows. God, he knows exactly what Ilya means.
Ilya is silent—one second, two, maybe three—but it stretches into forever.
“This… isn’t good for us,” Ilya finally says. “For you. For me.”
Shane’s laugh is bitter. “I’m not even good enough for you to fuck anymore?”
The hysteria rises fast. Tears burn hot and immediate in his eyes. He’s the one who’s tried to end this—multiple times, swearing it was the right thing. He’s said the words himself. But hearing them from Ilya is another thing.
“No,” Ilya rasps. “It’s not about that, Hollander…” He exhales something soft and ragged in Russian—mumbled, almost tender, something Shane aches to understand. “It’s killing me. Us. You almost fucking died out there on the ice.”
“That wasn’t because of—”
“You had an accident, Hollander.” Ilya interrupted. “You lost focus. It never happened to you before. Not like that.”
“It wasn’t because of you, Ilya!” Shane’s pleading now, raw and frantic. “It wasn’t you! It wasn’t—”
He can only hear Ilya’s breathing—harsh, uneven, like he is fighting not to break.
“See you next season, Hollander,” Ilya says. “Find a nice guy. Take him to the cottage. Take care of yourself. I hope you will feel good soon.”
The line goes dead.
Shane is crying—quiet at first, then choking, ugly sobs that wrench out of him like something physical is being torn apart inside. His whole body shakes with it. And he can’t stop crying for weeks.
Mother feeds him with painkillers that make him very sleepy. And Shane sleeps for the next few weeks. When he is awake, he stares at the empty message thread until his eyes burn worse than the tears.
No call.
No text.
No Hollander.
No filthy promise.
Nothing.
The silence is louder than any rejection Ilya could have spoken.
Finally—shaking, half-blind with grief and rage and exhaustion—Shane opens the contact.
His thumb hovers.
Then presses Block number.
A few weeks later, Scott Hunter wins the Stanley Cup. And right there on the ice, he kisses his boyfriend.
Shane would never have expected that what he envies most is the second part.
***
November 2017 — Boston
For the first few matches, Shane feels weaker. That his backhand is off. Those weeks without practice have taken their toll.
They scrape by against Ottawa. Barely. 3–2.
But Shane can’t shake it. Can’t stop the loop in his head. Now they are playing against Boston.
And Boston means one thing.
Every shift, every face-off, every time the puck drops—there he’ll be. Across the ice. In that black-and-gold jersey. That crooked smile hidden behind the cage, those eyes that used to go soft only for him.
Shane’s stomach twists at the thought.
He’s not ready. He’s never going to be ready.
Hayden, who sits next to him on the plane, doesn’t understand it—he can’t understand—because no one knows Shane’s secret. Not his friends, not his family, no one knows and no one can know. Hayden thinks Shane is stressed about losing, that this is his worst fear, but what Shane is really afraid of is collapsing on the ice and never getting up.
Ilya isn’t talkative. He tosses him a casual “Hi, feeling better, Hollander?” Shane doesn’t even dignify it with words—he simply nods. Ilya Rozanov lost the right to hear his voice the moment he left him at the lowest point of his life. He lost it when Shane spent weeks sobbing in Yuna’s arms, while she thought it was all because of hockey. “You should see a therapist, Shane, baby,” she whispered to him.
But Shane discovers something about himself. He plays more ruthlessly. More aggressive. He treats this game as his chance to prove that he still means something. That Ilya Rozanov didn’t destroy him.
They win 4 to 2.
“Good game, Hollander,” Ilya says straight to his face. He extends his hand. And Shane hates himself for the way even that small, polite contact sends butterflies rioting through his stomach.
Marlow is somewhere in the background apologizing for knocking him out during the match.
But all Shane does is return to the hotel, tell his teammates he doesn’t feel well, and unblock the phone. He stares at it for hours.
No message ever comes.
***
June 2018 — New York
Shane turns down the advertising deal he’s supposed to do with Ilya Rozanov. Some isotonic drinks for athletes. He refuses the joint gala. He refuses acknowledging Ilya Rozanov’s existence at all.
His mother even presses him once.
“I hate him,” Shane says.
“I thought you got along better,” Yuna reminds him. “He visited you in the hospital,” she adds, as if Shane doesn’t remember that every single day of his fucking existence.
But this is the only way to survive. Times are changing. Shane won’t be—no begging for a blowjob, no please fuck me, nothing. In the end, if you’re addicted, you have to get rid of the harmful substance. Throw it out of your system. Out of your body, out of your mind.
Shane makes sure they are never alone in the same room again—until the charity gala for young athletes, which he can’t refuse.
He takes too long getting ready to go out, arrives late, and worst of all, the first person he sees—though not the first one he encounters—is Ilya Rozanov at the bar, staring at him like a predator.
Shane performs a dance from table to table, choosing the farthest possible one from Ilya Rozanov, from his piercing hazel eyes drilling into him. But in the end, after two glasses of champagne—he doesn’t allow himself more, because he feels like he might black out since he wasn’t able to eat anything—and when he heads to the bathroom, he already hears his footsteps in the hallway.
Shane just goes to the bathroom. He locks himself in the stall and just pisses, even splashing the wall, because his hands are shaking so badly and he has no intention of coming out.
“Hollander,” he hears that fucking voice, “did you pass out in there?”
“Go away,” Shane says.
“I want to talk.”
Ilya Rozanov never wants to talk. Never. He only fucks, he only hurts, he only—
Shane knows he can’t stay locked in there forever, so he comes out. He just comes out and looks at that smug face, at those eyes that today aren’t smirking—but are different.
“Feeling better?” Ilya asks.
“None of your fucking business,” Shane says, washing his hands.
“You changed your phone number?”
Shane laughs. He laughs like he lost his mind.
“No,” he says seriously.
“I didn’t want to do this over the phone. I didn’t… Hollander. I had to.”
“Sure.”
“Hollander…” He steps closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Shane.”
“No, no, no,” Shane says, backing away until his back slams against the wall. “You’re not doing this to me again, fuck! You’re not, you hear me?! You’re not doing this! You don’t get to go silent for months and then show up expecting me to suck you off! Expecting you to fuck me! I’m not your toy! You don’t own me! Fuck off, Rozanov. You hear me?! Fuck off!”
For a moment, Shane, breathing hard, thinks Ilya might actually hit him.
He looks angry—or maybe more hurt. His brows narrow, furrowing deep.
“I wrote to you.”
“How’d that go again? I don’t give a fuck about your boring texts.”
“You know they’re never boring.”
“But I am boring,” Shane says.
Ilya smiles for a second, but there’s something sad in it—something broken.
Shane is terrified he’ll say suck my dick.
Terrified he’ll hear I want to fuck you, I want your dick, I want to be inside you—and worse, terrified that he’ll give in. That the walls he’s spent months building will shatter in an instant, that he’ll fold right there against the sink like he always did before.
“I just wanted to say… I’m sorry,” Ilya says quietly. “I don’t know if it was the best solution.”
Shane’s face slams shut like a mask. If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s this—turning himself to stone.
“Best one,” he says flatly.
Then he simply washes his hands, dries them with mechanical movements, and walks out.
Leaving Ilya standing there alone.
***
May 2019 — Montreal
Why doesn’t any hookup ever feel good? Shane has had sex a few times—a few pathetic attempts—each one of which felt dirty, disgusting, repulsive, and empty.
Shane remembers one night in particular. It was a gay club in New York, one of those places with sticky floors and peanuts everybody touched with dirty hands. He was drunk enough to pretend he wasn’t miserable, sober enough to hate himself for being there. That’s when he met the tall Serbian guy—curly light hair, broad shoulders, a crooked smile that almost looked like someone else’s in the low light.
They didn’t talk much. Shane dropped to his knees in the bathroom stall, the bass thumping through the thin walls like a second heartbeat. The guy’s hand fisted in his hair.
Shane closed his eyes and pictured Ilya.
Shane worked harder, desperate, chasing the illusion. Saliva dripped down his chin, his jaw ached, his own cock throbbed painfully against his jeans, untouched. He didn’t care. He just needed—for one stupid minute—to feel like it was real again. Like Ilya was still the one wanting to use his mouth, still the one who wanted him this badly.
The Serbian guy came with a choked curse, spilling hot and bitter across Shane’s tongue. He didn’t even warn him.
Shane swallowed on reflex, eyes still squeezed shut, still seeing hazel eyes gone dark with want, still hearing that rough voice rasp Hollander.
“I can also suck you, pretty boy,” the man said, already reaching for his belt again with a lazy grin. “You were amazing.”
And then Shane noticed. The accent wasn’t Russian. The teeth weren’t that blinding white, fake and perfect. The hair was too curly. The cheeks were too full, too soft. And the jawline wasn’t sharp. He couldn’t breathe.
His stomach lurched. He wiped his mouth hard with the back of his hand, tasting bile and shame.
“Fuck off,” he spat.
Shane comes up with the idea. He wants to unblock this number and send congratulations. Yet he doesn’t. It would be stupid, pathetic—it would look like he was affected. Ilya would show the message to his soon-to-be wife, and what would they think about pathetic, boring Shane Hollander, who still can’t get over a situationship from two years ago?
Fuck it, he decides, stepping off the mat. This isn’t helping at all. He gets on the treadmill, but even that—before he even sets the speed—drags up memories. Pretty much everything drags them up, even fucking hockey.
Of course, it changes something, he realizes, when he feels warm tears sliding down his cheeks. It means he’ll never see Ilya Rozanov again. These days, he only sees him from a distance—at events, on the ice. He ignores him. He sees him too much and never enough. Sometimes Shane looks at him with longing when no one’s watching. But now Shane won’t see Ilya anymore.
He’ll never see him again.
Maybe on TV, when they announce that Ilya Rozanov’s first child has been born. Maybe they will inform the world about the second.
And then he’ll probably disappear from the news altogether, because no one cares about old hockey players who’ve retired.
Ilya Rozanov will vanish completely from Shane’s world.
***
On the table lie Snickers wrappers—three of them—and two small empty Pringles cans. This isn’t some kind of breakdown, Shane tells himself. It’s the off-season; he always loosens up a little, though not too much, because he feels best on his strict diet (has he actually felt good at all in the last two years?) and when he goes to bed early and when he doesn’t watch the fucking news where they’re playing a tribute to Ilya Rozanov retiring.
What will Shane Hollander do now that his greatest rival is retiring?
Shane rolls his eyes. They always have to drag him into this shit, as if his wound wasn’t fresh enough already—they have to rub salt right into it. Shane switches the channels, and then…
His heart stops when the interview comes on screen. In the studio sits none other than Ilya Rozanov. He looks great. No, he looks amazing in his black shirt, black pants. Shane wants to change the channel, wants to gouge his own eyes out so he doesn’t have to see this, but the screen is magnetic.
“Unexpected news,” Clinton Beck says, host of the Evening News.
“I can keep my secrets,” Ilya replies. “I’ve been planning this for a while.”
“Who’s the lucky bride, Svetlana?”
“We are childhood friends,” Ilya says simply. No affection in his voice. No love. Or maybe that’s just Shane’s wishful thinking.
“You’re probably going to break a lot of hearts with this decision?”
Ilya smirks. “I doubt it.”
“Won’t you miss hockey?”
“It’s always better to leave the stage undefeated than like some relics,” Ilya coughs and says something that sounds like Scott Hunter, ”still craving for relevance.”
Since when has his English become so good? Did he take English lessons?
“And what about your greatest rival, Shane Hollander, captain of the Montreal?”
Ilya shrugs, but for a moment, the smirk disappears from his lips. Just for a second or maybe rather just a fraction of a second, but Shane has seen Ilya Rozanov moaning, has seen him sad, has seen him broken, and he knows that expression. Or maybe it’s again his wishful thinking. “Now I can finally say it,” Ilya replies, and he looks straight into the camera. “Shane Hollander, I love you. You will be missed.”
Clinton Beck laughs. The studio laughs with him. A moment later, Ilya joins in too.
Only Shane isn’t laughing.
Fucking asshole.
***
May 2018 — Montreal
It's Montreal again—match with fucking Boston—and Shane still hasn't sold that three-story building he bought years ago on a whim. He tells himself he needs to finish renovating it. That the walls need a fresh coat of paint, that the living room is missing the right furniture, that once it's perfect he'll make more money, flip it for profit, and move on.
Bullshit.
He just can't let it go. The place is too quiet, too empty, too full of echoes he refuses to name.
This time, the series between Montreal and Boston is tied—humiliatingly even, and worse, it means one more game. One more chance to see him on the ice, to feel that old hate, love or whatever it is.
Shane skips the team celebration again. They already think he's a bore; even Hayden probably rolls his eyes behind his back now.
Shane stays in his three-story apartment. The reason why is too embarrassing to admit out loud.
He scrolls mindlessly through Instagram. He's not big on social media—never has been—but tonight the algorithm is cruel.
Marlow has a story up. Shane followed him back after the accident, after that awkward DM apology, "sorry I knocked you out, man—hope you're okay". Mundo, the club Shane knows way too well. The caption says: "Rozy, you’re the king of the dancefloor."
Rozanov dancing. Some girl pressed against him, his hands slung too low on her back, his grin wide and hazy, pupils blown from whatever he's on tonight. Sweat on his neck, shirt half-unbuttoned, laughing loudly.
Shane stares until the story loops, then watches it again. And again. Maybe, after all, he likes suffering.
The music thumps in his head even though the phone is silent. He can almost smell the smoke, the spilled vodka, the cologne Ilya always wore.
He is very aware of how pathetic he is. Like a teenager nursing a crush instead of a grown man who's supposed to have moved on. The tie in the series doesn't matter anymore; this does. This stupid, grainy fifteen-second clip of Ilya living like Shane never exists.
Shane unblocks Ilya’s contact.
No message comes.
Sleep doesn't come easily. When it finally does, it's shallow and restless, full of half-dreams where Ilya is still on that dance floor, but the girl disappears, and it's Shane there instead, Ilya's hands on his hips, frantically whispering his name.
Nobody knocks on his door.
***
May 2019 — Montreal
He’s only provoking you. He’s only playing you like he always does. When he didn’t speak to you for six months, and then he just wanted to have you. To fuck you. Now he’s mocking you on national television. Same old games, Shane convinces himself, even as his heart pounds so fast in the middle of the night that he can’t fall asleep.
Eventually, he reaches for his phone, as if he wants to sink even deeper into his misery, his sadness, his self-inflicted torture. He searches for Ilya Rozanov’s Instagram profile—the one he has never followed in his entire life. His fingers tremble so badly he’s terrified he’ll accidentally like something, comment, give any kind of sign that he’s thinking about him, that he’ll humiliate himself completely.
But Shane needs to see Svetlana.
What does the person look like who’s worthy of Ilya Rozanov’s forever affection?
Shane knows how affectionate Ilya can be. Shane had never felt gorgeous unless he was in Ilya’s arms. He had also never felt worse than in those moments when he slipped out of those arms over and over again—craving the wrong words, the wrong gestures, pretending the suffering wasn’t tearing him apart from the inside.
But on Ilya’s Instagram, there is no Svetlana. Not a single photo. Not even an engagement ring. Ilya posts some random shit, because that’s all it is—he’s shit, a shitty person, a shitty human being, not worth another single thought from Shane.
Shane goes into every single post.
A can of Ginger Ale? He swallows hard. Caption: thirsty? my favorite boring drink. but i like vodka more. A photo of a half-eaten tuna melt on a plate in some dimly lit diner booth. Caption: when you eat tuna melt and think about somebody.
A shot of the Montreal Canadiens logo with a middle finger emoji superimposed over it. Caption: congratulations Montreal, but you still suck d… anyway.
A black-and-white photo of an empty hockey rink at night, just the blue line glowing under the lights. Caption: quiet tonight. almost too quiet.
A photo of a hotel room minibar, tiny bottles of vodka lined up like soldiers, one already open. Caption: nights like this one.
Shane checks the date. It was… Impossible.
A simple mirror selfie in a suit, tie loose, hair still damp from a shower, looking straight at the camera with that half-smirk Shane knows too well. Caption: cleaned up nice. shame nobody’s here to mess me up again.
Shane keeps scrolling, heart hammering, telling himself every single one of these is a coincidence.
Ilya has a story up. Svetlana has to be in it. But Shane isn’t about to view it from his own profile. Quickly, he creates a fake account—not putting much effort into it. He names himself simply “hockey_player12.”
Black screen and a sentence.
If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. If not, it was never meant to be.
What a cringe quote, he thinks, shaking his head. How pathetic, how…
Shane presses his hand over his mouth and sobs into it.
***
Shane has never sped. Never gotten a fine. He doesn’t even cross on a red light. He had his first drink at eighteen. He’s never touched a joint, never even smoked a cigarette. He isn’t wild. He’s predictable, and boring, and cautious.
Yet the next morning Shane Hollander is searching for flights to Boston.
He doesn’t understand the point of any of it, but one single thought has taken complete control of him.
He has never been happier in his entire life than when he was with Ilya Rozanov—and he needs to try this one last time.
He backs out of the Air Canada site several times. Flying is a bad idea. Someone might spot him.
Driving. His own car. Safe. Reliable. Hours and hours on the road to think about why he’s doing this madness. Hours to change his mind and turn around.
What is he even expecting? Life isn’t a rom-com. In real life, your fucked-up situationship is toxic and soul-destroying, it isn’t the love of your life.
But he’s imagined it so many times. Not just them fucking. Them watching TV together. Working out side by side. Cooking dinner. Being a real couple.
Shane doesn’t have anyone to call. Not really.
But there is one person he trusts won’t judge him.
He chooses from his contacts Rose Landry.
***
Rose’s words echo in his ears.
All these years? Oh, Shane… You’ve been choking it down inside yourself.
He waited for her to say he shouldn’t. That he shouldn’t go there, shouldn’t do this.
But all Rose said was that maybe this was their last chance. Not just his. Theirs.
What proof does he even have that Ilya Rozanov still thinks about him at all? An Instagram profile? Some teasing on national TV? The fact that maybe two months ago he would’ve wanted Shane to offer to suck his dick? Maybe that’s how it ends—the last fuck of their lives. But Ilya’s engaged, and Shane doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Maybe he loves Svetlana. Maybe…
Shane pulls over in the middle of nowhere, right beside a thick stretch of forest. He feels the air leave his lungs again. He flips on the hazard lights, steps out, and stumbles into the trees. He doubles over, hands on his knees, trying—failing—to breathe. All he can do is try to breathe.
***
Shane can barely keep his grip on the steering wheel. He’s going to crash. He’s definitely going to crash. What will his parents say? Who will even know why he drove all the way to Boston? Only Rose Landry, the one person he trusted with his secret. Will she tell them the truth? How will his team manage without him? How will any of this…
An unopened can of Ginger Ale sits in the passenger seat. He hasn’t really drunk it much in the last two years anyway. Water’s better in the end. Healthier. At the last gas station he ordered a hot dog—disgusting ground-up meat that he forced down anyway. Is that what Ilya is? His poison?
Shane has never been good at reading signals. Maybe he’s misinterpreting everything again.
I love you, Shane Hollander echoes in his head.
***
Shane suddenly realizes, halfway there, that he doesn’t even know if Ilya still lives in that house anymore. Maybe he’s with Svetlana now. Maybe he lives with her. Maybe he kisses her in the morning and fucks her.
Because Ilya likes women.
Shane barely makes it to the next gas station before he notices the fuel gauge is almost on empty.
Did Ilya send him anything in all these years? Anything? If yes, then what was it? Why does he want to know so desperately?
He shouldn’t forgive him. Never. Not rejecting Shane in the worst moment of his life. No. That lonely stay at his cottage, which had never felt so hollow before. Every single thing he did—swimming, eating burgers, sleeping, jerking off—he imagined Ilya right there beside him. After every embarrassing session, coming to fantasies of Ilya, he was only left crying harder.
He had never shed so many tears in his entire life.
The landscapes along this route are breathtaking—rolling Green Mountains in Vermont, dense forests and crystalline lakes like Champlain glimpsed from the highway, the dramatic White Mountains rising sharply in New Hampshire, state parks with winding trails and dramatic overlooks, quaint New England villages tucked between hills.
Interstate 89 carves through it all, past Burlington’s lakeside charm, Stowe’s mountain views, Franconia Notch’s granite cliffs and waterfalls, then down toward Boston.
It’s the kind of drive people take photos of, the kind that makes you pull over just to stare.
But Shane doesn’t care. Doesn’t care that he’s leaving Canada behind, crossing the border into the U.S., watching the familiar Quebec signs fade into American ones. Doesn’t notice the way the sunlight filters through the trees in golden patches, or how the air smells sharper, cleaner, as the road dips south. His hands are white-knuckled on the wheel, eyes fixed straight ahead, mind miles away in Boston. The beauty outside the window might as well be gray static.
“Would you want to be a thing? If we could?”
“We can’t be a thing, Hollander.”
Why is he doing this to himself again? Like a moth flying straight into the flame, straight toward self-destruction? Shane doesn’t know, but with every mile the weight grows heavier. Heavier still. The world outside the windshield starts to feel less picturesque, less real. He passes actual cities, real people living real lives, and he’s been driving for so long he should probably stop and rest—but he’s terrified that if he gets out of this car, he’ll never get back in.
He can still turn around. Pretend nothing happened. Answer his mom’s call and tell her he just overslept. His life could slide back into its neat, predictable normal shape.
The problem is Shane doesn’t want that normal anymore.
***
Shane crosses into Boston after six and a half hours of driving.
He feels more drained than after any game he’s ever played, and the world around him seems unreal. All the flashing lights and streets blur together. These memories—fuck, it’s not just Boston. It’s Canada, it’s the USA, every single mile reminding him of what he did with Ilya Rozanov, where he did it, what he didn’t do, and what he regrets every single day.
He parks the car a few blocks from the house and sits there for a long moment, staring blankly into space.
What if Ilya doesn’t live here anymore?
What if Svetlana’s with him?
What if he laughs in Shane’s face?
What if he slams the door shut?
None of it matters anymore. Shane isn’t even sure he parked legally, but with legs like jelly he gets out and walks in that direction anyway.
What was their last real conversation?
“Not the worst, Hollander.”
Not the worst. Fucking asshole.
Shane hates him so much.
He loves him so much.
Before he even knows what he’s doing, he’s standing in front of the door.
He knocks three times and waits. He wants to run. He wants to disappear. But the door opens.
Shane stands in the doorway, and Ilya stands opposite him. Shane doesn’t know what to say—his throat is so dry he can’t even swallow. Did he really come all this way just to stand here speechless? How pathetic. How humiliating. What was he even going to say? That he came to his wedding? To congratulate him? For fuck’s sake, why he even did it...
What finally comes out of his mouth isn’t particularly clever.
“Don’t marry Svetlana.”
Ilya looks at him intently, his face almost completely still. Only after a moment do the corners of his mouth lift, and he does the worst possible thing in the world: he bursts out laughing. So all those signals were just overinterpretation. So Shane was wrong. So…
“Hollander,” Ilya says finally, “did I really have to go this far just to get you to suck my dick?”
Shane freezes. “What?” he can’t believe. No, nothing’s changed. He’s still the same asshole. A horrible human being. So it was all provocation? A game? Manipulation? Shane wants to move. He wants to run away from here and never come back.
“You’re a fucking psychopath! Asshole! I…” Shane buries his hands in his hair, gripping hard. “No, I don’t fucking believe this!”
“But you still came here,” Ilya points out, smug as ever.
Shane stops thinking. Stops hesitating.
What Shane does is shove Ilya straight back against the wall—hard—even though Ilya’s bigger, even though Shane has no idea how much strength is left in his own body right now.
He kisses him. Fucking kisses him, so violently their teeth clash and scrape, and Ilya shoves his whole tongue into Shane’s mouth like he’s claiming territory, pressing their bodies together so tight there’s no space left between them.
“I fucking hate you,” Shane breathes against his lips.
“Not true,” Ilya murmurs.
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
Shane shoves him harder against the wall—wants to embed him in it, crush him—but Ilya pushes back.
“So desperate, Hollander? What, you haven’t fucked anyone in two years?” Ilya says, mocking.
“Fuck off!” Shane snaps, already feeling tears sting his eyes.
“You say 'fuck me' wrong,” Ilya replies.
Shane doesn’t even register when Ilya flips them and slams him down onto the thick, fluffy rug. He nearly rips Shane’s clothes off.
He pushes spit-slick fingers straight into Shane’s ass, sliding them up and down, up and down.
For a second, Shane wants to say wait, let me shower first, but honestly—who gives a fuck if he’s even clean for this asshole.
“Just fuck me already,” he growls. Ilya’s cock pushes in with difficulty. It hurts—fuck, it hurts so much for a moment that Shane lets out a broken moan.
“Everything okay?” Ilya asks, suddenly concerned. Shane hates when he’s soft. Hates it, because it might mean he’s not a complete asshole after all.
“Just fuck me,” Shane repeats.
Ilya wraps his hand around Shane’s hard dick and jerks him while fucking him from the side—Shane’s body curled, hips rocking—and Shane moans louder, louder, their bodies slapping together wet and obscene. Ilya licks the sweat straight off Shane’s neck.
Shane twists, shoves a finger into Ilya’s mouth.
“Suck it, you asshole,” he says.
Ilya obeys—his gorgeous, awful tongue swirling around Shane’s finger like he’s starving for it. Shane squeezes his eyes shut, presses his hips back harder, harder, and soon he’s coming—hard—cum spilling over Ilya’s hand, onto the rug, onto himself… fuck, how gross, how—
“Look at me,” Ilya orders.
They lock eyes. Ilya comes seconds later, deep inside him. No condom. Shane realizes it then. For the first time no condom.
And he has no fucking idea who else Ilya Rozanov has been fucking.
Panic floods his body.
“I need to… Fuck, what the hell did I do!” Shane says out loud. He’s almost crying again.
“Shane, calm down…”
“No!” Shane shoots up, scrambling for his clothes, hands shaking.
“Shane!” Ilya says again, sharper this time. “Shane.”
He waits until Shane finally looks at him.
“They’re threatening to take my passport away. I only did it for the American citizenship. I don’t love Svetlana. Never did. Not in this way.”
Shane stares at him, frozen.
“You didn’t want to… play me? Fuck with me?”
Ilya just shakes his head, like Shane’s the one being ridiculous.
“So why retire and…” Shane starts.
“And what do you think, Hollander?” Ilya cuts in mockingly, but the smirk doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Why the fuck do you think I’m retiring?”
“No, no, no—don’t say it—” Shane backs up half a step.
Ilya lets out a short, bitter laugh that doesn’t sound amused at all. “Why did you drive all the way here? Huh? Tell me. You show up at my door—what did you think was gonna happen?”
“I… I don’t know, I just—”
Ilya steps closer, crowding him without touching. “I’m retiring because I can’t keep watching you exist across the ice and pretending I don’t want to drag you into the nearest dark corner and fuck you until neither of us can stand.” He tilts his head, eyes narrowing, almost daring Shane to deny it. “I thought when we were together… As a secret was a torture, but this—” he gestures sharply between them, “Looking at you and knowing I won’t ever touch you again. I won’t ever have you... This, Hollander. This is fucking torture.”
Ilya cries. Ilya never cries. “So go ahead, Hollander. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you didn’t come here hoping I’d still want you this bad.”
Shane’s voice explodes out of him, “So why the fuck didn’t you tell me anything? You just left me! You fucking left me in the worst moment of my life! Do you even get it? The worst!” He’s shouting so hard his throat burns.
Ilya doesn’t flinch. He just raises one eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“I didn’t tell you anything?” he says. “Really, Hollander?”
Shane’s mouth opens, fury stuttering.
“I—”
“I sent you millions of messages,” Ilya cuts in. “Millions. Texts. Voicemails and I’m not doing voicemails. You fucking ignored me!”
“I just… I just blocked your number,” Shane says.
“Oh,” Ilya says.
“And what did you write?” Shane asks.
They end up on the couch. Ilya doesn’t ask—he just hands Shane his phone. Opens the contact labeled Jane.
Dozens of messages. The ones Shane never read.
Shane, sorry I did it like this. I just… it hurts too much that… Forget it. You’ll meet someone.
Did you see Scott Hunter? I’ll come to the cottage.
Okay. I get it. You don’t want contact. I’m sorry.
Can we meet? Room 1202. I want to talk.
Please. It was a mistake.
Begging you, Shane. And Russians don’t beg.
But Shane’s eyes stop—really stop—on one single message near the bottom.
I did it because I love you.
***
Ilya Rozanov Returns from Short Retirement: "I Wasn't Ready to Settle Down Yet"
His broken engagement and wedding plans with Svetlana Vetrova remain a complete secret. But now he's become captain of the Ottawa Centaurs—what caused this change of heart?
Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, Former Rivals, Seem Surprisingly Friendly Lately
The two have launched their own charitable foundation dedicated to mental health protection, which Rozanov is dedicating to his late mother, Irina. And yes—we can confirm they haven't killed each other... yet!
Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov Spotted Dining Together?
We caught them out—and they looked awfully close. Old rivals turned friends?
Exclusive: Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander Drop a Bombshell Statement
"Through our joint work on the foundation, we've grown closer and decided to give a romantic relationship a try." Rumors are swirling that this connection may have lasted a bit longer than they're admitting—but will we ever learn the full truth? And is that an engagement ring we spotted on Ilya Rozanov's finger?
Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander Tie the Knot, Causing a Major Scandal in the League
Former enemies now married? They even seem to have adopted a dog together. Who would predict that ending for the most famous rivalry in NHL!