Chapter Nineteen
The next day—Detroit
“Did you hear about Rozanov?”
Shane stopped tying his skate and looked at the bench across from him, where Gilbert Comeau and J.J. were chatting in French.
“What about Rozanov?” Shane asked, also in French.
They both looked at him, surprised, no doubt, by the slight panic in his voice. Comeau shrugged. “He didn’t fly to Nashville with the rest of his team today.”
“He flew separately?” Shane asked stupidly.
“No,” Comeau said, looking at Shane like he was a little bit dumb. “He isn’t in Nashville.”
“He didn’t get hurt last night,” J.J. said. “Not that anyone noticed, right?”
“I don’t think so,” Shane said, quickly replaying the last few minutes of the game. Ilya had seemed fine. He hadn’t left the ice in pain at any point during the game.
“Maybe he’s sick,” Comeau said. “I’m sure we’ll find out. Right now ESPN is just saying that he didn’t go to Nashville.”
“Right,” Shane said quietly.
He ran through a number of alarming scenarios in his head before he finally stood up and grabbed his phone off the shelf above his head.
Are you ok? he texted.
He didn’t get a reply. There was still no reply by the time the team left the dressing room to go warm up. When he returned to the dressing room afterward, he quickly checked his phone. Still nothing.
Forget about it, he ordered himself. It’s game time.
He’d probably learn what had happened after the game. He was sure it would be mentioned during the broadcast of the Boston vs. Nashville game.
Shane did not play the best game of his life.
Probably one of the worst games of the season for him, but his team managed to win anyway.
Shane couldn’t remember ever being so eager for a game to be over.
When they got back to the dressing room, he shucked his gloves off and immediately checked his phone.
Nothing.
Shane sat down hard on the bench, staring at his phone.
He opened his web browser and searched “Ilya Rozanov Nashville” to see if any more information had been released.
He found fans speculating on social media, and he saw an official ESPN story that just said “undisclosed reasons” and that there was no word whether Rozanov would be joining his team in Tampa Bay for their game in two days’ time.
This whole thing was very strange. Shane couldn’t sneeze in public without the hockey sites reporting that he was deathly ill and how that should affect your sports betting.
Ilya Rozanov, one of the biggest stars in the league, just disappeared with no explanation and no reporters seemed to be digging very hard. Or offering possible reasons.
Which meant...they must know the reason. And they were respecting Boston’s likely request for discretion.
Which meant...absolutely nothing good that Shane could think of.
Shane got showered and changed faster than he ever had in his life. He found a private corner of the hallway outside the dressing room and did something he’d never done before: he called Ilya Rozanov.
He wasn’t expecting him to answer, but he wanted the missed call to at least be recorded on Ilya’s phone. He wanted Ilya to know he was concerned.
But Ilya did answer.
“Hollander?”
“Yeah. Hi.”
There was a long silence.
“Are you okay?” Shane asked finally.
He heard Ilya huff out a humorless laugh. “I don’t know.”
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“In Boston? Are you sick?”
“No. Home. In Moscow.”
Shane wasn’t expecting that.
“Moscow? Did something happen? Oh, shit. Your father?”
“Yes. Dead.”
“Ilya, I—”
“What are people saying about me?”
“Nothing! The media has been very secretive about it. The Bears must have—”
“Good. I will be back by end of week,” he said stiffly.
“You should take more time.”
Ilya snorted. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Stop. I’m being serious.”
More silence.
“I’m so sorry, Ilya.” He didn’t know what else to say.
Ilya didn’t reply, but Shane could hear a sharp sniff, and then a tight, throaty noise.
“Ilya—”
“I will be back in a few days. I should go.”
“All right.”
“Goodbye, Hollander.”
“Wait,” Shane said, way too loudly.
Ilya waited.
“Just...call me, all right? If you need to talk. Or text me. Whatever. But... I’ll listen. I want to help, if I can.”
Ilya was silent for a moment. “You did. Thank you.”
He ended the call.
Shane leaned back against the wall and blew out a breath.
Two days later—Buffalo
Shane hadn’t really been expecting to hear from Ilya again. He was surprised when, after his game in Buffalo, he received a text.
Lily: Are you alone?
Shane stood up, mumbled a hasty reason for leaving to Hayden, and went out to the stairwell.
Shane: Yes.
Lily: Can I call you?
Shane: Yes.
His phone rang and Shane answered it immediately. The stairwell was silent and empty. He leaned against the wall of the landing below his floor.
“How are you doing?” he asked, not even bothering with hello.
“I feel like... I don’t know. Bad.”
“How’s your family treating you?”
Ilya gave a dark laugh. “Like I should not be here.”
“That’s ridiculous. He was your father.”
“Yes, well.” There was a pause and Shane waited. “I am paying for everything, so that makes me...of use.”
“How’s your—I mean, how’s his wife?”
“Upset. But not about my father. Everybody thinks so, but no. She is scared for herself.”
“Because there’s no money?”
“Yes. That.”
“What about you? Are you...upset?”
Ilya sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe about the wrong thing.”
“You wish things could have been different?” Shane guessed.
“I wish... I wanted him to... I don’t know.” He sighed again. “English is too hard today.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I spoke Russian.”
“You could probably learn it in a week,” Ilya grumbled. “Perfect. No accent.”
Shane laughed. “I don’t think so.” He was about to ask if Ilya had anyone there in Moscow that he could talk to, but it was pretty obvious that he didn’t. Why else would he be calling Shane?
“Where are you right now?” he asked instead.
“Walking. A park. I needed to get out.”
“Cold?”
“Fucking freezing.”
Shane was suddenly struck by a ridiculous idea. Or maybe it was a brilliant idea. He decided to share it before his brain had a chance to figure out which.
“Tell me everything you want to say,” he said. “In Russian. I won’t understand but...maybe it will help?”
There was a silence that was long enough for Shane to physically cringe at himself. He was about to take it back, when he heard Ilya quietly say, “Okay.”
The next several minutes were filled with Ilya’s voice, sounding more animated and flustered than Shane had ever heard him.
He was used to Ilya saying more with a teasing smile or a calculating look than with actual words.
But now it was like a dam had burst, and Shane sat himself on the stairs and let it wash over him.
Without the ability to translate any of it, Shane could just enjoy the sound of Ilya’s voice, which he barely recognized now.
The words were so quick and confident, unrestricted by Ilya having to carefully piece together his sentences like when he spoke English.
It felt intimate—like they were somehow sharing a bigger secret now than when they slept together.
And there was something undeniably sexy about hearing Ilya speak so fluidly in his mother tongue.
When he was finished, Ilya gave an embarrassed-sounding little laugh and said, “I am done.”
It was jarring to hear him switch suddenly back to English. Shane felt his head clear like he was waking from a dream.
“Feel better?” he asked.
“Yes. Thank you.”
Shane lowered his voice and said, “Maybe you could teach me Russian someday.”
“Only useful phrases,” Ilya said. Shane could practically hear his crooked smile. Then Ilya purred something in Russian.
“What does that mean?” Shane asked.
“Get on your knees.”
“Oh.” Shane quickly scanned the stairwell again to make sure he was still alone. He was already more aroused than he should be after listening to Ilya pour his heart out. “And what other useful phrases could you teach me?”
Ilya laughed. “I can think of many, Hollander.”
Shane shifted on the stairs. “I wish you were here now.”
Shane couldn’t believe he had actually allowed himself to say that out loud. They didn’t wish to be together. They reluctantly hooked up when they were in the same city because it was something to do.
He felt his mortification melt away when Ilya said, in a low voice, “Me too.”
Moscow
Something occurred to Ilya after he ended the call with Shane: maybe Shane had recorded that call and was going to run it through some sort of translating app later.
But Shane wouldn’t do that, would he?
Ilya stopped into a coffee shop and ordered a cappuccino. While he waited for it, he tried not to imagine scenarios where Shane would somehow translate every word that Ilya had just said.
Mostly he had just been ranting about his family, but he had included an admission that he wished things could have been different with his father. That he had stupidly always hoped that his father might tell him that he was proud of him.
That admission would have been embarrassing enough, but Ilya had also slipped in an “and on top of everything, I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you and I don’t know what to do about it.”
It was saying those words out loud, even more than venting his frustrations about his family, that had truly made Ilya feel lighter.
It was a secret he had been carrying for far too long, locked away so deep inside that he had even been keeping it from himself.
But as soon as he let himself acknowledge it, and now say it, he felt relieved.
Not because he could do anything about these feelings, but at least he had allowed himself to accept them.
And he had, in the most cowardly way possible, said them aloud to Shane.
Shane wouldn’t translate anything. That wasn’t why he had asked Ilya to unload on him in Russian. He was being a friend.
A friend?