28. April 3, Sunday Night #2
He looked over the room, taking in the cluster of broad shoulders and wrecked faces.
“She’s lucky,” he said. “Most dogs don’t get half a hockey team in their corner.”
It won him a few weak, grateful huffs.
“I’ll send someone out shortly,” he said. Then he disappeared back through the doors.
For a few seconds, the room became motion.
Tommy, Ty, Ian, and two others headed for the exit, talking over one another about flashlights, blankets, and whether anyone had gloves in their cars.
Jason stayed near the coffee station, phone pressed to his ear, giving instructions to arena security in a tone that brooked no argument.
Through it all, Ilya couldn’t move.
Puppies.
He hadn’t even known she was a she.
He’d sat on his tailgate and talked to that dog in the dark, so busy projecting his own loneliness onto her that he hadn’t looked closely enough to notice anything real. Not her sex. Not signs that she’d been nursing. Nothing.
She’d trusted him enough to take his glove. And still he’d missed the thing that mattered.
Without meaning to, he looked for Zoey.
She stood across the room with the blanket clutched to her chest, shoulders squared like she was bracing against impact. Her eyes found his instantly.
Wet. Fierce. Hurt. And still there.
The wreckage from the hallway stood between them.
She moved anyway. Crossed the waiting room without hesitation, stopped in front of him, and for one suspended second just looked at him.
Then she lifted her hand and gently cupped his cheek.
The contact was brief. Barely there.
A mercy he didn’t deserve.
Her hand dropped, and she stepped in, wrapping her arms around his waist. The blanket slipped from her fingers and landed in a soft, bloodstained heap at their feet.
It was instinct, not deliberation. Comfort. Contact. A bridge.
His body answered before his brain could interfere. His arms came up around her, hands spreading over her back, hauling her in. He dropped his cheek to her hair and shut his eyes.
Everything hit at once.
Christian on a stretcher.
Fido bleeding in the back of Zoey’s car.
The possibility of puppies hidden somewhere cold and dark.
Jayden’s drawing burning a hole in his pocket.
Kira’s last text: CALL LATER. LOVE YOU.
Mitch on his couch last night, asking if he’d already lost Zoey for good.
Zoey’s face when Ilya told her he couldn’t be the man she saw in her future.
The old rules he'd built his life around—be useful enough and maybe they won't leave; love is earned through sacrifice; feelings are dangerous—did absolutely nothing to stop the flood.
He wanted to keep everyone safe by controlling himself. Instead, everything felt like it was bleeding through his fingers. “I’m sorry,” he muttered into her hair, words for too many things.
She squeezed tighter. “I know,” she whispered. “Me too.”
It was not a friendly hug. Not the careful, compartmentalized kind. It was intimate. Familiar. The kind of embrace built by private tenderness, shared nights and a hundred moments no one else had seen.
Without thinking, Ilya pressed a soft kiss into the top of her head and pulled her tighter to him.
Which was exactly when the universe decided to detonate.
“Serge?”
Zoey stiffened in his arms.
Ilya’s eyes snapped open.
Mitch stood a few feet away, face gone pale and slack with shock. Jason hovered behind him, phone now lowered, expression flat with dread. Bobby sat very still in his chair, one hand braced on his knee like he was ready to stand.
Every one of them was staring at Ilya and Zoey still wrapped around each other.
Ilya’s hands dropped from her like he’d been burned.
Zoey stepped back. Panic flashed across her face before she locked it down.
Mitch looked from Zoey to Ilya and back again.
Their overreaction did what the hug alone might not have.
Realization hardened his face in horrible increments.
“What the hell is this?” he asked, voice rough and too loud in the room’s fragile quiet.
“Mitch—” Zoey started.
“My wife?” he said, staring at Ilya now. “Seriously?”
Ex-wife. The correction sat on his tongue. Useless.
“Ex-wife,” Zoey snapped, her tongue ready to defend. “And this is not the time.”
“The hell it isn’t.” His laugh came out broken. “I’m standing in a vet clinic watching my best friend and my ex-wife act like I just caught them sneaking out of the same hotel room.”
A couple of heads turned near the reception desk.
“Mitch,” Bobby said, voice clipped. “Lower your voice.”
Mitch didn’t look at him. “How long?”
The waiting room went painfully still.
Even the woman with the cat carrier had stopped rocking.
Zoey inhaled slowly. “I am not your business anymore.”
Mitch’s head snapped toward her. “Not my business? Zoey, come on.”
Then his attention slammed back to Ilya.
“How long?”
There were a dozen ways to answer that question, and none of them were clean. Weeks of sneaking around. Years of wanting. A whole history of silence dressed up as loyalty.
Ilya searched for some half-truth that might calm the storm, at least long enough to get them out of this waiting room.
There wasn’t one.
“I kissed her after San Jose,” Ilya said. “We started seeing each other after that.”
A muscle jumped in Mitch’s cheek. “Oh, yeah? And before that?”
The accusation landed hot.
Ilya remembered the first time he saw Zoey at debate club, sharp-eyed and impossible to ignore. Remembered Mitch elbowing him afterward and saying, I’m gonna marry that girl. Remembered burying every reaction he had because that was what you did for a friend.
For a brother.
“It wasn’t like that,” Zoey said.
Mitch barked a laugh. “You think I’m stupid? You think I didn’t see the way you looked at each other back then?”
“I never touched her when you were together,” Ilya said, voice low. “Not once.”
“Oh, wow. What integrity.” Mitch spread his hands. “You want a medal? You stood up in my wedding. You toasted us. And all the while you were what…waiting?”
“That’s enough,” Zoey snapped.
“No, actually, I’m just getting started.” Mitch’s gaze drilled into Ilya. “You, of all people? Captain Responsibility? Mister noble sacrifice? You couldn’t choose anyone else in the world?”
Ilya held his stare.
“Had to be her,” Mitch went on, anger sharpening around the hurt. “Had to be the one woman guaranteed to blow up the room. The woman who wants a family yesterday. The one thing you’ve been terrified of since I met you.”
That one landed.
Several heads turned.
Zoey went still.
“Mitch,” Jason warned quietly.
But Mitch’s eyes never left Ilya’s face.
“You tell everyone else how to hold it together. How to lead. How to think beyond themselves. And this is your move? Sneak around with my ex behind my back while I’m talking to you like you’re my brother?”
His mouth twisted.
“You think you can give her the life she wants? Christian’s in the hospital, your team needs you, and the dog you say you love has been missing, and this is what you’re doing with your time instead?”
The words punched through every bruise Ilya already had. Because they sounded too much like the voice in his own head.
“It was my choice too,” Zoey cut in, furious now. “You do not get to stand there and talk about me like I’m an object someone stole.”
Mitch barely glanced at her. “You moved across the country, took a job with his team, and I’m supposed to believe this all just magically happened?”
“Yes,” she shot back. “Because that’s the truth. And Mitchell, we were over long before the papers were finalized, and you know it.”
He recoiled like she’d slapped him. “Of course, this is about what I did wrong.”
“This is not about your ego,” she countered, voice shaking. “It’s about the fact that our marriage ended because you wanted a life where you were always the center, and I finally stopped shrinking to fit inside it.”
Bobby rose from his chair. “Everyone take a breath.”
“Stay out of it,” Mitch snapped, then swung back to the room at large. “You all knew?”
Silence. Not confirmation. Not denial. Just the guilty, uncomfortable quiet of men who suspected enough and chose to say nothing.