17. February 18, Friday #2
“Umm…well, depending on your contract, they do have a bit of that right. You know that.” Ty shrugged. “Also, you are scary good with fans. My mom loves your videos.”
Jason glared.
Ty held up his hands. “Just saying.”
Ilya filed it away. Pressure from management. Conflict between what Jason wanted and what they demanded. That he could work on later with agents, with coaches. Right now, the problem was keeping Jason from tanking himself and the team in one public explosion.
“We can talk to them,” Ilya said. “Set boundaries. But you blowing up at an event—”
“Is bad optics, yeah, yeah, I read the handbook.” Jason let his head fall back against the chair. “Give me the speech, Captain.”
Ilya braced his hands on the back of the chair across from him, leaning in. “You want to be a leader on this team?”
Jason’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t start with that.”
“Then act like one. You don’t make management’s jobs harder. You don’t make PR want to drink themselves to sleep. You bring it in here.” He tapped the table. “To me. To us. Before the cameras show up.”
Jason barked a humorless laugh. “To you. So, you can…what? Nod wisely and tell me to sacrifice a little more for the good of the team?”
Underneath the mockery was something raw.
“How much are you willing to put aside, Captain?” Jason asked, voice sharpening. “Where’s your line?”
Ilya’s mouth went dry. He knew the answer. There wasn’t a line. There had never been a thing he wasn’t willing to set on fire if it meant keeping the people he was responsible for safe and happy.
“You’re done tonight,” he said instead. “I’ll talk to Coach. We’ll clean some of this up. But you need to meet me halfway and not—”
Jason shot to his feet so fast his chair skidded.
“I am so fucking tired of you pretending you’re above this.
” His hands flexed at his sides. “Like you don’t have some sort of festering drama just rotting inside you.
Like you’re the noble monk in the corner, sacrificing everything for our holy cause. ”
The accusation hung heavy.
Ty’s shoulders crept up. Tommy went still.
“Jason,” Bobby warned, low.
“No.” Jason shook him off. “He wants honesty? Here.”
He turned back to Ilya, eyes hot and glittering. “You want to sit there and tell me about ‘optics’ and ‘sacrifice’ when you’re out there drooling over your best friend’s ex?”
The words cracked like a stick across a quiet forest.
“Aw, shit,” Ty muttered.
Ilya’s heart slammed once, hard. Every muscle went tight. “Watch it,” he warned, deathly quiet.
“Why?” Jason demanded. “Because it’s true?
” He laughed, brittle. “You think we don’t see it?
Your distraction? The way you look at her?
The way you bolt over the second she looks slightly sad or needs someone to save the day?
You’re supposed to be Mister Controlled, Mister Professional, and you’ve already crossed the line emotionally, man.
” He surged closer, palms flattening on the table.
“So what is this now? You protecting her? Or protecting yourself? Because it looks like you’re shrinking your life down to whatever they say is acceptable and then preaching at the rest of us not to explode.
” His voice cracked on the last word, eyes dangerously bright.
Jason wasn’t condemning the feeling, he was condemning the lie, the way Ilya boxed it up and labeled it noble.
Silence fell, loud and absolute.
Heat ripped through Ilya’s chest, followed by a cold nauseous wash. Years of self-discipline snapped into place like armor. He should deny it. Quick, clean, easy. Shut it down, pivot, blame the bourbon, pretend this was some alcohol-fueled hallucination they could all laugh off.
The problem was: Jason wasn’t wrong. And all four sets of eyes were on him like they knew it too.
Ilya’s throat worked. Once, twice. His grip on the chair back had gone white-knuckled. “We are not talking about that,” he ground out.
Jason snorted. “Exactly. Because it’s you.”
“Enough,” Bobby said, voice sharpening. “This is going nowhere.”
“It’s going exactly where it always goes,” Jason fired back. “We screw up, we bleed, we explain. He screws up, he—”
“I’m not—” Ilya cut himself off. The phrase ‘screwed up’ felt wrong, too close to conceding things he couldn’t afford to admit. “Nothing has happened between me and Zoey.”
“Yet,” Jason said.
Ilya ground his molars together.
Ty blew out a breath, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Okay, cool, this is fun, but can we maybe stay on the rails long enough to keep you from getting suspended? That’s my main goal tonight. Well, that and not having Nina murder me for losing donors.”
“Why would they suspend me?” Jason scoffed. “For not wanting to be their dancing monkey?”
“Because optics,” Ty said. “Because yelling at Coach in front of donors and media is high on the list of bad ideas.”
Jason deflated a fraction. His shoulders slumped, anger ebbing into tiredness. “I’m just…done, man.” He was bone-tired. It sat under every word.
Bobby leaned forward, forearms braced. “What’s going on, Jace? Really?”
Jason stared at a water ring on the table.
His throat bobbed. “Nothing. It’s what they don’t want me to do…
” A muscle jumped in his cheek. “I’m sick of them expecting life-altering loyalty but not giving it back.
And I’m sick of watching people I care about twist themselves in knots trying to uphold these obscene and impossible standards of perfection.
” His stare swung back to Ilya. “We’re human. We shouldn’t be so scared to live.”
“That’s not what I do,” Ilya protested, but something in his chest squeezed.
“And even if that’s what it looks like I do, I absolutely don’t want you to be like me.
” It came out more raw than he intended.
He cleared his throat. “I want you to tell me if you are drowning so we can figure it out. Together.”
Jason barked a laugh. “And then what? Management gives you a rehearsed speech to give me?” He dropped into a mocking imitation. “‘You’re the leader, Ilya. The face. Help us set the tone. Be the example. Show them that the team has to come first.’”
The words were almost verbatim. Ilya knew because he’d heard them.
Jason saw his reaction and nodded, grim. “Thought so.”
Bobby exhaled slowly. “Look. None of this changes one thing: you can’t blow up at management at a public event. You know that.”
“Yeah,” Jason muttered. “I know.”
“So, apologize,” Ty suggested. “Tomorrow. Or tonight, if they haven’t already left.”
Silence stretched.
Jason’s shoulders sagged. The rest of the fight bled out of him, leaving something smaller and more dangerous: resignation.
“I just wanted one thing that felt like mine,” he said finally, not quite looking at anyone. “One thing that wasn’t dictated by them.”
“Are you doing too much?” Ilya asked quietly, stomach tight at the idea of letting Zoey down. “Do you want me to tell Zoey you need to get off the Little Cyclones clinic?”
Jason’s head snapped up, eyes flashing. “Fuck you.”
The room went still.
“I love those kids,” Jason insisted, voice cracking. “That’s the one thing I’m actually excited about lately. I get to be on the ice with them and not think about…other shit.” His chest rose and fell, breath hitching. “It’s the other shit that’s killing me,” he muttered. “Not that.”
Ilya let out a slow breath. “Okay,” he said quietly. “Then for tonight, you’re going to drink water, get some sleep, and not talk to anyone with a camera or a microphone.”
Jason’s mouth twisted, but he nodded once. “Whatever you say, Captain.”
Ty rose, pushing his chair back. “I’ll drive him home.”
“No,” Tommy blurted.
Four pairs of eyes swung to him.
Tommy flushed, then squared his shoulders. “I mean, I don’t think Ty should leave the event. There are still donors here who wanna meet players. And Nina will skin you if you vanish. Plus, you said all week how excited Ashley was for this event.”
“Accurate,” Ty conceded.
“So, I’ll drive him,” Tommy said, voice steadier. “I didn’t have anything to drink. And…calling my sponsor would be good.”
The tension shifted.
Ilya leveled Tommy with a somber look. “You okay?”
Tommy shrugged, trying for breezy and landing somewhere near brittle. “I’m fine. Just want to get out of here before something becomes harder than it needs to be.”
“See?” Ty said, elbowing Jason. “Teamwork makes the dream work, big guy. We got this.”
“Shut up,” Jason muttered, but with no real heat.
Ty grinned. “I’ll walk you two down, make sure you actually get in the car without getting ambushed by media.”
Jason rolled his eyes. “Jesus, we’re not teenagers.”
“You’re handling your liquor like one,” Ty muttered.
Ilya stepped back from the head of the table. “Jason.”
Jason looked up, weariness stark.
“We will deal with this,” Ilya said. “You are not alone with it. But you cannot behave like that again. On the ice, at events, anywhere. You feel the lid starting to rattle, you come to me before it blows off. Understood?”
Something in Jason’s expression flickered. Shame. Relief. Both. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Understood.”
“Good.” Ilya nodded. “Go home.”
Bobby clapped Jason on the shoulder as he passed. “Come find me tomorrow. We’ll talk when you’re not three bourbons in.”
“Fuck you,” Jason muttered, threadbare affection under the words.
The three of them left.
Bobby lingered.
“You good?” he asked.
The reflexive answer—Always—stalled in Ilya’s throat. Because no. He was not good. He was wound too tight. His skin still hummed with the ghost of Zoey’s body pressed against his on the terrace.
And behind that: Mitch.
Mitch grinning on that godawful country club balcony, dragging Ilya into a hug the night before the wedding.
Mitch clapping him on the back after Ilya’s best man speech while Ilya stared at the microphone instead of Zoey’s face because if he really looked at her in that white dress he would’ve given everything away.
Mitch throwing an arm around his shoulders in college and saying, “You’re my family now, man. You and Kira.”