34. April 4, Monday
Chapter thirty-four
Ilya
Ilya parked in his usual spot at the group home. Same cracked asphalt. Same crooked basketball hoop near the fence, net hanging in tired loops. Same hand-painted sign by the front walk—WELCOME HOME in faded block letters, the M almost worn off from little fingers tracing it.
He turned off the engine and sat there for a second, fingers locked around the steering wheel, heart thudding too hard and too fast.
He had accomplished incredible things on the ice. Fought rivals in front of drunken crowds. Taken pucks off ankles, shoulders, ribs. Skated shifts where his lungs burned and his legs stopped feeling like his.
None of it felt as terrifying as unbuckling his seat belt and stepping out of the truck now.
He checked the dashboard clock.
Time to grovel.
The wrap-up event was supposed to be simple. A post-clinic thank-you filled with team freebies, highlight reels, snacks, and kids arguing over whose player card had the best stats.
His chest ached.
Zoey would be here. Whatever else had fallen apart, he knew that much. There was no version of this day where Zoey didn’t show up to hand out the kids’ trading cards herself.
He inhaled, slow and measured, and opened the truck door into the unseasonably warm day. The kind of false spring that made people believe there would be no more snow this winter.
Voices floated on the cool air as he crossed the small parking lot. Laughter, the high and low of it mixing in a familiar way. A stick clacked against pavement, followed by a gleeful shriek.
He rounded the corner of the building and saw them.
The players were scattered through the yard with the kids; some who lived here, some visiting, some clearly pretending they were too old to care while hovering close enough to hear everything.
Ty was crouched in the slushy garden bed with a cluster of children, digging into the mud with a plastic trowel and inspecting something in his palm like he’d discovered buried treasure.
Tommy chased two preteens with foam pool noodles, yelling something incoherent, then feigning a dramatic fall whenever one of them whipped him with their own noodle.
Jason sat cross-legged on the porch while Madison and Marcus, another teenager, stood behind him braiding his overgrown hair into tight, uneven cornrows. Jason’s expression said he had accepted this fate with the dignity of a man who knew resistance was futile.
Inside the front window, a projector beam spread over the living room wall. Photos rotated automatically: one kid mid-celebration, arms thrown wide, mouth open in triumph; another sprawled on the ice laughing; another standing beside Teemu with a grin so big it looked painful.
On another day, it might have made him smile.
Today, all he could feel was the knot in his sternum tightening.
Madison spotted him first.
She was a great kid. Sharp, guarded, allergic to sincerity. She reminded him of Kira sometimes—or maybe of who Kira might have been if he hadn’t gotten them away from their parents when he did.
Madison flicked her gaze up from Jason’s hair and clocked him with that too-old, too-wary look he recognized a little too well from mirrors. Then she tipped her chin once in a greeting that almost passed for casual.
He lifted a hand back, unsure his lips would cooperate if he asked them to curve into anything like a smile.
“Serge!” Bobby called from near the fence, where picture books were scattered across a kiddie table in front of him. “You’re late. We had to start the autograph factory without you.”
He gestured toward a neighboring card table heaped with pucks and Sharpies. A cluster of kids hanging there, decorating their swag and the trading cards Zoey’s team had made.
“I had a call,” Ilya said.
A few calls, actually.
One with Christian, who was awake, sore, deeply annoyed by hospital food, and already asking when he could skate again. Ilya had not made a joke about that.
He said what he should have said before the third period. “I should have asked better questions.”
Christian had gone quiet for a long moment.
Then he’d said, “No. I should have told you I was struggling.”
Both of them refused to let the other take the full blame, so they’d agreed to disagree. And agreed to do better.
There had also been a call with Sam, their GM.
Then HR.
Then Nina.
Which had been humiliating, necessary, and frankly less terrifying than thinking about what Zoey would say.
He told them the truth.
Not all of it obviously. Not the private pieces that belonged to Zoey too.
But enough of the truth to get some facts straight.
He and Zoey had begun a relationship. It had not started before she returned to the organization.
It had created an appearance issue. He took responsibility for his part.
If there were professional safeguards to put in place, they should be put in place around him too, not quietly dropped on Zoey like she was the only problem.
Nina had gone very quiet on the phone.
Then she said, crisply, “Well. If this buys us a little more leniency with your tight reins on the guys’ schedules, I’m sure we can make it work.”
Whatever saved Zoey’s job.
Even if it meant the guys had to take more ownership of saying no for themselves instead of relying on him to do it for them.
HR, naturally, wanted disclosure paperwork, boundaries, and signatures. Sam wanted to talk after Christian’s situation stabilized.
Ilya said yes to all of it.
He also made one more call.
A therapist whose name Kayla had sent with a single text: Do not be weird and make this about pregame rituals.
His first appointment was Tuesday.
He was already planning to be weird, but at least he would be professionally supervised.
Now, standing in the group home yard, he felt fragile. Newborn. Clumsy.
Madison still watched him from the porch.
There was a look on her face he usually noticed whenever she was trying to antagonize Babs or one of the other teens.
Their verbal sparring sessions generally ended with her telling him he needed to pay more attention to pop culture, and him asking if she was ready to put on skates yet.
Two years of bickering had taught him to keep an eye on Madison when she looked feisty.
But for right now, he had to focus on the immediate goal. Even if that goal felt selfish.
He scanned the packed yard and porch.
Then he saw her.
Zoey came out of the house with her arms full of knit winter hats. Her hair was covered by a beanie of her own, and she wore black jeans, a sweatshirt, and sunglasses that were unnecessary in the weak light.
She hesitated for a beat when she saw him.
Then she squared her shoulders, picked up her chin, and started passing hats to kids who weren’t wearing any.
His breath caught.
There was a kind of fierce resolve in her posture that made his chest ache.
Fuck him for hurting her.
He crossed the muddy yard, pulse hammering in his throat. It felt like playing in overtime—every nerve alive, every instinct screaming too fast, too slow, too late.
“Zo,” he said when he was close enough.
She stopped where she was arranging the extra hats in a pile on a picnic table away from the kids.
Her hand squeezed one of the hats until the fabric wrinkled. The sunglasses hid her eyes, but he could see the way her mouth pressed into a thin line.
“Ilya,” she said. No nickname. No softness.
The last time he’d said her name, he had followed it with I can’t.
Now, with everything in him, he was going to try to say I will, if you’ll let me.
“Can we talk?” he asked quietly. “Please?”
Her shoulders lifted on a breath. “Is this really the time?” she asked, glancing toward the yard.
“Probably not,” he conceded. “But I don’t want to wait anymore.”
That got a flicker.
She slid the glasses off and slipped them into her sweatshirt pocket, leaving her eyes naked. Red-rimmed. Guarded. So, so tired.
“Two minutes,” she said. “Then I have shit to do.”
He nodded.
They stepped a little farther away from the kids, toward the shadow of a tree that had never quite decided whether it wanted to live. The noise of the yard became a muffled hum.
For a second, he didn’t know where to start.
He had spent hours unpacking everything he built his life around. The idea that love was earned by usefulness. That being the glue meant never needing repairs of his own. That if something broke near him, it was because he failed first.
He realized, with a kind of quiet horror, that his father’s worst legacy wasn’t the drinking or the absences. It was the belief that some people were born to receive love, and some were born to patch what was left.
Ilya believed he was the second kind.
Until Zoey.
“I was wrong,” he began, the words feeling both too big and not enough. “About a lot of things.”
Zoey crossed her arms, hugging herself. “Which part?” she asked. “The part where you decided you knew better than me what I wanted? The part where you ran? Or the part where you rolled over for Mitch?”
He flinched. Shit, Mama was coming out swinging. Rightfully so, but still.
“All of it,” Ilya affirmed. “The part where I left and said it was for your protection. And I pretended it was noble. The part where I let my fear and guilt make choices for you. The part where I thought I could slice my life into safe pieces and still keep you in one of them. The part where I thought that if we gave it enough time that we could find a way to break it to Mitch while still keeping him in our lives.”
Zoey watched him, face unreadable.
“I’ve spent most of my life trying to be the opposite of my father,” he went on. “He loved us, I think, but his selfishness caused us to feel nothing but hurt. Came home drunk, made big promises he never kept, said we were important to him, then left us to fix everything alone.”
Ilya swallowed. “I thought if I gave up certain things, if I stayed sober, stayed present, took care of everyone, it would cancel it out. That if I never asked for anything big, I’d be safe to be around.”
Her eyes softened by a fraction.