The Long Game (Game Changers, #6)

by Rachel Reid

“She probably knows already.” The panic alarm that lived inside Shane started blaring. “Why would she?” “We are together at your cottage. You are gay. I am hot.”

“It’s the Game Changers Hockey Camp!” one of the kids yelled out.

would realize he could be with someone who wasn’t a dark secret. That it could be easy to love someone.

“I’m helping,” Ilya couldn’t resist pointing out. “I know you are.” Yuna patted his cheek. “That’s why you’re my favorite son.” Ilya grinned at Shane, who tried to look annoyed but mostly failed because his eyes had gone soft.

“I am Ilya. This is my... Shane.”

“We are very good at pretending to not be in love. Maybe we are bad at showing it when we are allowed.”

“I’ll do it,” Ilya said. “Come on, ding-dongs.”

Sometimes Ilya was so starved for touch he felt like screaming. He felt it most when Shane was close, like he was now, but off-limits.

“What?” he asked. Kiss me, Ilya wanted to say. Kiss me and hold me in front of all these people. Pull me onstage and do it. I don’t care anymore. Please. I’m dying. “Nothing,” Ilya said, and stepped away. “Nothing.”

so I wasn’t prepared for yearning ilya tbh and I am EMO ABOUT IT!!!!!!!

The forbidden aspect of their relationship—the discipline it took to hide how hot they were for each other—still did it for Shane.

ah lowkey been waiting for this difference in perspective to develop between these two

He took a sideways step so his hip brushed against Ilya’s, then placed a hand on the small of his back. It wasn’t much, but Ilya’s whole body relaxed as he leaned back into the touch. He glanced down at Shane and gave him a small, grateful smile.

Shane smiled back, and traced a little heart on Ilya’s back with his finger. Ilya raised one hand toward Shane, and it hovered in the air for a moment before Ilya pulled it back to rest over his own heart.

He reached his free hand up and caressed Shane’s cheek. “My beloved,” Ilya murmured, in Russian. “So beautiful.”

“You should quit hockey,” Ilya murmured. “Send them a text. Say you quit. Stay here with me.” “I’m not ending my career via text.” “Email, then.”

Ilya loved hockey, but he lived for the summers now.

Then, lightning-fast, Shane fired a forehand wrist shot over the goalie’s shoulder. And then, Shane winked at the camera. Winked. And Ilya knew it was meant for him.

Ilya drummed his fingers on the steering wheel to the rhythm of the Bad Bunny song that he’d recently added to his pregame playlist.

he just keeps getting better and better I swear

Ilya bent over the face-off circle in Montreal and smiled at the man across from him. “Hi.” Shane’s lips quirked up. “Hi.”

“There’s no way he likes you that much.” “He loves me,” Ilya said plainly. Honestly. Bood, of course, thought he was kidding. “Now you’re really dreaming.” Ilya chomped on his mouth guard to avoid smiling.

“When you watch it, this is what you will see. Me saying nothing. I wanted to say you are fucking everything to me. Everything. Okay?” Shane swallowed hard. “Oh.”

“Is he your husband?” Ruby asked. Ilya flinched, nearly making Shane’s brush slip. “No.” “Are you his husband?” “That’s not how—” Shane said, then stopped himself. “We’re not married.”

“I kind of doubt we’d ever have, like, a traditional wedding with all the stuff, but if we have anything at all, you’re on the list, all right?” “Cool. Is Rozanov on the list, or...”

The next morning, when the sun had just begun to rise, Ilya watched Shane drive away. He stood on his front step for several minutes after, staring in the direction the car had gone, and shivering in his gym shorts and T-shirt. Then, he went inside, closed the door, and burst into tears.

He didn’t keep his photos very organized, but he had one album he’d named “Boring.” He opened it now, and scrolled through the six photos it contained. They were all more or less the same, taken years ago during the NHL Awards. Ilya and Shane had been presenting an award together, and the scripted banter had involved Ilya asking Shane for a selfie. Ilya had used his real phone, and he’d taken real photos. Six of them.

He kept the photos i’m throwing up

“I don’t squeak.” Ilya shrugged. “This is why we need a sex tape. So you can see.” “No way. You would leak it immediately.” Ilya grinned. “Can you blame me?”

“How could they not know?” Shane said. “How could anyone have seen this—seen you—and not known about us?” Ilya had displayed his heart so openly, smashed against the ice as unmistakably as Shane’s broken body. “I don’t know,” Ilya said.

“I am so glad I met you,” Ilya said quietly.

Shane’s voice nagged him in his head as he took his first drag. He smiled as he exhaled, welcoming the company. Maybe he only ever smoked so he could hear that voice in his head.

He’d learned that the best way to hide his secrets was to pretend he was hiding entirely different ones.

“I came out to Troy Barrett,” Ilya said, a week later.

need to reread this scene IMMEDIATELY bc I didn’t realize Ilya hadn’t come out to anyone yet so this must’ve been so hard to do lowkey but so relieving 😭😭😭 god I’m sick I love Troy and Ilya besties era

In the photo they were nose-to-nose in full hockey gear, cropped close from the shoulders up, simulating a face-off. Unlike the intense, serious photo that ran in the campaign, however, in this one they were both laughing. Shane’s nose was scrunched up, and Ilya’s eyes were crinkled, but they still held each other’s gaze.

“Oh, fuck you. Sorry I still want to win cups instead of smoking weed with my teammates between losses.” The words hit Ilya like a crosscheck to the teeth.

Shane tilted his chin up defiantly. “Would you choose me?” Ilya let the question hang in the air, his whole body trembling with rage. He couldn’t believe Shane would even ask that, after everything.

Quietly, in a voice that couldn’t disguise his pain, he said, “I already chose you, Hollander.”

“Well. I had another enemy, but then I fell in love with him.”

Shane realized that most of Ilya’s posts were, in weird cryptic ways, about Shane. His entire account was like a secret diary of their relationship, full of inside jokes and little references that only Shane would understand. And Shane hadn’t even bothered to look at it before. Not really. He looked now. He scrolled until his eyes were so blurry he had to give up and sob into his hands instead. How could Shane have doubted for a second how fiercely Ilya loved him?

We’re going to crash. I’m going to die. I’ll never see Shane again. We were going to have dogs and kids.

The pilot made an announcement. Ilya’s brain was too panicked to translate all the words, but he heard “engine” and “emergency landing.”

But the plane was on fire, and Ilya didn’t have time to think. He wrote what was in his terrified heart: You are the best thing in my life. His eyes were blurry, making it hard to type. He quickly swiped at his eyes and kept writing. I love you. Always. Maybe from the first time I saw you.

I am thinking only about you right now. A million memories. Thank you for those. Whatever happens, I am with you. Safe in your heart. I believe it.

He believed the people you loved stayed with you until it was your time to go. He often felt his mother with him, and he knew he’d do the same for Shane.

To please not let this plane crash, because Ilya had wasted so much fucking time hiding how much he loved Shane—from the world, from Shane, from himself.

He could tell right away that Shane had been crying. “Oh,” Ilya said softly. “Sweetheart. I am so sorry.”

Why Troy was sitting there and not upstairs making out with Harris was beyond Ilya.

He’d once told Shane, years ago, that one day he would cover the dock at his cottage in candles. That he’d bring Shane down there, then ask him to marry him. It had been a joke, sort of. But now he was really standing in a room full of candles and— Shane sank to one knee in front of him.

“I choose you, Ilya. I promise I will always, always choose you.” Shane’s eyes began to shimmer. He took a deep breath and said, “Ilya Grigoryevich Rozanov, will you marry me?”

SHANE PROPOSING AND NOT ILYA WAS EVERYTHING TO ME.

Ilya slipped it onto the chain until it nudged up against the crucifix pendant that had been his mother’s.

He was staring at Ilya’s chest, and Ilya glanced down to see the ring there, glinting in the light of a million candles.

“How’s it going, fellas?” “Shhh. Shane is watching the men set up pylons.” “Would you fuck off?” Shane snarled.

“You have me, sweetheart.” The first time Ilya had used that particular pet name, Shane had felt like he’d been struck by lightning.