The Long Game (Game Changers, #6)

by Rachel Reid

“You smoke.” “Almost never.” “You had a cigarette last night.” “How do you know?” “I have a nose.”

😂

He was terrified that one day Shane would realize he could be with someone who wasn’t a dark secret. That it could be easy to love someone.

He closed his eyes and focused on how good it felt to be with Shane, alone in the dark, and tried not to wish it could be the same in the light.

He wanted so desperately to touch him. 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.

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.

“When you watch it, this is what you will see. Me saying nothing. I wanted to say you are fucking everything to me. Everything.

“Shane, do you promise to love Ilya and be his husband forever?” Ruby asked. Shane gazed at his ridiculous-looking boyfriend, who smiled back at him. One of the flowers on his headband was holding on by a thread, dangling in front of Ilya’s raised left eyebrow. Suddenly—absurdly—Shane’s throat felt tight. “I do,” he said quietly, and with an embarrassing amount of feeling. “Ilya,” said Jade, “do you promise to love Shane and be his husband forever?” “I do,” Ilya said. “Forever.”

“For dessert,” Ilya said with a slight quirk of his lips, “we can look at a picture of cake.” Shane rolled his eyes. “Or...” Ilya leaned in suggestively. “Maybe there is something else you are craving?” “Like your dick, you mean?” Shane asked dryly. Ilya grinned. “Is that part of your diet?”

Sometimes I feel like I might scream, it’s so hard keeping this secret. I love hockey, and I deserve to have the career I want for as long as I want it. I’ve earned that. But if I had to choose...I’d choose him.”

He’s on one side with his friends and family, while you’re on the other side, alone.

The words hit Ilya like a crosscheck to the teeth. Shane truly didn’t understand anything. Not what Ilya had given up for him, certainly. Ilya could be in Boston right now, leading one of the top teams in the league to more Stanley Cups. He could be breaking more records, and winning more awards. Instead he’d chosen to come to Ottawa, when he could have gone to almost any team in the league. He’d chosen a team that hadn’t made the playoffs in over a decade. He’d chosen it because it was Shane’s hometown, and close to where Shane lived. He’d chosen it so he could build a life in Canada with the man he loved.

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

“You are a human being with a lot of responsibilities and pressure. You play a physically taxing, dangerous sport for a living. You are hiding a very big secret while also living your life in a spotlight. You are in love with a man you aren’t allowed to be in love with. You are carrying trauma from your childhood that you’ve never allowed yourself to process properly. And also you feel things very deeply. Deeper than maybe anyone realizes.”

He knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted to reach the other side. He wanted that life together. Not in ten years, but now. Because ten years suddenly seemed like an impossible wait.

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. Ilya had enjoyed watching Shane go to his knees in front of him many times over the years, but he knew immediately that this was different. He suddenly felt winded. And dizzy. And maybe a little queasy.

“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?”