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He kissed Rozanov again, rough and needy. God, he needed this. This horrible, fucked-up thing.
Ilya had more important things to think about than freckles and polite Canadian boys.
He didn’t want to return to Russia at all. He wanted to stay in North America and start the next phase of his life. He didn’t want to hear his father—who likely hadn’t even watched any of the games—shame him for not bringing home a gold medal. He didn’t want to live with his father, or depend on anyone anymore. He wanted to be rich and famous and loved and have a huge garage full of sports cars. He wanted expensive clothes and gorgeous women and hot nightclubs. He wanted the weight of his family, and his country, lifted. He wanted to be himself.
Shane rolled his eyes. He had been called “pretty boy” a few times before, usually during games, and he hated it. He wished he hated it this time.
The hype leading up to the first meeting between Hollander and Rozanov seemed, to Shane, to be a bit much. They were both only nineteen, and their NHL careers were only weeks old. He wasn’t sure what anyone was expecting to happen.
Rozanov was a lot of things, but he wasn’t boring. He frustrated Shane on the ice, and flustered him off the ice. Shane wanted to crosscheck him in the mouth, and then kiss it better. He wanted to forget about him, and he wanted to play every game against him. He wanted...
Rozanov leaned in and pressed kisses to Shane’s hair and face and down to his throat. The kisses weren’t seductive or heated. They were light and sort of...adoring. Shane’s eyes fluttered closed, suddenly very sleepy, and he heard Rozanov murmur something to himself in Russian, and felt the words tickle the skin under his jaw.
SHUT UP!!!!
Shane kind of couldn’t believe that Rozanov had made them both dinner. He found it, he realized with some horror, adorable.
As soon as he had Shane in his arms, he was done for.
That admission would have been embarrassing enough, but Ilya had also slipped in an “and on top of everything, I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“I’m fucked,” he murmured in Russian. “I am so fucking in love and it’s horrible.”
Shane had traced a fingertip down that arm, over the swell of Ilya’s bicep, because he couldn’t help it. The morning light was making everything beautiful, and Shane was in love, so he had leaned in and lightly kissed Ilya’s wrist.
Shane was beaming up at him, eyes bright and freckles crinkled, and Ilya loved him. And Shane loved him.
The sun shone on every inch of Shane: his skin, his hair, his freckles. He looked so achingly beautiful and happy. It was a shame that Ilya was going to ruin it. A shame, but there was no choice about it: Shane Hollander was standing on the edge of a dock, and now his back was turned to Ilya. Like an idiot.
“First of all,” Yuna said, “have you talked to Scott Hunter?” She said the name like it physically pained her to speak of the evil man who had stolen Olympic gold from her beloved son.
Ilya wanted to tell Shane that it had been one of the best days of his life. It had been awkward, sure, but Ilya felt that, if he hadn’t quite been already, he would be welcomed into Shane’s family, and that was no small thing. In fact, to Ilya, who had barely been welcome in his own family, it was huge.
He wanted to tell Shane that the closest he felt to home was when he was with him. It didn’t matter if it was in a hotel room, or Ilya’s apartment, or at that weird hideout building Shane bought in Montreal, or here at Shane’s cottage; he was himself when he was with Shane. He’d left Russia, he was uneasy in America, and he’d spent his entire adult life drifting between continents and between lovers.
