Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Connors (Heated Rivalry), Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Original Player Characters (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Romance Novelist Shane Hollander, POV Ilya Rozanov, Himbo Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Romance Novel, Crack Treated Seriously, Angst and Feels, but like not as much as canon, Internalized Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Misogyny, NHL All-Star Weekend, NHL All-Star Game

Language:

English

Series:

Part 10 of Hollanov fics

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-20 Completed: 2026-05-21 Words: 14,973 Chapters: 4/4

Abso-pucking-lutely

Summary

Shane Hollander writes romance novels. Ilya Rozanov finds out.

Notes

So I've been reading a lot of mm romance novels because the world is trash right now and I love that romance novels always happy endings. So I finished a novel and went about my life and then suddenly this idea hit me like a lightening bolt: what if Shane wrote romance novels and Ilya read them and was like 🤔.

And then I made this tumblr post which you might have seen because it kind of went viral.

So I started writing it and it turned out way less crack and more angst than I thought. This might be my most angst of a fic in this fandom? I don't know, 'A True Thing' was pretty angsty I guess.

(I really love crack treated seriously bc I love coming up with a ridiculous idea and then thinking 'how could I arrange this world so this is actually beliveable'?)

Anyway, I think the fic is finished. I might add a little bit, but rn it's four chapters and 14k. I'll be posting every few days or something.

Content notes: I tagged for 'implied/referenced misogyny' because there's a lot of male characters talking about women (but few actual women make an appearance) and some discussion about whether women can play hockey and/or if they should be admitted into the NHL'

I make some fake reddit posts here without doing any research. All reddit names used I made up without checking to see if the are real names. Sorry if i accidentally stole your name.

I used this tutorial for the reddit posts. Special thanks to my discord for plotting help!

Chapter 1

Anna couldn’t look away as Raits stroked his large cock. It was red and hard in his hand and she couldn’t help imagining what it would feel like inside of her, it was so big .

She was boiling with embarrassment but also with desire; her panties were soaked and her skin was so hot she felt delirious with fever.

“Not here,” she choked out.

Joan Dutch, The Puck Stops Here

.

“What is this?” Ilya asked, looking at the book in Marly’s hand doubtfully. He had never seen Marly with a book before. In fact, he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn Marly was illiterate if not for his incessant tweeting.

“It’s a book, bro,” Cliff said with a wide grin that showed off all his gleaming white fake teeth.

Ilya raised his eyebrows.

“Oh,” Consy said, coming over. “Is that the new Dutch? I heard it was super hot.”

“It’s a beauty,” Marly said. “On fire. The girl is such a fucking rocket.”

Ilya looked between them, entirely befuddled. “You read this?” he asked.

“I haven’t read this one,” Consy said. “But I’ve read her other books. You haven’t? Oh, I forgot, you’re not part of the book group.”

There was a book group? Ilya looked around, suspicious. This must be some sort of prank.

“We invited you,” Consy continued, “but I think you were distracted?”

“He was texting that Montreal girl,” Marly supplied.

“Oh,” Consy said, knowingly.

Ilya tried glaring at them but his glares had stopped working on them years ago.

“You get together and talk about book?” Ilya asked, certain now that this was a prank.

“It’s like a really fucking good book,” Marly said.

“Yeah,” Consy agreed. “The author really knows her hockey. I’ve heard speculation that she’s, like, a hockey writer or something.”

Ilya looked skeptically at the cover, which depicted a very large man who, yes, could conceivably be a hockey player, kissing a much smaller woman.

“This is book about hockey?” he asked.

“No,” Consy said. “It’s about a hockey player who falls in love with… what’s this one?”

Marly looked at the back of the book. “A chick who’s also a hockey player.”

Consy nodded his head. “The last one I read, The Puck Stops Here, was about a goalie who hooked up with the equipment manager.”

“Who was girl?” Ilya asked.

“Of course,” Consy said, like who else would a hockey player hook up with, and Ilya had to resist the impulse to roll his eyes. “It was really good except there were times when the author got way too into describing the advantages and disadvantages of different pieces of equipment. Like there was a whole tirade about CCM’s new glove design.”

Ilya found himself intrigued despite himself. “New glove design is problem,” he said. “Too stiff fingers.”

“Hey,” Church called, jogging over to them. “What is the hold-up? I am so hungry.”

“Waiting for you, bro,” Marly said and they headed out into the New York evening.

“You read the new Dutch book?” Church asked, peering over Marly’s shoulder. “Where did you find it?”

“I got my connections,” Marly said, with a wink.

“Dude, I’ve told you a hundred times, you’ve just got to pre-order it,” Consy said. “That’s not a hook-up, that’s just, like, how people normally get books.”

“I will ask my agent,” Church said.

“Oh my god,” Consy exclaimed. “Don’t ask your agent. Bro, your agency charges you like three hundred an hour. Just fucking go on Amazon.”

“You shouldn’t use Amazon,” Marly said. “I heard they, like, don’t pay their workers or something.”

“Are you still hooking up with that hippie chick?” Consy asked.

“Dude,” Marly said, “vegans are fucking hot. And they tell you things about, like, why grass is bad.”

“Grass is bad?” Ilya asked, hopefully. Maybe he could find an excuse to never go golfing again.

“Look, man, I don’t know,” Marly told him. “She starts going on about like pollinators and shit. She’s wicked smart.”

“What is the pollinators?” Church asked.

“Bees or something, right?” Consy said.

“Yeah, I think,” Marly agreed.

“What does grass have to do with bees though?” Consy asked.

“I don’t know,” Marly said again.

“So Amazon is bad for bees?” Church pressed.

Marly frowned. “No, like, I think they’re two different things. Like Amazon has these great deals on shipping because their workers have to piss in bottles or something?”

“What?” Ilya asked.

“Do they sell the piss?” Church asked. “What does that have to do with shipping?”

“I don’t know!” Marly said again. “She just tells me things!”

“Okay,” Consy said. “If you can’t get it on Amazon I guess you could go to like…” he frowned in thought.

“A bookstore?” Ilya suggested.

They all looked at him in surprise.

“Oh yeah,” Consy said. “There are like whole stores for books. Huh.”

“Here’s the place,” Marly said, as he reached the door of the restaurant and they followed him in, crowding in the small entryway until the host found their reservation and led them to the table.

.

Aimee loved her mother, but sometimes she needed some space. “I’m going to find the washroom,” she told her and disappeared into the maze of corridors that formed the interior of the practice arena. Luckily, her sense of direction held true and in a few minutes she was slipping out a door marked ‘Emergency Exit Only’. Someone had propped it open with a brick.

The cold air hit her like a blow, but she didn’t mind. She took a deep breath and wrapped her coat a little tighter around herself, wishing she’d brought her beanie with her. A clicking sound made her turn and she almost gasped out loud at the sight.

A boy— a man really— about Aimee’s age was leaning against the wall, right next to a ‘no smoking’ sign, trying to light a cigarette. But it wasn’t the flagrant attempted violation of the rules that made her heart quicken; it was his halo of bright curls, his strong jaw, the wideness of his shoulders.

Suddenly, Aimee realized she knew that handsome face; It was Igor Sharov, Captain of the Russian Men’s World Juniors team and the number one heartthrob in Aimee’s locker room.

She must have made a sound, because Sharov looked over at her and raised his eyebrows.

“Hi,” she said, hoping her blush wasn’t too visible. “I’m Aimee Montclair. I’m on the Canadian Woman’s World Juniors team. You’re Igor Sharov, right? I was watching you play— your playing is beautiful.”

She remembered, suddenly, that men didn’t like that kind of thing. “I mean, it’s really good. You’re, uh, a really good player.”

Her face was burning despite the cold. Sharov looked her over, skimming his eyes from where her brown hair was piled messily on top of her head down to her dirty sneakers and back up. He smirked. “I know,” he said.

Joan Dutch, Pucky Go Lucky

.

Ilya dropped the book onto his lap and looked around. This had to be a joke, right? There was no way… but none of his teammates were looking at him, waiting to shout that he’d been pranked. The book Marly had loaned him was an ordinary looking paper-back, a jacked half-naked blonde man holding an extremely thin brown-haired woman dressed in a pink negligee— clearly not reflecting the contents of the book, not if she was supposed to be a hockey player. It had all the normal things books had; information about publication and the blurbs on the back about how good it was, even a preview of the author’s next book ‘The Puck Stops Here’ in the back.

The edges were worn, like Marly had carried it around for a long time. Surely this was way too much effort to go to for a prank.

And on top of all that, Ilya realized, was that no one knew about the first time he’d met Hollander except Hollander. There was only one person who could have… He looked at the name on the cover again. Joan Dutch… Dutch… That was a person from…

“Fuck!” Ilya exclaimed. Across the aisle, Portland started and looked over at him.

“Paper cut,” Ilya explained. He turned to the back of the book.

Joan is an avid hockey fan who lives in Montreal. She spends her summers hiking, kayaking, and spending time in the sun and is a lifelong Voyageurs fan.

It couldn’t be, could it? Ilya flipped ahead.

Aimee looked up at Sharov as he pinned her against the hotel room wall. “I’ve never done this before,” she admitted in a small voice. “Go easy on me?”

Sharov ducked his head to kiss her neck lightly. “Of course,” he said, with surprising tenderness. It was a sharp contrast to the hardness of his cock, which was digging into her hip. Just the feeling of it pressing against her made her mouth water. What would it feel like in her mouth, on her tongue? Would Sharov think she was a slut if she wanted to find out?

He flipped ahead further.

Sharov teased her entrance with his fingers and Aimee was torn between begging him to push them deeper and nerves. “You play with you here?” he asked. “Or are you too virgin?”

“Fuck off,” she hissed. “I’ve got a… a thing?”

“A thing?” he repeated, his fingers tracing up and down from her clit to her hole. It was all she could do not to gasp and rut against him.

“A dildo,” Aimee spit out.

Sharov’s fingers stopped moving and Aimee had to grit her teeth not to rock back on them. “What color?” he asked. “How big is it?”

“Shut the fuck up,” she said and he laughed.

Ilya flipped all the way to the back.

Igor dropped the last box onto the stack and wipe his face with the back of his hand. “All finished?” he asked. “Why you have so much stuff? Books so heavy!”

“That’s the last one,” she agreed, putting her box down as well. She looked around with satisfaction, already thinking about how she was going to decorate. How they were going to decorate. How they were going to merge their lives together, from now on.

“Good,” Igor said and caught her around the waist from behind. He kissed her neck. “Now we need to break in bed, yes?”

Aimee laughed and spun around, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him back. “We need to christen every room of the house,” she told him.

“Got to start, then.”

“We’ve got all the time in the world.”

Ilya was still staring, mind blank, at the book when the plane came to a stop and everyone starting bustling around, grabbing their bags and coats.

“You finish already, bud?” Marly asked and Ilya looked down to see the book still open to the last page in his lap. “Good read, huh? I think I actually learned something about offensive plays from it.”

“About time,” Ilya chirped, automatically.

Marly reached to take the book from him and Ilya snatched it up and wrapped an arm around it.

“Not finished,” he said as Marly’s eyebrow shot up. “Just looking to see ending.”

“Okay, okay,” Marly said, holding up his hands. “Give it back whenever.” He shrugged on his coat and shouldered his bag. “You gonna hang out in the plane all night?”

Ilya realized that almost all of the other players had filtered off the plane and he stood, pulling his jacket and bag from the overhead. “Just do not want traffic,” he lied.

“Okay,” Marly said, clearly not buying it. He led the way off the plane, into the cold winter air. The private terminal of Logan was quiet this time of night, a few staff speaking quietly to each other in one corner. They passed through the terminal and into the parking garage, to where their SUVs were parked side by side. “See you at practice later, bro,” Marly said, climbing into his.

“Yeah,” Ilya agreed, unlocking his car and climbing in. He realized he was still holding the book and dropped it on the passenger seat, then took a deep breath and started the vehicle.

The one good thing about getting back in the middle of the night was that there was no Boston traffic. Ilya made it to his house without incident, dumped his bag beside the front door, grabbed a Gatorade and flopped down on his couch. He looked down at the book again, then grabbed his laptop from his coffee table.

Joan Dutch, he searched. The first few results were from booksellers, then a Facebook page. He clicked on it, but it was clearly run by the author’s publicist. There was a website too, but it only contained information about the books.

Ilya cracked his neck and browsed the next few pages. Book reviews, some more social media that gave no impression of the actual author. It was clear that ‘Joan Dutch’ was a pen name, but apparently that was common for romance authors.

Finally, on the fourth page of results:

Ilya was just about to close the window with the title of another post caught his eye.

Ilya looked up ’self-insert’ and then felt his face flush. Hollander was… did that mean Hollander wanted to be a women?

No, Ilya decided immediately. He flipped to the end of the book. There was a passage... yes:

Aimee was intimidated by the WAGs at first. She felt so massive beside them, with her hockey mass and height. They weren’t all identical but most of them had the kind of polished look you only get when you’re dedicated to you looks, go to a beauty parlor every week, and spend thousands of dollars and an hour a day on your makeup.

Igor didn’t want a woman like that, she reminded herself, as she found her seat. A pretty brunette smiled at her, introduced herself as ‘Macy, Nile Richards’ girlfriend,’ and gave her a cocktail. Igor had chosen her, had invited her to move in with him, had introduced her to his friends and teammates. Igor had chosen Aimee out of all the woman who had (and still did) throw themselves at him. So it didn’t matter that she didn’t dye her hair platinum blonde or restrict herself to only three calories a day or wear shoes that made Aimee’s feet ache just to look at them. All that mattered was her and Igor. And Igor was skating out onto the ice to the roaring cheers of the Manchester crowd.

No, Hollander didn’t want to be a woman. Ilya’s stomach tightened and he resisted the urge to— something. Scream or topple over the coffee table or call Hollander and say… what? Accuse him of writing his book or sympathize with how he felt or confess the amount of time Ilya spent thinking about him?

Tell him he felt the same way?

Ilya swore and leaned his head on the backrest of the couch, staring up at the ceiling. It’s not like it changed anything. No matter how Hollander felt— no matter how Ilya felt— it’s not like they could be together. Even the little they did, the few times a year they saw each other, the occasional text was a risk Ilya shouldn’t have indulged in, not if he wanted to ever go back to Russia.

So maybe Hollander wanted something more. (Maybe Ilya did). It wasn’t like they could have it.

Ilya put the book and laptop on the coffee table and stretched out on his sofa. It was after 4 in the morning— he should go to bed. His bed was so big and empty. He fell asleep on the couch.

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

I'm screaming at all the amazing comments and kudos! Thank you!

This chapter utilizes css code from this tutorial to simulate messaging.

Ilya dragged himself into practice that afternoon, did his warm-ups and exercises, then headed into the locker room.

“Bro!” Marly exclaimed when he saw him. “You looked wrecked. Stay up all night reading? I get it.”

Ilya, who was still trying to come to terms with the idea that Marly was literate, grunted.

“Those sex scenes are so banging, though,” Marly continued, oblivious. “She’s so fucking hot for it. I love a chick like that.”

Ilya flinched, suddenly sucker-punched by the realization the Hollander had written down accounts of him and Ilya having sex (poorly disguised) and then published them for thousands of people, including Ilya’s teammates, to read (and possibly masturbate to).

He was simultaneously brimming with pride and horror.

“Roz, you’re gonna be late for practice,” Consy said, nudging him.

“Yeah,” Marly said, smirking, “it hit me like that too.”

.

After practice was over, Ilya googled bookstores nearby. The one closest to his drive home was massive, three stories with elevators and a cafe. Ilya hadn’t realized reading was so popular. He wandered around lost for a quarter of an hour before a sale associate whose name tag read ‘Erin’ took pity on him and asked if he needed help.

“Look for books by, uh, Joan Dutch,” he said.

“Oh,” she replied brightly, “that’s an easy one.” She lead him on a winding path through the store to where a round table had been set up with piles of book. All, he was shocked to discover, romance novels starring hockey players. This was a genre now?

Hollander’s novels had pride of place. There were three of them, Erin told him, touching each in turn. Pucky Go Lucky was the first. “It’s more of a boy meets girl kind of story, you know,” Erin gushed. “The usual relationship hurdles; where do we live, how do we reconcile our different lives kind of thing. It’s very sweet though, very loving? I think that’s really the thing that attracts people.

“Then this one,” she gestured to The Puck Stops Here, “it’s a little… darker I guess? I’m not sure if that’s the right word to use because it’s not, like actually dark, just in comparison, it’s less sweet, less gentle. It’s got a little dom/sub vibes, you know? The protagonist is meaner, that kind of thing. It’s not my favorite, honestly, but a lot of people are really hot for that kind of thing.

“And the latest.” She pointed to Good Puck, Baby! “Only came out a few months ago, instant best seller. It’s really interesting because it’s kind of set in an alternative universe where there are women on the NHL but then the protagonist and the love interest are actually on different teams, so you have that tension. It’s really cool— I’ve never read a book with that premise before.”

Rozanov considered the books. They had bright colors, simplified people, like paper cut outs, hugging or kissing, with some kind of hockey paraphernalia— pucks and sticks and helmets— in the background or as decoration.

“You have…” he fished for the term, gesturing. “Books with hard…”

“Hardcovers?” Erin supplied. “I’m not sure. They’re not as popular as paperbacks in this genre, because paperbacks are cheaper and easier to carry around. I can show you where they’d be.” She led him between shelves of books to where more of Hollander’s books were shelved. “No, it looks like we only have the hardcover for the newest release. I’m sure you can order it online though, or I can order it for you and you can pick it up in probably about a week.”

“No, it is okay,” Ilya said, and took the books off the shelf, one of each in paperback because he, ridiculously, wanted them to match.

.

He was determined not to binge-read them. He had things to do, after all; practices and meetings and an enormous amount of food to consume and workouts and getting half the muscles in his body iced on a regular basis and so on.

But he slipped them into his bag and read; on the plane, on the bus, in the ice bath. In his hotel room after curfew. He read Hollander’s romance novels in full view of the team and, to his shock, no one chirped him about it. They’d all heard about them from Marly and Consy and Church, apparently.

“Church said it helped him on his offensive strategy,” Mike mentioned, when he saw Ilya reading The Puck Stops Here in a hotel lobby. “Heard coach was thinking about making it mandatory reading— the hockey bits.” He scratched his neck. “Making the sex bits mandatory might be sexual harassment.”

The thought made Ilya’s brain go a little fuzzy. He imagined the Bears management passing out copies of Hollander’s books with serious instructions about what pages to read. A few more pages and they might encounter a graphic description of the first time Ilya had rimmed Hollander. It took all of his self-control and not break out into hysterical laughter.

.

Erin’s assessment of the books turned out to be spot on. The first was— well, there was no word for it but soft. Ilya felt like he was reading a blurry picture of himself, all the sharp edges (and he knew he had too many) filed off. But then Aimee didn’t have Hollander’s one million hang-ups either. There was a lot of hand-wringing: Aimee’s life was in Montreal, but Igor’s was at the mercy of his NHL contract; even if she could move to Manchester to be with him, abandoning her college program and hockey team, he could still always get traded. Unusual for a player of his skill level, but teams made stupid trades all the time.

At least you can talk about each other publicly, Ilya thought, ridiculously resentful. At least you can go on dates.

But then it turned out there was a national woman’s hockey league being started, and Aimee had to choose between her tentative plans to move to Manchester after graduation and joining the draft.

“Follow your dreams,” Igor had encouraged her.

“But what if my dreams take me away from you?” she’d asked.

“We will make work,” Igor had promised.

Then: deus ex machina. Aimee was drafted to the new Boston WHL team. They bought a house together within easy commuting distance of both Boston and Manchester. Happy ever after.

Ilya put the book down in his bag and looked out the window. There was just darkness out there. When he’d been little he’d thought you’d be able to see the stars brighter than ever if you looked out a plane window, but instead, when there was cloud cover or when you were flying over the ocean, it was as if you were traveling through a void, as if the plane and the people on it were there only things that actually existed.

It was early in the morning; they’d left directly from the arena as soon as they’d gotten through cool-downs and checkups with the trainers and media. Ilya’s thigh still hurt where he’d stopped a puck with it, though his pad had mostly protected him.

Around him, his teammates were mostly sleeping, though there was a murmur of soft voices from the back of the plane. Ilya took out his phone and opened his text thread with Jane. They hadn’t texted since the Bears had played Montreal five weeks earlier. It had been a one-off; they’d gotten to Montreal in the morning, played in the evening and gotten back on the plane. Not enough time for a fuck.

Hollander had always been the reluctant one. He’d taken almost a year to respond to anything after their assignation had gotten snowed out, he left Ilya on read half the time, sometimes he’d up and cancel their fuck dates without reason, even though they only ever had a few opportunities a year.

Ilya knew why; Hollander was ashamed, afraid. Of liking men and what they did together, of emotional intimacy, probably. Of Ilya, definitely. Sometimes Ilya felt like he was holding his breath, waiting for Hollander to call it off.

And then Hollander wrote a fucking book about them. Ilya had read the scene where Igor and Aimee confessed their love to each other so many times he was surprised he hadn’t worn the ink off the page. Hollander who had barely even glanced at him at the last NHL awards, who would kiss Ilya so sweetly one moment and then run out of the hotel room like his ass was on fire the next.

Hollander, who’d written a fucking four hundred page book about how much he wanted them to be together.

Ilya scrubbed his face with his hands. What the fuck was he supposed to think?

.

November passed and then December. They won more games than they lost. Maybe this would be their year.

Sometimes Ilya felt like he was stuck in a time loop, like Groundhog Day, except instead of a day that repeated endlessly it was a year. New team members, new scandals, new injuries, same questions in the media scrum, same speeches before play-off games. “We just got to leave it all out there,” and “we’re gonna keep working on our offensive, our defense, looking for weakness, convert our chances,” and “it just wasn’t our year, but we’re gonna train hard over the summer and come back next year raring to go.”

Same flights same hotel rooms same crappy visitors locker rooms. The Northwest trip, the Desert trip, the Battle of the Northeast, the Winter Classic, the All-Star Game.

.

The second book featured Anna, the older sister of Aimee from the first book, who served as an equipment manager for the Bluefins, a team out of Halifax. She had the same kind of obsessive knowledge and rigid notion for how things should be done as Hollander, which led her into conflict after conflict with Raits, a loose and carefree goalie.

A scheduling error resulted in her going into the showers only to find Raits jerking off. She stared a little too long and that had caused Raits to proposition her. She ran out of the showers; Raits found her in the equipment room, where he tried to apologize, but she pounced on him.

As Erin had said, the book was a little edgier. Raits was meaner, Anna pushier, and they got into fight after fight.

Meanwhile, the Bluefins were struggling, despite Raits’ best efforts, not just the team but the management, making Anna’s job harder and filling Raits with frustration and they took it out on each other, Raits holding Anna down and fucking her hard or commanding her to go to her knees for him.

There was even a version of that night in Las Vegas, both of them smarting from a loss that had been partially due to Anna’s boss not ordering the equipment she’d told him she needed. Raits had told her to strip and climb on the bed and put on a show for him and Anna had.

It had been hot, in Ilya’s memory, but that had been eclipsed by how cold it had been, how, after, he’d felt hollowed out and torn up.

But in Anna and Raits’ version, she’d stayed the night. It was the first night they spent together. Raits had asked her if it had been okay, had kissed her and cuddled her and held her all night.

.

The natural consequences of playing a high impact sport where fighting wasn’t sufficiently discouraged at the absurd rate of three times a week caught up to them in mid-December; Portland was out for a mild concussion, Cader with a fractured wrist, Sebs dislocated his shoulder, Auder with a groin injury, and Mike with bursitis in his knee.

So they got a couple of call-ups from Providence. The first, Feller, was an older guy who’d played a few games with them the season before. He was a sturdy, reliable D-man, polite, affable, on good terms with everyone.

The second, Dubek, was their second round pick, sent down to develop for another season. He strutted into the room like he owned the place. You saw that with mediocre players; they’d been big shots on their local teams, carried them to local championships, etc, but had never had the humbling experience of playing on national teams with guys you’d looked up to for most of your childhood.

Getting sent down after training camp had knocked some of the swagger out of him, but he was still too loud in the locker room, too eager to express an opinion. Ilya thought he might have to take the kid aside.

They were on the plane to Florida, Ilya sitting next to Marly as usual, The Puck Stops Here in his lap as he took a time out from reading to debate the merits of the different flavors of the protein bars the trainers stocked, when Dubek came down the aisle, stopping beside Ilya for a moment to say something, when he spotted the novel in Ilya’s lap.

“What’s that?” he asked, in a jeering way that had all of Ilya’s hackles rise.

“It is a book,” Ilya replied, coldly.

“Isn’t it, like, for chicks though?” Dubek asked. “I don’t know, man, that’s kind of gay.”

“What is gay about quality writing about a man and woman falling in love and having better sex than you’ve ever had?” Marly demanded.

Dubek stared at him, mouth gaping.

“And Joan is probably a better hockey player than you too,” Consy added over the seat.

“Joan?” Dubek asked, confused.

“Maybe if you read it you’d stop falling for fake-outs,” Church said, from across the aisle.

“What?” Dubek asked.

“I’ve got an extra copy here,” Marly said, grabbing it from his bag and practically throwing it at Dubek. “But you gotta read it fast because the book club is on Thursday.”

Dubek looked at the novel in his hand. “Okay?” he asked.

“Move along,” Consy said, waving a hand at him. “I think rookies usually sit in the back.”

.

“Do you think the endings of the first two were too similar?” Consy asked. They were in the team lounge, in the seating area that overlooked the fitness room, where Mike was doing some PT and Niems was on the rowing machine.

“What do you mean?” Marly asked.

“Like, Aimee gave up moving to Manchester to be with Igor, but then, surprise, she got drafted to Boston, then Anne wanted to take the new job Aimee found for her but didn’t want to leave Raits, but he encouraged her anyway, so she did take it, but then Raits got his UFA and was able to sign with Brooklyn to be with her. Like both times they accepted being apart and then happened to be able to find themselves in the same place.”

Marly considered this. “I think it’s genre-appropriate,” he said. Ilya blinked at him. Genre-appropriate? “Like it’s a romance novel so they gotta have an HEA, right?”

“It does seem a little lazy,” Dubek agreed. “Like maybe the author didn’t really know how to end it so kinda just fudged things a little. Man, I can’t get over how good the hockey was, though. Like the author has to be a hockey player, right? Like in college or something?”

“I don’t know how else you’d know what she knows,” Consy agreed. “Like, this is clearly someone who spends a lot of their time thinking about hockey. Like I love the love stories and the characters and everything, but I also just kinda want her to write a book that’s just about hockey?”

“But the sex is so hot, bro!” Marly exclaimed. “The scene where Anne pegs Raits? On fire.” He licked his finger and pressed it on his skin with a sizzling sound.

“Isn’t that… kinda gay?” Dubek asked, clearly confused.

“Bro,” Marly said, and swung an arm around Dubek’s shoulders. “How can sex between a dude and a chick be gay? That’s like the definition of straight. For real, though, I love how the author plays with the dynamic, instead of just expecting that the female character will just be submissive and passive. Even though she’s the receptive partner most of the time, Joan has managed to make it feel like a choice not like bio-essentialism.”

“What?” Dubek asked, while the rest of them just stared at Marly.

“What?” Marly asked after a minute of this.

“What is ‘bio-essen—?” Church asked.

“‘Receptive partner’,” Consy repeated, with a dazed expression.

“Hey, I took a gender and sexuality studies class,” Marly said.

Ilya belatedly remembered that Marly had done a year of NCAA hockey before joining the Bears. He was the most well-educated of all of them, Ilya was horrified to realize.

“That sounds gay,” Dubek decided.

“Oh it was, bro. It really was,” Marly agreed with relish.

.

Marly had an enormous, sprawling family, who lived a bit south of Boston and spoke in a Southie accent so thick Ilya often had a hard time understanding them, despite his overexposure to Marly.

He invited Ilya and some of the other members of the team over for the holidays. This year it was Ilya and Consy and Dima. Marly’d bought a new house for his parents, a sprawling farmhouse where his father, a retired plumber, could live out his dreams of being a farmer, which mostly, Ilya was given to understand, meant he had chickens that were constantly having health problems and a garden that produced so many zucchinis he was constantly foisting them off on Marly who’d then try to give them to the rest of the team.

“I thought chickens were meant to be hardy?” Dima said whispered to Ilya in Russian after they’d listen to Marly’s dad recount everything that had gone wrong with his chickens in the last year.

“I have no idea,” Ilya admitted.

Even with the size of the farmhouse, it couldn’t compete with the sheer number of people who appeared to belong, at least peripherally, to Marly’s family. Marly had introduced Ilya to a large number of them the first time he’d come around— for the American Thanksgiving his rookie year— and he was embarrassed to still be confused about all of their names their relationship to Marly.

They were loud, expressive people, arguing and agreeing at the same volume, freely affectionate, the polar opposite to Ilya’s own family, which was small and cold and always seemed to be diminishing. Ilya’s father had cut off contact with his mother’s relatives when she died and left them with only a cousin and her unhappy, quiet daughter.

“There’s our captain!” Marly’s dad shouted, when Marly and Ilya came in, trailed by Consy and Dima. “This is gonna be our year!”

The kids swarmed them, knowing Marly always had a bag of Bears merch to hand out, the aunts and uncles or whomever looked on indulgently, and they gave the kids high fives and listened to them excitedly talking about their various hockey games and school-related achievements until Marly’s sister Shannon dragged them away, out of the house entirely, to where Marly’s siblings and a number of his cousins were bundled up in the backyard around a fire, drinking beer.

“So what’s new with the farm?” Marly asked, looking around at the yard.

Shannon groaned. “Don’t bring it up! You’ll get half an hour of dithering over whether or not to buy a riding mower.”

“I can buy him a riding mower,” Marly said.

“Don’t,” Laurie, one of Marly’s other sisters said. “It’s the dithering he likes.”

“Here,” Mark, Marly’s brother said, emerging from the garage with some Bears branded folding chairs and opening them up for them. “You want some beer?”

“It’s eleven in the morning,” Laurie protested.

“Relax,” one of the cousins said. “It’s Christmas.”

“There’s eggnog in the kitchen,” another cousin offered.

“Beer is good,” Ilya assured Mark, who handed him a Sam Adams.

“How’s college going?” Marly asked Laurie, who immediately launched into an anecdote about how one of her dorm mates had found a feral cat and tried to hide it in her dorm room and everyone else in the dorm had decided to help including Laurie’s roommate pretending to have very loud sex to cover up the sound of the cat meowing when the dorm supervisor came by.

Dima, whose English was worse than Ilya’s leaned over to ask him a question about the story, and Ilya was in the middle of explaining something about American universities when he heard Marly talking about Hollander’s novels.

“They’re wicked good, bro,” Marly was gushing. “You haven’t read them yet?”

Mark looked confused. “I don’t read a lot of, uh, romance novels?”

“Bro, these are hockey romance novels. It’s like hockey plus sex. The perfect combo.”

“Hockey players,” Laurie whispered to one of the cousins, who giggled.

“Isn’t there, like, romance?” Mark asked.

“Well, duh. But romance is, like, awesome? And the chicks are all super awesome, like total hockey bros. But like girls. Girl hockey bros.”

“Cliff,” one of Marly’s cousins said, in a singsong voice. “Is there something you want to share with the class?”

Marly looked baffled for a moment, then his face cleared. “You mean am I bisexual or whatever? Nah, I mean I guess I’m kinda heteroflexible maybe but I’m just not that into dick.”

“He took a gender and sexuality class at college,” Shannon explained to the gaping cousins. “Came back for Christmas break and spent the whole time lecturing Mark for using ‘gay’ in a pejorative manner and complaining about misogyny in advertising.”

“What are they talking about?” Dima asked Ilya.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” Ilya confessed.

“I’m gonna get you those books,” Marly promised Mark. “I’ll get them for everyone.”

“I’m intrigued,” one of the cousins admitted.

“Me too,” another one said, “and I don’t even like hockey.”

Laurie looked pointedly at her Bears hoodie.

“Cliff gave it to me!” she defended. “And it’s cozy! And I can still support Cliff even if I don’t like hockey.”

“Love you too,” Marly said, not offended at all.

“So, like, is everyone on your team reading the books?” Shannon asked.

Marly considered. “Maybe half?” he looked at Consy, who agreed.

“Yeah, half. We’ve got five in our book group.”

(“Oh my god you have a book group,” Ilya heard one of the younger cousins murmuring.

“You are not posting this on Tumblr,” the cousin beside her ordered.

“But the numbers I could do!”

“I will make you sign an NDA.”

“You’re not even involved.”

“I’m your sister, that makes me automatically involved.”)

“And I know a bunch of guys have read them on other teams,” Consy continued. “That’s where I heard about them, actually. Jakey, who was at St. Nicks with me, his wife made him read them and he recommended them to me.”

Jakey was with the Winnipeg Wolverines. “Who else you know?” Ilya asked. “From other team?”

“Oh,” Consy said, considering. “Vaugny— with the Admirals, uh, Advy, from the Wings, St-Jean, you know the goalie for the Drillers, Zec— he’s on the Geese. Buck, with the Cougars.”

“You know a lot of people on other teams,” one of the cousins commented.

“Oh, yeah,” Consy said. “We were all at the same development camp when we were in High School and we swore we’d always keep in touch, even if we played for different teams. Did this whole blood brothers thing and all.”

“Cute,” the cousin said. “Extremely unhygienic, but cute.”

“So all those people on your group chat or whatever read it?” Shannon asked.

Consy shrugged. “I don’t know if they all read all the books. We’ve talked about it a fair amount on the chat, though.”

“Anyone from the Voyageurs?” one of the cousins asked. “They’re like your arch-rivals or something, right?”

Consy smiled. “Actually, no. But not because of that; we obviously didn’t know where we were going to be playing when we were kids.”

“Dima has friend on the Voyageurs,” Ilya surprised himself by saying.

Dima looked at Ilya surprised and Ilya repeated it in Russian.

“Da,” he said. “Edik Andropov. We play on World Junior team. But I have not read this book. It not Russian translation. My English is not good.”

“That’s too bad,” one of the cousins said.

“Maybe Edik has,” Dima added. “His English better.”

“The author’s actually from Montreal,” Marly cut in, always eager to discuss his favorite author.

Ilya wanted to text Hollander and tell him he was Marly’s favorite author. He wanted to text him and tell him they were reading his books with half the NHL. He took out the phone and looked at the last message he’d gotten from him. It was from three weeks before, after a Voyageurs vs Meatpackers games in which Hollander had gotten brutally checked.

Ilya stared at it for a while. He wanted to text Hollander, but what do you text after that?

“Right, Rozy?” Marly said, and Ilya looked up.

“Hmm?”

“I was just saying there should be a woman’s hockey league, right?”

“Yes,” Ilya said. “Stupid is not. Woman very good at hockey, it is very sexy.”

“That seems a little objectifying,” one of the cousins commented.

Ilya shrugged. “It is, what do you say? Being good at something is sexy.”

“Competence kink?” Laurie suggested.

“Okay,” Ilya said. “So is sexy because they are good. But is also sexy because it is hockey. So is very sexy. Not objectify.”

“But you could say exactly the same thing about men’s hockey,” Laurie pointed out.

Ilya shrugged.

(“Oh my god,” one of the cousins whispered.

“Seriously, if I see any of this on tumblr I…”

“You’ll what?”

“I’ll tell mom about your AO3 account.”

“You wouldn’t. That’s low.”

“She’d read all your fics ‘to be supportive’.”

“Actually, literally evil.”

“‘Jessica, your Harry Potter/Tom Riddle fic is so inventive. Who would have thought of Voldemort laying eggs inside of—’”

“Okay, okay, I promise. Jeez.”

“Not on Discord either.”

“Emily…”

“Promise!”)

Ilya looked down at his phone again. The screen had gone dark.

Chapter 3

Chapter Notes

angst in my crack fic? more likely than you'd think

I’m glad there are woman in the NHL and I’m glad I’m one of them. It means so much to me to have been made captain of the Mavericks. I just wish I wasn’t the first, you know? It sounds great, being a trailblazer, doesn’t it? But what it really means is that you’re constantly fighting. I’m so tired of fighting.

The third book, Good Puck, Baby, took place ten years after the second. In the intervening time, the Woman’s Hockey League had somehow merged with the NHL, putting a few women on every NHL team and making them eligible for the draft. Alison, the youngest of the Montclair sisters had been the first woman drafted directly to the NHL, fourth overall in her draft year, though a lot of people thought she should have been first, based on the relative skill of the prospects. She’d been made captain of her team at 24, the first woman to be a captain of an NHL team.

She’d met Nick the summer after her fourth year in the league at Aimee’s wedding. He’d just finished his rookie year with the Manchester Rapids.

Nick had made a beeline to Alison as soon as her bridesmaids duties were over. Later, he’d reveal that he’d developed a crush on her just from seeing her play. He kept her entertained all evening, bringing her drinks and making her laugh.

She’d gone home with him that night and their sex had been sweet and fumbling, both of them relatively inexperienced, but joyful. It was a sharp contrast to how suave Igor and Raits had been in the previous books. Instead of Nick taking charge, they figured things out together.

In a burst of impulsiveness, Nice asked her to go on vacation with him and she agreed. Instead of going to a tropical resort like most of the NHL players, they went to the Isle of Skye, where they spent the whole week hiking through the Scottish country sides, eating picnics on heather-dotted slopes surrounded by wildflowers and sheep, reading books in the cozy stone cottage they rented, staying up in the middle of the night talking.

Nick was gentle and kind in a way that disarmed Alison, who spent so much of her life guarded against the people around her. It didn’t take much for him to start gushing about what an incredible player she was and she worried that she was taking advantage of his hero-worship and their four year age difference, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave.

After that week, Nick went back to Denmark for the summer while Alison went to train with her sisters and their husbands in Halifax. She suggested that they break things off, but Nick insisted— begged really— that they try out a long distance relationship, and, despite her better judgment she gave in.

Alison had been drafted to the Mavericks out of Madison, Wisconsin, and Nick was traded to the Georgia Aviators shortly into his second season, so they were halfway across the country from each other and weren’t even in the same conference, but they did everything they could to make things work, and in the summer they went on vacation again— to Greenland this time— and Alison invited Nick to train with her family.

The next year, Alison was made Captain and then, midyear, the unexpected happened; Nick was traded to the Mavericks.

At first everything was great. Nick moved in with Alison and they suddenly got to spend so much more time together. But then the reality of their situation became more clear; their living styles didn’t mesh well. Alison was neat and organized to a fault, while Nick was more easy going and careless. Alison was demanding of her team, pushing everyone to work harder while Nick had always been— not lazy. You don’t get into the NHL if you’re lazy— but laid back. Alison had a strict nutrition plan that she adhered to religiously and Nick was always making exceptions for himself, and so on.

“You need to relax, let some of this go,” Nick told her one day, when she’d been chiding him about eating a donut.

“I don’t get to relax!” she had snapped back at him. “I don’t get to let things go!”

“Why?” he demanded. “Just because your standards are so high…”

“They’re not my standards!” she’d shouted back. “They’re everyone else’s! Everyone is constantly looking for me to fuck up. Every time I play a game and don’t get a point they’re questioning if women deserve to be in the NHL. Every time we lose a game they’re asking if a woman has what it takes to be a team captain. It doesn’t matter that we’re at the top of our conference. It doesn’t matter that we’ve made the playoffs every year I’ve been with the Mavericks. It doesn’t matter that I’m leading the league in points. Every single mistake I make is proof the NHL shouldn’t have integrated. So, no, I don’t get to let things go.”

And then the media had found out about Alison and Nick’s relationship, which hadn’t been a secret but which they’d kept mostly private and all of the talking heads had made a big deal out of it, asking if it was unethical for a captain to be dating her teammate (never mind that Igor was Aimee’s captain on the Mavericks), if the four year age difference was a problem, if them dating was going to be a distraction (never mind that they’d been dating for two and a half years at this point).

Alison came out of a media scrum white faced and shaking one day and was silent all the way home and then she said ‘I think we need to break up’ and wouldn’t talk about it any further.

Frantic, not knowing what to do, Nick called Igor, who talked to Aimee, who called up and double-teamed Alison into talking about it, and they convinced her to meet with team management before either of them did anything drastic like break off their relationship.

Team management was supportive of their relationship and Alison agreed to give it a while, but things were rocky, especially with multiple players out on IR, a few of the older vets not respecting Alison as captain, the constant harassment from the media, and Alison got more and more tense until Nick suggested, one day, that he ask his agent for a trade.

Heartbroken and caught-off guard, she agreed and then went out and drove for hours, through the beautiful Wisconsin countryside, convinced that when she got back Nick would already be on a plane somewhere else.

But when she got back, he was still there, waiting for her with one of her favorite (nutrition plan compliant) meals ready.

Alison stared at him, her face hot, her heart ready to burst out of her chest.

“I don’t want to break up with you,” she confessed. “I don’t want you to get traded. I want… I just want you. Here, beside me.”

“It’s tearing you apart,” Nick said.

“And you put me back together.”

.

“I guess what bothers me,” Consy said, “is that their problems don’t get solved? Like, okay, you’ve committed to being together, again, but the media is still hounding you and your teammates are still being shitholes.”

“I think what change is Alison decides she cares more to be with Nick not about media,” Ilya suggested. “Before she think she must always look good for media, listen to what articles say, but now she decide to care about Nick first, not media.”

“It’s kinda realistic, right?” Dubek said. “Like problems don’t just magically go away, sometimes you gotta just accept things and move on with your life.”

“I guess that’s true,” Consy agreed, slowly.

“I love the idea of women in the NHL,” Marly said, enthusiastically. “It’s stupid they don’t let them in. Like if a woman can keep up— and I caught some of the woman’s games at the Olympics. They were wicked skaters! Like why not? It’s like we’re just arbitrarily excluding one half of all people for like the stupidest reason. Like yeah, okay, she’s got a pussy or whatever, she can still skate so, like, why do you fucking care?”

A year ago, Ilya wouldn’t have expected Marly to be a feminist, but at this point he felt like nothing could surprise him.

“What about the locker rooms?” Consy pointed out.

“Like, dude, if they don’t care I don’t care. It’s all just bodies, right? I take showers with hot people like every fucking day.”

“I’d play with women,” Church said.

Dubek looked dubious. “Are they hot?” he asked.

“Dude, they’re hockey players!” Marly exclaimed. “Of course they’re hot.”

Ilya had seen some ugly-ass looking hockey players in his time, but he didn’t mention it.

“What about you?” Consy asked. “How do you feel about women in the NHL?”

“Like you say,” Ilya said. “They are good players. I will take every good player on my team, I do not care about organs.”

“Eww,” Dubek said. “Organs?”

.

New Year’s passed in its usual drunken stupor. Ilya had managed to make the acquaintances of enough Russians in Boston that he hadn’t had to spend the holiday alone. Instead he’d gone from party to party, Dima at side. There was the Russian restaurant he and Dima went to as often as they could, the party at Boston University that Ilya was getting too old for, then another party with some young Russian professionals Sveta had introduced him to.

She was on the West Coast doing something for her business, and he felt her loss. They last time they’d seen each other, they’d fought. Ilya had been feeling annoyed because Hollander had left him on read again and he must have snapped at Sveta one to many times because she’d snapped back, telling him that if he wasn’t going to tell her what the problem was he wasn’t going to get to take it out on her.

Of course he couldn’t tell her. If he could have she would have understood why he couldn’t. But that didn’t help much when she was looking at him, hurt, reminding him that once they’d shared all their secrets with each other. Once they’d shared everything.

.

Things improved in January; Auder and Sebs came off IR and Dubek got sent back down. They won both games of a home and home with Buffalo and then went on a trip through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.

Ilya flew down to Miami for the too few days of bye week, spent most of them lying in the sun and the nights dancing (vertical and horizontal) and then he was flying all the fucking way to Vancouver for the All-Star weekend.

.

He wasn’t sure if Hollander would be there. He hadn’t heard from him since that text before Christmas and Hollander didn’t really like All-Star Weekend; he’d managed to be ’sick’ for three of the five All-Star Weekends they’d been invited to since he’d been drafted.

At least Vancouver wasn’t too cold. Ilya checked into the hotel and then got dinner with some of the other Russian guys, drinking too much and reminiscing about the times they’d played together.

He was interrupted in the middle of a story about something stupid Grisha had done at the World Cup one year by a text vibrating in his pocket. A specific text-tone he’d chosen for a specific person.

Fuck you, Ilya thought, but he was too drunk and stupid not to text back.

Text bubbles popped in and out for a solid minute. Fuck this. Fuck this guy, Ilya told himself, but he kept the phone on his thigh, where he could keep looking down at it while listening to Grisha finish the story (not at all the way it should be told).

Finally:

Ilya should have said ‘no’ and blocked him. He should have done anything except what he did, which was stand up and toss some of the ridiculous Canadian money on the table.

“Got a hookup?” Vitya guessed.

Ilya waggled his eyebrows and headed out.

The hotel was on the waterfront and the elevator had a glass wall so you could see the harbor as you were lifted higher and higher over it. Ilya got out on the 14th floor and headed down the hallway casual as anything, greeting the few guys he passed.

Hollander opened the door almost as soon as he knocked and ushered Ilya into the room like he thought he was in a spy novel. Hollander would have made a terrible spy. Everyone knew the best way to get caught was to act like you were doing something wrong. If you wanted to get away with shit you had to act like you had every right to be doing what you were doing.

They looked at each other for a moment, then Hollander had Ilya pinned against the wall, devouring him with his mouth, running his hands all over his skin. Ilya never understood how Hollander could turn on and off this passion, could act like the neediest of lovers one minute and then cold and distant the next. Could be this person and then go for months without a word.

.

Ilya had had it all planned out; he’d lure Hollander to his room, where Hollander’s books would be innocently placed on the night stand. Maybe he’d mention them. “Have you read these books? Everyone’s talking about them, it seems.” And Hollander would blush and pretend he’d never heard from them. Maybe Ilya would pick up Pucky Go Lucky and read the opening scene, mention how it sounded family, until Hollander broke. Hollander was a terrible liar— he’d fold easily.

Instead he blurted it out, when Hollander was just out of the shower, still drying himself off— that beautiful, luscious skin that Ilya wanted to lick all over. Hollander would be making noises about Ilya leaving soon, Ilya thought and then suddenly he couldn’t stand it any longer.

“I read your books,” he said.

Hollander froze. The towel fell to the floor.

“What do you mean?” he asked, his voice a little choked.

“Marly is very excited about them,” Ilya said, stretching out like he didn’t have a care in the world. “He talked me into reading it. I was so surprised that it seemed familiar. Maybe, I think, it is coincidence. But no— again, like straight out of memory. And then I look at author name. Dutch? It is obvious.”

“I thought so too,” Hollander said. “But Jackie thought it was funny. Anyway, she said, it wouldn’t matter because no one would ever put it together.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, looking a little miserable. “Hockey players weren’t supposed to read it. Hockey players never read romance novels.”

Hockey players do a lot of things they’re not supposed to do, Ilya thought. Case in point.

“I saw a reddit page,” Ilya said, probably trying too hard to sound casual. “Someone said it was self-insert fan-fiction about Ilya Rozanov.”

“Oh my god,” Hollander groaned, covering his face with his hands. “I know I should have done a better job at making Igor a different character. But I didn’t think anyone would read it!”

“I do not understand,” Ilya said, and here he was at the root of it, at the line he had thought of over and over, like sharpening a blade. “How you can write three novels about me but not answer a text.”

Hollander’s hands dropped away and for a moment he started at Ilya in confusion before his eyes narrowed in anger.

“Me?” he asked. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Half of time you leave on read!” Ilya exclaimed.

“Me?! I can’t fucking believe you. You fucking invented ghosting, you know that?”

“What?” Ilya asked, taken aback.

“We were going to fuck,” Hollander said, almost viciously. “You begged me to agree to it. You practically twisted my arm. You made me give you my number. And then what happened? The game got cancelled and I never fucking heard from you again. Five fucking months and you never texted me back. You looked at me on the ice like you didn’t know me. I though, maybe in Las Vegas, but you avoided me the whole fucking night.

“Oh but then you decided you wanted it again, I guess, or, I don’t know, you remembered how your thumbs worked, but you know, I wasn’t going to give in. I honestly don’t fucking even know why I didn’t block you. Didn’t you wonder why it took me two fucking years to say ‘yes’?”

Ilya shrugged, feeling dumbfounded. “I thought you were scared virgin,” he said.

“Fuck you,” Hollander said and stood up, pacing to the window. “I wish I’d listened to my instincts because you know what happened the moment I let you in again? We had that beautiful evening. You were so gentle and tender, so caring. You touched me like you gave a fuck and then what? You fucking ghosted me again.”

“The Olympics—”

“I don’t even fucking care about the Olympics. Yeah, I know you had you own shit to deal with, but that was two weeks and this was…” he shook his head. “Seven fucking months. You fucking fucked me like that and then you acted like I didn’t exist! We played a fucking playoff series against each other and you acted like I was a fucking stranger.”

“What I should have fucked you on the ice?” Ilya found himself asking.

“I don’t fucking know, but you shouldn’t have treated me like that. I don’t even have to get into what happened in Vegas.”

“You put it in your book.”

“Yeah,” Hollander admitted, still staring out the window.

“That’s how you wanted it?” Ilya found himself asking. “Cuddling all night long?”

“I wanted not to feel like I’d been hollowed out,” Hollander said.

He looked at Ilya over his shoulder, then looked back out the window. “Since then I’ve been more careful,” he said, sounding almost as if he were talking to himself. “Trying not to get sucked in too deep. Because I know you’re just going to pull that shit again.”

He sounded so lonely, so lost. Ilya wanted to go over to him, to wrap his arms around him, but Ilya had caused that. He’d been so annoyed at Hollander for jerking him around and he’d caused that.

“So yeah,” Hollander told the Vancouver skyline. “Maybe it’s a fucking self-insert fan-fiction or whatever, I guess, but not of Ilya Rozanov. Just someone I thought once, maybe, Ilya Rozanov was.”

There wasn’t much Ilya could do after that, but find his clothes and flee down the hall to his room.

Chapter 4

Ilya needed a drink, desperately, but all the bars along the waterfront emitted a warm glow onto the black water of the harbor, golden, like beacons of happiness, laughter and music spilling out of them, when all Ilya wanted to do was to be submerged by something cold and dark.

He was angry, ragingly angry, torn up with anger, but after a few minutes he realized he was angry with himself, not Hollander. Hollander was right or, at least, not wrong. Ilya had ghosted him twice, for half a year each time.

Hollander, for all his waffling, for all his leaving Ilya on read, had never done it for that long. Had never done it fuck after they’d had anal sex for the first time, like one of those assholes who dated a girl only until she let him fuck her and then dropped her like a used condom.

Ilya had had his reasons. He couldn’t remember what they were that first year, but he knew he’d had them. He’d been writing a reply to Hollander, then Sveta had interrupted him and then every time he’d gone to finish it something had stopped him. He couldn’t remember what now— it must have been something stupid if he couldn’t even remember.

And the second ‘ghosting’ after the Olympics, well. The Olympics had been such a shit show. For some stupid goddamned reason, Team Russia had named both Koshelev and Gromov to the roster, despite the fact that Gromov had very publicly divorced his wife, who was Koshelev’s sister, for his twenty year old mistress and meanwhile Ikanov and Bykov were division rivals who were notorious for getting into fights, Vasin was having the worst season of his life, Kopsov had only gotten on the team because his father was the head coach and apparently there wasn’t one goalie in the entirety of Russia who was capable of stopping pucks.

The Olympics was a major shit show and everyone blamed Ilya, despite him being on a team with 24 other players. He had failed Russia, he had failed his father (and his father was failing) and he had been distracted. He had been thinking about Hollander since they’d hooked up, had been having daydreams about what they’d do the next time they were together, had fantasized about fucking Hollander in the Olympic Village, despite what a terrible fucking idea that would have been. Ilya had been distracted and they’d not just lost but lost horribly. Lost to Latvia, a team with, maybe, two good players on it.

And then Sveta had said Ilya had a chance at the cup and he’d promised himself he’d get it. It was going to be his redemption arc. No distractions. No Hollander.

And it had worked and he hadn’t considered what it must have felt like for Hollander, getting ignored like that. Being looked through the way Ilya had looked through him, because looking at him would have been so distracting he would have lost.

Still, he could have sent a text. It would have been very easy to have sent a text. He hadn’t even considered it. Just a simple “I’m trying to focus on my game right now, let’s reconnect next season” or something like that.

No, Hollander had been right. Ilya Rozanov was the asshole. Igor Sharov and Raits Lapins and Nicklas Juhl would have never done anything like that.

Because they were fictional characters, probably.

He’d reached the end of the waterfront, the path running into some kind of park that was closed for the night. Restlessly, he turned around and headed back the way he’d come.

He ended up in front of Hollander’s door, pounding on it before he could think better of it. Hollander didn’t answer. Ilya knocked again, and knocked until the door beside Hollander’s opened, Scott Hunter leaning out of it.

“Jesus Fucking Christ,” Hunter said. “Get in here, kid.”

Ilya bristled at being called ‘kid’ and was trying to think of a good insult when Hunter added “you want the whole league to know your business?”

Ilya followed him into the room.

Hunter produced a bottle of something and poured a glug of it into a mug and handed it to him.

“What you know about my business?” Ilya asked him, wincing at the sweet flavor of the liquor.

“More than I’d like to,” Hunter said. “Did you forget the part where you arranged an assignation right in front of me at the All-Star Game your rookie year? Or the part where you and Hollander then fucked all night in the room next to mine? Because it is burned into my memory.”

“Fuck,” Ilya said. “You did not tell anyone?”

“Kid,” Hunter said, “that was six years ago. If I’d told anyone you’d already know.”

“Thanks,” Ilya said, begrudgingly.

“I don’t want to know your business,” Hunter told him. “In fact, I’d really appreciate not knowing your business, so it would be helpful if you remembered how thin hotel room walls are. For example, tonight I was in the middle of a video call with my boyfriend when I was treated to a reprise of your business followed by a very loud argument. Kip thought it was hilarious.”

“Your boyfriend,” Ilya repeated.

“You thought you two were the only gay guys in the NHL?” Hunter asked.

“I’m not gay,” Ilya said.

“I don’t give a fuck,” Hunter told him. “Look, he’s clearly not gonna open that door. Go to bed, apologize for whatever the fuck you did in the morning. And tell Hollander that pseudonyms are supposed to make it hard to guess your identity. ‘Dutch’? Seriously?”

“You read Hollander’s books.”

Hunter sighed. “The hockey was good. But that joke about Finns being in love with their cousins is pretty tired. Tell Hollander to consider retiring it.”

.

Ilya went to bed, but not to sleep. After staring up at the ceiling for half an hour, he went and found his copy of Pucky Go Lucky in his bag and, despite himself, starting reading it again. Igor Sharov was who he wished he was too.

.

There was no fantasy draft this year, thank god. Instead, the league had decided to let the fans decide the whole thing through online voting. It had taken weeks, apparently, and been a running topic on all the hockey shows and blogs. Leo Bonin, captain of the Vancouver Orcas, was one of the team captains, of course. The fans, having randomly been divided into one team or the other, had voted for their favorite for captain and top players in offense, defense, and goaltender and some fancy algorithm compiled it all.

The lists were kept secret until that Friday, though, when the announcers did their tedious tension building thing, calling the names out one by one, cameras in the waiting room to capture each player’s reaction when they did and did not get chosen.

Hollander was picked for away team captain, no surprise. Ilya watched on the provided televisions as he walked, smiling what Ilya thought of as his Orange Soda smile at the crowd. After a few minutes of excruciating banter with the hosts, they called the first alternate captains for the two teams. Hunter and Ilya, and Ilya, of course, was on the away team.

Hollander turned the Orange Soda smile on Ilya as he came out, shaking his hand like Ilya hadn’t been balls deep in him, as if he hadn’t said what he’d said to Ilya the night before. Ilya returned media face for media face and then turned back to the hosts, who wanted to joke about Ilya and Hollander being on the same team for the first time ever.

“Don’t accidentally board him,” one of the announcers said and Ilya hoped whatever he was feeling didn’t show on his face.

Thankfully the announcers moved on to the second alternate captains, then the rest of the teams. All Ilya had to do was sit on the stage and make his face look normal and ignore the fact that Hollander was so close he could feel his body heat.

.

They went out as a team that evening, as was All-Star Game tradition. Hollander must have been warned ahead of time, because he had a restaurant already reserved, a place on the waterfront that sold fresh cuts of fish. Ilya would have sat at with Grisha and Sasha and a few other guys he knew, but Cooper, the other alternate captain, rounded him up and declared they were going to sit at the ‘captain’s table’.

That’s how Ilya found himself sitting next to Hollander again, while Cooper and the goalie Jean St-Jean discussed some mutual acquaintances.

“You guys are being quiet,” Cooper noticed. “Roz? I’ve never see you go so long without chirping someone.”

“Tired,” Ilya said. “No sleep last night,” he added with a suggestive wink.

“Nice,” Cooper said, approvingly. “Everyone always says you’ve got a girl in ever port.”

Hollander stood, abruptly. “I’m going to the washroom,” he said.

“Huh,” St-Jean said. “You guys really are hating each other?”

“No,” Ilya said, even though he probably should have agreed. “Hollander only pouting because he knows when I am on team he is second in points.”

Cooper didn’t seem convinced. “He won’t even, like, look at you. It’s kinda weird.”

Ilya shrugged and tried to think of something to change the topic to. “You read the romance novel?”

“This novel everyone is talking about?” St-Jean asked. “I think it is written by a French Canadian?”

Ilya shrugged. “I don’t know,” he lied.

“I read ‘em,” Cooper said. “Romance isn’t my thing but the hockey was good. The sex was pretty hot, I guess. That Aimee is a rocket. Everyone’s saying we should get woman in the NHL now.”

“Why not?” Ilya asked.

“The locker room might then be smelling better,” St-Jean pointed out.

“But, like, wouldn’t it be weird? You think the chicks could keep up?”

“The women on Olympics team are very good,” Ilya said.

“They don’t have enough training,” Hollander said. He sat back down in his seat.

“You do not think they can play?” Ilya asked, surprised.

“No,” Hollander said. “I think they can play. But they don’t have the resources boys do. They don’t get the extra training, the attention. It’s not fair to compare what women and men can do when women don’t have the same advantages. It’s like if you gave a special study section to one group of students and then tested them all and decided that that one group was naturally smarter.

“I suspect that if we gave the same resources to young female players as we do to male players we’ll get just as many skilled girls as skilled boys. In the meantime, why not draft the women who have shown they can play onto the NHL?”

“It’s too violent for women,” Cooper said.

“Women aren’t more fragile than men are. Their bones aren’t made of something different. Their skin is the same.”

“They’re smaller,” Cooper pointed out.

“Only on average,” Shane said. “There are plenty of women who are just as big as you or me.”

“I just don’t think I could check a woman,” Cooper said.

“So they’d have a psychological advantage,” Hollander pointed out.

Ilya laughed.

“It’s such a ridiculous idea,” Cooper continued. “Everything would have to change.”

“Like maybe they’d have to stop all the hazing that happens in juniors and to rookies?” Hollander asked.

“Well, yeah,” Cooper said, looking a little uncomfortable.

“And that would be a bad thing?”

“It doesn’t even matter what we think,” Cooper burst out. “It’s never going to happen.”

Hollander shrugged.

“I liked these books,” St-Jean said. “Good hockey, very fun.”

“Thank you,” Hollander replied on autopilot and then his eyes popped open wide.

“Yes, thank you for opinion, is very correct,” Ilya added quickly. “St-Jean you recover well from injury?”

St-Jean laughed. “You think I will tell you this?”

Ilya gasped in mock offense. “You think I’m want secret? Only asking so I’m polite.”

“Yeah, bro, we’re just caring friends,” Cooper said. “Where exactly on your lower body was that injury?”

“Fuck you,” St-Jean said and threw a cherry tomato at him.

.

Somehow Ilya ended up walking beside Hollander on the way back to the hotel. Ilya enjoyed the cool night air, despite the drizzle.

“Thanks,” Hollander said, breaking the silence. “For covering for me, back there.”

“Okay,” Ilya said. He looked at Hollander, walking with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. “I am sorry.”

Hollander looked at him surprised.

“You are right,” Ilya told him. “It was… I should have texted you. I did not think it would hurt you.”

“It didn’t hurt me,” Shane spat out quickly.

Ilya glanced at him again, eyebrows raised. “You were angry. You would not be angry if did not hurt.”

“I was angry because you came at me upset that I didn’t text you when you had done the exactly the same thing to me but for much longer.”

“Okay,” Ilya said. “Sorry for that. Too.”

Hollander took a deep breath and turned to stare at the water. Ilya stopped too, looking out over the harbor, at the distant gleam of lights, gone blurry with the rain and fog.

“I wrote the first book three years ago. When I was out with broken ankle, remember?”

“Yeah,” Ilya said.

“I was so bored. My parents wanted me to come and stay with them but I still had to go to practice and meetings and home games and work out the parts of my body I could. So Jackie— Hayden Pike’s wife— invited me to come and stay with them. She’s got three kids— a fourth on the way— and, like, so many nannies and housekeepers and I don’t know what else, that there’s always someone around, so it was a lot better than being home alone. And I could ride to the training rink with Hayden, which was good because driving with a broken ankle sucked.

“But I was still really bored. I had way too much time to think, so I started thinking, and I thought about you. Or— us, I guess. What it was like with you.

"I’m gay?” He add, glancing sideways at Ilya, who couldn’t help saying “Oh, really?”

“Fuck you,” Hollander said, sounding a little relieved at Ilya’s reaction. “I mean, you fuck women too.”

“Yes,” Ilya said.

“Well, I don’t.”

“Okay.” Ilya didn’t know what else to say to that.

Hollander gave him a long look, then looked back across the water.

“I’m gay,” he said again, more confidently. “Even though I tried really hard not to be. And in that house, with Jackie and the kids and…” he swallowed. “It was kinda like, you know, everything I wanted? And I thought ‘I’ll never get to have this.’ Because I’ll never get to be out, I guess, so I'll never get any of that; the relationship, the children, living as myself in full view of the world.

“But I couldn’t help imagining what it could be like. You know, if you weren’t an asshole and it wouldn’t ruin our lives if people knew about us. And I kept thinking about and thinking about it and like if I were a girl— I don’t want to be a girl,” he added, quickly. “I’m not like a trans person or anything. Like I’m very fond of my dick and I don’t want boobs or whatever.

“But. If I could, you know, be with a guy and no one would care. Like if I were a girl I could. And this story kind of just happened in my mind, like if we met and I was a girl and what would have happened, and I just kept thinking about it and I didn’t know what else to do and I started writing and this book kind of came out?

“And then I couldn’t keep it a secret from Jackie, she just pried it out of me and she thought the story was really good. Like, it needed some work here and there and she helped me with a lot of the sex scenes and she suggested I get in touch with one of the women who play for McGill to help with the college woman’s hockey aspect and she just really encouraged me and convinced me to tell my agent about it.”

He laughed. “My agent was pretty confused when I told her, but you know, she’s my agent, so she read it and she also thought it was really good, so she connected me with a publisher and the next thing I knew it was hitting the shelves.”

He shrugged. “And I thought maybe a few people would read it. I never expected the whole NHL to. And I wasn’t going to write another one, but I was bored in the summer and…” he waved his hands.

“So yeah, it’s, like, not really about you. Except you’re like all of my experience, so I guess…?”

“You say Igor is me but not asshole,” Ilya said.

“I mean, he’s kind of an asshole.”

“But he does not ghost for half a year. Twice.”

“No,” Hollander agreed.

“Maybe,” Ilya said. “Maybe I can be less of an asshole.”

“Could you?” Hollander asked.

“Maybe. I can try.”

“So what?” Hollander asked. “We still can’t…”

“Hunter has boyfriend,” Ilya said.

“What?!” Hollander exclaimed.

“He told me. He said he heard us. Last night. And at All-Star Game rookie year.”

“Oh my god,” Hollander breathed.

“I think he told me about Kip— his boyfriend— so I would know he does not tell.”

“Okay,” Hollander said, relaxing a little.

“That is three people,” Ilya said.

“What is three people?” Hollander asked.

“Three people in NHL fuck men.”

“So?”

“Maybe there are more. Maybe if we… if people know. Maybe it is not too bad.”

“It would be bad,” Hollander said.

“But maybe not ruin,” Ilya suggested. “I am not say tell people. Just maybe not be so scared.”

“What are you saying?” Hollander demanded.

“You cannot have Pike’s life,” Ilya said. “You do not want it anyway. Pike is mediocre hockey player. So slow. But maybe you have something.”

“What?” Hollander asked. “What can I have?”

“Me,” Ilya said. “Maybe you can have me.”

Hollander stared at him for a long moment and then laughed. “So what? You don’t sleep with girls?”

“No,” Ilya agreed. “And you text me back.”

“We still only see each other like four times a year.”

“We can do more,” Ilya said. “We can in summer. Bye week. Montreal only four hour from Boston. We can meet in middle. Two hour is not too bad.”

“I… you think we should be in a relationship.”

Ilya sighed. “We are already in relationship. I think we should be in a closer relationship. I think I want to hear from you every day. I think no more ghosting both you and me.”

“Oh,” Hollander said.

“We find out way to make work,” Ilya said. “You cannot have whole dream, but you can have some, yes?”

“It’s risky,” Hollander said.

Ilya shrugged. “Hunter have relationship. You more coward than Hunter?”

Hollander scowled. “It’s different for him.”

“Yes,” Ilya agreed. “He is old and boring. Our sex is more fun.”

Hollander scoffed.

“What do you care about risk, anyway? You choose most obvious pseudonym ever.”

“It would have worked if you never read them!”

“Hunter knew.”

“Well, Hunter’s stupid.”

Ilya laughed. “I like your books, you know,” he said.

“Thank you,” Hollander told him, sliding closer to Ilya, close enough that their shoulders touched.

.

They stood there for too long, until they were wet through and shiveromg, and then they went back to Hollander’s room and showered until they were warm and curled up in bed together for the first time— and hopefully not the last.

.

When Ilya woke, he turned his head to see Hollander staring at him. He couldn’t help smiling. “What?” he asked.

“Were you serious?” Hollander asked. “About having a more serious relationship?”

“I think try not to be serious is our problem. We hurt each other because pretend it is casual.”

Hollander frowned in thought. Ilya reached up to smooth out the crease in his forehead. “It’s risky,” he said. “We could lose everything.”

“Yes,” Ilya agreed.

Hollander smiled and scooted closer to Ilya so he could kiss him. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Ilya echoed and rolled on top of Hollander, who laughed. “You are mine now, yes?”

Hollander looked up at him, open and honest, mouth parted like Ilya was something wonderful.

“And you are mine.”

Enjoy this book? Don’t miss the upcoming sequel by Joan Dutch!!!

A mm hockey romance set in the world of Plucky Go Lucky!

Just Keep Pucking

Lovers to rivals to lovers…

When they met at a hockey development camp at the age of fifteen, Joel Montclair and Tej Puri were instantly inseparable, a fast friendship that teetered on the edge of something more, only for a misunderstanding to destroy their friendship and any hope of a deeper connection.

Now, eight years later Joel and Tej are captains of the their respective teams and bitter rivals, barely able to met on the ice without coming to blows.

Joel Montclair— the youngest member of a hockey dynasty, Joel has felt the pressure his whole life to live up to his brother and cousins’ illustrious hockey careers. Through hard work and sheer determination, he’s managed to make it to the top; he’s the Captain of the Austin Steers, he’s successfully lead his team to the playoffs five times and even won the cup. But despite all of his success, he knows that if anyone ever finds out his secret it will all come crashing down: Joel Montclair is gay, and despite all the progress the NHL has made, there are still no openly queer male players.

Tej Puri— already a ground-breaker, one of a few Indian-Americans to have ever been drafted to the NHL and the only Sikh. As Captain of the Houston Hell Hounds he stands out because of the color of his skin and at home he’s criticized for giving up his family’s cultural and religious practices to better fit in to the NHL. He doesn’t want to be gay on top of all that.

For the last eight years, because of a misunderstanding, Tej has believed that Joel had threatened to tell other people about his sexuality and Joel has believed that Tej had dropped him as soon as Joel had been open about who he was, so when the two find themselves contractually obliged to work together on a series of media appearances, they’re both convinced it’s going to be a train wreck.

But when they finally start getting to know each other again, they discover that the spark of passion they felt at fifteen is still there. Will they be able to work through their shared distrust and fear and become something more, or are they destined to remain could-have-beens?

Dutch does it again! Not only are the sex scenes steamy and the hockey impeccable, but she doesn’t shy away from dealing with the difficult topics of homophobia and racism with nuance and understanding.

— Next Stop Romance

I didn’t expect a mm hockey romance to hit so hard! Came for Dutch’s well deserved reputation for sexy intimacy and realistic hockey and stayed for the heartbreaking love story. Every time I read a book by Joan Dutch I think she can’t outdo herself and then she does!

— Romance Review

Exclusive preview:

There was a small town about halfway between Austin and Houston, with population of about ten, and the house was outside of that, not the kind of place you’d think a millionaire hot-shot hockey player would live. It was a small two bedroom cottage overlooking a small pond, shaded with willows and clogged with reeds. There was a tiny porch where you could sit to watch the rain and a dock that was half rotten and at night in the late spring fireflies would come out and turn the whole world magical.

Tej had lived a lot of places but none of them had felt like home the way this house did, despite the peeling wallpaper and sagging porch roof. He loved every inch of it; the cracked linoleum in the kitchen, the faded yellow curtains in the front room the way the stairs creaked when you walked up them.

But what he loved the most was waiting for him in the back of the house, a book in hand and a beer at the ready. Joel looked up at Tej and beamed. “Hi,” he said, straightening up as Tej sat down beside him, the chaise lounge complaining at their joint weight.

“Hi,” Tej replied and felt like he heart might split open with happiness.

Preorder now from Kiss and Tell Press!