Rating:

General Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationships:

Shane Hollander & Jackie Pike, Hayden Pike/Jackie Pike

Characters:

Jackie Pike, Shane Hollander, Hayden Pike

Additional Tags:

POV Jackie Pike, Shane Hollander & Jackie Pike Friendship, giving jackie a little smidge of a backstory, Good Friend Jackie Pike, Good Friend Shane Hollander, Anxious Shane Hollander, this really came out of nowhere I just really want them to be friends, set somewhere around 2014/15

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-19 Words: 2,255 Chapters: 1/1

unexpected places

Summary

Jackie and Shane share a quiet moment hiding away from the chaos of a Voyagers party.

Notes

Hi!!!! Like so many others Heated Rivalry has completely consumed me these past few months. I can't even pretend to be upset about it.

This is just a short little thing that was really fun to write. I honestly didn't spend that much time editing, so I apologize for any mistakes. I hope you enjoy :)

The house is full to the brim with energetic, boisterous hockey players and even louder than it usually is, paper plates and red solo cups littering almost every surface with the smell of meat grilling wafting in from the open doors to the patio, and Jackie is about to have a meltdown. 

She is what most would call a very calm, go with the flow type of person, but right now, her patience is being tested to its very limits. And, really, what had she been thinking? Inviting the whole of the Montreal Voyagers for a playoff viewing party at their house had obviously been a recipe for disaster. She’s only reaping the consequences of her and Hayden’s bad decision making, now.

She watches as Comeau knocks his hip into the kitchen island rounding the corner far too quickly, his drink falling from his hands and straight onto the floor. He looks down at it, swears, and grabs a paper towel off the counter to mop it up. His effort is half-assed at best, and he leaves a huge puddle underneath one of their barstools before walking away, tracking sticky beer across her dining room from the bottom of his shoe.

Jackie takes a deep breath, lets it hiss out of her teeth, then goes to actually clean it up. 

Yeah. They are never doing this again. 

She finally makes her way out of the chaos of the downstairs—but not before directing J.J. to the closest bathroom, helping Mitty find his misplaced phone, witnessing another drink clatter to the floor, and getting stuck in a rather one sided conversation with a very drunk Drapeau—and slips away and up the stairs. 

She’s sure Hayden will forgive her for abandoning her hosting duties. Last time she saw him he was manning the grill, which is where she presumes he still is, stuck grilling burger after burger after hotdog for twenty-something professional athletes who can put away a lot of food. 

It’s quieter upstairs, the voices from downstairs still audible but blessedly muffled. She walks farther down the hallway then leans back against the wall, thumping her head back in between picture frames. 

Deep breaths, she tells herself. She forces her hands to unclench and tries to swallow down the nausea that’s been building for what must be hours, at this point. 

She’s fine with baby mess—is more than used to it with the chaos that the twins bring, but this is different. This is just on the side of too fucking much for her to handle right now. 

Breathe. 

She dips her chin down to her chest, placing a steadying hand against her belly, and counts to four in the repeating pattern of box-breathing that her midwife had taught her how to do when she was pregnant with the twins. 

Eventually, her heart rate calms down and the nausea subsides—almost all the way—and she lets the tense muscles of her shoulders drop. She’s okay, she’s just taking a minute, and she’ll be just fine to go back downstairs in…a little bit. 

Hayden can manage his teammates. She can take a break. 

A faint noise catches her attention from down the hallway in the direction of one of the guest rooms, and her heart rate rockets up again almost immediately. Shit. If there’s a drunk idiot rummaging around her house she’s going to be fucking pissed. 

She stalks down the hallway, pushing open the door to the guest room without knocking to find a startled Shane Hollander sitting at the edge of the bed, reading an open book in his lap.

“Oh,” she breathes, relieved. “It’s just you.”

Out of all of Hayden’s teammates, Shane is by far Jackie’s favorite. He always has been. He’s been over at their house plenty of times over the past couple years, ever since Hayden practically forced the guy through the door to have dinner with them for the first time. He’s great with Jade and Ruby, despite how nervous he always gets when Jackie and Hayden get him to hold them, and has such a genuine kindness and earnestness to him that shows what a truly good person he is. And then, you know, there’s the whole hockey prodigy thing about him too. 

So out of all the people to find up here, she’s exceedingly glad that it’s him.

Shane stares at her with wide, guilty eyes. “Yep. Just, um, just me.” He closes the book and rests it against his thigh, his finger keeping his spot, and his eyes dart quickly from her face, to the ground, then to the hallway behind her. “Sorry, I can—I’m not sure if you wanted people up here? I’m so sorry, I should have asked. It’s just…it’s really, like, loud down there? I kind of—”

“Needed a break?” she interrupts with a wry smile. He nods with a self-deprecating huff, and Jackie finds herself chuckling. “Yeah. Me too.”

Shane’s smile is more of a grimace. “Thank you for hosting. I’m sure it’s not exactly easy, having so many people in your space.”

“So many messy, gross hockey players that are incapable of cleaning up their own messes in my space, you mean?

Shane winces, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay. It was my idea, anyway.” Jackie nods to the book in his hand. “Watcha reading?”

“Oh.” He glances down at the book like he’s surprised to see that it’s still there. “Um, A Sicilian Romance.” 

Jackie moves across the room to sit down next to him on the edge of the bed, the mattress bobbing slightly with her weight. “That was one of my dad’s favorites,” she says, a small smile tugging at her lips as she recalls the sight of her dad curled up in the ugly red armchair in their living room, glasses barely perched on the tip of his nose, the book propped up on his knee as he read. She gestures to the bookshelves lining the walls of the room. “Most of these books were his, actually.”

Shane’s eyes scan the shelves. “Wow, that’s a lot.”

“He was an English literature professor. Down at McGill. A few years after he died mom moved into a smaller house, so she didn’t have enough space for all the books. They’re split mostly between here and my sister’s house, now.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.” He’s absentmindedly running a finger up and down the spine of the book. She wonders if he’s even aware that he’s doing it. “How long ago did he pass away?”

“About seven years ago.”

“You were…fifteen?”

“Yeah.” She swallows. “He passed two days after my birthday.”

“I’m sorry. I’m—sorry.”

She bumps her shoulder against his. “Don’t be,” she says, smiling. It’s not forced, like it used to be when she talked about her dad, for so many years. Too many years. “It makes me happy to talk about him. To remember him.”

Shane smiles softly. “Well, then. I’m glad.”

“Me too.” Her hand reflexively goes to rest against her stomach, and maybe it’s the sweet memories of her dad still at the corners of her mind’s eye, or the steady warmth of Shane’s presence next to her, but she finds herself blurting out,

“I’m pregnant.”

Shane’s head whips around to look at her, eyes wide in surprise. “Oh! Congratulations!” 

“Thank you. I-I haven’t told Hayden yet,” she says. “Well, I haven’t actually told anyone. I hadn’t been planning on telling you right now either, it just kinda…burst out.”

Shane is clearly floundering for what to say, his mouth open then closing like a fish. “That’s…okay.”

Jackie can’t help but laugh at his obvious helplessness about what to say. “Yeah.” But then her face scrunches up, all the worries and uncertainty that’s been storming inside her since she found out last week coalescing into a big lump stuck at the back of her throat. “I-I know that we’re young, and that we already have the twins, but—but I’m happy. I’m happy with the girls, I’m happy with Hayden, and we’re doing good with the whole parenting thing so—so, it’s not a bad thing, you know?”

“Hey, you don’t have to defend yourself to me. Or to anyone,” he says gently, but with a firmness that helps her believe it. “You and Hayden are good parents.”

Jackie takes a slow breath. “Thank you,” she says earnestly, wiping at the tears collecting at the corners of her eyes before they can fall. “Thank you.”

“And…you’re happy?”

Warmth rises within her. “I’m so happy.”

In a rare initiation of physical contact, Shane wraps an arm around her shoulder and pulls her into a half-hug that she’s more than happy to reciprocate. 

“I’m really happy for you,” he says into her hair, and when he pulls away he’s smiling, big and bright in the way that she so rarely gets to see. “Hayden’s going to be over the moon.” 

  Jackie returns his smile. “He is.” 

They sit in silence for a moment. It’s comfortable, which is not something she would expect with any of Hayden’s other teammates. Though, she supposes, Shane has always been the exception. 

Jackie laughs a little to herself, brushing off Shane’s perplexed look, and flops down onto the bed, starfishing her arms out. “So. How long do you think we can get away with hiding up here?”

Hayden finds them a little over thirty minutes later. They’re both laying back on the bed with their legs dangling over the sides, trading stories about primary school art projects of all things. Hayden smiles down at them from where he stands in the doorway, toothy and a little lopsided in the way that Jackie has always loved. 

“I was wondering where you two had gone,” he says, making a tsking sound with his teeth as he shakes his head. “My own wife and best friend, abandoning me to the wolves.”

Jackie laughs, pushing herself up into a sitting position. She offers a hand out to Shane and pulls him up too. “So dramatic,” she teases. She opens her arms in invitation, and Hayden doesn’t waste a second before coming to stand between her legs and wrap his arms around her, dropping a kiss to the top of her head. 

“You guys okay?” he asks.

“Mhm,” she hums happily into the front of his shirt. 

“It’s just a little hectic down there,” Shane says sheepishly.

Hayden groans. “Serioulsy. I think I’ve made more than one hundred hamburgers. I never want to look at ground beef ever again.”

“Hayden, you know I love you, but we are never hosting your team ever again. At least not without the WAGs coming along too to wrangle them all.”

“Oh thank god.”

Shane laughs. “I hope I’ll still be invited.”

“Duh,” Hayden says. He reaches out to ruffle Shane’s hair, but Shane swats his hand away, scrunching up his nose. 

“Dude,” he huffs. 

“Dude,” Hayden mocks, and gets blocked again when he goes in for the hair ruffle a second time. 

“Boys,” Jackie sighs, but it’s undeniably fond. 

A loud whoop of laughter rises up from downstairs, followed by several rowdy cheers. She can hear the fridge being opened, then the sound of something thudding loudly to the floor. 

“We should probably get back down there,” Jackie eventually says, wanting to do anything but. 

Hayden and Shane sigh in unison. “Yeah.”

“You can take the book,” she tells Shane as they stand up. She fights a grin when she realizes that he has still somehow got his finger keeping his place between the pages.

“Oh! It’s okay! I’ll, um, I’ll put it back—”

“Shane, take it,” she laughs. “Tell me how you like it when you’re finished.”

He narrows his eyes at her like he’s trying to detect if she’s really okay with it, before finally saying, “Okay. Thank you. I’ll take good care of it.”

“I know you will.”

“I didn’t know you read anything other than the MLH rulebook, Shane,” Hayden teases as they file out of the room, laughing when Shane pushes at his shoulder.

“Shut up.”

It gets louder with every step down the stairs, and Jackie has to take a fortifying breath before she takes the last one. 

“We got this,” Shane whispers from behind her. 

She chuckles, then grabs Shane’s arm before he can wander off. “Hey,” she says quietly, just for the two of them. “I know you’re Hayden’s friend and everything, but I hope you know that you have a friend in me too.”

Shane’s whole face flushes, but his smile is pleased. “I do. Thank you, Jackie. And—I’m your friend, um, too. Like, y’know…ugh.”

Jackie squeezes his shoulder. “I know.”

He’s swept off into the arms of a very inebriated J.J. moments later, leaving Jackie and Hayden alone for what feels like the first time in ages. He wraps his arms around her from behind, his warm chest a solid comfort against her back. 

“I’m ready for bed,” he grumbles. 

“Me too.”

“Just a little bit longer.”

They head hand in hand down the hallway to where most of the team seems to be congregated in the living room, but she tugs Hayden to a stop right before they enter the room.

“Hey, can I talk to you about something later? Once everyone’s gone home.”

“Of course.” He tilts his head to the side. “Is everything okay?”

Jackie smiles. “Everything is great.”