Chapter 1

“When you were a kid you’d come in through the back gate, your folks left a light on in case you got home late”

The Hollander garden was soaked in the warm light of late afternoon. Ilya stood by the rosebushes, brushing his fingers over a petal that felt softer than anything he remembered from his childhood. He adjusted the collar of his dress shirt for what felt like the tenth time. Shane had called this a “family party,” just a casual get-together, but to Ilya the word family still came with weight. It meant preparation. It meant armor. Even if that armor was just a neat shirt and a carefully controlled smile. “You good? You’re staring at that bush like it’s a scouting report,” Shane called out, stepping onto the porch. He looked completely at ease, a beer in hand and that easy grin that could thaw the worst Ottawa winter. Ilya lifted his gaze past Shane toward the house. It was solid and lived-in in the best way. Through the windows, warm light spilled across framed photos and worn door frames etched with years of growing up. The place felt like a history you could touch. “I’m fine,” Ilya said, the words a little too careful. “I just… I look at this garden, this house you grew up in, and I wish I’d known you back then. Before everything else. When you were just some kid running through that gate with dirt on your knees. I bet your parents always left the light on for you, no matter how late you got home.” Shane laughed and bumped his shoulder into Ilya’s. “Every night. My dad complained about the electric bill, but he never turned it off until he heard me come in. Even when I was in Montreal and only came back for summers, that light was still there. Now come on—Mom’s been asking where you are for twenty minutes.” Inside, the table was crowded with food and voices. Roasted chicken, potatoes, and the kind of easy conversation that comes from years of feeling safe. Shane’s mom asked Ilya about his favourite meals. His dad launched into a story about Shane losing his first tooth during a peewee game. The sound of cutlery and laughter blended together into something that felt like home, even if Ilya didn’t quite know how to belong to it. Shane had grown up being loved like this—asked about his day by people who genuinely wanted to hear the answer. Ilya smiled when he needed to, but his mind slipped away to a kitchen that didn’t look anything like this one. Flashback: Moscow, 2003 The apartment didn’t smell like dinner. It smelled like burnt cabbage, stale smoke, and something bitter that never quite went away. Twelve-year-old Ilya sat stiffly at the kitchen table, his boots not quite reaching the floor. Across from him, Alexei ate in tense silence, eyes locked on their father like he was waiting for the next hit to land. “You played like a coward today,” their father snapped. He hadn’t touched his food. He just gripped a glass of vodka so hard his knuckles went pale. “Soft. Like an American. I didn’t raise a son to back off the boards.” “I played smart,” Alexei shot back, trying to sound confident and only half managing it. “Maybe if you weren’t drunk by lunchtime, you’d notice the game isn’t what it was. I’m leading scorer. What else do you want?” “I want a man,” their father roared, slamming his hand on the table. The bowls rattled. Soup sloshed onto the faded tablecloth. Their mother moved around them quietly, like someone trying not to be seen. Irina was getting thinner by the day, fading into the background of the place. Her hands shook as she set bread down. “Stop. Please,” she whispered. “Just… eat. It’s Tuesday. Can we have one quiet Tuesday?” “Peace is for the weak,” he spat, turning on her. “You baby them. You make them soft. Look at him.” He jabbed a finger at Ilya. “He just sits there. No fire. Nothing in him. Just like you.” “Don’t talk to her like that,” Alexei snapped, pushing his chair back so hard it scraped across the floor. Everything exploded at once, voices raised, glass breaking, both of them towering over the table and hurling words meant to wound. Irina shrank into the corner, breathing too fast, eyes empty. Ilya didn’t move. He’d learned that stillness was safest. If you didn’t exist, you couldn’t be hit. He stared at the reflection of the light trembling in his bowl and let the yelling turn into background noise. Hours later, the apartment was quiet. The wrong kind of quiet. Heavy. Ilya couldn’t sleep. The cold in the place always found him eventually. He slipped out of bed, thinking maybe he’d find his mother still awake in the kitchen like usual. But the kitchen was dark. The bathroom door stood a little open, a strip of moonlight cutting across the floor. Ilya pushed it wider. “Mama?” he whispered, but the word barely made it out.

Chapter 2

Chapter Summary “Cause i’ve changed my accent, And i gave a false name, i hope i throw a party in a house of my own some day”

Chapter 2

“Cause i’ve changed my accent, And i gave a false name, i hope i throw a party in a house of my own some day”

The real estate agent handed them the keys, told them to take their time, and left them alone in the house. It was a big colonial in a quiet Ottawa suburb, with a wrap-around porch and a mudroom that looked like it was made for dumping hockey bags in. “We could paint this room navy,” Shane said, his voice echoing a little in the empty space. He was already pacing around the living room, measuring things with his hands like he could see everything already in place. “Then we get one of those giant sectionals. Enough room for the guys when playoffs roll around.” Ilya went to the window and rested his hand on the glass. Outside, he watched a squirrel run along the fence and disappear up a tree. His chest tightened the way it always did when things felt big and permanent. He loved Shane. They’d built a life together. But standing in a house like this, thinking about forever, still felt like standing on a ledge. “It’s great,” Ilya said, forcing a small smile. “Lots of light. Lots of room.” “You sure?” Shane stopped and really looked at him. “You’ve been quiet since we pulled up. If it’s not right, we keep looking. I mean it. No pressure.” “I’m fine,” Ilya said, stepping closer so he could feel him there. “Just… thinking about where we’d put the Christmas tree.” He wasn’t thinking about Christmas at all. He was thinking about how much of his life had been spent changing himself—fixing his accent, smoothing out rough edges, becoming whatever version of “Ilya” people wanted. Even when he was the face of the Boston Raiders, first overall in 2009, it never stopped feeling like he was borrowing a life instead of living his own.

Flashback: Boston, 2009 The apartment in Boston was high-end, overlooking the harbor with floor-to-ceiling windows that should have been a victory. Instead, it smelled of industrial cleaner and a vacuum-sealed kind of loneliness. Ilya was eighteen, his body a map of bruises from his first NHL training camp, and his mind was a static-filled mess of English words he couldn't quite string together fast enough. He sat on the floor of the empty living room, the glow of the city lights outside making the interior feel even more hollow. He had finally built up the courage to call home. He had a signing bonus now—more money than his father had likely seen in a lifetime. He thought, perhaps, being the number one pick in the world would finally buy the pride he’d been chasing since he was four years old. The phone rang four times before his father answered. The voice on the other end was already thick with drink. "I signed today," Ilya said in Russian, his voice small. "The Raiders. It is... it is a lot of money, Papa. I can send some. I can help Alexei with—" "You are a traitor," his father interrupted, the words cold and sharp. "The KHL made you. Russia made you. I pushed you into the ice so you could represent your blood, and you go to America to be a puppet? To play for the fans who hate us?" "I am playing in the best league in the world," Ilya argued, a rare spark of defiance lighting in his chest. "Hollander went second to Montreal. Everyone here is excited—" "Hollander," his father spat the name. "The golden boy. I saw the draft. I saw him on the stage with his mother and father crying like fools. You were on that stage alone, Ilya. Because you are alone. You go to Boston for pennies and fame, but don't come back when they chew you up and spit you out. You are no son of mine if you wear that jersey." The line went dead. Ilya sat in the dark for an hour, the phone still clutched in his hand. The anxiety was a physical weight, a crushing pressure that made it hard to breathe. He was eighteen, and if he failed here, there was no back gate to return to. Later that night, the silence of the apartment became too much. He called Hollander. It wasn't love; it wasn't even friendship yet. It was just a release. When Hollander arrived, they didn't talk much. They couldn't. Ilya didn't have the words in English and Hollander didn't have the patience for a tragedy. It was just sex—rough, desperate, and distracting. It was the only way Ilya knew how to deal with the hollow ache in his chest, a way to feel something other than the crushing fear that he was a waste of space. In those hours, he didn't have to be the First Overall Pick or the Traitor Son. He could just be a body, forgotten in the dark.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

“I bet you grew up grazing your knees, but the fall wasn’t fatal like it was for me”

The rink was cold, a familiar biting chill that settled into Ilya’s joints, but the heat from Shane’s body as he leaned against him made the temperature irrelevant. They were retired now, the jerseys hung up in the back of a closet—the black and gold of Boston and the red of Montreal just echoes in the rafters of arenas they no longer had to bleed in. Down on the ice, twelve-year-old Sofia was a blur of lilac and silver. She was the best of both of them—possessing Shane’s easy athleticism and Ilya’s terrifying focus. She was practicing her double axel, her brow furrowed in concentration. "She’s been at this for an hour," Shane whispered, his breath puffing white in the air. He reached out, his gloved hand finding Ilya’s and squeezing. "I told her we’d get hot chocolate after. That usually speeds her up." Ilya didn't answer. He watched Sofia take off, her small frame rotating with a grace that was almost painful to look at. Then, a slip. A hard, sickening thud as her hip hit the ice. The sound echoed through the empty arena. Ilya stiffened, his entire body going into a fight-or-flight response he hadn't needed in years. His breath hitched in his throat. He waited. He waited for the scream. He waited for her to look at them with terror. He waited for the world to end because she had failed. Instead, Sofia just sat there for a second, rubbing her hip. She caught her fathers' eyes through the plexiglass and laughed. She brushed the ice shavings off her leggings, pushed herself up with a bright, determined grin, and gave a thumbs-up before skating back to the center to start the sequence again. Shane’s head rested on Ilya’s shoulder, his voice warm and soft. "She’s got your stubbornness, Ly. She’ll land it on the next go. She knows we aren't going anywhere." Ilya let out a long, shaky breath, finally leaning back into Shane’s solid warmth. He watched his daughter—the girl who was asked how her day was every single evening, the girl who was fed love until it overflowed. To her, a fall was just a slip. It wasn't a verdict. Flashback: Moscow, 2007 The walk to the car was a funeral procession. Ilya was fourteen, his gear bag feeling like it was filled with lead. His team had lost the regional final, and Ilya had been the one to miss the deciding penalty shot. The puck had hit the post—a hollow ping that had haunted his dreams for weeks after. In the car, the silence was a physical entity, suffocating and sharp. Beside him in the back seat, his brother Alexei was a wall of cold stone. Two years after Irina’s death, the bond they’d once had—the way Alexei used to shield him—was gone. Alexei had survived by becoming their father's shadow. He didn't look at Ilya; he just stared out the window, his jaw set. When the car door slammed shut in their driveway, their father turned in the driver's seat. His face was a mask of disgusted fury. "Speak," their father barked startling Ilya. "Tell me why I waste my life on you." Ilya looked at the floor of the car. "I missed, Papa. The ice was—" "The ice was the same for everyone!" his father roared in Russian, reaching back to cuff him across the shoulder. "A waste of money. A waste of space. Do you know how much the skates cost? The ice time I work for? You had one job—to win. If you cannot win, you are nothing to me. You are a ghost, just like your mother was." Ilya looked to Alexei, a silent, desperate plea for help. But Alexei just looked at him with eyes that were as cold as their father's. "You were soft, Ilya," Alexei said in Russian, his voice devoid of any brotherly warmth. "You let the team down. Papa is right. You didn't work hard enough. You deserve the walk home." "Get out," his father ordered. When they got inside, Ilya had gone straight to his room, his knees grazed and bleeding from a fall during the third period. No one checked on him. No one asked if he was hurt. He sat in the dark, clutching a pillow to his chest, waiting for a light that would never be left on for him. He had learned then that a fall was meant to be fatal. It was meant to be a moment of absolute shame that stripped away your right to belong. Present Day A sharp snick of blades hitting the ice brought Ilya back. Sofia had landed it. She stood tall, her arms out in a perfect finish, her face radiating pure, unadulterated joy. She skated to the boards, beaming as she leaned over the glass. "Did you see, Papa? I did it! I didn't let the fall stop me!" Ilya reached over the glass, his hand trembling slightly as he ruffled her hair. "I saw, sweetie. I saw. You were magnificent."

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