Thank you to GT and Ruth for beta reading. Thank you to Edie and Angel for telling me about coke.

Shane’s life is a group project. Someone from the front office populates the practice schedule on his calendar at the beginning of every season, road trips marked out in stretches of blue and home games in Boston gold. His mom adds blocks of gray in the interstitial spaces, ad shoots and sponsorship meetings, all annotated with details about when he needs to be at the airport, whether the league’s car service is picking him up. The housekeeping service and the nutritionist mark out space in a pale, summer yellow.

The system works. There is a tablet in his kitchen that shows the week’s events, up against a paper notepad where he leaves notes for the housekeeper and the grocery service. His smart watch pings notifications as he brushes his teeth: practice at eight. A meeting with the physical therapist at one. Financial advisor at three. Tape review for tomorrow’s home game, Buffalo.

Shane frowns around a mouthful of toothpaste and taps his watch. The appointment is there, in the same green as he uses for dentist appointments and oil changes: financial advisor, 3pm, Grigori Rozanov, CFA. Shane hadn’t realized a whole quarter had already passed.

There’s an ungainly hour between his afternoon appointments, so Shane goes straight downtown from the rink and loiters in a coffee shop, watching the minutes spill past. The shop is small, just large enough for a few tables. A man at one of them looks up at Shane and pauses with his drink halfway to his mouth. Promising, maybe.

“Are you—”

Shane swallows the last of his tepid coffee. “Sorry.” He gestures at the oversized clock. “I’ve got a meeting to get to.”

Milk Street is quieter in the winter, when all the businessmen have scuttled away from the weather. Shane pushes through the big gold and glass doors of his advisor’s building and rides the elevator six halting flights up. The office is down a hall and to the left, and Shane is struck as always by the antiseptic smell of the hallway, an almost medical lemon bitterness.

He nods to the receptionist as he enters. She, as she always did, looks at him with blank incomprehension and waits for him to remind her that this firm takes appointments, and that Shane’s presence should be expected.

“It’ll be a few minutes,” she says, and disappears down the short hallway.

Shane has enough time to flip open one of last winter’s Economist issues (Oil Prices Surge!) before she returns and ushers him down the hall, shaking her head as though he is an unruly child being ushered to the principal’s office. The dark carpet swallows up his footsteps.

“Through here,” she says, and Shane bites his tongue to keep from reminding her that he has been a client of this firm for nearly ten years now, and knows very well where Grigori’s office is.

“Thanks,” he says instead, and steps in.

The office looks the way it always does. The windows have the same view of the neighboring building, marred slightly by the snow-frosted pigeon spikes on the sill, and the same wooden desk with its two visitor’s chairs are waiting inside. A man Shane doesn’t recognize is sitting behind the desk, leafing through a stack of paperwork. He’s younger than Grigori, wearing a dark suit, shirt buttoned up to his neck. Shane can’t make out much else about him other than the sharp cut of his jaw and his softly curling hair.

Shane shuffles in place for a moment, waiting to be acknowledged. He briefly debates going back outside to knock on the door. “Excuse me.”

“You are excused,” the man says, just this side of irritability. His eyes, when he glares up at Shane, are very blue. “What do you want?”

“I’m sorry,” Shane says, drawing on his ingrained Canadian manners. “I must be in the wrong office. I’m Shane Hollander.”

“Roz,” the man says by way of introduction. “You had an appointment?”

“With Grigori Rozanov,” Shane offers. “Is he here? I can wait.”

“He is dead.”

Shane blinks. “I’m sorry,” he offers. He had never particularly cared for Grigori, but the man had been a steady, disappointed presence in Shane’s life since his first season in the MLH.

“No, do not be. Sit.”

Shane, for lack of another option, sits. The chair is the same too-hard leather on a stiff wooden frame. It squeaks against the floor as he shuffles it closer to the desk. The man—Roz—watches him.

“I didn’t get a notice,” Shane says.

“Notice?” 

“That… that my advisor had changed,” Shane says, and cringes.

“We did not send a notice. You are here. This is your notice.” 

Shane can pick out the accent more now that they’ve moved on to full sentences. Roz’s accent is not as thick as Grigori’s, the Russian vowels loosened under American influence. Someone from the same immigrant community, he assumes. People stick together.

An unaccented silence swells as Roz pulls out a set of folders from a filing cabinet, arranges them on his desk, and starts to leaf through, ignoring Shane completely. Shane, who had thought fidgeting had been knocked out of him in years of hockey camps and professional athletics, picks at the seam of his dress pants.

“So you’re taking over his clients?” he asks finally. Roz looks up, his finger holding his place in a column of numbers. One of the reports that Shane doesn’t read, instead skimming for the double-lined total to find the result, that quarter’s win or loss.

“Yes.”

“That’s nice,” Shane says, and dies a little inside. “I mean—”

“Do you know you are paying management fees on these investments?”

Shane’s mouth opens to answer, then closes again. He swallows. “Is that good?”

“No,” Roz says and flips the page around. He has large hands. All of him is large, Shane realizes with a jolt, as Roz leans over, shoulders flexing as he shoves a paper towards Shane. Broad shoulders and muscled forearms, larger than the wiry build that hockey favors.

Shane wrenches his attention back as Roz points at the page, fingertip grazing a number further up the column than Shane usually bothers to read. “See?”

“What am I looking at?”

Roz gives him a withering look. “Management fees. One and a half percent of committed capital.”

“Is that…good?”

Roz's face is unyielding in the same way that Grigori’s is—was, Shane corrects himself. The Slavic stoicism holds his muscles in a tight grip. All the same, Shane can make out the shape of his exasperation. “You do not read your investor reports?”

“I read them,” Shane argues. He skimmed one last year, his eyes crossing somewhere around core-plus investment strategy before he turned back to the known safety of the win-or-loss at the bottom of the income statement. 

“What is your committed capital?”

Shane frowns. “Shouldn’t you tell me that?”

“Okay, so you do not read them. Admit this next time.”

“There’s like twenty of them. You want me to read all of them?”

“I want you to have a baseline understanding of your investments,” Roz says, leaning forward to jab his finger onto the page. “This is embarrassing for you.”

“Look,” Shane says, annoyed by the blatant unprofessionalism. He is the client. He does not come here to be berated by the man he assumes is his newly assigned financial advisor. He preferred the old one, who put paperwork in front of Shane, told him where to sign, and assured him on a quarterly basis that his investments were providing market-appropriate returns, whatever the fuck that meant. “Is there someone else I can go to? I don’t mean to be rude, but I would like to discuss moving to a different advisor.”

“No.”

“What do you mean no?”

“No,” Roz repeats. His eyebrows raise. “There is no one else.”

“There are at least ten other people who work here,” Shane argues. “I’ve seen them. Give my account to one of them.”

“They are not qualified.”

“And you are?”

“Special license,” Roz says, and Shane wants to wipe the smug look off his face. “You have many investments in private securities.”

“Private what?”

“Yes, exactly. This is why you need me. You do not have this license. You know how to hit a puck and miss the net. You do not know that you are being, what is the word? Fleeced.”

“You’re an asshole,” Shane says wonderingly, Canadian manners outmanned by years of Boston hockey. “You’re such a fucking asshole. How did you even get this job?”

“Inheritance.”

Shane, who had been gearing up to tell Roz to cancel his contract so he can go find a new firm to work with, stops dead. Dead like Grigori, his mind supplies. Grigori, who passed very little down physically to his son, except for the color of his eyes and, evidently, a wealth management firm. “Roz. Like Rozanov.”

“Ilya Rozanov, yes.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Now you say ‘I am sorry for your loss’ and ‘I did not know him as well as I would have liked’,” Rozanov prompts. He waits expectantly while Shane parrots the words, and then claps his hands loudly. “Good, that is done. No more. He was a bad father and worse advisor. We will not talk of him again.”

“Asshole,” Shane says again, almost under his breath, like he’s redefining the word.

“You have a new sponsorship, yes?” Rozanov asks, in a whiplash turn back to businesslike. “Your manager sent me the contract this morning. I remember now. I have investment proposals for you to review somewhere in this—” he gestures at the disorderly pile of paperwork, mouth curling down.

Shane frowns. “My mom sent you that?”

“Hollander.” Rozanov talks to him like he is explaining things to a very small, particularly slow child. “You have a team. Your mother gets you a very good contract. She sends the details to this firm so that we know when money should be in your account.”

“I know that.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“You know what,” Shane says, expecting to be interrupted, but Rozanov sits back with his fingers laced atop the wooden desk, waiting patiently. “I know that,” he finishes lamely.

“This is a pleasant surprise for me. I will keep it in mind when I decide whether we keep you as a client. Whether I keep this fucking firm.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It is my company now,” Rozanov says. He yawns, one broad hand coming up to cover his mouth. His eyes, Shane sees now, are bracketed with sleepless purple. Shane wonders exactly when Grigori died. “My father took shit clients. Stupid hockey players and rich assholes who think they know everything. You think you are worth keeping on?”

Irritation creeps its prickling way up Shane’s spine, drawing his shoulders close up by his ears. “Fuck you. You think you know me?”

Rozanov looks at him with cool blue eyes. He leans forward on his desk. Exhaustion weighs him down, but he carries himself with a self-assured confidence that Shane has never managed. Rozanov looks him up and down, a lingering, assessing glance that sets Shane’s teeth on edge. “I know lots of things about you, Hollander. I know you have boring, low-risk investments, and I know that you have a weak backhand, and I know that you want to suck my dick.”

Shane physically startles, coming nearly off his seat. “What?”

“Am I wrong?”

He’s not, is the problem, and Shane hates him all the more for it. The arms on his desk are corded with muscle. He looks like he could throw Shane around, hold him down with one forearm between his shoulderblades. That demanding personality would melt into dominance, a thought that lights an incandescent spark in Shane’s gut.

“Absolutely fucking not,” Shane says.

“I am not wrong?”

“I’m leaving,” Shane says, and stands. Rozanov doesn’t say anything to stop him, and Shane realizes too late that he doesn’t want to leave, actually. He hovers for a second too long, his fingers clasped around the curved wooden back of his chair, until Rozanov gives him a mean, self-satisfied smirk, which is enough to finally spur Shane through the door and down the hall and out the door to where the winter air is cold on his overheated cheeks.

Shane learned he was gay, or something close to it, at twenty years old.

Cliff Marleau was an off season trade, two years into his entry level contract and shipped out from Chicago to shore up Boston’s offense when someone finally admitted that Shane couldn’t be expected to score every goal alone. Marleau was tall and sharp-jawed and with enough confidence to cut through the collective bullshit of a locker room. He was everyone’s friend by sheer force of personality. Shane watched him collect their teammates one by one, dragging them into his orbit for drinks and golf trips.

“Come on,” he said to Shane one day. It wasn’t the first time they had spoken, but it might have been the first without a puck between them.

Shane, damp-haired from his shower and in his post-practice sweats, turned warily. “What do you want, Marleau?”

“We’re going out.”

“No we’re fucking not,” Shane said, and expected that to be the end of it, except that four hours later he was in his best jeans and a too-big borrowed silk shirt in a club so loud and crowded that the walls threatened to close in with every thud of the bass. His sweaty fingers slipped across the sides of his drink. He took another swig, looking for somewhere to put it down. It was too sweet, clinging to the back of his teeth.

A broad hand clamped down on his shoulder, and then Marleau was next to him, grinning a hockey player’s smile, a black gap where his left canine should be. “Having fun?”

“No,” Shane said, and Marleau laughed.

It was incomprehensible to Shane, then, that it happened again not a week later, and then again a few days after that, in some hellish neon bar in Raleigh. He was an adult, fully capable of telling Marleau to fuck off, except that Marleau was the kind of person who took it as a challenge, all of Shane’s excuses running off him like rainwater off the eiders. 

Six months later, Shane had been forced into the horrifying realization that Marleau was his friend, the only real one on the team. He felt like a stray kitten that Marleau had scruffed and brought home, if home were a series of darker and grimier clubs.

“We’re gonna get you laid,” Marleau said into his ear one of those nights, a tipsy arm slung around Shane’s shoulder, his breath hot on his skin. He pointed past Shane at a small sea of bridesmaids-to-be in pastel pink, their curls frizzing up, helpless against the sticky summer humidity. The world spun as he turned to look.

“Okay,” Shane said, and didn’t realize until the three of them were piling into an Uber together, Marleau on one side and the girl in the middle, glitter sparkling on her eyelids as she fluttered her eyes at each of them in turn, where the night was heading.

The girl—Alana, she said with her soft pink mouth, pressed up against Shane’s front, fingers twisted in his hair—didn’t know anything about hockey, which cut out about eighty percent of Shane’s conversational material. No one was expecting him to talk, at least, other than a grunting, masculine approval when she stripped off her bra to reveal the sway of her rose-tipped breasts. He palmed one tentatively, like petting an unfamiliar animal, and she moaned and leaned into him. Marleau, at her back, looked at him over her shoulder, grinning like they’d won a prize.

Shane, who had spent his whole life unselfconsciously naked in communal showers, unbuttoned his shirt carefully and peeled off his pants. Someone positioned him on the edge of a bed and then a warm mouth was on his half-hard dick and Marleau was kneeling on the bed next to him and, well—there were three of them, he reasoned, his mind fuzzy with over-poured drinks. He couldn’t let her do all the work.

Marleau didn’t flinch when Shane’s mouth settled tentatively on his dick, just dug his fingers into Shane’s scalp and dragged him gagging down onto it. A hole’s a hole, he told Shane later, after he had fucked Alana into a satisfied puddle and sent her on her way with cab fare. 

Shane paused, his shirt halfway on. “What does that mean?”

Marleau’s mouth was broad, his teeth unnaturally straight and white. The only thing he had on was soft gray sweats, and Shane could make out the swell of his dick through the fabric. “You liked it. I liked it. No sweat, man.”

“No sweat,” Shane repeated.

“Yeah if you want to—?” Marleau gestured, and Shane didn’t bother taking his shirt back off before his knees were picking up the weave of Marleau’s rug. He tasted like the inside of a rubber and skin and sweat and Shane’s whole anxious brain shut down as Marleau thrust, choking-deep, and the last fringes of Shane’s rational mind reminded him that he had never found a challenge he didn’t want to meet.

They don’t do that much anymore. Occasionally, on road trips, when Marleau wants to get off easy. They play video games after; Call of Duty on the rumpled edge of a hotel bed while Marleau cracks a beer.

Shane has had years to find ways to pick up. Nothing too public. Marleau knows about him, which means the whole team knows, in a sort of general, Holly doesn’t fuck girls way. Cadyn takes the shower furthest from him, and sometimes someone will look at him for a second too long after they make the kind of joke that Shane grew up hearing, but it hasn’t been a problem. Shane does good trade on the apps and it’s fine. It gets him through the days.

There are, Shane reminds himself as he winds back through the hellscape of Boston traffic, more important things than sucking some glorified accountant’s dick. More important things than the way Rozanov’s mouth curled up, plush and amused. The Raiders are gearing up for another playoffs run, their fourth attempt in as many years. They made it to the conference finals last year, losing in overtime in a jaw-clenching fifth game against Buffalo. He needs to regather the frayed threads of his focus. Shane does not want to lose to Buffalo again.

They don’t. Buffalo’s starting goalie is out with what league gossip calls a dislocated shoulder and the news outlets report on as an unspecified upper body injury. He won’t be back soon and they’ve called up a series of green rookies from their affiliate team, all of whom Shane is pretty sure have never seen a puck before, given how easily his team sinks six goals in two periods. Shane scores one off a slick top shelf backhand, and doesn’t think about proving Rozanov wrong.

The season rolls on from there. Days roll into each other, picking up steam until they become months and when Shane looks up the second half of the regular season is nearly gone. The Raiders win six games in a row and then lose in spectacular fashion to the worst team on the west coast. Shane gets home and sucks down his tasteless, nutritionally complete pre-workout smoothies and smiles blandly for his sponsors and there, in blocked-out green, is another meeting down at Milk Street.

Shane knows logically that it has been three months. Christmas came and went with all of the holiday cheer that Boston can muster. Shane did his best to avoid it; he escaped back up to Ottawa for the break, a long drive and a blissful, uninterrupted day in his childhood home. January dragged him to California for the pointless spectacle of All Stars, media and crowds and two goals that do nothing for his season, and February capped off with Marleau, crowing in the locker room about the sex he was going to have for Valentine’s day and the girlfriend that he’s sure is going to stick this time.

Three months has done nothing to stifle the nauseous hunger in Shane’s gut.

His thumb hovers over cancel appointment.

Shane imagines Rozanov sitting in his shitty inherited office behind his old-fashioned wood desk, the smirk that would cross his face when his receptionist buzzed back to let him know that Shane Hollander was too much of a coward to show back up.

Shane sets his phone face down on the counter and rinses the blender. 

Fuck him, Shane reminds himself as he maneuvers his car in the concrete labyrinth of the parking garage. Rozanov is an asshole. Shane deals with assholes every day on the ice. He walks into Rozanov’s office with his shoulders set like he’s expecting a check, and is immediately off-kilter when Rozanov doesn’t even look up, just gestures vaguely to the visitor’s chair.

Rozanov looks good. The purple smears under his eyes are gone, and his hair is set in neat curls. Shane can smell his cologne, a faint, woody scent that lingers in the air. The suit is gone this time, and Rozanov has on a seafoam green dress shirt, unbuttoned down to his collarbones. Shane catches a glint of gold around his neck.

There are few changes in the office. The desk is devoid of its usual precariously stacked paperwork, replaced by a sleek silver Macbook, and Grigori’s wall of certificates has been taken down. The paint has faded over the years, and the wall is scattered with dark rectangles. The office looks otherwise the same as the last time Shane was there. The window looks out onto the same concrete view, and the same fake plant perches on a three-legged corner table.

Shane sinks into the chair. He doesn’t have to wait long.

“Bullshit fund is winding down,” Rozanov says, foregoing the pleasantries, and flips his computer around for Shane to see. There are a series of graphs, and a lot of very small print. Fine, Shane thinks. They can ignore their last meeting. Not like he cares.

“Do you have a printout?”

“What, you can’t read?”

“I prefer to read it on paper so I can take it home.”

“You put it in your filing cabinet, too? Save up all your papers?”

Shane, who does all of this, presses his lips together in renewed annoyance. “What about it?”

“Good bedtime reading,” Rozanov says seriously. His full mouth quirks. “Will put you to sleep. Which is your favorite fund to read about? Real estate or healthcare?”

“Healthcare.”

Rozanov makes a sound like a buzzer. “Wrong. You do not have any investments in healthcare funds, so shut up and look at the computer, Hollander, and let me tell you. This fund? This is bullshit. Look at the returns.”

Shane wants, more than anything, to punch him. The sensation rolls over him like the tide. If they were on the ice, that would be acceptable. Not something that Shane does, generally. He has a reputation for playing clean, but he’s not above decking someone that fucks with his goalie, or if their mouth is running faster than their skates. Most people can’t get under his skin like this, needling their way in with just a few words. He sucks air through his teeth. “What about the returns?”

“Management fee is on committed capital. We talked about this last time, before you threw your little temper tantrum. Five million, yes?”

“Sure.”

“And look here.” Rozanov points to one of a series of numbers on the screen. “Only called three. That is bad,” he adds, when Shane looks at him with blank incomprehension. “High IRR on called capital, but you are paying fees on committed, and you have two million gathering dust. They will call again for fund expenses, I think.”

“Isn’t it your job to handle this?” Shane asks, irritation bleeding through. “Why am I invested in this if it’s such a bad idea.”

“Fuck if I know, Hollander. Probably someone told your old advisor—” not my father, Shane notes. Not Grigori “—that this was a good idea. I am here now. Do you need liquidity?”

There is a feeling that comes after Shane has been sent tumbling into the boards, where his brain hasn’t quite caught up with his body and the whole world is bright and clean. He watches Rozanov's lips move, but none of the words are making any sense. He wonders if it’s possible to get a concussion just from sitting in an uncomfortable chair, watching his unfairly hot financial advisor talk down to him. “Liquidity?”

Rozanov looks like he is only just managing not to roll his eyes. “Available money for a big purchase. Buying fancy cars or a new house. Jewelry for your mistress.”

“I don’t have a mistress.”

“Ok, so no.” Rozanov talks quickly, running through investments and numbers. Shane, whose interest in numbers tops out at xG and Corsi, finds himself watching more than listening. Rozanov's lips are a soft, pink recurve. He holds his mouth close when he talks. There is stubble along the hinge of his jaw. Shane can’t tell if he shaved that morning or if this two days’ worth. He wants to feel it against his palm.

“Hollander,” Rozanov says, and he sounds amused. “If you do not want to talk about investments, tell me so I do not waste my time. I will find you new terrible investments and charge you extra fifty bips for my inconvenience.”

“Sorry.” Shane shakes himself back to attention. “You were saying something about industries.”

“Commerical real estate is safe. There are new funds investing in youth sports. Buy up the rinks, the teams. Parents pay lots of money.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Hollander, you make ten million dollars a year to play a game for children. You cannot talk about fairness.”

Shane’s face burns. No one talks to him like this. It’s yes Mister Hollander and can I have your autograph and, at worst, a rude question about his team’s inability to break out of the neutral zone this season. It shouldn’t make his dick perk up. “I donate.”

Rozanov snorts. “Sure. Okay. It is not a crime to have money. I think maybe we are done here today. I will send options to you. Paper mail, so you can file them.”

“Can’t you just tell me what to do,” Shane asks, and then his face flushes with new heat. “I mean this isn’t my area. I play hockey.”

“I know what you do.”

“I just—” Shane has a script for this, an easy out when he has nothing else to say. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. Last time. Would you like to come to a game sometime? On me.”

“No, thank you.”

“You don’t watch hockey?”

“I do.”

“I could—”

“I don’t fuck straight boys,” Rozanov says, and closes his laptop. Shane catches his mouth before it can open enough for his tongue to loll out and tangle on the floor.

“I’m not,” he protests, before he can think better of it. He can feel his face turning the blistering red of Carolina’s jerseys.

“You suck any dicks recently?”

“No,” Shane grits out. He’s been busy. It’s the middle of the season. He thought maybe he’d have a chance here, with the man who did the financial services equivalent of knocking on the bathroom stall the last time Shane sat in his office. Now, Rozanov leans back, his hands crossed over his stomach, smiling meanly.

“Saving it for marriage?”

“You know what, fuck you too.”

“Spoiled,” Rozanov says, and clucks his tongue. “Used to getting what you want, aren’t you?”

Shane is. He worked harder than anyone else, is better than everyone else, and they never let him forget it. It galls, the easy way that people defer to him. Not like this. Not like Ilya Rozanov, whose pink tongue rests on the point of his canine as he looks Shane over in overt assessment. “You did not want to fuck last time. I assumed you were straight.”

“You don’t know shit about me,” Shane snaps.

Rozanov leans back further, legs spreading. One corner of his mouth turns up. “Prove it.”

Shane wore his nice khakis for this meeting. He regrets it when he’s on his knees under Rozanov's desk. It’s the kind of desk he associates with GM offices and corporate board rooms, heavy wood, skirted one three sides with wood walls that go all the way to the floor. He barely fits in that hot, stuffy space, his mouth stretched wide around Rozanov’s dick, swallowing, intent on proving himself for reasons he doesn’t understand.

Rozanov’s hand finds his hair. An intercom buzzes, and a moment later Shane is gulping air through his nose when the office door opens.

“I will be late for my next meeting,” Rozanov says to his secretary, while Shane pants around his dick. His skin is buzzing, ready to crawl off his bones with the combination of arousal and mortification. He tries to pull off, but Rozanov’s fingers dig into his scalp.

“Did Mr. Hollander leave?”

“He had another engagement,” Rozanov says, and doesn’t even have the decency to sound bothered. He lets Shane go when the door slams shut.

“You fucking bastard,” Shane snarls. He presses the heel of his hand down into his crotch so he doesn’t embarrass himself by coming in his pants.

“I did not want to be interrupted,” Rozanov says, and coaxes Shane back down. “We have finally found what you’re good at. Don’t stop now.”

Shane doesn’t stop. When he’s done, his mouth wet and sore, he untangles himself from Rozanov’s legs and stands next to his desk, his hand hovering near the waist of his pants. HIIs cock is hard and aching, damp inside his boxers.

“Appointment time is over. You can go,” Rozanov says, eyebrow raised, and then when Shane only gapes at him, he drags him back over, peeling Shane’s pants down over his thighs and shoving him back against the desk. “You think I’m an asshole?”
“You’ve proven that,” Shane grits out, and then Rozanov’s mouth is on his dick, those pink lips parted, hot and wet down to the back of his throat. Shane has enough wherewithal to note that he’s found a way to shut Rozanov up.

He has to sneak out the back way, down an emergency stairwell, so Rozanov’s receptionist doesn’t spot him leaving. Before he goes, Rozanov drags him down and kisses him, bites his lip gently, and then shoves him out the door. Shane can taste Rozanov’s cigarettes until he’s nearly back at his car.

The Raiders lose in the second round, knocked out in the fourth game without even the decency of overtime to lessen the sting. Shane chews on the loss while he packs up his things. The calendar on his fridge has been cleared. No practices, no meetings, just an unabated stretch of June marked Ottawa.

Shane has nearly forgotten about Rozanov by the time he slumps, battered and miserable, through his parents’ door.

“I have a new sponsorship contract for you to look through,” his mom says, long after Shane’s bruises have healed. “Maybe this afternoon?”

“I thought we were going on to the lake,” his dad calls from the kitchen, then appears by the sliding door, a towel in his hands. “Shane got that new—what is it? Waterski?”

“Jet Ski.”

“It’ll be quick,” his mom says, all fond exasperation. “It’s an easy one. Dunkin’ Donuts! Can you believe that?”

“I don’t even eat doughnuts.” It’s hard to muster up any annoyance here on the patio outside his parents’ house, where the air is thick with the buzz of cicadas.

“Which is why it’s a good thing it’s for a drink. Offensive fro-zone. They blend it with protein.”

“That sounds disgusting.”

“Does it? I’m sure you can manage a few sips on camera.”

Shane melts into the Muskoka chair, feeling childish. “What do I have to do?”

“Just a few commercials. They’re filming in LA before camp starts. Does that work?”

Shane demurs, but when he checks his calendar later that night the shooting dates are already marked out in gray.

Shane likes being a captain. He likes calling the newly drafted players and welcoming them to the org, likes showing up at dev camp and shaking hands with the prospects. He knows their stats as well as he knows his own, and he knows which ones will almost certainly never see the show. He likes getting into Boston a little earlier than everyone else, settling back in before the season kicks off properly.

He doesn’t particularly like it when Marleau drags him out to a seedy bar and plies him with top shelf tequila.

“It’s bad,” Shane complains, and sucks on the lime to try and clear the taste from his mouth. It doesn’t work.

“I know where your mouth’s been,” Marleau snorts, and slaps Shane on the back.

“Not the same. Anyway, how’s Tiffany.”

“Mouth like an angel. Tits like a whore. I think I’m going to marry her.” Marleau grins, and Shane grins back, exuberant, all of the potential of the new season laid naked before them.

His calendar fills back up, his life sectioned off into pieces. When an appointment shows up in September, a block of green nestled between two preseason games, Shane hits cancel.

Sometimes Shane hates how close the team is. Not all the hockey teams live in each others’ pockets the way the Raiders do. He doesn’t want to know about the shit that Connors took that morning or see Varkov’s hookups’ nudes before every game. It’s the same incestuous flow as every team he ever played on as a teenager dialed up to eleven.

So he knows, of course, that November twelfth is Feller’s birthday and that his goal is to fuck three women at the same time, a mind-bogging feat even if he weren’t missing both of his top front teeth like some kind of testosterone-riddled ruminant. He also knows that he’s getting dragged along on this odyssey, where they’re going to stumble their way through a bar crawl and end up on the front page of TMZ.

As annoyed as Shane is at the spectacle of it, at the drinking and the boorishness and the over-loud clubs and soggy bathrooms, it’s better than it was. It is better to be part of the team than not to be invited at all.

Three kids from Shane’s junior team made it to the draft. One of them got picked up in the second round by San Francisco, the other right after, shipped off to Tennessee. They talked about it in a little Facebook group, just the three of them, about how everything was about to change. Hockey was going to be different, faster, harder hitting. Every single person in the MLH had once been the brightest star of his feeder team; every fourth line goon with a worst-of compilation on YouTube had once skated circles around his teammates.

Shane could never find the right words to talk about it. The other two were caught somewhere between resentment and exhilaration, posting fight compilations and talking about how hard they would need to work to not get shoved down to some shitty affiliate team. Shane waited for that hit of mediocrity with open palms. He had always stood out. Maybe, he thought, he could finally fit in.

That hope lasted all the way through his second day of dev camp, when the other rookies, laughing through their exhaustion, huddled together in a corner of the locker room, scrolling through Yelp on someone’s phone. Hall, who Shane had been partnered with in drills, looked over at him. They would never see ice time together. Shane was destined for the top line. It was obvious, even now, two days into his MLH career.

They watched each other for a moment. Hall’s mouth twisted, and he turned back to the clot of rookies. Shane never found out what they decided on. By the time Marleau joined the team it was a fact. Sky is blue, ice is cold, Hollander doesn’t come out with the guys.

It’s nice to be included, he tells himself, as he downs a shot of something hot pink and sticky sweet. If he compares it to his first two years, it’s almost pleasant. Marleau was the key turning in a lock Shane hadn’t even known existed, dragging Shane along on their underage outings until they started to expect him there.

Shane is already eyeing the exits, even though it’s barely late enough for Feller to have been turned down by three different women. Shane catches an elbow to the ribs about it, some not-so-gentle teasing about leaving before the party’s even started. He doesn’t care. The bar is so loud he can’t hear himself think. It’s too hot, and everyone is too close, moving in uneven rhythms.

He’s bellying up to the bar to settle up the team’s tab, happy fucking birthday Feller, when a hot presence presses up next to him, shoulder to shoulder. Celebrity has its perks, but Shane hates when people feel entitled to touch him, tugging him over for unwanted hugs or photographs, so he plasters on half a smile and turns. “It’s not a great time,” he yells over the music, and then stops, because his fucking accountant is standing next to him in a sheer black shirt, his nipples on display. 

Shane’s mouth goes dry, then wet. The memory of the last time he’d seen him rushes in. Shane had skipped their last meeting. He sent an email authorizing an investment in something called sale-leaseback industrial storage and emailed his mom about finding a different financial advisor. The place where Rozanov’s arm presses against his is hot.

“You missed our appointment.” Rozanov leans close so he doesn't have to yell, at least not quite as loudly. He nods past Shane. “Buy me a drink.”

Rozanov gives Shane a disappointed look when he tries to buy him vodka and gets whiskey instead, top shelf and expensive enough that Shane double takes at the receipt he’s signing. There aren’t any empty seats, so Shane follows him over to an empty patch of wall and tries to look casual as he sips his own whiskey. It tastes like old band-aids and ash, and he chokes down a hundred dollars in three determined gulps.

“What do you want?”

“Rude, Hollander.”

Shane’s mother used to tell him his eyes would get stuck if he rolled them. He does it anyway, exaggerated irritation under flashing lights. “What the fuck do you want, Rozanov?”

“Rozanov,” he corrects, accent twisting the name into something new. “Last name only, like one of your players? Maybe you should try Mr. Rozanov. Or Ilya, since you can’t say it right.”

“You call me Hollander.”

“You prefer Shane?”

Shane shrugs. He does, but it would be giving something away to admit it. “I’m here with my team,” he says instead, and gestures to the gaggle of them, a tall cluster of jocks by the bar. Marleau turns and catches sight of them, then grins and gives Shane a thumbs up. Shane tries to shake his head at him, but he’s already turned back to the group.

“Marleau knows about you, then,” Ilya says. He leans against the wall like he’s already had a few drinks, his mouth loose and smiling. Maybe something more than alcohol; his pupils are wide pools of black ringed by that startling blue. None of it does anything to temper Shane’s feeling that he is being sized up by a predatory creature.

“Big fan of his?” Shane asks, tipping his chin over to where Marleau is handing out another round of shots.

“Not of the Raiders, no. He is on my television, hawking mediocre fast food. He knows?”

“There’s nothing to know.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Ilya’s head rolls on his shoulder. “I think there is a lot to know about Shane Hollander.”

“You’re under an NDA,” Shane says, the alcohol suddenly a hot weight in his stomach as he realizes he doesn’t know whether Ilya signed one. Grigori had, and the firm’s employees, but Ilya had come in as a new owner. Anxiety fizzes up his spine.

Ilya gives him another of those unimpressed looks, eyebrows a flat line across his brow. He sips his whiskey. “Hollander, if I want your money I will steal it. I do not need to blackmail you.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“I said I will not. Uncoachable,” he says with a snort. Shane, who has never in his life been described that way, reaches for his equanimity and finds it missing, a bare void where it used to sit. “Are you having fun with your team?” Ilya asks, cutting Shane off before he can work himself to a lather.

“Not really.”

Ilya leans in, eyes glittering. He looks like he’s about to tell Shane a secret. The ice cube in his empty glass rattles. “I have something better than this. Come with me.”

Maybe, Shane thinks, there is something wrong with him. A deep-rooted need to please that only comes out in the presence of coaches and his mother and, evidently, Ilya Rozanov. He follows him into a heavily graffiti-ed single-occupancy bathroom, barely big enough for the both of them. 

Shane expects to end the night on his knees, so he is surprised when Ilya pulls out his keys instead and a little baggie, white like powdered sugar.

“I don’t do that,” Shane says. Ilya shrugs and piles a bump on the end of a key. Shane arches backwards, spine against the porcelain sink, when Ilya holds it up to his face. “I said I don’t,” he repeats, because it’s loud in the bathroom. The music thuds through his skin.

“You will like it. One inhale.” He demonstrates, then fumbles with the bag again. His free hand finds the back of Shane’s head and pulls him forward. “One time,” he coaxes, his fingers gripping Shane’s scalp. “Only one.”

Shane knows some of the guys like coke. They talk about it the way they talk about girls and fast cars. No one has ever tried to make Shane try it. Ilya’s grip hasn’t slacked. Shane’s heart thuds in his chest in time to euro trash techno. He feels like a mouse, caught in unseen talons.

“Just one,” Ilya repeats. “For me. I will never let you do it again.”

“Promise?”

Ilya’s eyes glitter in the dim light. “Pinky swear.”

Shane catches a glimpse of himself in the scratched metal mirror. His own eyes are wet and wanting. Desperation pools in his chest in a long-ignored catchment. He tries to mimic the way Ilya did it, a single uncomfortable inhale.

“I don’t feel anything.”

“You will.”

He does. Shane hasn’t ever felt like this. He is alive in a way he has never known, every nerve singing. He tries to tell Ilya this, his words bubbling up like spring water. His mouth curves up at the corners when he talks. Everything is clean and bright in this shabby bar bathroom.

“And this?” Ilya asks. He tugs Shane’s jeans open. Shane’s hips kick rabbity up into his hand. He has never been so horny, never wanted so deeply. His dick, he finds, when he looks down, is only half-hard, which is impossible, because Shane is about to come. He tries to explain this to Ilya, too turned on for embarrassment, and then Ilya kisses him and Shane wants and wants and wants.

Shane winds up on his knees. Ilya’s dick has no problem getting hard. Shane wants it more than he wants air, and he whines when Ilya drags him back up, his mouth bitter with precome.

“Close,” Ilya tells him, and flips Shane around to brace with his forearms on the porcelain sink. He looks himself in his own wide eyes as Ilya pulls Shane’s pants down below his ass and slicks up the space between his thighs with restroom soap and fucks him there, his dick up against Shane’s balls, grunting with each thrust until Shane thinks he might die. Someone bangs on the bathroom door, a fist against wood, and Ilya comes in a hot rush.

“Come home with me,” Ilya pants into the curve of Shane’s neck.

Shane’s come down enough to realize where he is and what a bad idea this was. Someone else’s come is in his boxers. “Maybe next time,” he says, like an idiot, because there won’t be a next time, this is the last time, and Ilya can take his fucking cocaine and his softening dick and his callused palms and fuck off into Shane’s thin list of bad decisions along with Jessica from high school and last season’s penalty kill.

The next time Shane sees Ilya Rozanov, he’s at Shane’s grocery store.

Shane, at seventeen years old, had already been the subject of a TSN documentary and more scouting articles than he cared to think about. He had known since he was just a kid that he would play in the MLH, a part of the 2009 draft class. After the lottery, the headlines focused on Montreal; who would their second pick be? Who was the second best? Shane skipped the combine. He was going to Boston.

A year later, Shane, with all the unearned confidence of a newly eighteen-year-old sports prodigy, told the league he didn’t want to billet with any of the vets. He signed his lease paperwork with his freshly-discovered signature and spent an evening sitting on the bare wood floor of his brand new Boston penthouse, alternating panic and delight in the ups and downs of a sine wave, something he vaguely remembered from the last math class they’d forced him to sit through before school became a distant second priority.

He didn’t know how to balance a checkbook, he thought, sitting with his nose nearly against the glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows. He didn’t know when his first paycheck would come in. The league had sat him down in a day-long seminar about appropriate behavior on Twitter and how not to blow his signing bonus on sports cars with usurious terms, a word he had needed to look up later, but no one had pointed to a check and told him which corner to sign.

His mother had set up his bank account when he was thirteen, after the first sponsorship check cleared. She had asked, in her careful way, whether Shane needed help to set up his life in Boston. They both knew the answer was yes. If you’re sure, she had said, when he declined.

There was an awful lot of money sitting in that account, probably. He wasn’t sure if he’d been paid yet. He fumbled through a cardboard box and flipped open his laptop. The password was his high school girlfriend’s birthday.

Shane asked one of the d-men at practice, Brooks, 2015 third round draft pick, fourth line, and old to Shane’s eyes though probably no more than twenty-five. He shrugged. “I’ve got a guy,” he said and copied down Grigori’s number onto the back of Shane’s hand.

Shane’s money was in their hands two weeks later. The whole thing felt luxurious, the type of service celebrities used. It billed itself as a multi-family office, one that mostly concerned itself with family money, trusts and dynasties, but deigned to pick up the occasional athlete as some kind of charity case.

 Shane’s bills were paid by one of their green-visored accountants, his housekeeper’s payroll managed plus an annual bonus at Christmas, his taxes filed in two countries and a patchwork of states, and the only thing they asked of Shane was his signature on a stack of forms once a year and what he assumed was a reasonable asset management fee.

He kept the penthouse unit, even after he realized how much extra hassle Boston traffic adds to his life. It is not as large as it felt when he was eighteen; three reasonably sized rooms and an open-plan kitchen. It is a place that is just his, where Shane can shrink down the parts of himself that are not hockey and store them safely within its four walls.

Shane likes the solitude and the top-of-the-world view. He likes the furniture that some designer picked out for him, and the mismatched lamps that he chose for himself. He likes looking out across the city, to where the jagged spine of the skyline cuts into the sky. 

He can still see that skyline, he finds, from where Ilya Rozanov bends him over the edge of his couch, his sweaty face pressed into the leather by one of Ilya’s broad hands.

“I can’t,” Shane tries to say, and chokes down the rest of the sentence when Ilya’s slick fingers wind proprietarily into him, followed by the blunt head of his dick.

“Fuck, Hollander,” Ilya mutters, and a new cold slick of lube drizzles down onto the aching point where their bodies meet. Shane gasps at the sensation, and then again when Ilya thrusts in, hard, expecting Shane to take it. Shane does. He bears back, his fingers scrabbling for purchase on hand-stitched leather as Ilya shoves him forward, his chest pressed flat against Shane’s back.

It’s not Shane’s first time, no matter how much Ilya grunts in his ear that he’s tight like a virgin, that he’s being so good, that his ass is made for this. He hates the sound that wrenches out of him at the last one.

“I don’t do this,” Shane says, when he’s wiped down the couch and settled his beating heart. Ilya raises his eyebrows and gestures, in a way that encompasses exactly how much this they just did. He has not put his shirt on yet, and Shane wants to put his hands on the deep cut of his abs.

“I just—” Shane cuts off, not sure how to explain that catching sight of Ilya at the grocery store, a head of cauliflower balanced in one palm, isn’t the way that his sparse sexual encounters usually start. Shane’s life is clean and precise. Managed.

“You take it better than you play hockey,” Ilya says, which sets equal swells of pride and irritation through Shane.

“Fuck you.”

“Not today.” Ilya smirks at him, and Shane wants to smack it off his face. “Besides, I do not think you want that. Not when you make that face when I fuck you.”

Shane’s face goes hot, the blush building on his cheeks and down his neck. Ilya winks at him and makes himself at home in Shane’s kitchen, pulling a glass down from an open shelf and filling it with water from the fridge. He drinks it in three exaggerated gulps, his throat moving with each one.

Shane doesn’t know how to kick out a hookup. He doesn’t bring men back to his apartment. It doesn’t go with anonymity, to bring someone into the space where Shane’s trophies are arranged in shining rows along one wall. There’s no anonymity with Ilya, who has access to every facet of Shane’s life.

He picks up a bag of veggie crisps from the counter, and Shane decides that’s enough of this. “Well, it was great, uh, seeing you.”

“You missed the last appointment,” Ilya says, and pops open the bag. He chews, looks at the bag like it’s wronged him, and sets it carefully on Shane’s counter. “These are terrible, Hollander. You need better snacks.”

“Like what?”

“Cheetos are good.”

“Those are disgusting,” Shane informs him. “Do you know how much sodium is in them?”

“Not enough. Why did you miss the appointment? I texted you.”

Shane goggles. “Why do you think?”

“Oh,” Ilya says, like he’s placing the last piece in a puzzle. “You are embarrassed about not being able to come. That is normal with coke. You get used to it. Not you, because you cannot have any more, but other people do.”

“You’re such a fucking asshole,” Shane says, and starts walking towards the door. Maybe if he opens it, Ilya will wander out on his own accord, like ushering a moth out a window.

“Who is this?” Ilya asks, delighted, when Shane is within grabbing reach of his own front door. He eyes the doorknob longingly, and then turns to find Ilya with an armful of smush-faced gray cat.

“He’s going to bite you,” Shane informs him, and watches with horror as his usually-disgruntled cat rolls over in Ilya’s arms, his paws catching on the thin fabric of his shirt.

“He would never,” Ilya coos. “Pretty boy. I will call him Dym.”

“His name is Oscar.”

“Okay, okay, bye bye Dym,” Ilya says, as he sets the now-squirming cat on Shane’s counter. He rubs behind his ears, and his face stretches into a broad, genuine smile as he coos at the cat, ignoring Shane entirely. Something in Shane’s chest catches, a dangerous, unfamiliar feeling.

Shane had tried, when he first got to Boston, to inundate himself in the city. It had been August, and everywhere the world had been hot and loud, sticky with humidity and the crowded presence of a thousand other people. No one recognized him yet, so he rode the squealing green line, cheek and jowl with the crowded commuting mass. He thought once that someone wanted his autograph, but they were looking for directions to the city’s Chinatown, and Shane pretended to be a tourist as well so he didn’t have to admit that he didn’t know the way, didn’t know anything about this city that was supposed to be his home.

He kept it up as a habit for a while, until one ride when eight separate people asked him for selfies and autographs, one of them a woman who ran her hand along his spine when she leaned in, her floral perfume thick in his nose, and slipped her number into his hand with a wink.

He used the car service after that, or drove himself once he got comfortable enough with the aggressive, scrummy city driving. He’d driven himself to the shoot, something the league had put together for their rookie class, intending to shape their malleable images into respectability before they went off and ruined it with girls and drinking and minor charges. Shane sat on the grimy floor of a white-walled room and forced a smile for the camera and didn’t complain when a puppy pissed on his leg.

“Not a dog person?” the camera operator asked. She waved and an assistant brought in a wicker basket of kittens and dropped it into Shane’s lap, startling a laugh out of him. They put him and Hall next to each other, and Shane answered the same series of questions, except this time had a tiny gray cat sinking its needle claws into his shoulder and grumbling out a rattling purr.

They collected the rest of the kittens one by one, snagged from shelves like picking apples. The miniature asshole on Shane’s shoulder hissed when the volunteer reached for him. She laughed like it was cute, and not like eight ounces of claw-bearing fury was staring Shane down from his shoulder. “He’s available,” she said, and raised an eyebrow.

“Uh,” Shane managed, and tried to unstick the cat from his shoulder, which earned him four paws’ worth of claws in his skin. “I’m sure he’ll find a great home.”

“Holly made a friend,” said Hall, too many teeth in his smile. “That’s new.”

“Yeah, fuck you too.” Shane handed the cat over. “Go hang out with your kitten friends, buddy.”

“You should take him,” said Cadyn. He had a kitten perched on his ball cap, paws splayed out and eyes closed. “I’m getting this one.”

“We’re on the road forty-one games a season,” Shane pointed out. “What are you going to do with a kitten?”

“I dunno.” Cadyn reached up and the cat’s blue, blue eyes shot open, paws kneading air. “We live close. Maybe they can be playmates. Cats like that, right?”

Shane, desperate not to go back to the same empty apartment, desperate for the excuse of dragging another person into his orbit, reached back out for the gray kitten. “Yeah. I guess so.”

Cadyn had brought his kitten over once or twice, before the novelty wore off, before he realized that he didn’t have anything in common with Shane other than a jersey.

Shane watches Ilya scratch his cat under the chin, baby talking in Russian, and knows this can’t happen again. It is much, much too close to home.

Shane is playing, if he wants to be modest about it, the best hockey of his career. Something this season slotted into place. He has a new winger, a transfer down from Montreal with too many kids and a gregarious smile that Shane hasn’t quite figured out yet. Their defense has apparently decided they’re tired of hanging their goalie out to dry. They’re sitting pretty at the top of the division, head and shoulders above the second place team. A deep playoffs run, Shane thinks. A competitive shot at a cup.

Everyone on the team settles into the season in their own way. Marleau gives up drinking for approximately three days and then informs Shane, beer in hand, that doesn’t want to interrupt his routine. Dubek goads the rest of them into conditioning work that has even Shane feeling like he is going to puke off the side of his exercise bike. Shane, with precious little left in his life to pare away, cinches one notch tighter. There can be no distractions.

Ilya doesn’t respond to Shane’s cancellation email, and Shane doesn’t respond to his texts, and Shane assumes that’s the end of it.

It isn’t.

He sees him everywhere. Ilya is at Shane’s grocery store fondling the eggplant and he is at the coffee shop Shane likes to visit on game days, slurping a blended drink in the corner. He runs in the same park, following the path by the kiosk, buying an energy drink in its metallic can, informal in his Adidas sweats, and blinks at Shane in surprise before he jerks his head towards the disused gazebo, one eyebrow raised. He brushes up against Shane in the tiny shop at the golf course on the first nice day of spring. “Funny coincidence,” Ilya says, shrugging, before he drags Shane into the country club’s single-occupancy bathroom and jerks him off with his back digging into the air dryer while Shane alternates staring at the stubble on his jaw and the water stain on the wall behind him.

“How the fuck are you even here?” Shane asks, when he’s tucking himself back into his pants. His knees are going to ache for the rest of the day. He hopes his PT doesn’t notice the bruising.

“What, America?” Ilya leans back against the bathroom sink, muscles flexing under his polo shirt. He reaches out to adjust Shane’s collar. “Blame my father. Twelve years old and he says Ilya, we are moving to America.”

“I meant golfing, asshole.”

Ilya shrugs. “Stupid sport, but clients like it. This is how you get new clients in finance. You invite them golfing.”

Shane looks instinctively at the door. “You have a client waiting for you?”

Ilya falters. “Ah, not today. Only me. Practicing my swing. What about you?”

“The list of sports we’re allowed to play during the season is about this long.” Shane holds his thumb and finger about an inch apart. “Why the move?” he asks before he can make any jokes about the gesture.

“My mother died,” Ilya says candidly. “He wanted to forget her, I think.”

“I’m sorry.”

It gets him a shrug. “It has been a long time. My brother is still back in Moscow, being the worst. You would not believe him. My father died and all of a sudden he is on WhatsApp. Oh, Ilya, I will take over the business, do not worry.” Ilya rolls his eyes. “I am not sure he can count to ten. Do not worry, Hollander, I will not let him handle your investments.”

“That’s not something I’ve ever worried about,” Shane says honestly, and files it away in the stack of facts he is collecting. 

Ilya told Shane, at the coffee shop, that he had decided not to sell the Boston office, because he doesn’t trust the way that private equity treats the industry. Not that he cares, he was quick to add, shrugging slightly, only that it is a convenient stepping stone, a path forward in his own life and away from the Big Four consulting that he had been mired in back in NYC. Shane has learned about his friend, Svetlana, and that he wants a dog but isn’t sure whether he can make it work in the city. He knows that Ilya used to play hockey when he was a kid, and that he’s loudly convinced he would have been better than Shane if he’d gone pro. He knows that Ilya watches every season of Survivor and has alarmingly deeply held opinions on the current season. He knows that there are flecks of hazel hidden in the startling blue of his eyes.

Shane waits for a count of thirty after Ilya leaves before he slinks out of the bathroom in search of his team. If any of them notice him acting oddly, they don’t mention it.

“Did you look at that list Farah sent over?” Shane’s mother asks. Shane’s phone is caught between his shoulder as he scrubs the cat’s water dish.

“Which list?” he asks absently, and tips suds out into the sink. Oscar winds around his ankles, a mobile tripping hazard.

“Financial services, remember? They’re all pre-vetted. I think it’s time for a change, honestly. I never liked Grigori.”

“He’s dead, Mom.”

“Well,” she huffs. “Still.”

“I’ll look,” Shane promises. He writes an email to the top option, a local firm that specializes in professional athletics. It stays in his drafts.

Haircuts are orange, blocked out every other month at a little barber shop around the corner from his apartment. He books them himself, one of the only things that Shane adds to his own calendar, outside of blocking out time for team events or his mother’s birthday. Shane gets the same haircut every time, short enough that it doesn’t tickle the back of his neck. The barber is a middle-aged man who has no interest in small talk or hockey, and Shane gets a curt nod when he leaves the tip at his station on the way out.

His phone buzzes as he steps into the blinding glare outside. Shane squints at the screen, and then steps into an alley to look.

Ilya: I see you

Shane: It’s unethical to use client contact information this way

Ilya: Only for you

Shane: Stop texting me

Ilya: I am in line. Food truck

Shane looks over and spots him. It’s been warm for a few days, an unseasonable stretch of false spring that cuts through the winter drab, but not warm enough for Ilya’s sleeveless tank top, the shorts that hang around his knees. Ilya grins and looks back at his phone.

Ilya: Maybe not so hungry. Parking garage.

Ilya’s car is a neon orange monster with darkly tinted windows tucked into the corner of an underground garage. He bullies Shane into the passenger seat, his hands on Shane’s hips and back, his mouth hot on the back of Shane’s neck.

“What’s with this?” Ilya asks, gesturing to where Shane is fastening the seatbelt. “Take it off.”

“Here?” Shane asks, incredulous, even though a fresh flood of heat is working its way up his body, soaking into the hollow of his gut. “We’re going to get arrested.”

“No one is here.” Ilya half-crawls across the car. It’s too small for both of them in the deep bucket seat, an uncomfortable squeeze. Ilya tries to angle it right, but he can’t get his mouth to Shane’s dick without contorting in unnatural ways, and it’s funny, it’s fun, in ways that Shane doesn’t associate with hookups. His laughter turns into a groan when Ilya gets a hand around him instead, hot dry skin working Shane in quick, rough movements. He jerks up into Ilya’s grip, his head tipped back into the headrest.

“Messy,” Ilya chides when Shane is done. He holds his hand up between them, a thick pearly smear across his palm. “You will get your mess on my nice car.”

Shane isn’t sure where the impulse comes from. Maybe it’s the heat that still sears impossibly through his bones, or the want to, just once, surprise this man, but he takes Ilya’s hand with his own and pulls it towards his face, cleaning him with careful swipes, bitter and salty. It’s worth it for the way Ilya’s eyes go wide, how his throat works when he swallows.

“Come home with me,” Ilya says quietly. It isn’t the first time he’s asked. Shane shakes his head.

“We can’t keep doing this,” Shane says. Warning lights flash in his brain: someone is going to find out, and no matter how many cups he wins he will always be that hockey player, the one busted for indecent exposure, getting off under the cold fluorescent lights of a parking garage. 

“Come here,” Ilya says, and pulls Shane toward him, angling him awkwardly in the seat. Shane jerks him off in quick, efficient motions, Ilya’s callused fingers surrounding his so they’re working at it together. “Fuck,” Ilya whispers when he comes, then wipes his hand on Shane’s shirt and ignores Shane’s squawk of disbelief.

Ilya settles back into his seat, eyes-half closed, sated and lax. Shane can’t help the way his whole body turns towards him like a flower seeking the sun. “You need a ride home?” Ilya asks after a moment, when Shane is still sitting in his car.

“No. My place is close.”

Now is when Ilya will shoot him a smirk and a see you next time and Shane will tell him, with all the conviction he can muster that there won’t be a next time. Shane waits for it, but instead Ilya says, “The season is almost over. Where do you go during the summer?”

“What? No it’s not.” Shane, who frequently feels that conversations are happening around him, still manages to be caught off guard. “Playoffs go through June.”

Ilya scoffs. “Always with the hockey, Hollander. That is not what I asked.”

“Hockey is kind of important to me.”

“I do not care about your hockey. After you lose in the first round, then. Where do you go?”

“We’re not going to lose in the first round.”

“Ok, fine.” Ilya gestures impatiently. He watches Shane through the rearview mirror. “In fantasy land, after you win the cup even though your only backup goalie is a call-up from the Pirates, where do you go?”

“Ottawa, I guess,” Shane says. The conversation is surreal. He has to twist his neck to look at Ilya properly. There is a sign on one pitted concrete wall announcing that he should pay for parking before exiting the garage. “I stay in Boston sometimes, but my parents are in Ottawa. That’s where I’m from.”

“You stay with your parents?”

“Sometimes,” Shane says, instantly defensive. “They have a cottage near Montreal. I spent summers there when I was a kid. That’s where I’m going to have mine built.”

It’s a long-time dream. The season belongs to hockey, to whichever team owns his contract. It’s Boston now, but it could just as easily be another city next year or next month. Not as likely at his level, but stars get traded just the same. The summers, though, are for Ottawa. They are for the lakes and the clear night sky as much as for conditioning and rebuilding enough muscle to last him a competitive season.

Shane has mentioned it to a few people, which usually earns him a platitude about it sounding nice. Ilya, by contrast, presses his mouth tight and looks Shane over consideringly.

“Okay,” he says finally. “We will look at financing. May be better, or maybe we will need to liquidate some stock. I will put together some options. I will have the office put the meeting on your calendar.”

“No,” Shane says reflexively. He can’t risk Ilya’s office, the thick, sound-deadening walls. The sturdy wood desk.

“You’re scared. Of what?”

“I’m not scared,” Shane objects. “I just don’t want to go to your office.”

“No sex.” Ilya taps his chest twice with a closed fist. “Promise. Only business. No distractions before playoffs.”

“Oh, now you think we’re making playoffs?"

“I support your delusions,” Ilya says, and winks before he swings his car door open, and ushers Shane back out into the bright light of reality.

There are another three weeks before the appointment crops up on Shane’s calendar, long enough for the regular season to wind its way to the end, and Shane is suffused with the same nauseous anticipation as every year at the proximity of playoffs.

The last road trip of the year comes to a close, a grinding set of games up and down the west coast. Shane’s body is a map of bruises, a testament to the game. A mottled yellow bruise creeps along his ribs from where he caught a puck, and there is a dark red smear under his eye from a high stick. His right shoulder aches with every move. Shane thinks about how it will feel when Ilya wrenches it behind his back, and his whole body shudders in anticipation.

Ilya hasn’t cropped up in Shane’s vicinity at all during those three weeks. It should be a relief. It’s what Shane has wanted all season, the space to focus on his game. Instead, he finds himself scanning the edges of grocery stores and the line at the gelato stand for golden curls and a spattering of moles. He wonders if Ilya has a dermatologist. He wonders where Ilya is. 

Shane doesn’t miss him, because you can’t miss something that isn’t yours. He notes his absence, the way he notices that the dark-bodied sparrows disappear during the summer. He notices that Ilya didn’t text after the game, a goal and two assists, twenty-two soaring minutes on the ice. He gets pulled into media where all they want to know is how it feels to be at the top of his game, and Shane wonders what Ilya would ask instead. Why Shane let Stewart catch him off guard in the neutral zone, maybe. Why Shane’s shot in the third period zinged off the crossbar when his winger was wide open.

His skin feels buzzy and too-tight as he makes his way through the building and towards Ilya’s office. Shane hasn’t been down to Milk Street at all this season. It had been over-optimistic to assume that this would be enough to knock Ilya Rozanov out of his life. Ilya looks up as Shane enters and nods, amusement flickering across his expression. Amused at Shane, probably, who feels ready to vibrate out of his skin.

The office looks nearly the same as the last time Shane was there. He isn’t sure what he was expecting. Ilya seems the type to sweep into a space and turn it on end, to change his surroundings to suit his mood by the force of his presence. Maybe it's only Shane's desperation that makes him feel that way. Some things are different, certainly. The oil painting is gone, replaced by an abstract print in green and gold. At the edge of the same sturdy desk is a fishtank with a single long-finned inhabitant.

“Hollander,” is all Shane gets for a greeting before he’s sinking into the visitor’s chair. He accepts a cup of lukewarm coffee from the receptionist and tracks her footsteps as she disappears out of the office. The door closes with a snick.

“We can’t—” Shane says at the same time as llya presses something on his laptop and a printer thunks to life.

“For you,” Ilya says, and slides a thin stack of paper across the desk. Shane takes it automatically. It’s numbers, mostly, a sea of them in tiny black print.

“What is this?”

“Proposal for your house project.” Ilya uncaps a pen with his teeth, mumbling around the plastic. “I made some guesses, but we can hone in on details before you start. Construction loan, probably, interest only while they build. I put another option on the second page, but you are making good enough returns on your investments that I would be hesitant to liquidate.”

The buzzing in Shane’s bones settles into a dull, uncomfortable ache. “I didn’t know you did real estate.”

He shrugs. “Eh, not really. New things, you know? Good for the mind. You will need a general contractor. I will not be holding a shovel.”

“Maybe you’d be better at that than customer service.”

Ilya ignores him. “This is all preliminary. Many things to do before we know final costs. Find you an architect, sort out your financing, all of that.”

“I want to find my own architect.”

“You can do that,” Ilya agrees. “I will set someone on the team to work with you on the project.”

“What if I want you to do it?”

Ilya considers it, humming lightly. “No. I do not think so. This is not part of our standard package of services, so there will be additional charges for construction management, foreign financing, et cetera et cetera.” He plucks another paper from the printer’s tray and nudges it delicately across the desk.

Shane takes one look at it and physically chokes. “That’s, um. A lot.”

“Exorbitant,” Ilya agrees toothily. “The value of the all-in-one package.”

Shane already knows he’s going to do it. It’s the push he needed, tipping him forward into a project he’s needed for years. His own space on the shore of the lake. Glass, he thinks. Glass and wood and a view over the rippling water as the sun rises.

He skims the projection to keep up appearances. “No existing client discount?”

“Mr. Hollander,” Ilya says in a tone of reproach. “This is a business, not a Wal-Mart. We do not offer discounts.”

“Wal-Mart is a business. 

“And you thought what, that I will give you ten percent off because you ask nicely?”

“I’d settle for five.”

Ilya looks him up and down, and fire sparks behind Shane’s ribs. “You think you can earn your way into it?”

Shane’s mouth goes dry. Finally. He doesn’t understand Ilya’s brand of fiduciary foreplay. “Maybe. Did you have any ideas?” He spreads his legs ever so slightly, feeling like a whore as he does it. Shane has never had to initiate between them. He lets Ilya do it, then follows along obediently at the first raised eyebrow.

“Win a cup and we will talk.” Ilya’s grin widens, revealing the crowded row of his bottom teeth. “Appointment time is over, Mister Hollander. I will see you next quarter.”

“But—” Shane blinks at him, slew-footed by the casual dismissal. It undercuts the anticipation that had been building since he saw the appointment laid out on his calendar. Mortification mingles with anger in the churning pit of his stomach. “Isn’t there anything else you wanted to discuss?”

“Like what? Your team’s SOG? I will watch the first round, see if your second line can remember where the net is.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Shane snaps with real irritation.

“Ah, no. Not today.”

“Why did you even make me come in?”

“You know how much money is in your accounts?” Ilya asks, snapping the question in a way that sets Shane further off kilter. He shakes his head. “A lot, Hollander. You don’t spend anything.”

“I spend money,” Shane argues. “I have a–I pay my staff. My apartment. I eat out.”

“That is not spending money, Hollander.”

“Just because I don’t buy stupid cars like some of the guys doesn’t mean I’m being weird about it. I send my parents money. You see my donations, asshole.”

“Hollander. What are you saving for?”

Shane stares at him in outright bafflement. The horny energy that dogged him all morning is slipping away. “What do you mean what? I’m saving. It’s fiscally responsible.”

“You have—” Ilya pauses, mouth working through mental math before he swipes a hand through the air. “A lot. You have lots of money, Hollander. You earn lots of money and you do not do anything nice for yourself. I see your receipts. You get coffee and you go to the golf course and you still live in your little apartment that you got on your ELC salary.”

“It’s not little.”

“Not the point,” Ilya says, visibly annoyed. “You do everything other people say. What do you want for you? This house? We will get you this house.”

“I want to play hockey,” Shane grits out. He wants to suck Ilya’s dick. He wants to get bent over his desk. He doesn’t want to have this conversation.

“Okay, so play hockey.”

“I want to get fucked,” Shane says, annoyed. “You can’t even help me with that.”

“Not today, no.”

“Why not?” Shane can’t help the petulant whine that fringes his words, which only heightens his irritation.

“I promised,” Ilya says seriously. He taps his nose. “And no fucking during playoffs. Is that not the rule?”

“There’s no scientific basis for that,” argues Shane, who loves hockey and all its unscientific superstitions. He loves that he can pass off any idiosyncrasy as a superstition, something else to fuel his production. “And it’s not playoffs yet.”

“Maybe I will run into you after you lose.” A smile plays around the corners of Ilya’s full mouth. “It will not be long. First round knock out. Admirals in five, I think.”

“Oh, you’re a fucking Admirals fan now?” Shane’s fingers crunch into his knees.

“Eh, not so much, but I lived in New York. Needs must.”

“You live here now.” Shane is annoyed at his own annoyance. He doesn’t care who roots for his team or who hates him. He doesn’t care that his mom still watches all of the Metros games. He definitely, absolutely does not care that his fucking accountant can’t be bothered to pretend to support his team.

Shane is used to wanting things he can’t have. He wants a competent fourth line. He wants to never have to talk to the media again. He wants to wipe the shit-eating grin off Ilya’s face. The wanting only makes him want more, a recursive kindling of his competitive drive.

Ilya only grins wider. Maybe he can see right through Shane, break him out into debits and credits, lay out the measure of a man in red ink. “Okay then, Shane Hollander,” he says, and waves a hand toward the office door. “Go win, then. Give me something to root for.”

They play the first two games of the series at home, a win and a loss. Shane drives hard, ignoring the ache in his knee and the swelling bruise on his ribs, but it isn’t enough to stop Vaughn from scoring in overtime of the second game. The world devolves into the thud of palms against the glass as his team trails off the ice. Two days, and then they play in New York, an easy win that brings them up two to one in the series.

Shane doesn’t think about Ilya Rozanov rooting for the Admirals. He doesn’t think about a house up in Ottawa and the way the leather of his fancy car’s seats feels against his bare back. He sets it aside and clears his mind of everything except for that moment, the ice and the play and the thud of a body against the boards. He scores the game winning goal for the fourth, a tidy wrister glove side, and his team swarms him, dragging him down to the ice.

The room buzzes with a chewy, frenetic energy before the fifth game. They’re back in Boston, in Shane’s own city, in his own barn. “We’re going to win this one,” he tells Marleau, who tells it to Connor, who tells it to St-Simon, and on down the line. Shane isn’t much for game-day speeches, but they all know what they need to do.

A few hours north, Montreal and Tampa are grinding out their own series, trading wins back and forth. A win tonight means the Raiders get a few days to recover. Shane wants the space to breathe, to practice, to prepare.

Shane is good at zoning out the crowd. After years of playing in sold-out stadiums, he barely notices the rhythmic thump of hands on glass. It’s just another distraction, like shitty chirps or the smack of a stick on his back, always short of a penalty. Everyone is trying to get a rise out of him, players trying to draw a penalty or fans looking for a thrill. Shane is used to ignoring all of it, until he looks up during warmups and finds Ilya drinking an overpriced beer in his glass seats, a fucking Admirals jersey on his back.

The hot shock of anger takes Shane by surprise. He lets it spur him through puck drop, all the way through his first shift. It flickers back every time he looks over and finds Ilya watching someone else. He’s sitting next to a woman, her hair a halo of curls, and Shane is surprised by the jealousy that flares up at her presence.

“We’re fucking finishing this,” he tells Marleau before puck drop, and they do. When he peels himself off the ice at the end of the game it’s with one more win under his belt and a gritty determination between his teeth. He doesn’t look to see if Ilya is watching him.

Shane’s phone buzzes in his pocket while he’s doing media afterward. He ignores it. It’s too much, too dangerous, for this to be here at the rink. All of it is too dangerous. Shane is caught on the blade-edge of wanting, frustrated at being turned down last time, annoyed at letting it get under his skin. He turns his phone off and shoves it in his bag.

There are cool downs and team dinner and by the time Connors has decided where they’re celebrating Shane is pretty well over it. He settles in gamely anyway and follows along to the bar Connors chooses, which is the same one Connors always chooses. The place is quiet, at least, or quiet enough that Shane can make out the shape of his own discontent over the din.

Not all of the guys come along to these things. St-Simon begs off on the basis of being a family man, and Anderson roundly told the team that he’d seen enough of them for a year, and then slapped Connors on the back and told him not to be too hung over to practice. Shane is there out of the same misshapen obligation that dogs the rest of his life, the one that Ilya had so tidily highlighted.

He accepts a piss-water American beer from one of his teammates and pauses with the bottle halfway to his mouth. “How the fuck,” Shane says incredulously.

“Who?” Marleau starts to turn but Shane kicks him. “The fuck, man.”

“Don’t look.”

“Look at what? Is this a guy? Is this the guy?”

Shane sets his beer down on the high-top table. It leaves a ring of condensation on the sticky wood. “What guy?”

“The one you’ve been texting.” Marleau turns again, attempting subtle but falling five paces short. 

“I’m not texting anyone.”

Marleau leans past Shane to look. “Is that him? Tall guy? He looks familiar.”

“He’s not,” Shane hisses, and tries to turn Marleau around, but the man has four inches and forty pounds on him and shakes Shane’s hand off. Mercifully, Ilya hasn’t noticed them. He is leaned up against the bar, still wearing that stupid Hunter jersey. Shane wants to punch him.

“He’s my wealth manager,” Shane grumbles.

Marleau’s laugh kicks out of him in a donkey bray. “Wealth? Jesus, Holly. You’re fucking your accountant?”

“He’s not an accountant.” Ilya had made this very clear the first time Shane had called him that. There were three layers of certifications required for him to do his job. He did not do taxes.

“You’re staring,” Marleau says, and elbow Shane a little too hard. “Wealth. What’s he got you in? Stocks?”

“Real estate. I don't know. I just show up and sign things.”

“Fancy. He need more clients?”

“Ask him yourself,” Shane snaps back, and grabs for Marleau when he stands up and takes a step towards the bar. “The fuck are you doing?”

Marleau thinks of his dick as a public service, and now that he has a real girlfriend, he’s spent the last year trying to shunt hookups Shane’s way. Shane halfway thinks that Marleau’s going to get outed for it, which would be hilarious if it weren’t a disaster waiting to happen. Marleau waves widely, and Ilya’s face splits into a grin when he spots them.

“Hollander,” he says, sidling into the private section and sidling up next to their table. “Hollander’s friend. The one with the, eh, offside calls. How is your face? Maybe next time you should not let Vaughn punch you first.”

Marleau looks delighted, and Shane is struck by the sudden and horrifying realization that these two would be fast friends. “Rozanov.”

“Please. I am Ilya,” he says, and winks at Marleau. “I am sure Shane has told you a lot about me. It is the type of thing he likes, I think, to talk about his safe investments.”

Shane sees, all at once, how the night is going to go. Marleau will be charmed by Ilya, bros of a feather. They will exchange numbers and make plans for tee time after playoffs. Ilya will wind his way one notch deeper into Shane’s life, an unavoidable and unattainable facet of his existence.

“I can’t do this,” Shane says, and gets up. Maybe he can ask for a trade. The other side of the country, maybe.

Ilya catches him on the street outside while Shane is typing his address into Uber. The evening is cool, and the street lights leave amber puddles on the sidewalk. “Hollander,” he calls.

“I have a car on the way. Go back inside.”

“Give,” Ilya says, and Shane, unaccountably, does, setting his phone in Ilya’s waiting hand.

“There’s a cancellation fee,” Shane says numbly.

Ilya rolls his eyes. “I will help you file for bankruptcy.”

“I’m not doing this any more.”

“Doing what, Hollander?”

“Can you just—fucking, Christ, Ilya. Stop calling me that.”

“Shane.” Ilya’s voice is soft. “Let me take you home.”

Behind them, the bar door opens, disgorging a clot of drunk revelers onto the sidewalk. “Can we go,” Shane says, and gestures with his thumb. They end up huddled between two buildings, in an alley that smells like piss, but is safely out of reach of his teammates.

“You’re always where I am,” Shane says bluntly. “How do you do that?”

“This is what is bothering you?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, I tell you, then we go back to my place, okay?”

“What?”

“You always feel better after we fuck,” Ilya says reasonably. “Less stressed. Okay? Good plan.”

“It’s not a—”

“I looked at your bank.”

Shane short circuits. “You what?”

“Your bank records,” Ilya clarifies. “The firm keeps your books. I just—” He mimes typing on a keyboard. “And there, I know where you get coffee in the mornings and where you go golfing.”

Shane knows, rationally, that he should be horrified, but he can’t help the laugh that bubbles up. It’s such a stupid, simple explanation. He thinks back over the year. Coffee shops and the bar that Connors always picks and his favorite grocery store. “You’re a psychopath,” he says, and presses the palm of his hand to his mouth to stifle a snort of laughter. “Jesus Christ. How did you know about the park?”

Ilya gives him a toothy grin. “Actual coincidence. I was running and you were there.”

“And you came to the game.”

“I have season tickets. I have been there before, but you did not notice.”

“Jesus Christ.” Shane presses his shoulders against the brick wall and stares up at where the stars would be. “Why?”

Ilya leans next to him, shoulder to shoulder. “You cancelled your appointment. I wanted to, well. I wanted to see you, I think. And then you brought me back to your apartment and I was—” Ilya mimes an explosion, his fingers bursting outward. “I went a little overboard. Maybe.”

Ilya’s accent gets thicker when he’s unsure. Shane likes that. He likes a lot of things about Ilya Rozanov.

“You think?”

“I know what I want. I knew from the first day when you walked in and you wanted so badly to suck my dick that you didn’t know what to do with yourself.”

“Oh fuck you,” says Shane, but he’s smiling, his heart swelling. “I thought I was just a convenient fuck for you.”

“Hollander,” Ilya says seriously. “Shane. Nothing about you is convenient. You know how many meetings I missed waiting at that stupid coffee shop?”

“You’re insane.”

“I know what I want.”

“I do too,” Shane says with a surety that surprises him. “You said I don’t know what I want. I want hockey, and I want my house in Ottawa, and I want this. You’re insane. Do you know that? Maybe I am too, if I want you anyway.”

“You want my dick.”

“And I want you to burn that jersey.”

Ilya isn’t wearing anything under the jersey. It isn’t warm enough for him to be shirtless, and he looks ridiculous, standing half-naked in an alley. Shane can feel the affection in his heart settling in, sending down roots as Ilya wrestles the jersey into a dumpster. “Better?”

“Much.”

“I will get a Hollander jersey,” Ilya promises. “Only Raiders for me now. I have renounced New York. Awful city. The only good thing it has is pizza.”

“Good.”

Ilya pauses. The light catches in his curls and on the slope of his shoulder. “And when people ask me why I am wearing a Hollander jersey?”

Shane catalogues his emotions. There is fear, of course. He has spent years being cautious, taking only enough to slake the basest wants inside of him. He doesn’t know what will happen if this comes out; there have been no openly gay hockey players, few gay athletes in any professional sport. There would be outcry against him, rude signs and Twitter threads demeaning his masculinity, the restrained style of his play. All of those things already exist; he is good at tuning out the pounding fists, the angry faces of an away crowd.

He sifts past the fear, like turning over a rock at the edge of the lake to find the crawling salamanders, and finds a thready anger that he has needed to hide at all. And past that, in a soft underscore, the tentative, simmering anticipation that he could have something more. That there is something here that he could choose for himself, to grasp in greedy hands and hold tight.

Ilya could be that, he thinks.

“I don’t want to be public yet,” he says, and watches Ilya’s face for disappointment.

Ilya shrugs with what Shane recognizes by now as affected nonchalance. “I can be a secret if you need.”

“No. I don’t—I don’t want that,” he says, and likes the way Ilya’s shoulders unknot. He watches Shane carefully. The breath shivers in Shane’s lungs. He isn’t good at this. He wants to be. 

“So?”

“Marleau knows something, which means everyone else will by the end of the week. The team anyway.” Shane scrabbles for the words. “I want this to be just for me. I live under a fucking microscope. Everyone thinks they know me. So, not a secret but not—not for everyone else. Is that ok?”

“Ugh,” Iya says with affected disgust. “My chance at fame. Gone like that.”

“I should probably find a new firm I guess.”

His brows furrrow. “No, why? Stay with me. I will give you the discount you want.”

“Isn't that a conflict of interest?”

“So official. I am Russian. Bribery is a classic Soviet tradition.”

“You grew up in Boston,” Shane accuses. “Were you even born when the Soviet Union collapsed?”

“Yes, and they have bribery here, too.” Ilya tucks his hands under his armpits and shivers. “It is cold,” he whines. “I know you have just discovered planning, but we do not have to figure everything out tonight.”

Shane’s laughter startles out of him. It is a novelty to be seen so easily. A novelty to be wanted like this, as Shane himself.

“What do you want, then?”

“Well you can't fuck during playoffs so…”

“Fuck you,” Shane laughs again. He is full of so much excitement it swells up near to bursting. 

“Let me take you home.” Ilya boxes Shane in against the wall, his hand against Shane’s cheek, thumb stroking the crest of Shane’s cheekbone. His fingers are cold, but the rest of him is so warm. “Tomorrow is for hockey. Tonight, come home with me. Please.”

Shane knows what should be on his calendar tonight. A reasonable bedtime, the PT stretches laid out on his coffee table. He will have practice in the morning and tape review and the thousand other things that eat up the playoffs hours.

Maybe he can add a new color to his calendar. A startling blue, flecked with hazel.

“Okay,” Shane says, effervescent with possibility. “Take me home.”