Summary:

Shane Hollander has spent his entire career in careful control - of his image, his privacy, and the parts of himself he wasn’t ready to share with the world. One leaked conversation strips all of that away overnight, and what’s left in its wake is a locker room that’s turned on him, a coaching staff that wants him gone, and an organization that has decided the easiest solution is to make him disappear quietly.

Ilya has been in the league now long enough to understand that some things are too dangerous to want. He has his career, his team, and the laws of his home country to think about. He has very good reasons to keep his distance from Shane Hollander and the storm currently surrounding him. But he’s never been good at doing what he should do.

A story about what it costs to have everything taken from you - your privacy, your safety, your right to tell your own story - and what it looks like to slowly, painstakingly, build something real in the wreckage. About two people who have been circling each other for years finally running out of room to keep pretending. About found family, hostile ice, and the difference between the life you survived and the one you actually get to live.