Chapter Text
The video is seven minutes and forty-two seconds long. It opens on an empty bedroom. Ugly floral bedspread, ugly floral wallpaper, ugly floral curtains. You can’t see it in the video, but Ilya remembers the carpet was ugly, too. A hideous, stained mauve that looked like the raw cow tongue Ilya’s mother sometimes bought when she was feeling especially sad. She said it reminded her of what she used to eat as a kid, before the fall of the Soviet Union, when standard cuts of meat were sometimes in short supply.
In the video, there’s a low voice speaking in Russian. Come here, you little brat, it says, and then Ilya appears at the edge of the frame.
He’s thirteen or fourteen, but still easily recognizable. Same curls, same big lips, same mole on his left cheek; the nose is even crooked. He had only broken it twice, at that age, but that was enough.
He looks afraid. This is one of the worst parts of the video, for Ilya. It would be easier if he spent the whole thing smirking and laughing, if he pushed back into Kuznetsov’s cock instead of shying away from it. Then it would just be the gay thing. But you can see the way Ilya flinches at even the slightest touch, his skinny teenage ribs sucking in and out as the palm on the back of his neck slides down, down, down.
Ilya should probably stop watching when Kuznetsov shoves him face-down into the mattress, but he doesn’t. He keeps watching. He keeps listening to his teenage self make these pathetic little simpering noises into the sheets. At least he doesn’t say no, or anything so stupid. He doesn’t say anything at all, actually. Not until the very end of the video, when Kuznetsov had pulled out of him and slapped his ass. What do you say, boy? he had asked, showing his yellow teeth.
And Ilya had said thank you.
Thank you, coach, he had said, and bent down to pull up his pants.
—
So the video isn’t good.
Ilya hadn’t known the video existed, before this moment. If he had known, he would have paid someone to have it destroyed. Would have paid someone to murder Kuznetsov, maybe, just for redundancy's sake. But it was peak stupidity, to keep evidence of your homosexual perversion around in a country where that crime could get you sent to jail for several decades, and Ilya hadn’t thought that Kuznetsov would be that dumb.
But apparently he was, and apparently the video did exist. And now here was Ilya, waking up to a link in his email inbox, which led him to Twitter, which led him to a video of himself get fucked by his old hockey coach.
And there go the plans for the rest of his life.
So. He spends about ten minutes in the bathroom, heaving into the toilet. There’s not much in his stomach but bile, but he stays there a while anyway, because he can’t quite make himself stop gagging. He keeps seeing Kuznetsov’s hairy fingers wrapped around Ilya's waist. He keeps hearing his voice, what do you say, boy?
After a while, he forces himself to his feet. With shaky legs, he goes to the bathroom tap, rinsing his mouth out and then shoving his whole face under the stream of water. He emerges, wet as a fish, and tells himself he feels better. He dries his face off. He gets to work.
His first order of action is logging into his security system and changing all his passcodes. There aren’t a lot of people who know his codes, but there are a few. Svetlana, Marly, his coach, Shane. Undoubtedly, some of these people will be demanding explanations, and if they don’t like the ones he gives, they’ll show up on his doorstep. There’s nothing he’d like less.
He calls the security guard for his gated community and has his list of approved visitors updated. “Nobody in but me,” Ilya says. “Nobody at all.”
The guard hesitates. “Not even Ms. Svetlana?”
“Not even Wayne fucking Gretzky,” Ilya says, and hangs up the phone.
Next, he goes into his Find My Friends and turns off his location sharing, so nobody can find him. They’ll expect to find him at his house, of course, but Ilya doesn’t have to stay here. He could rent an apartment, or a hotel, or he could—
What? What could he do? The list of options available to Ilya has shrunk overnight. Yesterday, he could do anything. Today—
He brushes the thought away. It’s not worth thinking about, right now. There are more important things to handle.
Things like Shane. Ilya’s phone is blowing up with calls and messages right now, but by far and away the most of them are from Shane. Jane, Jane, Jane, his screen says, every time taunting him with the blushing red heart emoji that Ilya had only just added to the contact field. It made him look sappy, maybe, and he usually changed it to an eggplant when he knew he was going to see Shane, but, fuck it, if he couldn’t claim Shane as his boyfriend then at least he could claim Jane. At least his friends could know he was taken by someone.
So, Shane. What to do about Shane? Ilya knows how Shane feels about coming out. It’s his worst nightmare. This is my literal fucking nightmare, Ilya, Shane had said, and that was just when his dad knew. His big, dumb sweetheart of a dad who saw all of two seconds of Ilya groping Shane’s ass. By now, half of Twitter has probably seen Ilya doing much more pornographic things. This probably, actually, is the worst thing Shane can imagine happening—or it would be, if Shane was publicly connected to Ilya at all.
This is a small mercy: they haven’t started on their plan yet. They haven’t announced the charity, or even begun its legal incorporation; they haven’t begun soft-launching their friendship to the press; Ilya hasn’t made any moves towards Ottawa.
Ilya can’t subject Shane to this, not when there’s another option.
As soon as he realizes this, he pulls his phone out of his pocket. Best to chop from the shoulder, and best to do it before he chickens out. He pulls up his text stream with Jane, which, even as he watches, is filling up with texts.
Jane: Ilya, I saw the video. Please call me immediately.
Jane: Please please pick up your phone.
Jane: I know this is overwhelming, but I need to know you’re safe.
Jane: I’m going to fucking kill whoever released this.
Jane: My mom and your agent are working on takedown requests. I don’t want to freak you out, but it’s already spread pretty far.
Jane: Ilya, please pick up the phone. Please.
Jane: If you don’t let me know you’re okay within the next 5 minutes, I am going to call Svetlana and have her come to the house.
Jane: Okay, I called Svetlana and she told me she’s in Russia. She was asleep and hadn’t seen the news. She knows now.
Jane: Please answer your phone before I have a panic attack.
Jane: Should I be buying a plane ticket right now?
Ilya takes a deep breath, bracing himself.
Ilya: no plane ticket. i am fine
Immediately, three bubbles appear.
Jane: Holy shit, Ilya, I am going to fucking kill you when I see you.
Jane: You scared me so much. I thought you had done something.
Ilya swallows hard, guilt curdling in his stomach. Of course he scared Shane. Shane was the only one who knew about Ilya’s mother’s history, the full story. Well, Shane and Svetlana, but Svetlana had been there when it happened: she knew him before, and so it didn’t change her view of him. Not like Ilya knew it changed Shane’s view of him. He could feel it in the way Shane looked at him sometimes, when Ilya was too quiet or smiled less than usual on a night together. And Ilya had noticed—of course he had noticed—the way Shane stocked his medicine cabinet now. No loose razorblades. Old bottles of half-finished prescriptions suddenly disappeared into the night.
Ilya: i know and i am sorry. sorry to have this conversation over text too but i don’t think i can talk right now
Jane: That’s okay. We don’t have to plan out a response right now anyway. I’m just glad you’re okay.
Ilya: that’s not what i meant
Ilya: i meant i think maybe you should not be involved in planning a response to this. or anything at all
All Shane sends back is a string of question marks, which is fair enough—Ilya is terrible at this.
“рубить с плеча,” he mutters to himself.
Ilya: i do not want you to get dragged into this. i think we should break up
Immediately, the read receipt shows up under the message. Ilya waits for a terrifying two, three beats before the phone in his hand starts ringing.
Call from Jane❤️, the screen says.
Ilya rejects the call. Shane calls back. Ilya rejects it again. They go through the cycle a couple times before Ilya’s phone screen is freed up for just long enough to text Shane again.
Ilya: i do not want to talk. i am sorry. as i said i know it is bad to do over text
Ilya: this will be better for you. my career is going to be very bad for a long time. i may not have career after this. there will be lots of cameras on me, very high risk. it is not fair to you
Jane: Shut up. We’re not breaking up. I’m coming to Boston.
Ilya shakes his head. His stubborn boy. But if Shane is an unstoppable force, then Ilya is an immoveable object. If anyone can withstand Shane, it’s Ilya, especially if Ilya has good reason to do so—and he does.
Ilya: you cannot force me to stay in relationship with you, shane. i am not a bad play you can fix
Ilya: i’m sorry. i know this isn’t what we planned and i know you hate it when plans change. i wish things were different. but this is what we need to do. you’ll see.
Ilya: do not come to boston. i am leaving soon anyway, there is nothing here for you
He hesitates for a second, but, fuck it, in for a penny. He adds:
Ilya: i love you very much. thank you for everything. you were so good to me, even when i was very bad boyfriend. i did not deserve it, but you are the love of my life.
Then—because it’s the best option, because Ilya needs to be able to use his phone without constantly visiting this text stream—he blocks Shane, and deletes their past texts and Shane’s number from his phone.
In less than a minute, it’s done. Shane is gone from Ilya’s life.
Ilya sets his phone down on the kitchen countertop and takes a deep breath. He should probably feel more terrible about this. He should probably be crying. But his chest feels hollow as a balloon animal. He feels very little of anything at all.
—
Ilya’s not sure what to do, after that. He should spend some time online, researching his path to American citizenship if his work visa is rescinded, or, maybe more usefully, searching for countries in which you can buy residency. He heard someone say once that for half a million dollars in real estate, you can get residence in Malta. He looked up Malta afterwards. Malta is the gayest country in the European Union, according to Out.com.
But Ilya opens his laptop and mostly just stares at his own reflection in the screen, and eventually he shuts it again. At a loss for what to do, he wanders over to the fridge and stares at its contents for several long minutes until its aggressive beeping becomes impossible to ignore, at which point he closes the fridge and lays down, flat on his back on the kitchen tile, staring up at the ceiling.
As a kid, he had liked doing things like this when he was left home alone—find some strange hallway or corner of his house and lay down so he could examine it from a new angle. He rarely found anything more exciting than a crack on the ceiling he’d never spotted before, or a dusty spidernest, but it excited him nonetheless. To find new things in a place that he knew completely. It made him feel like there was always something else to discover. Like if he could just chip back the layers of his father’s stern face, if he could pry his way into Alexei’s chest cavity, he would find the people he remembered from when he was very young. The people who showed up, sometimes, in his dreams at night, smiling when they saw him, saying Ilyusha in voices that were more warm than angry.
Ilya’s been laying on the floor long enough that both of his legs have gone numb when there is a ferocious banging from the foyer. “Ilya!” the person shouts, and Ilya realizes with some distant recognition that it’s Marly. He hadn’t really expected Marly to show up, but it wasn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility. Ilya is more surprised that he managed to get past the front gate. Well, he had plenty of money for a bribe, or maybe he made some claim about suicide and legal liabilities if the Boston Raiders’ nine-million-dollar-a-year captain killed himself under their watch.
Was Ilya still the captain? He hasn’t looked at any of his messages from work. It wouldn’t shock him if they decided to strip the C after something like this.
“Ilya, I know you’re in there, you fuckwad!” Marly yells, still pounding. “I can see your location on my phone!”
It’s enough for Ilya to grab his phone and check it, but—no, he turned it off. Whatever Marly’s seeing was transmitted hours ago, probably. He’ll realize that soon enough. In the meantime, all Ilya has to stay is to stay very still and quiet on the floor. Eventually, Marly will realize that Ilya isn’t home and he’ll go looking somewhere else. If he wants to keep looking. Maybe he’s just here out of some sense of loyalty, and now that he’s tried he can say he gave it his best effort and wash his hands of the whole thing with a clean conscience, and—
There’s a terribly loud shattering sound, and Ilya’s burglar alarm starts to wail.
“Intruder alert,” the system announces. “Intruder alert. First floor living room window damaged. Police will be notified in twenty seconds. Please enter your security code if this is in error. If this is not in error, please exit the home. Police will be notified in ten seconds. Please exit the house. Police will be notified in—“
Ilya punches his code into the pad by the front door with shaking fingers. “Security code entered,” the system informs him. “Police have not been notified. Alarm ceased.”
Ilya takes a deep breath and twists around. Unrepentant in his living room, Marly stands in a pile of shattered glass. There’s a big rock on the floor by his feet that, up until two minutes ago, Ilya is pretty sure lived in his flowerbeds.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Me?” Marly looks comically surprised. “What’s wrong with you? Bro, I’ve been calling you all fucking morning. Jesus, I mean, are you okay?”
“Am I okay?” Ilya demands. He waves his arms in the air. “You just shattered my fucking living room window!”
Marly rolls his eyes. “Chill, bro, it was just a window.”
“It’s the entire fucking wall!”
Marly looks around, a confused expression on his face like like he’s only just now noticing that Ilya’s entire fucking house is made of windows. With this one shattered, the whole place is less of a building and more of a massive outdoor pavilion, open to the wilderness. And it looks like it’s going to rain.
“Yeah, you might need to call someone about that,” Marly admits.
Ilya pinches his nose. “Jesus Christ,” he says to himself in Russian. “Why did God give me such an idiot for a friend?”
“Hey, I might not speak Russian, but I know what you sound like when you’re insulting someone,” Marly says. “And it’s not my fault, anyway. I was worried about you! Maybe next time you should answer your door.”
Ilya glares at him. “Next time? If there is a next time, I do not think we will be friends by then.”
“Ouch, bro,” Marly says. “That hurts. Hey, do you have anything good to drink around here?”
“It’s not even noon.”
“Look,” Marly says. “My best friend’s private parts are all over the internet. I’m traumatized, or something. Also, I’ve missed your vodka. So?”
Ilya closes his eyes.
—
“Okay,” Marly says, when they’re settled in Ilya’s other living room, both of them with a glass of vodka in hand. Ilya picked his shittiest bottle of vodka out of spite, but Marly, who was used to Tito’s and Svedka, didn’t even seem to notice the slight. “So how are you doing? Really?”
“I’m peachy,” Ilya says.
Marly snorts. “Sure.”
He’s got his legs spread apart so far you’d think his cock was the size of a beer can, but his shoulders are tense, his thumb rubbing over the side of his glass. Ilya can’t tell if it’s the conversation he’s uncomfortable with or Ilya himself.
Ilya shrugs, looking down at his own glass. “You are being so dramatic. Is not a big deal. Am not first famous person to have sex tape leaked. Not even first hockey player.”
There’s a long silence, and Ilya thinks maybe Marly has taken his point, but when he looks over Marly is frowning at him, his eyebrows screwed up into an expression that makes him look kind of like he’s shitting.
“Look, if you have problem with me—“
“Woah, bro, no,” Marly interrupts. He even presses a hand to his heart and everything. “Nothing like that, come on man, you know me.”
Yes, Ilya does know him, which means he knows just how often Marly likes to call guys cocksuckers and faggots and sissy little bitches. Less often now than he used to, but it still comes out plenty often on the ice. Marly’s a good guy, but with things like this—it counts for less than one would hope.
“I’m just—I didn’t watch the video. Obviously. But I saw a gif—I didn’t mean to, it was just there on my Twitter and by the time I figured out it was you it was too late, and—“
“Get to the point,” Ilya says.
“I’m just trying to say that what was going on in that video—did not look consensual,” Marly says. “You seemed pretty young and—I don’t think it counts as a sex tape if it’s a video of a crime.”
Ilya clenches his jaw. Technically, yes, it was a crime. Even Russia, with all its stupid fucking laws, has an age of consent, and that age is sixteen. Ilya was, what, fourteen in that video? And Kuznetsov was in his thirties. If it had been reported at the time, if there was evidence—
But it hadn’t been reported, and there wasn’t evidence, and there never would be. Even if the statute of limitations hadn’t long since expired, there would be no desire to prosecute a crime like this in Russia. Last time Ilya checked, Kuznetsov lived in Sweden now, coaching their national youth hockey team, and Russia wouldn’t go to all the effort to extradite him, not when the “victim” was a cocksucking hockey player who left Russia for the NHL. Ilya’s famous, and he has influence in Russia—or he had it, anyway. Because the moment that video leaked, Ilya lost any power he had.
Is a crime a crime if nobody is willing to condemn it? Or is it just something else to be sad about?
Fuck. It really hits Ilya for the first time: he can never go back to Russia.
“I think you’re being dramatic,” Ilya tells Marly, instead of any of this. “I was young, does not mean I did not like cock.”
Marly chokes around his vodka.
“What?” Ilya demands. He has never been able to stop himself from pressing on a bruise. “You say you are okay with the gay but then you make this face. Was that a lie? You want to punch me now?”
“No, man!” Marly says. “Fuck, I’m just trying to figure out what to say. I’m not a therapist, you know, I don’t know what the fuck the right response is here.”
But his shoulders are tight and he’s not looking at Ilya.
“Normally, you would offer to get me drunk,” Ilya says.
Marly huffs. “Yeah, well. We’re clearly already halfway there.”
Ilya tilts his head. “Maybe we should try for all the way.”
Marly shakes his head. “Ilya fucking Rozanov,” he says, and there’s something in his tone, something Ilya is too tired to try to understand. “Yeah. All right. All the fucking way.”
—
An hour later, Ilya is proud to say that they’ve mostly succeeded.
“Is the Russian mafia like really a thing?” Marly asks. He’s four drinks in, and his face is starting to get flushed and sweaty the way it always does when he gets trashed. “Like, do you think I could really hire someone to commit murder?”
Ilya makes a face at him, tipping back his own fourth glass of vodka. Fifth? He’s starting to lose track in a pleasant, thoughtless way. “Who the fuck do you want to kill, Marly? Caitlyn? If you want the house back so much I bet she just sell it to you.”
“Roz, you are so fucking stupid sometimes,” Marly says, but doesn’t press the issue.
A few minutes later, it’s Marly’s turn to be oblivious when Ilya finds himself breaking the silence by saying, “You know, is funny. This is almost like that arcade game. With the rats.”
Marly and his big, dumb, confused face. “What the fuck are you on about,” he says.
Ilya huffs. “You know, game where they give you hammer, you smack down the rats!”
“Whack-a-Mole?”
“Yes, this,” Ilya says, waving his empty glass through the air. “Is—I spend decade here, in America, playing this game. First my brother wants money for cocaine. Fine! I whack the mole. Then my father dies. Fine! I whack the mole. Then my boyfriend wants me to tell him about how my dead mother killed herself. Fine! I whack the mole. Now this.”
A thought occurs to him, and he tilts his head. “Oh, yes. I have a boyfriend, by the way. Well, I did. We broke up today.”
“Fuck, Roz,” Marly whistles. Behind his head, the sun is starting to get low in the sky. Is it evening already? “Who is it?”
“I can’t say who. Famous. Super secret.” Shane had had rules for them, to keep it that way. The standard stuff—fake names, no telling friends about their relationship, blah blah blah—but other things, too. True CIA shit, like not keeping any photos of each other on their phones, even if they were group shots or advertising pictures. Ilya had been meaning to buy a Polaroid camera, so he could at least get a few snapshots to keep in his safe, but he’d never gotten around to it. Now he never would.
“No hints?” Marly asks, dragging Ilya from his thoughts.
“Marly,” Ilya sighs, and Marly laughs.
“Sorry. I think I’m drunk. Maybe cuz Caitlin tried to make me into a teetotaler. Oh my god, am I a lightweight now?”
“What the fuck is teetotaler?”
“Boring little bitch.” Marly lists back on the couch until his head is half-hanging over the arm.
“Maybe my boyfriend is teetotaler, then,” Ilya says. Then he has to correct himself: “Ex boyfriend.” It stings more than it should, really, with all the alcohol numbing him up.
“Yeah, what the fuck,” Marly says. “Did that piece of shit break up with you over this? Because I’ll go beat his face in.”
“That is hate crime, Marly,” Ilya says.
“No, it’s a defending your bro crime,” Marly says. “Worth it. Okay, gimme his name, I’m gonna Google his address.”
Ilya rolls his eyes. “You cannot Google address of famous person, idiot,” he says. “And no reason to hit him. He did not break up with me. I broke up with him. Is not—cannot date him in secret and be sure we won’t be caught. So cannot date him.”
Marly shakes his head. “That sucks, man. I mean—are you sure you have to do that? Like, not to judge but, I kinda feel like people don’t care who you’re dating right now? Like, that’s kind of the least of your problems?”
Ilya shakes his head morosely into his vodka glass. “You don’t understand,” he says. “Is not me. Is him. He would never come out. Never. Maybe after we retire, he said. I think maybe not. We die in closet.”
Marly nods sympathetically. “Yeah, that’s—that’s a bummer, bro. Well. Maybe it’s for the best, breaking up with him, then. I have a gay cousin, he was showing me Grindr at Thanksgiving and it’s fucking crazy. We can get you such good ass—“
Ilya does have a Grindr profile, though the hasn’t used it in a very long time. He redownloads the app, just so he can show Marly what the state of gay dating is in Boston. Marly can’t focus enough to stop gaping at all the abs and asses on display. “How much do you think this guy benches?” he keeps asking, waving a thirst trap in Ilya’s face. “What about this guy? Do you think he builds his quads from Bulgarian split squats or traditional presses?”
Eventually, Ilya steals his phone back, because it’s that or brain Marly with the now-empty vodka bottle. Like he always does when he’s drunk, he clicks into his texts to re-read old messages from Shane. It’s only after he’s scrolled halfway down the page, searching for Shane’s name, that he remembers he deleted those text streams. In fact, he deleted Shane from his life entirely. He’s alone now.
“I need to get out of here,” he decides, shoving himself to his feet.
Marly, sprawled on the floor, blinks out of him. “Like, this room?”
“Like, this house,” Ilya says. “I don’t want to be here when Shane shows up.”
Marly’s brow furrows. “Shane like—Shane Hollander? Your rival?”
Fuck, Ilya thinks. Misstep. Maybe he’s more drunk than he thought. He tries to play it off; classic arrogance. He’s unbothered, because if he’s unbothered, then clearly this isn’t the sore spot it looks like. “Do you know any other Shanes?”
Marly frowns at him a moment longer before his expression suddenly clears. “Oh,” he says. “I get it.” Ilya braces himself to hear so you’re a faggot with Hollander. He sucks cock too. Instead, Marly says, “You think he’s gonna come here to rub it in your face?”
Ilya stares at him.
“I always thought he was kind of holier than thou,” Marly muses. “But damn, you really think he’d show up just to taunt you? That’s fucking cold.”
Good lord, Ilya thinks. Sometimes he really does wonder if Marly is the dumbest man in the entire MLH.
“Look, it doesn’t matter. The point is, I don’t want to risk it,” Ilya says. Marly blinks at him blankly. Ilya huffs. “So, can we go to your place?”
Marly brightens. “Oh, yeah!” he says. “Of course. Let’s go, bro.” Then he pauses. “Shit, I can’t drive like this. Are you sober enough to drive?”
Ilya claps him on the shoulder. “Oh, Marly, my dumb friend,” he says. He means it to sound scornful but mostly it comes across as fond. “We can call a fucking Uber.”
—
Ilya wakes up the next morning more hungover than he has been in years.
He groans, rolling onto his side to bury his face into the spare pillow. He hadn’t shut the curtains last night, and the morning sunlight is like a dagger to his brain. He feels like he was run over by a semi-truck. He feels like he just played an entire hockey game without a single substitution. He feels like someone has died, and he feels like maybe that person was him.
Reluctantly, after a few minutes, he gets up to go to the bathroom. He pisses, then splashes his face with water, then fumbles around in the medicine cabinet until he finds a bottle of Advil. He takes three and then, after a moment’s thought, a fourth. There’s a plastic cup by the sink and he fills it with water that he gulps down before refilling it and tottering back to bed.
He folds himself back under the covers. He glances at his phone screen—more missed texts from Svetlana, more missed calls from Svetlana, a message from Farah telling him to call her at his earliest convenience. Missed messages in the Raiders groupchat, missed calls from Ilya’s coach, missed texts and calls from unknown numbers who are probably journalists, a text from the Raiders’ front office begging him to call today so they can touch base on PR angles, a string of notifications from Yuna Hollander and a singular missed call from David.
It was stupid of Ilya not to block their numbers yesterday, too. Block and delete, that’s what he should have done. He sets his phone down on the bedside table and closes his eyes. Fuck, his head is killing him.
Hazily, he finds himself wishing he had Shane’s fingers in his hair, rubbing the headache out of his scalp. Shane was always so good at that, when Ilya had a headache. Even when it was a headache from drinking, and his own damn fault. Shane would roll his eyes and complain that Ilya brought things on himself, but he’d slot himself behind Ilya in bed, kissing the back of his neck to distract him from his nausea, and slip one hand into his curls. Shane loved messing with Ilya’s curls. It’s like petting a very fluffy sheep, he had said once, and Ilya hadn’t known whether to be offended or endeared, so he had sucked Shane’s cock instead. The whole while, Shane rubbed his hands through Ilya’s hair, fingernails scraping against his scalp.
Ilya wants so badly to be there, right now. In Shane’s arms; in Shane’s house; in the memories he has with Shane. Fuck, he just wants Shane.
The thought hits him like a freight train. He wants Shane, and he’s not going to get him. He’s not going to get him ever again, because he and Shane are broken up. Ilya broke up with him.
The first sob that tears its way out of his throat takes him by surprise; by the second, he’s plastered his hands over his mouth to muffle the sounds. The last thing he wants is for Marly to hear and come see—this. Tears fall thick and fast down his face and he cocoons himself in the too-warm duvet, burying his face in the fabric.
This is all his fault, he thinks as he cries. He should have known better than to get involved with Shane like this. He should have known better to hope—but that was his flaw, wasn’t it? He always wanted more. He was always asking for more. He hadn’t appreciated his mother when he had her, and then she had killed herself. He hadn’t appreciated the life he had created for himself here in Boston, either, too hung up on a freckled Canadian who could shove him around on the ice, and now he had lost both the Canadian and his life in Boston. And was it worth it? The time they had together, was it worth feeling this, now, knowing he could never get it back?
Ilya’s heart feels hollow, like the skin of a mango scraped clean by a metal spoon. He lays in bed crying long enough that eventually he falls asleep.