Page 108 of The Long Game
Attraction, sex. Those things were easy. Relationships, feelings,love. Ilya was still working on how to navigate that stuff.
Troy left when the movie ended, which was far later than either of them should have been awake with a game to play in New Jersey tomorrow, but again, Ilya was a bad captain.
A tiny voice in his head, that maybe sounded a bit like Shane, told him that bad captains don’t make new teammates feel comfortable coming out to them. Or feel comfortable knocking on their captain’s hotel room door in the middle of the night just to hang out.
When Ilya was in bed, but before he went to sleep, he typed out a text to Shane:I’m sorry.
He deleted it. He wasn’t really sorry for anything. Instead he wrote,I miss you, then deleted that too.
After staring at his phone for several minutes, he typed a red heart emoji, and sent it.
He was surprised when Shane replied almost right away. He’d expected Shane to be asleep.
Shane:I’ve been working on an apology text for over an hour.
Ilya smiled and wrote,How many words do you have?
Shane:Too many. I’m really sorry about what I said. I’m glad you told Troy. I’m glad you have a friend you trust.
Ilya felt immediately lighter. He wrote,Thank you. It feels good, to have someone know.
Shane:I was being a jealous prick.
Ilya:I know.Then, because he couldn’t help himself, he added,He is very hot. I understand.
Shane:You’re the worst.
Ilya:Maybe he is up for that threesome you pretend you don’t want.
Shane:Good night, Ilya.
Ilya:Would be a nice Christmas present...
He watched the three dots for what seemed like forever as Shane typed. Finally, Shane’s reply appeared:For Troy, maybe.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“It’s fucking Christmas, Hollander,” Ilya groaned. “Eat a cookie.”
Shane bit back a whole speech about how even one cookie would fuck up all his hard work. He wasn’t on aweight lossdiet, he was following a complicated nutritional regimen designed to enhance physical performance.
But Shane didn’t want to explain all of thatagain, so instead he rolled his eyes as hard as he could.
“I don’twanta cookie.” It was a lie. It was a fucking lie. He wanted a cookie so bad.
“Yuna,” Ilya called out. “Tell your son to eat a cookie.”
“Leave him alone,” Yuna called from...whatever room she was in at the moment. She moved around so much it was hard to keep track. “We love Shane even without carbs.”
Shane would really like it if everyone stopped talking about his diet. It shouldn’t be a big deal. He was a professional athlete who was treating his body as if he were a professional athlete. His nutritionist had worked with some of the top athletes in the world, and they all swore by him. Maybe Ilya was getting away with eating like a stoner teenage goat for now, but he’d be thirty soon, and that would change. Shane preferred to stop any physical deterioration before it started.
“You don’t even celebrate Christmas,” Shane said grumpily.
“I celebrate cookies,” Ilya said, then crammed an entire thumbprint cookie in his mouth.
“Gross.”
“It has jam!” Ilya said through a mouthful of cookie.
