Page 177 of The Long Game
“Is that what the ring’s about, then?” He pointed at Ilya’s chest.
“You noticed?”
“I’m a goalie.” Wyatt pointed to his own eyes. “I notice everything.”
“You are perceptive,” Ilya said, trying out a word he’d recently learned.
“It’s my superpower. I didn’t want to ask, but now it seems kind of obvious that it’s from Hollander.”
“It is. We are engaged.” Ilya was still getting used to saying those words aloud. To believing them.
“Then Shane Hollander is a lucky man.”
Ilya was in danger of crying, so he wrapped Wyatt in a hug to hide his face. “Thank you,” he said.
“No problem.” Wyatt patted him on the back. “Just try not to make your wedding day the same as Harris and Troy’s, okay? I don’t want to have to do a lot of running around that day.”
Ilya laughed, and then sniffed. “Okay, Hazy.”
Shane couldn’t ever remember being so nervous at the start of the playoffs before. Not even as a rookie. He shuffled his skates anxiously as the national anthem was sung, trying not to stare directly at the back of Ilya’s jersey, fifty feet in front of him.
Holy shit. This was happening.
The Montreal crowd was deafening but couldn’t drown out the blood pounding in Shane’s ears. He needed to pull himself together because, yes, it felt weird standing on the ice with Ilya when everyoneknew. And, yes, most of his teammates had been less than friendly since Shane had returned from his suspension, but the team had silently made a pactnot to talk about it, which should have been a relief but actually made Shane feel awful.
Ilya’s team had accepted him back with open arms. They’d talked about his relationship with Shane—joked about it, even. Shane felt like he was playing an unending version of that board game, Operation, and the slightest mistake—anything less than perfection—would get him zapped. It was exhausting, and it was pressure he didn’t need on top of the usual playoffs expectations of the Montreal fans.
Finally, it was time for the puck to drop. Shane was clinging to the hope that he’d start to feel normal once the actual game started. Except, of course, the opening face-off was between him and Ilya.
They both bent at the waist over the face-off spot, and for a moment, their gazes locked.
“Good luck,” Shane said. It was all he dared to say right now, with everyone watching.
Ilya’s lips quirked up in his usual crooked, cocky smile, and then the puck dropped.
Ilya won the face-off.
Fucking hell, playoff games were intense. Ilya had almost forgotten.
The game was going...okay. Troy Barrett had opened the scoring early for Ottawa, which had been exciting, but Montreal had answered quickly. And then added a second goal.
But 2–1 was a respectable start to the third period. Better, Ilya thought, than anyone had expected Ottawa to fare against Montreal.
During a break in play, Ilya checked in with his goalie. “You good, Hazy?” he called out over the screeching vocals of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.”
“Yep,” Hazy said cheerfully. “Hey, do you like this song?”
Ilya’s brow furrowed. Was this seriously what Wyatt was thinking about right now? “Is okay.”
“I always thought it had all this buildup and then falls kind of flat, but I dunno. Anyway, score a goal, okay?”
Neither Ilya nor Shane had scored yet. Ilya had noticed that Shane had been a bit off the whole game. Not handling the puck as cleanly as he usually did, not getting the scoring chances he was known for.
Ilya wanted to ask Shane how he was doing. He wanted to hold him, but they’d agreed not to see each other off the ice during this playoff series. Because, despite everything else between them, they were two NHL stars who both wanted to win the Stanley Cup, and neither was about to let their fiancé stand in the way. Ilya wasn’t sure it was a sound strategy. After a week of being apart from Shane, he wanted to tear his own skin off.
So there was more than one incentive to end this series quickly, even though that meant one of them would lose.
As they bent for the face-off at the beginning of the third, Ilya noticed a glint of gold, on Shane’s neck.
