Heated Rivalry (Game Changers #2)(81)

Ilya suppressed a grin. “Disasters?”

“I’m not giving you the details, so shut it,” Shane grumbled. He poked at the fire for the hundredth time. Ilya wasn’t sure it actually did anything useful, but Shane seemed to enjoy doing it.

There was something a little creepy about sitting in this small pool of light in the middle of total darkness. It was so eerily quiet—just the crackling of the fire, the occasional lap of water from the lake, and—

A fucking wolf. That was a fucking wolf howl.

“What the fuck was that?” Ilya said. He couldn’t conceal the terror in his voice. But who the fuck cared, because they were surrounded by hungry wolves!

Shane laughed. “It’s a loon.”

“A what?”

“A loon!” Shane was really laughing now. “It’s a bird. Like a duck, kind of. Oh my god, you thought it was a wolf!”

“What the fuck bird makes a noise like that?”

“A loon!” Shane said again. Then he doubled over in hysterics. Ilya wanted to push him into the fire.

“Fuck you and your loon!” Ilya said. “Stupid Canadian wolf bird.”

Shane looked up at him, still laughing. His whole face was crinkled up: eyes, nose, freckles. Ilya wanted to grab embers from the fire and smash them into his own eyes because he could not bear to look at this adorable, crinkled, happy face.

“Look,” Shane said. He made a tunnel out of his hands, brought them to his mouth and...

Made the wolf bird noise.

No human should be able to make that noise.

“You speak bird now too?” Ilya asked flatly.

Shane cracked up again, and shoved him. Ilya fought like hell not to, but he started laughing too.

“I speak fluent bird. No accent!” Shane gasped.

“I fucking hate you.”

Shane leaned against him. “No you don’t.”

Ilya sighed. No. He didn’t.

He picked up his can of Coke that was resting on a chunk-of-tree table next to the bench and took a sip. He handed Shane his ginger ale.

They sat in comfortable silence for a long time.

“Have you talked to your family in Russia at all?”

The question came out of nowhere, which meant it was something that had been on Shane’s mind for a while. Also, it probably wasn’t the real question that Shane wanted to ask.

“No. Is just my brother there now. And he sucks.”

“Oh. Right.”

A much less comfortable silence fell between them.

“I’m sorry,” Shane said, for no reason at all.

“Why?”

“Your family. My parents are so great. I just...wish you had that too.”

Ilya shrugged. “My mother was great.”

He knew he shouldn’t have said that, because it was only going to lead to—

“How did she die?”

It had been fourteen years, almost, but a lump formed in Ilya’s throat anyway.

“An accident,” he said sardonically. He said it because that was what his father had told everyone. It was what Ilya had been told, very sternly, even though he had known it wasn’t true even at the age of twelve. She had an accident, Ilya. You understand, yes?

“An accident?” Shane asked. His hand was on Ilya’s arm now, squeezing him through the sleeve of his hooded sweatshirt.

“Yes,” Ilya said, with a tight, humorless smile. “She accidentally swallowed a whole bottle of pills. Oops.”

He felt Shane’s body tense. He was sure Shane couldn’t even imagine such a thing. Not in his perfect little family.

“Ilya,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

Ilya pursed his lips and shook his head. The fire was looking very blurry now.

“How old were you?” Shane asked.

“Twelve.” And then, somehow, words scraped their way out of Ilya’s throat that he had never shared with anyone before. “I found her.”

His voice broke on the last word, and Shane was on his feet, hauling Ilya up with him. Shane engulfed him in his arms and held him tight, letting Ilya bury his face on his shoulder.

“I don’t want you to think she was weak,” Ilya said. “She wasn’t. She was...amazing. But she was so sad. And my father was so hard on her and...”

Ilya didn’t cry. Not really. He wiped quickly at his eyes to remove the moisture and just breathed Shane in. He smelled like wood smoke because everything around them smelled like wood smoke, and it made Ilya want a cigarette.

But mostly he just wanted to hold Shane close to him in this place where no one would ever find them. He wanted to stand in the spotlight of the campfire under the endless stars and feel Shane’s fingers stroking his hair and not think about his horrible father or his wonderful, desperately sad mother. He didn’t want to think about hockey, or rivalries, or what was going to happen when these two weeks were over.

“You’re so strong,” Shane murmured in his ear. He kissed his temple. “You’re incredible. I—”

Ilya held his breath.

And then another fucking loon screamed over their heads. And both men completely lost it. They held each other as they shook with laughter. It was a wonderful relief to laugh after all that.

They sat back down, but this time Shane tucked himself into Ilya with his legs pulled up on the bench. Ilya wrapped an arm around him and kissed the top of his head.