Heated Rivalry (Game Changers #2)(91)

And Shane suddenly felt a little light-headed.

It was all happening so fast: their confessions of love, being discovered by his parents, making plans for the future...

Oh god oh god oh god.

“Shane?” It was Ilya’s voice, all concern. Shane felt a hand on his shoulder, and then he realized that he had his head between his knees. “Are you okay?”

Shane inhaled and exhaled slowly, keeping his head down.

Ilya’s hand moved to Shane’s knee as he crouched beside him, seeking his eyes. “Shane?”

“I’m okay,” Shane said weakly. “I’m just...freaking out. Don’t worry about me.”

Ilya took his hands and rubbed his thumbs soothingly over the backs of them. “We are good here, yes?” he said. “Your family is here. And your boyfriend. And we are okay here.”

Shane raised his head slightly. “Boyfriend?”

Such a ridiculous word. Such a ridiculous, wonderful word.

Ilya shrugged and grinned. “I think, yes?”

“Yes.”

It was really too bad they were in his parents’ living room, and that his parents were definitely staring at them, because Shane wanted to jump into Ilya’s lap and kiss him into the floor.

“Since their rookie season,” Shane heard his mother say. “I can’t believe it.”

“Looking at them now, I kind of can,” his father said.



Chapter Twenty-Seven


They left Shane’s parents’ cottage with a promise to come for dinner the following evening.

Ilya wasn’t sure how Shane felt about everything that had just happened, but he thought it had gone surprisingly well.

“Holy shit,” Shane said. He hadn’t even turned the engine on; he was just sitting in the driver’s seat with his forehead on the steering wheel.

“It was okay, yes?” Ilya offered.

“I don’t know. Do you think it was? Fuck. That was really weird.”

“Well. Now they know.”

Shane blew out a breath. “Yeah.”

“We should go home.”

Shane nodded against the steering wheel before sitting up and pressing the ignition button.

Ilya spent the entirety of the short drive back to Shane’s cottage wondering if it was weird that he’d just called Shane’s cottage home. He knew his grip on the English language was tenuous, but referring to a place he was staying for two weeks as “home” wasn’t weird, was it?

If it was weird, Shane wasn’t saying anything about it.

Shane actually didn’t say anything at all during the drive back, other than a few muttered curse words. His hands were tight on the wheel. When they got back to the cottage, he dropped his keys into a bowl and strode into the living room with a hand in his hair.

“I need some air,” he said, and he walked outside to the patio, leaving Ilya alone in the house.

Fortunately, Ilya had packed just the thing for this situation.

He went to the freezer and pulled out the bottle of vodka he had stashed there the day he’d arrived. It was the good shit, distilled in small batches and impossible to buy outside of Russia. He grabbed two glasses and carried them and the bottle outside.

“Is maybe a good time for this,” he said, holding up the bottle.

Shane turned warily, and snorted when he saw the vodka. “The last time I drank that stuff was in Las Vegas. You remember?”

“Yes,” Ilya said, carefully pouring a couple of inches into each glass. “But you did not ever drink this stuff. This vodka is special.” He handed Shane one of the glasses.

Ilya closed his eyes as he took his first sip, enjoying the contrast of the frigid temperature of the liquid and the fire of the alcohol as it slid down his throat. Perfect.

He opened his eyes when he heard Shane sputtering and coughing.

“Oh, wow,” Shane said. “That is strong. I might need some cranberry juice or something.”

“If you mix that with cranberry juice I will drown you in the lake.”

But Shane, seemingly unable to concentrate at all, was already taking a second sip. “This has been the weirdest day of my life.”

Ilya wanted to tell Shane that it had been one of the best days of his life. It had been awkward, sure, but Ilya felt that, if he hadn’t quite been already, he would be welcomed into Shane’s family, and that was no small thing. In fact, to Ilya, who had barely been welcome in his own family, it was huge.

He wanted to tell Shane that the closest he felt to home was when he was with him. It didn’t matter if it was in a hotel room, or Ilya’s apartment, or at that weird hideout building Shane bought in Montreal, or here at Shane’s cottage; he was himself when he was with Shane. He’d left Russia, he was uneasy in America, and he’d spent his entire adult life drifting between continents and between lovers.

But now he had been reeled in by this annoying Canadian, and all that he knew was that he wanted to stay. He wanted to anchor himself to Shane and just...stay.

He couldn’t say any of that—literally, he could not possibly come up with the English words to articulate any of the things he was feeling at that moment. So instead he plucked the vodka glass from Shane’s hand and sat it on the table next to his own. Maybe alcohol wasn’t the thing Shane needed right now.