“Well, neither was I,” Yuna said. “But I got over it.”
“J.J. isn’t my mom.”
“No,” Yuna said. “Yourmomis the one making dinner at the end of a long day while you sit on your butt and mope. Come help.”
“I’mhelping,” Ilya couldn’t resist pointing out.
“I know you are.” Yuna patted his cheek. “That’s why you’re my favorite son.”
Ilya grinned at Shane, who tried to look annoyed but mostly failed because his eyes had gone soft.
Later, they sat around the table and toasted their successful first day of camp with glasses of water. They ate their healthy, Shane-approved dinner and talked about hockey, and thecharity, and decor ideas for Shane’s house, and plans for the rest of the summer. It felt, as it always did to Ilya, wonderful and surreal at the same time. He’d never expected to have this domestic comfort in his life. Not with anyone. He’d never expected to be part of a family, and have parents again.
He would do absolutely everything to protect this, and he was constantly terrified that, when it came to it, he wouldn’t be able to. Because the daywouldcome.
Shane offered to clean up after dinner to make up for slacking off during the preparation. Yuna insisted on helping, which probably meant she wanted to talk to Shane, so Ilya headed outside to the back deck.
He leaned on the railing and stared up at the sky where the stars were barely visible from all of the city lights. Nothing like at Shane’s cottage.
“I think you’d like what we did today.” Ilya spoke quietly, in Russian, to the sky. “I hope you are proud.”
He only ever spoke to one of his parents, though both were dead now. His mother’s death had been sudden and devastating. His father had faded away gradually from Alzheimer’s, and Ilya still hadn’t sorted out his feelings about losing the man who’d never had a nice word to say to him. Or to Ilya’s wonderful mother.
Ilya’s friend Harris, back in Ottawa, swore there was a ghost living in his parents’ house. A great-uncle or something. Ilya didn’t think he believed in ghosts, but he clung to the idea that his mother’s spirit was with him, somehow. He needed her to be.
“Hey,” Shane said in a hushed voice behind him. “Mom’s gone to bed.”
Ilya turned to face him. He’d changed, when they’d gotten home, into sweat shorts and a Voyageurs T-shirt. His feet were bare and his shaggy hair was rumpled. Ilya immediatelyopened his arms and Shane practically fell into them, resting his forehead on Ilya’s shoulder and exhaling loudly.
“I’m exhausted,” Shane said. “Let’s go to bed, okay?”
“Sure.”
But Shane didn’t move. He wrapped his strong arms around Ilya’s waist and held him, breathing slowly against Ilya’s neck. Ilya rocked them a bit, gently, from side to side, and enjoyed the quiet. He closed his eyes and focused on how good it felt to be with Shane, alone in the dark, and tried not to wish it could be the same in the light.
Chapter Three
Shane asked Ryan to help him get some gear out of storage at the rink the next morning. Ryan, understandably, looked uneasy about it.
“I haven’t told anyone,” Ryan blurted out as soon as they were alone in the equipment room.
“I know. I’m not worried about that,” Shane assured him.
“Oh.” Ryan’s massive shoulders dropped away from his ears. “So what equipment do we need?”
“The mini-nets and some of those, um, things for, like, stickhandling practice. Y’know. The little...things?”
“Things,” Ryan repeated slowly, glancing around like maybe thethingswould reveal themselves.
“Listen, um,” Shane said.
Ryan’s attention snapped back to Shane.
“Your boyfriend’s in town with you, right? Fabian?”
“Yes,” Ryan said suspiciously.
“Cool. We were thinking—I mean, Ilya and I were thinking—that you guys might like to go out tonight. Get some dinner, maybe? With us?”
