J.J. looked at the floor, but then he nodded, once.
Shane left.
It was after ten o’clock at night when Ilya’s phone finally lit up with a text from Shane:I ate a Snickers bar.
Ilya sent him a FaceTime request right away.
“Are your parents still there?” Ilya asked as soon as Shane’s exhausted face appeared.
“Yeah,” Shane sighed. “They went to bed, I think. I dunno. I’m in my room. I’ve been pretty antisocial.”
Shane’s hair was tied in a messy bun, and he was wearing his glasses. Ilya wanted to hold him so badly it hurt. “Did the chocolate make you feel better?”
“No,” Shane grumbled. “Maybe. It was really fucking delicious, even though it was old. I think it was one you bought me a long time ago.” He sighed. “You gonna gloat about it?”
Ilya didn’t feel victorious. He knew eating candy was basically hitting rock bottom for Shane. “No.”
“Why not? Isn’t this what you want?Fucking relax, Hollander,” he said in a terrible impression of Ilya. “Right?”
“Sweetheart,” Ilya said gently.
Shane sighed. “Sorry. How’s Anya?”
“Asleep,” Ilya said, glancing at her bed in front of the fireplace. He’d used his fireplace more in the two weeks since getting a dog than he had in all the time he’d lived here before.
“What did your team say?”
“I only talked to Wiebe,” Ilya said. “But he was good. Sympathetic.” He’d already decided to keep what Wiebe had shared with him to himself. Wiebe didn’t know Shane.
“Really? Theriault was fucking furious.”
“Because he’s a prick.”
Shane winced. Ilya knew it was hard for him to hear a bad word spoken about his asshole coach. “He’s just, y’know, old-school.”
“Old-school,” Ilya scoffed. “A fancy way of saying he is a prick.”
“It works.”
“My coach is not a prick and we are on fire,” Ilya pointed out.
“Can’t argue that. They’re gonna be hurting without you, though.” Shane shook his head. “It’s such bullshit. We should be playing.”
For a long moment, they just stared miserably at each other, wishing there was someone to blame besides themselves.
“What do you think the fans are saying?” Shane asked.
“I don’t know. Have you looked online?”
“Of course not.”
“No. Me neither. But some people have texted me. Harris. Troy. Wyatt. Max. Svetlana called me. That was nice.”
“Yeah?” Shane said. “Max texted me too. And Rose. I guess she was right about needing a plan B. Whatever that would have been.”
The truth was, plan A, B, or any other letter would be the same: they’d do whatever the league told them to do. Because they were professional hockey players and wanted to continue to be professional hockey players.
“We will see what Farah’s statement says.”
