Or maybe they were just regular smiles and Ilya was being ridiculous.
“Mr. Rozanov?”
He dragged his attention away from his boyfriend and the handsome stranger and looked down at the girl in front of him.
“Ilya,” he corrected her, warmly. “Is something wrong, Chloe?”
“No. I just, um...” She glanced down at her skates, which she was shuffling nervously.
Ilya crouched down. “Yes?”
“I keep missing backhand passes. Not just in the drill, but, like, all the time. Do you know what I’m doing wrong?”
Ilya smiled. “We will try some and see what the problem is.”
He spent the next fifteen minutes sending passes to Chloe, and correcting her stick placement when she was receiving them. By the end of it, she was beaming with pride as she easily accepted a bunch of consecutive passes from him, and Ilya had barely glanced in Shane’s direction.
As Chloe joined the group that J.J. had called to center ice, Ilya took a peek and saw the handsome man laughing with Shane about something. And then the fucker placed a hand on Shane’s arm.
There was nogoodreason for Ilya to skate down the ice with one of the pucks and fire it at the glass behind Shane’s head, but he did it anyway. He could hear Shane scream, and Ilya laughed when he whipped around, eyes flashing with fury.
“Asshole!” Shane yelled.
Ilya gestured with his stick toward the children on the ice and shook his head. “Language, Hollander.”
Things were tense between them for the rest of the day. Ilya couldn’t even apologize because Shane wouldn’t talk to him. Not that he felt like apologizing; he just wanted Shane to stop being mad about it.
And Ilya wanted to stop feeling embarrassed about doing it. It had been immature and petty and unprofessional. He still didn’t want to apologize, though.
They had a debriefing, of sorts, at the end of the day with Yuna in the room they all used as an office. Shane didn’t even look at Ilya for the entire conversation. When Yuna left, Ilya braced himself for Shane’s fury.
The storm started with Shane loudly shuffling papers for no reason. Then he crossed his arms, huffed, and stared at the wall opposite Ilya.
Ilya couldn’t stand it. He’d rather Shane unleash whatever anger he had inside him so they could move on. Fortunately, he was an expert when it came to making Shane unleash his anger.
“What is the problem?” Ilya asked.
Shane spun to face him, eyes glinting. “Theproblemis that I’m trying to run a camp with a fuckingtoddler.”
“Is this about the puck thing?” Ilya asked innocently.
“It’s aboutyouhaving to always make me look like an idiot!”
“Come on.”
“Why’d you do it? Because Laurent’s handsome?”
“Laurent.”Ilya took a triumphant step toward him. “So youareattracted to him.”
“What? No. I mean, yes. He’s nice to look at but—”
“And he liked looking at you.”
Shane paused at that, and his cheeks pinked in a way that Ilya normally loved. He was not so into it now. “As if,” Shane said. “You weren’t even there.”
“I could tell.”
Shane was only inches away from him now, his head tilted back so he could glare directly at Ilya despite their height difference. “You almost gave me a heart attack with that stupid puck, and why? Because you thought I wasflirting?”
