Chapter Text
Shane Hollander was thirty-six years old the first time he put on a real MLH jersey. He shot his reflection in the mirror a wry smile. Once, a very, very long time ago, Shane had dreamed of donning such a jersey at the age of eighteen as one of the top three picks of the MLH’s 2008 draft class—maybe even the first. It had taken him a long time to make his peace with how his life had turned out. And although he could confidently say he was okay now, there was no denying that everything he’d done for his son—driving him to practices and games, paying for equipment and camps and training, the occasional heart-wrenching visit to the ER—left just the slightest taste of bitterness in his mouth when he thought about how this wasn’t supposed to have been his life. He was supposed to have been the young phenom the hockey world had its eye on, not a parent giving everything he had to his son.
(Needless to say, between then and now, Shane had developed a profound sense of gratitude for David and Yuna Hollander. Not that he hadn’t loved and appreciated his parents before. But it was certainly different now that he was a parent himself.)
But today, on the morning of the Ottawa Centaurs’ season opener game, Shane felt nothing but an all-encompassing sense of pride. His son, Luca Hollander, at the age of eighteen, was playing in his first MLH game. Shane turned around to look at the name and number on his back. Hollander. #24. The jersey may not have been his own, but today, he felt nothing but a rock-solid certainty that everything he’d done—walking away from the only dream he’d ever known—had been worth it.
“Shane, honey?” Yuna’s voice floated into the bedroom. “You ready to go? Puck drop’s in an hour.”
“Yeah, Mom,” Shane yelled back. He grabbed his jacket and a pair of sunglasses, then hurried downstairs. Yuna was waiting for him, wearing the exact same jersey Shane was. Since making the decision eighteen years ago that would change his life forever, Yuna and David had been firmly and unanimously in Shane’s corner, and that included supporting their grandson in the dream that had originally been their son’s. In fact, it had been Yuna who’d taught Shane the fine art of being a momager. Dadager? Shane wasn’t sure what the paternal equivalent was.
“Oh, Shane,” said Yuna, clicking her tongue disapprovingly. “Not those, please.” She gestured a hand at the Gucci sunglasses perched on top of Shane’s immaculately coiffed hair. “You’re a Balenciaga ambassador, remember? You can’t be seen wearing a competing brand.”
Shane let out a huff of laughter. He may have swapped the world of hockey for the world of modeling, but Yuna Hollander was still very much Yuna Hollander. “Right, sorry. Thanks for reminding me,” he said, swapping out the offending frames for a sleek Balenciaga pair. He didn’t do as many shows or shoots now that he was in his mid-thirties—modeling was a young person’s game, after all—but he’d amassed enough clout throughout the 2010s that plenty of luxury brands and high-end magazines still wanted his face on their products. “Wouldn’t want to spark a minor international scandal.”
“Don’t be that way, Shane,” tutted Yuna as they made their way to Shane’s very sensible Land Rover, parked in the driveway next to Yuna’s car. “All eyes are gonna be on Luca this game, which means more than a few eyes are gonna be on you.”
Shane sighed. The story got dragged out every time Luca did something big—the World Junior Hockey Championships, when he was drafted, his first day at the MLH training camp. How Shane Hollander, hockey phenom, suddenly vanished from the public eye in 2008. How he reemerged five years later on a meteoric rise in the world of fashion. How suddenly coaches and scouts were taking note of a U15 player with the same surname who seemed to be almost preternaturally good on the ice, almost as though there was an element of genetics at play.
No one in Shane’s life—not his parents, not any of his friends—had ever spoken to the press, but the Internet at large put the story together anyway. Clearly, Shane Hollander had left hockey behind to raise a child.
A child who was now making his own MLH debut.
Shane was glad the season opener was a home game. He, Yuna, and David had been ecstatic when Luca had signed with Ottawa. It meant they could all still be together, as the family they’d always been. Shane had never hidden the truth about Luca’s mother from his son, but even so, Luca had never wanted more. Grandpa, Grandma, and Dad had always been more than enough.
Speaking of which. “What’s Dad say? How’s Luca?” Shane asked as he pulled into the Canadian Tire Centre’s parking lot. David had gone ahead with Luca, three hours before puck-drop. Both Shane and Yuna had wanted to go too, but Luca had pleaded with them to let David—who was easily the most mellow of the Hollanders—handle things.
“Your father says he’s locked in,” said Yuna after a quick scan of her phone. “A few pre-game jitters, but nothing unusual. Apparently, the captain took him aside for a quick chat during morning skate, which helped.”
Shane felt a strange little tug in his chest. The captain.
He hadn’t thought about Ilya Rozanov in a long time—or rather, he’d tried not to. He’d followed Ilya’s career, of course. It was impossible for anyone with even the slightest passing interest in hockey not to. Rozanov was a god in the MLH, a perennial All-Star with a trophy case that probably needed its own zip code. Every time Shane saw Ilya on a highlights reel, he was briefly transported back to a locker room in Saskatchewan, looking up into the intense eyes of a Russian teenager who had looked at Shane like he was something worth more than a silver medal.
“Good,” Shane murmured, adjusting his sunglasses. “Luca needs a steady hand. He’s got way too much of my nervous energy.”
Yuna laughed. “Our nervous energy, you mean.”
Walking into the arena through the VIP entrance was an exercise in practiced composure. Shane was used to the flashes of cameras and the murmurs of, “Is that...?” But here, the context was different. He wasn’t Shane Hollander, the face of Vogue Hommes; he was Shane Hollander, the ghost of hockey’s past. As they moved toward the elevators, a group of fans in Centaurs jerseys stopped dead and stared. Shane offered a polite, distant smile—the “celebrity shield” he’d perfected after years of shuttling back and forth from Ottawa to Paris, Milan, and New York—and ushered Yuna inside.
The family suite was alive with the warm buzz of conversing spouses, excited children, and proud parents. David immediately rose to greet his wife and son, his face a map of grandfatherly anxiety.
“He’s on the ice for warm-ups,” he said, gesturing to the glass.
Shane walked straight over without even pausing to take off his jacket. Below, the ice was a blinding, perfect white, scarred by the blades of twenty-odd men moving with violent, beautiful efficiency. He scanned the red jerseys of the Centaurs until he found it: Hollander. 24. Despite the blond hair so unlike Shane and Yuna’s own, Luca looked so much like Shane had at that age—the same effortless stride, the same way he tucked his hair behind his ears when he stopped. Shane felt a lump form in his throat. They’d done it. He’d done it. He’d gotten his son here.
And then, his eyes drifted.
Leading the Centaurs, setting the pace with a frightening level of intensity, was a player who moved like a predator. He was broader now than the boy Shane remembered, his movements more calculated, his presence filling the entire arena. On the upper-left of his chest, the tell-tale ‘C’ was bright and bold.
Ilya Rozanov slowed as he approached the corner of the rink directly below the suites. As if sensing a gaze, or perhaps just out of habit, Ilya looked up.
Most players looked at the crowd as a blur of color. But Ilya’s gaze was surgical. It swept across the glass, past the corporate sponsors and the screaming kids, and locked—dead center—on Shane.
Shane froze. He was thirty-six, a father, a man who had stood on the world’s biggest stages without blinking. But under that dark, heavy stare from the ice, he felt eighteen again, the scent of cigarette smoke rank in his nostrils and the air so bitingly cold around him. He remembered the brief moment of warmth as Ilya Rozanov had grasped his hand and said, a hint of laughter gleaming in his eyes, “You will not be so nice when we beat you.”
For a second, the roar of the crowd—the classic, thumping arena music and the screech of skates on fresh ice—faded into a dull hum. Shane felt a traitorous thrill zip down his spine. For one heartbeat, he forgot everything. His parents behind him, his son on the ice down below; none of them existed. He was just Shane, the boy who had once introduced himself to a rival because he couldn't help himself.
Then, Ilya blinked. He didn’t look away, but his head tilted a fraction of an inch, his eyes raking over the number on Shane’s chest. He turned slightly to look at Luca, still in the middle of a warm-up, then turned back to Shane, mouth slightly ajar.
“Shane? You okay?” David’s hand landed on his shoulder, warm and grounding. “You’ve gone a bit pale. Is it the height? We can move back from the glass.”
The spell broke. Shane forced his muscles to relax. Below them, Ilya finally turned, pushing off with a powerful stride to rejoin the warmup circle.
“I’m fine, Dad,” Shane replied, his voice only slightly tighter than usual. “Just... a lot of memories in one building. It’s a bit overwhelming.”
“It’s the jersey,” said Yuna, joining them at the glass and smoothing a phantom wrinkle on Shane’s sleeve. Her touch was more motherly now than managerial. “It suits you. I know this brings up so many what-ifs. You’re allowed to feel that. But remember this is your victory too. You’re the reason Luca’s out there on that ice right now.”
Shane looked back down at the ice. Luca was lining up for a drill, looking bright-eyed and focused. A few feet away, Ilya Rozanov was leaning against the boards, staring up at their suite again with an expression that could only be described as haunted.
Shane straightened his posture. He’d spent eighteen years being exactly who he needed to be for his son. He wasn't going to stop now.
“I know, Mom,” he murmured, his eyes tracking the red-and-black blur that was Captain Ilya Rozanov. “I know.”
The locker room was a symphony of heavy breathing, the muted rip of tape, and the aggressive bass of a techno track that someone—one of the rookies, probably—had put on the speakers. Usually, this was where Ilya Rozanov found that place of absolute, icy focus where nothing existed except the next sixty minutes of play.
But today, the ground felt like it was shifting under his feet.
Ilya sat at his stall, methodically re-tying his skates. His hands, usually as steady as a surgeon’s, now felt a fraction of a second too slow. He was under no delusions as to why. Not when that name kept echoing through his mind.
Shane Hollander.
The name had been a footnote in his memory for nearly two decades. A pretty boy with the biggest, darkest eyes Ilya had ever seen, who moved like a demon on the ice, and who had disappeared into the ether after the World Juniors in 2008. Ilya had spent years wondering what happened to him, then years more assuming he’d simply burned out. When he’d seen the name Hollander on the draft list for the Centaurs, he’d told himself it was a coincidence. A common name.
He was wrong.
“Earth to Rozy,” a voice chirped, breaking through the fog.
Ilya glanced up. Zane Boodram was standing over him, grinning like a man who had just found a winning lottery ticket. Next to him, Wyatt Hayes was leaning against the lockers, his eyebrows raised in a way that suggested trouble.
“You were staring, Cap,” said Bood, speaking in a low, conspiratorial tone. “During warm-ups. You almost let a puck go over the boards because you were looking at the executive suites like you’d seen the Virgin Mary.”
“I was not staring,” Ilya insisted. He pulled his laces with a sharp, violent tug, the familiar bite of the cord against his fingers grounding him. He didn’t look up, focusing instead on the bridge of his skate. “I was checking the glass. The glare is…distracting.”
“Distracting.” Hazy let out a disbelieving hoot of laughter. “Sure, I guess ‘distracting’ is one word for a guy who makes like a billion dollars just by standing still in a pair of Italian trousers. I don’t think it was the glass that was giving off that glow, Cap.”
Bood glanced over at Hazy. “You know the guy Roz was making eyes at?”
“Sure do. That’s Shane Hollander. My wife has a candle from that fragrance line he’s the face of. He’s gotta be on, what? Every luxury watch ad ever made?” Hazy replied. “I didn’t realize the rookie’s dad was that Hollander.”
“Are we talking about Shane Hollander?” said Troy Barrett, suddenly popping up at Hazy’s elbow. “Harris has a Pinterest board dedicated to him. Says no one makes a suit look good like Shane Hollander does.”
Ilya glared. “He is the father of a teammate,” he said sternly. “It is inappropriate to discuss him this way.
“Is it inappropriate to say he looks better now than I did at twenty?” Bood asked, unbothered. “Because he does. He’s wearing his kid’s jersey, Ilya. He’s a supportive hockey dad. That’s your kryptonite, isn’t it?”
Ilya felt a heat crawl up the back of his neck that had nothing to do with his pre-game workout. He glanced across the room. Luca Hollander was sitting three stalls down, adjusting his helmet, looking remarkably calm for an eighteen-year-old about to play his first shift.
The kid had Shane’s jawline and big, doe-like eyes. He had that same way of looking at the world like he was taking a mental photograph of everything, as though with enough time and effort, he could distill everything before his eyes down to its most basic concepts.
Shane Hollander stayed home to raise this boy, Ilya realized, feeling his heart clench at the sudden thought.
“Focus on the game,” he commanded, grabbing his gloves and turning toward the tunnel. “Toronto’s in the building. If you spend as much time on the forecheck as you do on celebrity gossip, maybe we’ll actually win the opener.”
Still wearing their usual shit-eating grins, Troy, Hazy, and Bood saluted him. “Aye-aye, Captain,” said Troy sweetly. Ilya rolled his eyes and pushed past them, the cool air of the arena tunnel hitting him in the face.
He led the line onto the ice, his heart hammering a rhythm that had nothing to do with adrenaline and everything to do with the man sitting behind the glass.
He had to be perfect tonight. He didn’t know why, but he felt like he was eighteen again, trying to catch the eye of the boy who had walked away.