Chapter Text
Shane is twelve when he realizes he can understand Russian.
He’s at a hockey camp in Vancouver, his first one so far from home. He’s buzzing out of his skin with excitement and pride, because getting in shows that he’s good at hockey. Not just Ottawa good, but good good. Like, internationally good.
There are kids from all across the world at the camp. He meets a boy from France named Pierre, and is excited that he can speak the same language as someone from so far away. But then Pierre laughs and makes fun of his accent, and Shane isn’t as excited anymore.
There’s only one other kid from Ottawa at the camp, Brian Guthrie, but he and Shane play for different clubs and aren’t really that close. Plus, he’s obsessed with showing off to the Swedish players that he can understand their language, and Shane decides that Brian Guthrie is tacky.
So what, Brian Guthrie understands Swedish. It’s not like he can speak Swedish, which would actually be cool. He just has a soulmate who speaks Swedish. Sorry if Shane isn’t impressed that some random Swedish girl speaks Swedish.
Three days into the camp, he goes to face off against Pyotr Sokolov, one of several Russian campers. Unlike Shane, Pyotr has already hit puberty, so he stands at least a foot taller. They’re supposedly the same age, but Pyotr practically looks like he could be his babysitter.
“Wow, wasn’t the under 10 camp last week?” Pyotr laughs as they face each other. “How old is this kid?”
“I’m twelve,” Shane answers. He’s pretty sure Pyotr was making fun of him rather than genuinely asking, but it’s hard for him to tell sometimes.
Pyotr looks up at him in confusion, and Shane is even less sure now whether or not it was a chirp. Did he not expect Shane to answer? Pyotr’s confusion works out in Shane’s favor, though, because he wins the face-off. He ends up scoring three goals in the game, and he feels like he’s on top of the world.
Later, as he unlaces his skates on the bench in the locker room, Pyotr approaches him. He still looks confused, which makes Shane feel confused. He knows he hasn’t hit a growth spurt or anything yet, but surely he doesn’t look that young?
“Can you understand what I’m saying?” Pyotr asks. Shane furrows his brow.
“Is this some kind of trick question?”
“No. Can you understand what I’m saying right now? And what I said at the face-off?” Pyotr asks again. For someone asking such a weird question, he sure sounds annoyed.
“Um, yeah?” Shane confirms. Pyotr’s eyebrows raise, and Shane feels like he’s missing a crucial piece of information here. “Why does it matter?”
“Because I’m speaking Russian.”
Shane drops his skate, the loud clatter as it hits the ground causing several other boys to look their way. He nods at them, and soon enough no one is paying attention again. Good.
“Because your soulmate, yes? I am guessing,” Pyotr says, in heavily accented English this time.
Holy shit. Holy shit.
Shane has a soulmate. His hand flies to his right ear, to the skin right behind where a soulmark would appear. Could appear, apparently, if he’s lucky enough to meet her, and fall in love with her.
One in a hundred, they say. About one in every hundred people has a soulmate. The odds are not in anyone’s favor, and yet somehow they worked out for Shane. But, shit, she speaks Russian? Does she live in Russia?
“Hollander, hello, are you okay?” Pyotr asks, and Shane realizes he’s gone nonverbal. He needs to stop doing that. His mom is always getting on his case about it.
“Yeah, sorry. It’s just a big thing to find out, you know?” He laughs to cover his sudden burst of insecurity.
“I guess,” Pyotr shrugs, switching back to Russian. “I don’t think I have a soulmate. Or if I do, she must speak Russian.”
Now that he’s heard Pyotr speak English, Shane realizes the difference. He can’t believe he didn’t notice Pyotr was speaking a completely different language at first. It’s different than when someone speaks French, because he also speaks French, so his brain just switches to French mode when he needs it to.
But with Russian, it’s different. He can understand everything Pyotr says, but it’s weird, almost like he’s reading subtitles on a foreign film. Except there’s no subtitles, it’s just his brain. If he thinks about it too hard he’ll get a headache.
He can’t speak Russian, he knows that. He’s pretty sure the only Russian word he knows is “vodka.” If Pyotr asked him to repeat anything he said back, he wouldn’t be able to do it. It’s an odd feeling.
Pyotr turns away, probably bored of the way Shane’s gone quiet again, and a strange anxiety rushes through him.
“Pyotr, wait,” he calls out. Pyotr turns to look at him, his smile looking a little forced now. Shane rushes towards him, hushes his voice so no one else can hear. “Don’t, uh, don’t tell anyone, okay?”
Pyotr looks at him like he’s crazy, but he nods. Relief floods through him. He isn’t sure why he doesn’t want anyone to know, but something about this feels private. Pyotr walks away then, and he and Shane only interact a handful of times for the rest of camp.
When he gets home, he lays in bed and tries to picture his soulmate. He doesn’t know how to imagine someone as Russian, so he just imagines a generically pretty girl wearing one of those Russian fur hats he’s seen in movies.
His stomach feels uneasy with the image, but he can’t pinpoint why.
Shane doesn’t think about his soulmate for a long time.
He buys a book about learning Russian when he’s fifteen, but finds it to be ridiculously difficult. When he looks it up online, he reads several articles about how—ironically—understanding a soulmate’s language can actually make it more difficult to learn, because your brain keeps trying to translate the foreign words instead of letting you learn them. He gives up after that.
He doesn’t tell his parents about his soulmate. Every time he tries to picture her, he gets uncomfortable and anxious, and he doesn’t feel ready to answer the hundreds of questions his parents would inevitably ask. His mom would probably make him sign up for some sort of study, god forbid.
When he plays in the World Juniors at seventeen, he considers his ability to understand Russian a secret asset more than anything else. The players don’t know that he can understand the little things they say to each other.
When he finds Ilya Rozanov smoking outside the rink and struggles to explain the no smoking rule, he briefly curses himself for giving up on learning Russian so quickly.
“Sorry,” he laughs, awkward. “I don’t speak any Russian.”
“Is okay,” Rozanov replies, unimpressed. “I understand English.”
“Right, yeah, of course. I wasn’t trying to comment on how well you speak—”
“No, not speak. I understand English. My soulmate speaks it,” Rozanov interrupts, and Shane feels as if the ground falls out from under him.
Ilya Rozanov has a soulmate. Why does that information feel like a tectonic shift?
“Oh wow, I—that’s cool.” The words seem to slide out of Shane’s mouth before he’s even fully aware of them. “Do you—do you know her? I mean, do you—”
“I have not met her yet, no,” Rozanov replies, easy. Like sharing this sort of information is nothing new. Like it’s just another detail about him.
Shane isn’t sure what to say, after that. A small part of him is annoyed when he realizes that Ilya apparently understood everything he said about not smoking and clearly ignored it.
“Do you have one?” Ilya asks, taking another drag of his cigarette.
“A cigarette? No, I don’t smoke, and even if I did you’re not supposed to smoke here,” Shane replies, annoyed. Ilya has the audacity to laugh at that.
“No, not a cigarette,” he smirks, putting his cigarette out on the No Smoking sign. Shane doesn’t know whether he should be pleased that he’s no longer smoking or annoyed at the blatant disrespect of the rules. “A soulmate.”
Shane startles. No one has ever asked him that so bluntly. It’s actually considered rude, in some circles. Then again, Rozanov clearly doesn’t give two shits about rules.
Should he share that he has a soulmate, too? He’s never told anyone before, not even his parents, but Rozanov looks oddly invested in his answer. Maybe even hopeful. But Shane is terrible at reading people’s emotions, so who knows.
He’s not sure what exactly it is that makes him tell the truth. There’s something earnest in Rozanov’s eyes, something that makes him feel like this secret will be safe with him.
“Uh, yeah, I do,” he answers, voice shakier than he’d like. “Haven’t met her yet, but she’s out there somewhere.”
Rozanov’s eyebrows raise at that, but he doesn’t say more. That curiosity is still there, like there’s something Shane isn’t saying. Technically there is, he guesses. But something stops him from sharing that his soulmate speaks Russian. He doesn’t want to examine it too closely.
“Don’t tell anyone, though,” Shane rushes to add. “It’s, uh, not something I like people to know about.”
“Ah, there goes my best gossip,” Rozanov replies, monotone. “Was going to tell all of Russia that some random hockey player in Canada has soulmate.”
Shane laughs, anxiety easing just a bit. They maintain eye contact, Rozanov’s smirk fading into a shy smile. It’s freezing cold, but Shane feels warm in Rozanov’s presence. As soon as the thought hits, the anxiety comes back in full force. He has to get away from here.
“I, uh, my team.” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, as if he’s expecting the entire Canadian team to be standing behind him. “I should—it was nice to meet you, though. Good luck with—yeah.”
He dashes away before Rozanov can reply. Which is a good thing, probably, because even though he can understand English, Shane isn’t sure he actually managed to say anything coherent.
He doesn’t see Rozanov again until the day of the draft, and he’s so pissed about being second pick that he doesn’t even get a chance to say much more.
When they chat later on the floor of a hotel gym, sharing a water bottle, Shane can’t help but feel drawn to Rozanov. He licks his lips after taking another swig of water, chasing any taste of the other man left behind. He’s a little disappointed that he only gets the taste of his own sweat. Rozanov hasn’t stopped watching him for a single second.
“Did you find her yet?” Rozanov asks, breaking the silence.
“Who?”
“Your soulmate,” he answers, like it should’ve been obvious. Shane feels anxious, suddenly. He doesn’t really like to think about her.
“No, not yet. I had a girlfriend up until recently but, uh,” he pauses. He doesn’t want to say that he knew Jessica wasn’t his soulmate because she didn’t speak Russian, so he just says, “it wasn’t her.”
“Ah, me neither. She’s probably in Canada, though,” Rozanov shares, and the piece of information feels intimate. Like we shouldn’t be talking about this, Shane thinks. He continues the conversation anyway.
“Oh yeah? How do you know that?”
“She speaks English and French,” Rozanov sighs, like he’s disappointed about it. Shane’s stomach does something weird at that. “Canadian French, I think. Hard to tell, is weird.”
Shane wants to say that he understands, that he’s tried with limited success to figure out if his soulmate is from Russia or from another Russian-speaking country, but that would require him to share more information about her, and he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want her here, in the space between them. The thought terrifies him a little.
“I should probably get back to my room,” Shane says, trying to keep the tremble out of his voice. He thinks he succeeds. Mostly.
When he gets to his room, the back of his ear itches. He wonders if it means his soulmate is thinking about him, wherever she is. He kind of wishes she would stop.
When they meet again almost a year later for a commercial shoot, enough time has passed that Shane feels more relaxed. He and Rozanov can’t stop laughing, and when the shoot ends he sort of even laments the fact that they’ll have to go back to being rivals soon.
And then Rozanov approaches him in the shower, and he isn’t sure how they can possibly go back to being rivals. He wants to forget it ever happened, maybe even to never see Rozanov again.
And yet he tells Rozanov his room number. And answers the door when he knocks. And slides to his knees so easily, taking Rozanov’s cock into his mouth. He’s never done this before, but it scares him how much he likes it.
He almost whines when Rozanov finishes, because he doesn’t want to stop. But then Rozanov is returning the favor, and Shane feels hot desire race through him in a way it never has before. He finishes embarrassingly quickly, but he doesn’t care. He’s never had an orgasm that good.
They laugh together, after, and it feels natural. Easy.
“So, you’re not gonna tell anyone about this, are you?” Shane asks, just to be sure. It’s a strange echo of the words he’d said before, when he asked Rozanov to keep his secret about his soulmate.
“Me? Yes, Hollander, I’m going to tell everyone,” Rozanov says, looking annoyed.
“Because no one can know,” Shane continues. He can’t look at Rozanov right now, spread out on the bed like some sort of sex god. It makes his brain go fuzzy.
“No shit,” Rozanov replies, and Shane freezes. He said it in Russian, which means Shane isn’t supposed to understand. He suddenly overthinks his facial expression. Is his face giving away that he understood? Rozanov goes on, though.
“Hollander, look, I’m not going to tell anyone, okay?”
“Okay,” Shane agrees.
Rozanov leaves after that, and Shane still can’t look at him as he gets dressed. He looks at the ceiling for a bit, then at Rozanov’s belt when it’s time to say goodbye. Anywhere but in his eyes.
“Holy shit,” Shane says to himself once Rozanov leaves. He isn’t sure when they’ll see each other next, or if there will even be a repeat of tonight’s activities. Who knows, one of them might find their soulmate before then.
His stomach turns. Somehow, even here, she worms her way in.
Shane lays in bed, still naked, mind spinning out about his soulmate. Will he have to tell her one day that he hooked up with Ilya Rozanov? Or that he wants to do it again?
Well, he hasn’t met her yet. So she’ll have to forgive him for doing some—experimenting in the meantime. It doesn’t mean anything. She’s a foregone conclusion. She’s his soulmate, so he knows that he’ll love her eventually, but right now the thought of her still makes him feel a little sick to his stomach.
It’s probably just nerves. He’s going to love her. He has to.
When he sees Rozanov again at the All-Star game, Shane feels inexplicably nervous.
As they sit for the press conference, he lets his mind slide into the same place it usually goes when he has to do press. He puts on a smile, laughs at the jokes, and pretends like he loves being there.
When a particularly complicated question gets thrown Rozanov’s way, Shane can see him trying to formulate a response. It occurs to Shane for the first time that Rozanov has done what he never managed to do, learn his soulmate’s language.
He can tell Rozanov is struggling to find the words to answer, so he jumps in. Rozanov looks at him gratefully, and he feels a tap to his foot as their shoes line up. It feels like every nerve ending in his body is centered on that point.
It feels impossible to resist later, when Rozanov gives him his room number.
As he makes his way to Rozanov’s room, he thinks again of his soulmate. He definitely hasn’t met her yet, though it would be hard to tell.
Despite centuries of study, no one has been able to exactly discover what makes a soulmark finally appear. Some couples get them immediately, and others don’t appear until years into a relationship. He’s even heard of some couples who develop theirs at different times.
No, he definitely hasn’t met her yet. He doesn’t know any girls who speak Russian. So that’s that. She’s out there somewhere, waiting for him. And he’s here, in an elevator, on his way to (hopefully) hook up with Ilya Rozanov again.
He pushes down the feeling of guilt. He doesn’t owe her any loyalty, not yet. This stuff with Rozanov doesn’t mean anything, anyway. They’re both just biding time until they meet their soulmates.
When he gets inside Rozanov’s room, it’s only a matter of seconds before they collide, lips bruising, Rozanov’s tongue insistent in his mouth. It feels exciting in a way none of his kisses with his exes ever have.
After they make plans to fuck in Montreal, Shane is more than happy to take Rozanov’s cock into his mouth again. He’s been practicing on the dildo Rozanov made fun of him for, and after several extremely embarrassing attempts he is glad no one saw, he feels like he can try out the new trick he learned.
His first attempt at deep throating an actual cock is less than successful. Rozanov is bigger than his dildo, unfortunately, and it takes Shane a few moments to move past the embarrassment of choking on Rozanov’s dick.
His second attempt is significantly better, if the way Rozanov is cursing is any indication. He feels a hand in his hair, guiding his head, and loses himself to the pleasant buzz in his brain.
“Fuck, never had a mouth this good before,” Rozanov grunts in Russian. Shane is almost positive he would not have said that if he knew Shane could understand him. He preens at the praise silently, both because he doesn’t want to give any indication he heard it and because his mouth is otherwise occupied.
Later, as Shane sits against the headboard and comes down from the fuzzy afterglow of the amazing blowjob he got as a reward, Rozanov turns to him.
“Thank you again, for earlier. Sometimes is hard to find the words in English. I am slow learner.” Rozanov sounds almost self-conscious, and Shane simply refuses to let that be.
“No, no. Your English is really good. I know it’s hard to learn a language that your soulmate speaks.” Shane is afraid to say more, but he lets the implication hang there. That maybe he has a soulmate that speaks another language, too.
“Yes, well, is also for my soulmate, so,” Rozanov says, like it’s obvious that he would learn English for her. Shane feels the same guilt from earlier seep through him. He hasn’t learned Russian; he gave up. Why did he give up?
It occurs to him, then, that maybe Rozanov could give him some insight on his soulmate. They’re not the same person, obviously, but they do speak the same language.
“Do you hope that she’s doing the same? Learning Russian for you?”
Rozanov considers the question before answering.
“I guess maybe. I know she will understand me no matter what language I speak. But sometimes it is nice to have conversation in Russian,” Rozanov says, looking sad for a moment. “I only speak Russian with my father and brother. It would be nice to speak it with someone who—”
He cuts himself off, looking away from Shane. He takes a deep breath.
“Someone who what?” Shane asks, voice gentle.
“Nevermind, is not important. It would be nice, but I would not blame her if she did not.” Rozanov says. Shane hopes his soulmate has the same mindset.
“You speak French, right?” Rozanov asks, like he’s just remembering it.
“Yeah, I do. I don’t use it as much as English, but I’m fluent.”
Rozanov nods at that, considering his answer. Shane is confused for a moment, before he remembers. Rozanov’s soulmate speaks French.
“I can’t, like, teach you or anything. If that’s why you’re asking,” he clarifies. He’s very good at learning, but not so much teaching. In any subject.
“What? No, I don’t want you to teach me French,” Rozanov replies, sounding put out. Shane feels stupid suddenly.
“Would you want your soulmate to learn French?” He asks.
Shane thinks about it. Honestly, while he would like to have a language in common with her, he doesn’t really care whether it’s English or French. Maybe it’ll even be Russian, if he can get his ass into gear and actually learn the damn language.
“I think as long as she spoke English or French, it’d be fine. I don’t need her to speak both,” he answers. Ilya nods, but doesn’t say anything else. Shane takes it as his cue to get dressed and leave.
They exchange phone numbers, and Shane can’t keep the smile off his face as he rides the elevator back down to his floor. Two weeks, and then Rozanov will fuck him. He tries not to feel guilty about the thought that crosses his mind next.
He really hopes he doesn’t meet his soulmate in the next two weeks.
He doesn’t meet his soulmate in the next two weeks. He also, notably, does not meet Ilya Rozanov, due to bad weather.
He doesn’t see Rozanov again until the NHL awards, and even then it’s hard to track him down. He has to get through crowds of people congratulating him for Rookie of the Year, but as his eyes scan the room, he doesn’t see Rozanov anywhere.
Eventually he gives up looking and resolves to get some air. The shot he did with Scott Hunter is maybe affecting him more than he thought.
It figures that that’s where he finally runs into Rozanov. He looks pensive, staring at the Vegas skyline as he smokes a cigarette.
Their conversation is tense in a way it hasn’t ever been before. Rozanov seems on edge, and when he yells at Shane that not everything is about him, Shane feels about two feet tall.
He knows not everything is about him. It almost never feels like it’s about him, not really. It’s sometimes about the idea of him, of what he can do or sell, but it’s never about him. Shane.
For the first time, he finds himself wishing she were here. His soulmate. Maybe she would see through the Shane Hollander brand, to the lonely, anxious person underneath the hockey gear and sponsorships.
He realizes he was maybe subconsciously hoping Rozanov could also see him. It seems a silly thing to want now. They are so different. Rozanov is heading back to Russia for the summer, and he has three more commercials to film before he can escape to his cottage.
“I guess I’ll, uh, see you next season?” He offers his hand for a shake, telling himself that this is probably for the best. He should distance himself from Rozanov, put an end to whatever this thing between them is. It can’t go anywhere.
When Rozanov pushes him against the wall and crushes their mouths together, Shane can’t help but kiss back. He doesn’t understand what went wrong tonight, but this he does understand. Desire, want.
It takes him a moment to remember where they are, and when he does he pushes Rozanov back. What is he doing? He just resolved himself to end this thing between them, and now here he is sticking his tongue down Rozanov’s throat?
He storms away, waves off the “see you next season” Rozanov calls after him.
Whatever, it’s bullshit. He has a soulmate anyway, and he should really focus on finding her. His stomach turns. Maybe he should just focus on hockey for now.
In the two years between that kiss at the NHL awards and the next time he and Rozanov hook up, Shane does not find his soulmate.
He does find some things out about himself, however. Primarily that he really, really likes being fucked. Specifically by Ilya Rozanov, unfortunately. He’d always thought people were exaggerating about how much they love sex, but he thinks maybe he gets it now.
They continue hooking up over the next two years, and the whole time Shane feels like there is an expiration date on this. One of them is bound to meet their soulmate, and then it’ll be over for good.
But every time he meets up with Rozanov, he finds himself drawn more and more to him. Each clandestine hookup is like another hit of a drug he’s only getting more and more addicted to. He tells himself dozens of times that he’s going to end it, but he never manages to do it.
It all comes to a head in Boston, when Ilya asks him to stay the night. It’s a bad idea, he knows it’s a bad idea, but he agrees to it anyway.
And, fuck, it’s really good. Not just the sex, which is, as always, stellar. It’s also that he finds Ilya easy to talk to in a way that most people aren’t. And it doesn’t escape his notice that Ilya stocked up on ginger ale before he came over. It’s a small gesture, but it feels important
As they lounge on the couch, watching hockey, Shane feels like they’re in a universe of their own making. Tomorrow he will start searching for his soulmate again. Today, he can have this.
Ilya, of course, takes the opportunity to bring her up.
“Have you found her yet?” He asks, looking at the TV as if he’s asking about the weather.
“No, uh, I haven’t. Not yet,” Shane answers. He’s immediately uncomfortable.
“There is a girl I like here very much, Svetlana,” Ilya says. Shane feels inexplicably annoyed at that.
“Oh? Is she your, uh, your soulmate?” He asks. Is it possible Ilya found his soulmate? And if so, why did he invite Shane over?
It would be a pretty shitty thing for Ilya to do, he thinks. Uncharacteristically shitty.
“No, no, nothing like that,” Ilya clarifies. Shane hates that he feels relieved. “She is old friend from Russia. Sometimes we fuck. But her soulmate speaks English, too. So we both know it will never be more than that.”
Shane has absolutely no idea where this conversation is going. If Ilya is trying to imply that the same is true for him and Shane, he doesn’t need the reminder. He’s known the whole time that they’ll never be more than this.
“And you’re not looking for your soulmate?” he asks. Say no, he thinks. Say no, so I can feel less guilty that I haven’t been looking at all.
“Mmm, I think I will find her eventually,” Ilya replies with a sigh. “But you know me. I’m lazy.”
There’s that self-deprecation again. Shane kind of hates it when Ilya talks about himself like this, especially when it’s so incredibly untrue. Ilya learned English for his soulmate. That’s the opposite of lazy.
“I don’t know that side of you at all,” Shane says. He hopes that conveys all that he feels about this. The smile Ilya gives him in return is soft in a way it never is for the cameras. Shane finds he likes it better than the rest.
The oven alarm goes off, and Ilya grabs their tuna melts. As they eat, Ilya brings the subject back to Shane’s soulmate.
“Are you looking for her?” He asks. “Your soulmate.”
Shane nearly drops his can of ginger ale. How is he supposed to answer that? He can’t tell the truth, obviously.
“Oh, yeah, sure. When I have time,” he says noncommittally. Ilya doesn’t appear to be buying it.
“I never hear about you with girls,” he says. It’s not an accusation, but it still makes Shane uneasy.
“Yeah, well, that’s private. Same reason nobody knows I have a soulmate,” he shrugs. Ilya nods at that, and Shane still isn’t sure he’s being convincing.
Ilya’s phone rings, putting Shane out of his misery. Ilya excuses himself to the other room. The tuna melt turns sour in Shane’s stomach as he quickly realizes he can hear Ilya’s conversation. Ilya isn’t being quiet, but that's because he thinks Shane can’t understand. Shane really, really shouldn’t be hearing this.
It sounds like something is wrong with Ilya’s father. He’s gathered bits and pieces over the years, and knows that Ilya’s relationship with his family back in Russia is tenuous at best. He suspects it’s worse than Ilya lets on, and this phone call only proves that.
When Ilya returns to the couch, Shane isn’t sure what to do. He should tell Ilya he can understand Russian, right? It’s long overdue, and now it’s reached the point where he’s invading Ilya’s privacy.
But it seems like a bad time. He looks shaken, and Shane finds that instead he wants to make sure Ilya is okay.
“Are you okay? It sounded like something was going on with your father,” Shane says carefully.
Ilya looks at him intently, then, searching his eyes. Shane isn’t sure what exactly he’s looking for, but he keeps his face purposely blank.
“Ah, you speak Russian, now?”
Fuck, Shane should really answer that honestly. Something stops him, though. Maybe it’s self-preservation. Maybe he’s a coward.
“I know the word for father,” he ends up saying, which isn’t technically a lie. He does know the word for father, and a few other words that he’s picked up. Despite swearing to himself that he would learn Russian, Shane hasn’t been able to do it. It feels wrong to do it for her.
Maybe there’s someone else he’d do it for.
The thought comes out of nowhere, and Shane shoves it away. It’s ridiculous. If he won’t learn Russian for her, he won’t learn it for anyone. She’s his soulmate, for crying out loud.
Ilya pulls him into his side, and Shane relaxes into the calming rhythm of fingers in his hair. The edges of his vision go blurry. It’s like with one simple move, Ilya has turned off the anxious part of his brain.
Why couldn’t it be him?
Shane pulls himself out of Ilya’s hold, scrambling backwards. Ilya looks confused.
“What is—”
“I have to—I can’t—I have a soulmate,” he stammers, a million thoughts racing through his mind.
“And I have one too, but I am sure she will understand, Shane,” Ilya says calmly, like he’s trying to steady a spooked horse.
Shane.
Ilya called him Shane. They don’t do that. Ilya must see his reaction, because he immediately backtracks. “Hollander, come on. It is nothing, we both know there is someone else for us.”
But it’s not nothing, and that’s the problem. It’s not nothing at all, this thing with Ilya. And, fuck, since when had he become Ilya in his head? This was too much. They would meet their soulmates any day now, and it would all come crashing down.
“I can’t. I’m sorry, I—I have to go.” Shane shoves his feet into his shoes and goes, ignoring the hurt expression on Ilya’s face.
It isn’t until he’s halfway back to the hotel that he realizes he’s wearing Ilya’s shirt, and that his own shirt and jacket are still in Ilya’s bedroom. And, fuck, he isn’t wearing socks either.
Who cares? He’s a millionaire. He’ll buy more socks. He absolutely cannot go back there, not when his head and his heart are such a mess.
He can’t have Ilya. He has a soulmate, and she’s probably perfect and pretty and nice. Whatever he feels for Ilya, he’ll feel tenfold for her.
He resolves himself right then and there. He is going to find her. Whatever it takes.