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0 Days, 1 Hour Gone
Hayden doesn’t remember how he got here. His hands are shaking where they rest, limp, between his knees. The waiting room in the whatever hospital wing he is in is muted and sterile, every surface polished to a dull shine as if by the frantic hands of a thousand anxious families before him. He is the only one here, if you don’t count the tired-eyed nurse who lingers behind an old wooden desk, tapping at her monitor, sometimes glancing at him like she’s not sure if he’s about to bolt or collapse. Her presence is peripheral, a distant moon tugging at the tides of his focus, which can’t settle anywhere for more than a moment.
It’s not that nothing feels real. It’s that everything feels hyperreal, like someone has ratcheted up the contrast in the world until each detail is so sharp it cuts. The humming of the fluorescent lights vibrates inside Hayden’s teeth. A prickle of sweat crawls down his back, freezing as it goes. He’s wearing a coat and a scarf, though he can’t remember putting them on, and the bundle of cloth around his neck is suddenly a noose. He wants to tear it off, but his hands won’t obey, he stares at them, the way they tremble, as if watching a trick of animation.
He had just finished getting off the phone with Yuna and David. The words on the screen of his phone still burn after images into his vision: outgoing call, missed call, voicemail. He’d tried both numbers three times before anyone picked up. They were in Ottawa, and Hayden had told them to get on a flight immediately, that there’d been an accident and that they needed to be here. He hadn’t told them what had happened, couldn’t. There was no vocabulary for this. The only words he could get out were, “Come now,” and “I’m so sorry.”
He swallows sobs and bile together, fighting to keep everything inside, because if he starts now he might never stop. He was trying to keep everything together, but a stranger’s car, barreling the wrong direction on a slicked stretch of highway, ripped his friends out of the world and left him here to pick up the pieces.
He can’t wrap his mind around the word: dead. Like a punchline he can’t process, like a story that someone else is telling. Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander are dead, and Hayden is the one who has to break this news to their families, or Shane’s, when they finally walk through the hospital’s automatic doors in an hour or two.
The clock on the wall is pointing to the same time over and over. Maybe it’s broken, maybe it’s just lying. Hayden wishes he could lie to Yuna and David, wishes he could conjure some alternate reality where this isn’t true. He gags on the truth, on the memory of what the cop had told him, on the distant sound of screaming that he’s still not convinced wasn’t his own. He regrets agreeing to be Shane’s emergency contact.
He tries to remember the last thing he said to either of them. He tries to remember if he thanks them for everything, or if he let the conversation dissolve into sarcasm and half-hearted jokes. God, was he an asshole to Ilya? He couldn’t remember. He tries to remember if Ilya was happy, if Shane knew how proud everyone was, if they sensed that the world revolved a little bit around them, even if they pretended otherwise.
Hayden could not bring himself to tell Yuna and David, over the phone, that both Ilya and Shane had died. That they both had fought for their lives in the ambulances, but neither of them would be walking out of this forsaken hospital. He couldn’t tell them that a drunk driver had hit them and had taken them away from them. That neither of them would ever lace up a pair of skates again, that they would never—God, Hayden was going to throw up.
0 Days, 12 Hours Gone
The morning after Ilya and Shane died, Hayden is conscripted into reality by the crude shriek of his alarm and the grim, utilitarian efficiency of Voyagers management. There is a team meeting scheduled for nine o’clock sharp in one of the hotel conference rooms, and Hayden is expected to attend. There is no option, no decency in being excused, not even for the poor bastard who had to originally break the news.
He makes his way to the conference room ten minutes early, because he cannot bear the idea of arriving last, of every face swiveling in his direction when he walks in. The room is cavernous, as bland and temporary as the rest of the hotel’s event spaces. There is a long table set up with a carafe of coffee, a tray of bagels, and an ostentatious mound of bananas and apples. Hayden’s stomach recoils at the sight.
There are already three or four teammates seated at the far end of the room, hunched over their phones, talking quietly into the void. JJ is among them, slumped with his back against the wall, knees splayed out, eyes looking somewhere centuries past the carpet. The man is a slab of muscle and bone, but today he seems shrunken, as if grief could physically erode someone’s mass. Hayden had felt that JJ owed being told before the rest of the team, so he had told him last night.
Hayden slides into an empty chair near the middle, trying to be neither the center of attention nor the last one in line for judgement. The rest of the room fills in by increments.
Hayden doesn’t know how to greet anyone. Every word available feels obscene. He wants to look at JJ, to offer something, but JJ’s head is bowed, shoulders hunched, body language radiating a force field of Do Not. Eventually, Hayden gives up and stares at his own hands, which are as useless today as they were last night.
The rest of the Voyagers trickle in: some alone, some in small packs. Theriault arrives last, exactly at 9:00, his face set in a rictus of official sorrow, a man who has practiced his eulogy face in the mirror. Theriault stands at the head of the table, does not sit, folds his arms across his chest like he’s bracing himself against the hurricane winds.
There is a reverent hush. Nobody touches the coffee. The only sound is the brittle, persistent hum of the overhead lights.
Theriault clears his throat. “Thank you for coming,” he says, voice pitched low and grave, as if they are in a church and not a hotel conference room with carpeting made of recycled water bottles.
Every head turns toward their coach, some with open curiosity, others with grim expectation. Hayden feels himself tightening, bracing for impact.
“I will keep this brief,” Theriault says, and Hayden can see the careful way he has orchestrated this moment. “There was an accident last night, involving Hollander.” Theriault does not look at his notes, even though Hayden knows he must have them. “Shane—” and here, Theriault pauses, tongue heavy against his teeth, “—did not survive.”
The words hang in the air like smoke, slow to dissipate. For a moment, the team is just a collection of breathing, blinking bodies. Then the noise starts, a low animal groan from someone at the far end, a chair scraping violently against the carpet, the backup goalie muttering “fuck” over and over under his breath. JJ does not move. He has folded in on himself, hands gripping his knees, head still bowed, as if praying or refusing to acknowledge the universe’s latest insult.
Theriault continues, “Ilya Rozanov was also in the car. Him and Hollander passed away at the hospital. The driver of the other vehicle was pronounced dead at the scene. All of our games have been postponed for the foreseeable future. This is all the information that we have at this time.”
This time there is no collective gasp, just a stunned silence that stretches out so long Hayden wonders if the concept of time has simply stopped applying. He feels himself detaching, observing his teammates from the wrong end of a telescope. Hayden is aware of how calm he appears, how he nods once in acknowledgment, how he waits for more instructions. It’s like he’s been cast as an extra in his own life.
Theriault says something about counseling, about a media blackout, about how all questions should be routed through the PR office. Hayden’s mind snags on the phrase “media blackout”, it strikes him as absurd, as if silence could somehow protect these boys, as if there is any such thing as blackout anymore.
When the meeting ends, nobody moves. They sit in a kind of waking paralysis, waiting for permission from someone, anyone, to leave. At last, JJ stands. He is unsteady, ghost-pale, his eyes red-rimmed and too bright. He looks at Hayden as though seeing him for the first time.
Hayden stands, too. For a moment, Hayden thinks JJ is going to speak, say something profound or comforting, but JJ just shakes his head, once, and leaves the room.
Hayden is left alone in a sea of static, the voices of his teammates blurring into one indistinct surge of noise. The carafe of coffee is still full, untouched. The bananas shine under the fluorescent lights, sickly and obscene.
He sits back down, and for a long time, he just listens to the static, which is full of the things that cannot be said.
1 Days, 12 Hours Gone
“…two NHL stars were killed two days ago in a head on collision with a drunk driver. The two players, Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander, were traveling south-bound when the wrong-way driver struck them. Rozanov and Hollander died at the hospital. Authorities say that the driver of the other vehicle was pronounced dead at the scene. Many are questioning why Rozanov and Holl-”
David jabs the remote control, silencing the television mid-syllable. The glassy sheen on his eyes is equal parts grief and rage. He towers over the remote, hand clenched white-knuckle around it, as if holding the world at bay by force of will.
The living room is a fishbowl: saturated by sunlight pouring into every corner, making the dust motes visible, exposing every smudge and fingerprint. Outside, the world keeps moving. Inside, the air is thick with the tang of burnt coffee and the unspoken threat of what comes next. Hayden sits on the far side of the Hollander’s dining room table, shoulders drawn up under the weight of borrowed sorrow. It is Yuna who breaks the silence that follows. She is so still, so precisely composed, it takes Hayden a second to realize she’s even in the room. Sometimes, in these last forty-eight hours, he has caught himself wishing she would fall apart, just once, because then maybe he could too.
Jackie folds her hand over Yuna’s on the table, a silent benediction, a kind of pact. Hayden feels a spike of irrational guilt, as if by witnessing the gesture, he’s trespassed on something private. All around them are funeral home brochures, printouts from local florists, legal documents, a growing stack of condolence cards that Hayden has been tasked with opening and sorting. The word of grief, he’s discovering, is mostly clerical.
The TV’s muted blue screen reflects off the windows, casting a ghastly pallor across the table. Hayden’s phone buzzes again and again, notifications stacking up like aftershocks: more voicemails from reporters, group texts from teammates, PR bulletins from the Voyagers management, a single, cryptic message from Marlow. He hasn’t listened to any of them in hours.
David is pacing now, stalking the perimeter of the room like a wolf with nowhere left to hunt. “Unbelievable. Not even a day gone and the vultures are already circling.” He gestures with the remote at the TV, at nothing. “If I ever see that bastard from the Post, I swear to God—”
“David,” Yuna says, gently but unequivocally. She always had the talent for making his name sound like both a plea and a warning.
He sags, momentarily deflated, then sinks into the chair at the head of the table. The seat creaks beneath him, a frail old man’s groan. Hayden glances at Jackie, who gives him a look that says, “Let’s just get through this.” He tries to return it, but his face won’t cooperate.
Three hours. That’s how long it has taken for the hockey world to transform two dead men into a headline, a groundswell of speculation. Hayden has read every iteration. Some of the tweets are sickeningly sincere, quoting scripture or song lyrics; others are pure clickbait, spinning out elaborate timelines and drug theories and, of course, the burning question: Why were two superstars, from rival teams, in the same car at one in the morning in Boston? Some simply call it tragic. Others call it suspicious. The really intrepid ones, Hayden notes with disgust, have already started piecing together screenshots from years-old Instagram posts, as if they might reconstruct the truth from the gaps.
None of them, he thinks, will ever get it right.
Yuna’s voice is calm, but her fingers are bone-white where they grip Jackie’s hand. “We don’t have to make any decisions yet,” she says. “But we need to think about arrangements for both boys.” She does not cry or stammer. She says boys, not men, and Hayden sees how far back in time she’s had to reach just to survive this moment.
David leans forward, elbows on the table, hands steepled. “There’s the matter of Shane’s service and Ilya’s too.”
Jackie looks at Hayden with something like gratitude, as if he’s the only anchor left in the room. It feels like both a privilege and a punishment. “Did you ever hear from Ilya’s brother?”
Hayden shakes his head. “Still nothing.” He doesn’t want to say what everyone already suspects: that Andrei Rozanov has no interest in even his own brother’s funeral.
Yuna closes her eyes, and for a moment some silent calculation passes over her face. “Ilya would not want his brother handling any of this,” she says, and there is a razor’s edge to her certainty that surprises Hayden.
Hayden inhales, the air sharp in his chest. “There’s Svetlana. She was Rozanov’s emergency contact. We’ve been talking, a bit.”
“We need to include her,” Yuna says. “The next time you hear from her, tell me.”
Hayden nods, distracted by the still unopened condolence cards. He slides one from the top of the pile, fingers shaking a little less than they were an hour ago. The envelope is creamy, expensive. The inside is written in delicate, looping cursive. He doesn’t read the whole thing, just the signature: Coach Theriault, and the names of everyone else at the Voyagers office.
“Should we even be going through these?” Jackie asks, her voice small.
Yuna answers for all of them. “We should. People want to help, and this is what they can do.”
Hayden keeps sorting. Some cards are from neighbors, some from fans across the world, some with names he doesn’t recognize. Every so often someone handwrites a story about Shane. He reads them all, collecting the good ones in a separate pile for them to read later.
When done with the cards, Hayden busies himself with the funeral pamphlets, reading the options for music, flowers, caskets. The raw transactional nature of mourning makes his stomach cramp.
There’s a question that makes the cramping worse: what are they supposed to do about Ilya?
He looks again at Yuna, who is methodically making notes on a legal pad, questions for the funeral director, possible readings, and a short list of Shane’s peers who might want to speak. She is so competent it hurts to watch. Jackie quietly wipes her eyes every few minutes, but keeps her hand on Yuna’s like she’s holding a lifeline. David alternates between silent fuming and frenzied activity, clearing dishes that no one used, straightening already-straight stacks of paper, checking his phone for messages he can’t bring himself to answer.
His phone buzzes again. This time he checks it. It’s a text from Svetlana: “I am available to call when you are ready.”
He thumbs the call button almost immediately.
2 Days, 14 Hours Gone
Svetlana’s ability to absorb tragedy with grace astonishes Hayden each time he interacts with her. Not that she is stoic, exactly, his phone conversations with her are full of pauses, sometimes sharp intakes of breath, as if she’s steadying herself after being punched in the lungs. But she never lets the grief leak unchecked, never allows it to turn messy or theatrical. She always makes room for his own feelings, often before he’s even articulated them. Even now, in the aftermath, she’s the only one (outside of Yuna, maybe) who seems to understand that “helping” isn’t a process of containment, but expansion: making space for pain to exist alongside the logistics.
Within twelve hours of the accident, Svetlana had secured power-of-attorney and had already begun seeing to the arrangement of Ilya’s body, even before the Voyagers’ lawyers had finished circling the wagons.
Hayden’s own involvement has been limited to verifying details and relaying information as necessary. He is the messenger in all things, and he’s not sure if that’s an honor or a curse. Each time Svetlana’s name lights up on his phone, he braces for the next impossible question, the next chasm he will need to bridge between cultures and customs and the uncontainable mess of loss.
Svetlana calls instead of texting. Hayden answers on the first ring. She does not say hello, only, “I have some updates.”
He listens as she methodically lays out the time, the place, the circumstances of death. She has already spoken to both a priest and a notary, she says, “to cover all legal and spiritual bases.” She is certain Ilya would want something simple and unpretentious, “but not a cremation. His mother would haunt me.” She says this without irony.
She explains: “Ilya wore his mother’s cross always, but he did not really believe it. Still, he would want comfort for her. I think service should be in a church, even if it is only for show.”
Hayden finds himself nodding along, even though she can’t see him. “That makes sense,” he says, and means it. He’s never really thought about what comes after, for anyone, let alone for someone like Ilya, who’d probably shrugged the topic off with a joke or a lewd suggestion. Now it feels like a vital piece of the puzzle, something Hayden is now responsible for assembling.
“The question,” Svetlana continues, “is where. He is not going back to Russia to be buried, no. Boston makes the most sense, but…” She trails off.
“But?” he prompts.
She sighs. “There is some discussion about him and Shane.” Another pause, this one heavy with the knowledge of what she is about to say. “They told me they were together. In the car.”
Hayden’s mouth is dry.
“Yes,” he says, and in that fragile syllable is everything he can offer. “They were together.”
Svetlana does not sound surprised. “I knew about them,” she replies, without explanation. “Ilya should be as close to Shane as possible. If they cannot rest together, then at least on the same ground.”
Hayden presses a hand to his forehead, overcome by the certainty in her voice. Too many people on the last day have asked what “the truth” really is, as if there must be a single, undisputed answer. But Svetlana’s version leaves no room for ambiguity: Ilya and Shane belonged to each other. That was the truth that mattered.
He relays this information to the Hollanders. They are all gathered around the table, surrounded by the detritus of a siege, half-empty mugs, legal pads, and a whiteboard with funeral home options scrawled in progressively more desperate handwriting. The air is both hopeful and hopeless, thick with the remains of arguments that have only been temporarily paused.
Yuna listens to Hayden’s summary, then looks to Jackie and David for consensus. “I think it’s right,” she says, softly. “Shane would want that, too.”
David laces his hands together and fixes Hayden with an unreadable stare. In the silence, Hayden suspects there is a battleground he cannot see, a private calculation of legacy and optics and what it means, truly, to honor the dead. But David only nods.
In the next twenty-four hours, the arrangements begin to take shape. There will be two services, one held at the Catholic Orthodox church down the road, and one at the funeral home Yuna had chosen.
It’s only when Hayden’s alone that the magnitude of what they’re doing finally hits him. It isn’t just a matter of burying two men. It’s about crafting the narrative that will survive them, the version of their story that will be told and retold by everyone who comes after.
3 Days, 8 Hours Gone
“…Shane Hollander’s service and burial is set to be this Saturday, while Ilya Rozanov’s will be this Sunday; one week after their deaths. Both men will be laid to rest in Ottawa, Canada. We ask that everyone remains respectful of—”
The cemetery grass is more moss than turf this early in the spring, pillowy beneath the tread of Hayden’s boots. He recognizes the particular blue-black of the sky overhead, weather undecided, as if the city is still in mourning too. Even now, Hayden can sense the distant hum of highway traffic, muffled by the thicket of leafless trees and a perimeter of cold stone. He pictures the city on the far side of that noise: hockey fans, morning commuters, media trucks parked out front of the area with their telescopic cameras pointed at the wrong places, still hungry for anything left to devour of Shane and Ilya’s story.
He keeps his hands in his coat pockets, head ducked, but his gaze is greedy for detail. He lets himself see it: the narrow access road winding through the cemetery, the way the sunlight, when it escapes the clouds, paints the marble and granite with unlikely color. There are rows and rows of burial plots, some clustered close like families at a bus stop, others solitary and defiant at the edges. The names vary on the headstones: Irish, Portuguese, Korean, Moroccan, Dominican, Brazilian, Swedish, Panamanian. It’s the kind of place, Hayden thinks, where you could be laid to rest and, even dead, still feel the gentle chaos of a city going about its business.
He waits for a moment, letting the wind carry away the last vestiges of the reporter’s voices. There are wind chimes here, someone a long time ago must have tied them to one of the crabapple trees lining the path. Hayden watches as the wind picks up, setting the chimes into a silvery, unpredictable chorus. The sound is sharper than he expects, almost irreverent, and it makes him smile, fleetingly, in spite of everything.
It is a nice spot. Hayden tries to picture, for a second, his own name etched into one of these headstones, and finds it oddly comforting. There are worse places to end up. He wonders if, when his time comes, anyone will find such a place for him.
The family plots are organized with an order that borders on the obsessive. There are discreet, wrought-iron fences demarcating each plot from the next, as if to prevent even the dead from trespassing. Hayden paces along, counting the names. There is one plot unmarked but freshly manicured. The earth is not yet dark and upturned, but it is still an empty canvas awaiting inscription. It doesn’t take much imagination to see where the “Hollander” sign will be placed. Whether it will say “Hollander,” “Rozanov,” or, as Hayden suspects, both names hyphenated together. He finds he doesn’t care, as long as they’re together.
Svetlana stands to his right, arms folded, her posture both defensive and elegant. She’s dressed in black, but she’s swapped her boots for a pair of battered trainers. She seems small here, her presence compressed by the open sky, but her voice is unyielding when she speaks.
“It is nice,” she says, nodding once as if settling a private bet.
Yuna stands on Hayden’s other side, hands clasped in front of her. She looks, for the first time since the accident, not composed but simply tired, her hair pulled back in a way that exposes the worry lines above her brow. “You think so?” she asks, but it’s hardly a question.
“Yes,” Svetlana continues. “It is peaceful.” She lets her eyes drift across the pond at the far end, where a flotilla of ducks skims the surface. “Ilya liked water,” she adds, then shrugs, as if embarrassed by the sentimentality. “He was not a good swimmer, but he still liked to do it.”
Hayden shifts, his mind rifling through memories that only seem to surface now, when they are most useless. He can only remember the barbs that he and Rozanov would snarkily throw at each other. He wonders if Ilya would have hated this spot, or if the sight of ducks and the soundtrack of wind chimes would have amused him, at least for a little while.
“He would have liked the ducks,” Svetlana says, quietly. “And the chimes. He likes, likes, noise.”
They stand like that, the three of them uncertain what to do with their hands or their silence. David was still inside, fussing with the funeral director (he had kicked Yuna out for being “too overbearing”). Hayden feels the weight of the day pressing in on him. He thinks of how easy it would be for everything to go wrong, for someone to split Ilya and Shane up in death the way they’d had to hide in life. He vows that he won’t let that happen.
There is a small, formal gathering planned for later, a walk-through of the service with the funeral director, but for now, they have the cemetery to themselves. Yuna stops to brush a pine needle from the edge of the plot; Svetlana kneels, quickly, and plucks a stray dandelion. Even these tiny gestures seemed loaded, as if the earth itself is being curated for the arrival of its new inhabitants.
The wind chimes start up again, louder this time, and the ducks stir restlessly on the pond. Hayden imagines Ilya and Shane watching from somewhere, rolling their eyes at the fuss, secretly pleased at the turnout of three.
He lets himself look at the empty plot, and for a second, he imagines Ilya and Shane sprinting for the finish line, neck and neck, neither willing to let the other win by more than a step. Always together, until the very end.
He clears his throat. “Should we go?” he asks, though he’s not sure if he’s ready to leave.
Yuna considers the question, then touches Hayden’s arm, brief and gentle. “Let’s walk around a bit more,” she suggests. “It’s a nice day.”
6 Days, 9 Hours Gone
It is Friday in Ottawa, a day that has the uncomfortable distinction of being both the day before Shane Hollander’s funeral and the latest in a string of public relations “touchpoints” designed to shepherd the living through the aftermath. Hayden is sitting in another conference room, this one in an airport hotel that smells faintly of chlorine, watching the rest of the Voyageurs file one by one, slouched and sullen, heads down like schoolchildren in detention.
A table at the front of the room is set with stale coffee and a stack of paper cups, neither of which look especially inviting. Hayden is the last of the players to arrive, he knows, because as he pushes open the door, there is a visible ripple in the room, a momentary hush as two dozen pairs of eyes flick up to register his entrance. The silence tightens, everyone’s collective discomfort thickens, made heavier by the fact that they all seem to know why they are here, and why today, of all days, is different from the endless parade of team meetings, postmortems, and counseling sessions.
Hayden slides into the open seat next to JJ, who offers him a nod, then immediately resumes his dedicated study of the pattern on his disposable coffee cup. The seat on Hayden’s other side is conspicuously empty; it had always been Shane’s, and even now, with the space officially reassigned, nobody seems willing to claim it.
At the head of the table stands a woman named Gail Medlock, the “crisis communications specialist” that the Voyageurs have brought in for the week. Hayden recognizes her face from the all-staff email. She is flanked by two members of the Voyageur’s HR department, and further down, by a marketing intern who looks barely out of high school.
Gail scans the room, eyes cool but not unkind. She waits until the slow shuffling and coughs have subsided before she speaks, her voice measured and just loud enough to command authority. “Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. My name is Gail Medlock. I’ve been working this week with both the Voyageurs HR and PR teams, as well as with the Hollander family and the League’s communications office. I want to start by acknowledging how hard this week has been for all of you, and for everyone who’s ever been a part of this team.” She glances at the empty seat next to Hayden, and there is a beat of silence that feels deeply uncomfortable.
Hayden feels the breath stall slightly in his chest, and he glances down at his hands on the table. They are steady, but his pulse is not. He senses the same tension radiating out from his teammates, there is a collective readiness for something, a bracing.
Gail takes a measured breath. “I know there’s been a lot of speculation this week, and a lot of stories circulating in the press and online. I want you to know the facts before someone else tells them to you out of context.” She pauses to look at each player in turn, her gaze landing on Hayden for a half-second longer than the others. “To be blunt: Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov were together on the night of the accident. The Hollander family has asked us to confirm that they were in a committed, romantic relationship with each other at the time of their deaths.”
For a moment, Hayden thinks the world has stopped. There is not a cough, not a shuffle, not even the clink of a coffee cup. The silence is raw, animal, the kind that scrapes the inside of your skull. Hayden is aware of his own breathing, the sound loud in his ears, of the way JJ’s entire body tightens beside him, and of the faint, involuntary flinch from one of the rookies across the table.
There is nothing to say. Gail lets the silence hang, her hands folded in front of her, as if she has done this before and knows exactly how long it takes for the information to process.
Hayden glances around the table, trying to gauge the reactions. JJ is stone faced, eyes on his cup. A right-winger is frozen, his hands white-knuckled on the arms of his chair. The backup goalie is looking at the floor, lips pressed together in a way that could be anger or grief or both. Even the most veteran players who are no stranger to drama, seem to have nothing in their playbook for this particular moment.
“I know some of you may have questions,” Gail said, her tone softening just a touch. “I’m here to answer as much as I can, and to give you a chance to say whatever you need to say. There will be a press statement issued later today, but we wanted you to hear it from us directly. No one expects you to have the right words, or even any words right now.”
She stands, poised, letting the room do the work of acclimatizing to this new reality. Hayden feels a strange heat behind his eyes. He can’t decide if it’s anger, relief, or exhaustion. Maybe it’s just that the information feels both like a betrayal and a relief, that the truth is finally being told and yet he is not sure what good it does anyone now.
The silence persists. This is the kind of silence that you can only get when the thing you feared most has happened, and you are still here to witness it.
Hayden thinks of all the little things that no one in this room would ever get to know about Shane and Ilya. The stories that died with them.
He wonders if, in some parallel universe, today could have been a day where it was just two hockey players, together in public, no tragedy required. But that isn’t this universe. In this one, it took their deaths to make the truth safe to say. Hayden isn’t really sure if it even is safe for the truth to be said.
Gail resumes her briefing, methodical and unhurried. “The family has asked that any questions regarding the nature of their relationship be directed to me. We’re not interested in fueling speculation or rumors. We’re interested in honoring both men, as teammates, as competitors, and as people.” She pauses again. “There will be a joint memorial service following the private funerals. The details will be sent out later today, but the families have invited you all to attend if you are able.”
She looks around the room, making sure everyone is still with her. “If you have questions, or concerns about your own privacy or the media coverage, please come see me after this meeting. We want to support you as best as we can.”
There is another long pause. Hayden will wonder if anyone will speak, or if they will all just file out in silence, unable to process the new terms of their world.
He’s so busy holding his breath that it takes him a second to realize it’s JJ who finally says something. Not loudly, not violently, just a simple: “Did you know?”
There’s an intake of air around the table, and all eyes pivot. Hayden has to fight the urge to physically recoil.
He tries to play dumb, but the best he can manage is a feeble, “What?” His voice sounds like it belongs to someone else, thin and unsure.
JJ doesn’t give him the privilege of ambiguity. “Did you know they were together?” There is no space for misinterpretation. JJ’s eyes bore into him, angry and flat.
Hayden opens his mouth, but the words slither away before he can get hold of them. He glances down at his hands, searching them for guidance, but there is nothing there but the white knuckles and the shallow crescent moons of his own nails.
Someone else, a defenseman two seats down, chimes in, his tone edged with something Hayden doesn’t recognize. “You were his roommate on the road, Pike. You must’ve known.”
The room is starting to close in, the fluorescent lights above flickering in Hayden’s peripheral vision. Gail tries to intervene. Her voice is soft, but carries a warning. “I don’t think it’s fair to—”
“Answer the question,” JJ interrupts, his jaw set. “You were his best friend. Were you covering for him?”
Hayden feels the weight of all their stares, each one a pin pressed into his skin. “I—” he starts, but the sound catches. “I don’t—”
“Yes or no, Pike,” someone else says, their voice half-buried in the rising swell of murmurs.
“Gentleman, maybe we can just—” Gail tries again, but the players aren’t listening. It’s as if the air has become electrically charged, every molecule attuned to the possibility of an admission.
Hayden hearts his own heart beating in his ears, louder than any voice in the room. He wants to explain, to say that it wasn’t his secret to tell, that some things were sacred, but he can’t find a way to say it.
JJ leans in, his voice low and hard. “He trusted you. Did you know?”
Hayden’s mouth is dry as sand. He nods, barely perceptible, but enough.
JJ’s lips flatten into something like disgust. “Unbelievable,” he mutters, shaking his head. He looks away, as if just seeing Hayden makes it worse.
A rookie winger, newly called up from the minors, blurts, “So you let him lie to all of us? For how long?”
Hayden wants to scream, to tear at the table and break whatever spell has seized the room, for Coach Theriault to do something instead of just watching the chaos bloom.
“He wasn’t lying,” Hayden manages, his voice brittle as glass. “He just didn’t—”
A different voice cuts him off, louder this time. “He didn’t want us to know?”
“He didn’t want to be a distraction,” Hayden says. “He didn’t want this to happen.”
JJ laughs, bitter and sharp. “Yeah, well, look how that turned out.”
The words hit Hayden like a slap. For a second, he thinks he might black out, the world tilting at the edges of his vision. He remembers, all at once, Shane curled up on the bed of a hotel room laughing at dumb memes, Shane handing him a water bottle during intermissions, Shane taking the brunt of a check so Hayden would get the puck out of the zone. He remembers Ilya too, the way his eyes would soften when Shane said his name.
He can’t stand this, the way their memories are being devoured by the team’s confusion and resentment. He wants to smash through it, to make them see what he saw, but there’s too much noise, too many voices shouting over each other.
Gail raises her hands, as if to summon quiet by sheer will, but it does nothing. The dam is broken.
“How long were they together?” one voice asks.
“Did you help them hide it?” says another.
“Was he throwing games on purpose?”
Each question strikes him in a different place. Hayden stares at the tabletop, wishing he could disappear into its grain. He wants to say love is nobody’s business but their own, that if Shane and Ilya were careful it was because people in this room, in this league, would never let them be more than a headline.
He hears his name again, this time from Gail. “Mr. Pike, you don’t have to—”
But Hayden cuts her off, finally, with a shout that cracks the room open.
“Yes! Yes, I knew!” he says, voice ragged. “I knew they were together. I knew because I cared enough to ask, and because they trusted me. And it wasn’t a big secret, not really. They just wanted to play hockey and to be together. Is that so fucking hard to understand?”
A hush falls again, but it’s different this time. The anger in his voice has stunned them, and even he is startled by its force. He stands, the chair scraping behind him, and faces the room.
“He’s dead!” The words leave him, raw and loud, cracking the soft lull of the room. “He’s dead, and all you guys care about is who he was with!”
He sweeps his hand at the line of faces, then at the empty seat at the end, the one Shane always sat in, the chair now as hollow as the air inside Hayden’s chest. “You see why he never wanted to say anything?” he shouts, and immediately feels the tears welling up. “Look at yourselves. Look at how you’re all reacting! you don’t have an ounce of respect for the man. He was your captain! And you’re going to let who he loved erase everything he did, everything he was, for you?”
No one answers. Not a cough, not a shuffle, not even the polite murmuring of disagreement. Coach Theriault looks at the ceiling, his lips pressed thin, as if he could will himself to disappear.
Hayden’s heart is racing, so loud in his ears it drowns out every rational thought. Why is it always this way, he thinks. Why do people need a scandal more than they need the truth? The urge to flip the table, to physically dislodge their pettiness, burns in his arms. He resists, but his hands curl into fists, knuckles aching. He looks at Gail, whose eyes are white but unflinching.
“He just wanted to play hockey,” Hayden says, his voice trembling but clear. “He wanted to win. For this team. For you.” He points at JJ, then at the coaches, then at the whole room. “Everything you know about Shane, the leadership, the discipline, the insane work ethic, none of that changes because he loved someone you didn’t expect. None of it.”
All the effort, all the years of sacrifice, and this is what it boils down to: a room full of men more upset about a secret than death.
7 Days, 8 Hours Gone
The earth on the right plot is freshly tilled and dark, the color of pooled coffee grounds in a paper filter. The plot’s permanent occupant has now been lowered six feet into that black loam, the casket’s simple brushed steel dulled by the morning’s mist, and for a moment it feels like the ground itself is refusing to let go.
The service was beautiful in the way that all funerals are beautiful: full of people doing their belt to look somber and dignified even though some of them are still in shock, and some of them are already drunk. There were photos and highlight reels displayed on screens. Not just the standard issue action shots, but candid slices of Shane’s life. Shane in the locker room, wrapped in a towel and grinning. Shane with an arm slung around Yuna’s shoulders, both of them blinking in the sun. Shane with his hair sticking up in every direction. Shane, always and forever, the center of the frame.
There’s a buzzing fluorescent memory in Hayden’s head, a loop of the photo from their rookie year that made the slideshow. He and Shane on the practice ice, rookies in baggy gear, teeth too big for their faces. Hayden’s helmet is crooked, and Shane’s glove is halfway up Hayden’s arm like he’s trying to eat him alive. In the picture, they are both laughing so hard that they look seconds before toppling over. Hayden can’t remember who took the shot, but he remembers the moment. The chill of the arena, the scrape of skate blades, the way Shane’s laughter echoed in the empty stands. He wonders if anyone else at the service saw that photo and felt the same bright surge of longing.
After the last handful of dirt, the mourners started to drift away. Some left flowers; some just stood and looked at the grave, as if waiting for further instructions. The headstone would come later, after the ground settled, but for now there was only a small, green marker with Shane’s name, the dates, and nothing else. Hayden stood there long after others had moved on, trying to work out what, if anything, he should say to the patch of dirt that now held his best friend.
It was Jackie who finally broke through, her palm squeezing his bicep with a pressure that was both warning and comfort. '“We should go,” she said, gentle but insistent, her voice a low counterpoint to the wind. He could feel the tremor in her hand, knowing she was barely holding it together herself.
Hayden looked over at her, knowing what she was trying to keep him from. If he stood here much longer, he would go under, and he would not come back up for air. In Jackie’s eyes there was a glimmer of understanding, the kind that comes from years of knowing someone so deeply. She pulled his arm tighter and leaned against him. Hayden nodded, just once, and let himself be led away.
They walked back along the path to the cemetery gates. Hayden’s mind drifted back to the plots, to the one to the left of Shane’s. There was no marker yet, just a raw, unmarred rectangle of earth, but it would be occupied come tomorrow. Ilya would be interred tomorrow, besides Shane, just as they had been in life.
As they walked, Jackie was glancing down at the screen of her phone. “It’s everywhere,” she said, not even trying to sugarcoat it. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to avoid it, not for a while.”
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Hayden wanted to say he didn’t care, but the truth was, he did. He cared a lot. He didn’t want Shane reduced to a viral headline, didn’t want Ilya’s memory trampled by a thousand hot takes from people who’d never even met him. But there was nothing to be done now, not with the story running wild, not with the world’s appetite for scandal.
The walk out of the cemetery was longer than Hayden remembered, the damp wind flattening his hair and the taste of earth everywhere. He didn’t look back at Shane’s grave, not yet. There would be time for that later, for private visits, for talking to the marker when no one else was around. Right now, it was enough just to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to let Jackie guide him toward whatever came next.
20 Days, 2 Hours Gone
The drive easy is a blur, a stretch of highway so empty it feels outside time. The city’s lights fade into the rearview, sky gone black above, and for two straight hours Hayden doesn’t touch the radio. He just drives, hands glued to ten and two, teeth clamped tight. The need to move, to escape the silence, is so urgent, and by the time he turns into the cemetery’s parking lot, it’s an ungodly time, and his body is vibrating with exhaustion and caffeine.
He parks under a streetlight and kills the engine. For a moment, he sits in the dark, waiting to see if the world will rush back in. It doesn’t. There’s only the ping of the cooling engine, the frost forming on the inside of the windshield, and the low, vibrating hum in his chest that has nothing to do with the car and everything to do with what’s buried in the ground just beyond the gates.
The air bites through his jeans and sneakers; spring in Ottawa is a cruel joke. He walks the main path by memory. The security light at the caretaker’s cottage is on, but nobody stops him, nobody asks what business he could possibly have at this hour. He cuts left at the stone angel with its nose chipped off, then up the slope past the mausoleums, and finally into the section where the ground is still raw.
The soil is darker here, wet with recent weather, mounded in a way that makes Hayden’s stomach twist. The simple green plastic name tag stands out, the lettering already weathered. To the left is another, identical rectangle of earth, and an identical simple green plastic name tag with a twin death date.
Hayden stands between them, hands jammed into the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie, and tries to feel something other than emptiness. For a split second, when he started this idiotic drive, he pretended that this was all a prank. That the caskets are just decoys, that any second Shane will pop out from being a headstone with a shit-eating grin, and Ilya will roll his eyes, arms crossed, and say, “You fell for it?” Some part of Hayden wants to believe it. A part that’s louder in the dark, when there’s no one to contradict him.
But they’re gone, both of them. No clever twist, no elaborate scheme. The funerals were closed-casket, nailed shut, and Hayden can’t shake the feeling that maybe the bodies inside aren’t even them. That what made them real, what made them matter, is already dissipating molecule by molecule, leaving only the world’s worst souvenirs.
Hayden crouches by Shane’s marker and touches the little plastic plate, thumb running along the embossed letters. It’s already scuffed. He thinks about how quickly the world moves on, how the sharpest grief dulls by increments until only the date remains, a number etched in granite or plastic, nothing more. He’s so tired he could sleep here, curled up on the soil, not even minding the cold.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he notices the dandelion. One lone stalk, bent but stubborn, nodding by Ilya’s marker even though the grass has been trampled. Hayden plucks the flower and, on impulse, walks it over to Shane’s side, pressing it into the sod just below the marker. A dumb gesture, but it feels right.
He sits back on the balls of his feet and stares at the two plots. He pulls his hood over his head and rocks forward, elbows on knees. He wants to speak but the words are caught in his throat. It’s ridiculous, talking to dirt, but there’s a comfort in it. “Hey,” he says to the earth. It comes out croaked and flat.
He wants to apologize. For not doing more, for not being able to stop the avalanche of events that none of them saw coming, for letting them be reduced to a meme and a hashtag. For surviving, most of all. It seems unfair, cosmically wrong, that he gets to keep walking around while they’re both just…here. Turned into mulch and memory.
The wind shifts and snaps the hood away from his face. Hayden swears he can hear something, a whisper of a breath, but it’s only the sound of traffic. “You guys really left a mess,” he says, and this time there’s a flash of anger in it, real heat. “I hope you’re happy.” He can feel himself spiraling out, emotions fracturing in all directions.
He doesn’t realize he’s crying until his hands are slick and cold with tears. He wipes them off on his jeans and sits back on the grass, feeling stupid but lighter, emptied out in a way that’s almost a relief.
Hayden stands, dusting the mud off his palms and knees. The dandelion’s head is already curling, folding in on itself. He wants to say something meaningful, something to encapsulate everything he’s feeling, but nothing comes.
So he just says, “Goodnight,” and leaves the cemetery, hoodie drawn close, the lines of the path already blurring behind him.