Chapter Text
The first thing Shane became aware of was the sound.
A violent, relentless vibration against wood, again and again, close enough to his head that it felt like it was drilling straight through his skull.
His eyes stayed shut.
For a second, that was all he allowed himself. Darkness. Pressure behind his forehead. A tongue that felt too thick in his mouth. A throat scraped raw. Heat gathered under his skin, wrong heat, stale heat, hotel heat, and before he had even opened his eyes he knew something was off.
The sheets were too soft.
The mattress sank differently under his weight.
The air smelled like liquor, expensive cologne, and the faint chemical sweetness of room spray trying and failing to hide the rest.
His phone kept vibrating.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Shane opened his eyes to a ceiling he had never seen before.
White. Flat. A thin gold line running along the edge. Morning light leaking through blackout curtains that had not been pulled closed all the way. His head pulsed the moment he looked toward the window. Too bright. Too early. Too much.
He swallowed and immediately regretted it.
Then he felt it.
Warmth against his side.
A body.
Shane froze.
Not the kind of stillness that looked calm from the outside. The ugly kind. Sudden. Violent. Every muscle locking at once as if the body could turn itself into stone and refuse what it already knew. He did not move at first. He did not breathe. He stared at the strip of white ceiling above him until his vision sharpened enough for panic to settle into shape.
There was a forearm across his waist.
Heavy. Bare. Human.
His own heartbeat started to pound hard enough to make his temples ache.
Slowly, with all the care of someone trying not to set off an explosive device, Shane turned his head.
Ilya Rozanov was asleep beside him.
For one horrible second his mind refused to place what he was seeing. It offered him fragments instead. His curls crushed against a hotel pillow. Mouth half open in sleep. Stubble shadowing his jaw. One shoulder bare above the sheet. His face turned toward Shane like this was normal. Like he had every right in the world to be here.
Then the recognition hit in full.
Ilya.
Ilya.
Ilya.
Shane jerked back so fast the mattress dipped violently under both of them. The arm slid away from his waist. He was already sitting up before the thought had fully formed, breath snagging in his chest, one hand braced on the bed, the other gripping the sheet hard enough to feel the tendon strain in his wrist.
His shirt was gone.
He looked down.
He was wearing black dress pants, unbuttoned, belt half undone. No shoes. No socks. White dress shirt hanging open, one sleeve still on, the other twisted somewhere under him. There was a bruise low on his collarbone. Not dark yet. Fresh. A stain of something silver on the cuff.
He stared at it, trying to force his brain into sequence.
Last night.
Last night.
There should have been steps. A beginning, middle, end. He should have been able to pull the thread and find where it started, where he had gone wrong, what exact decision had brought him into a hotel bed with the one person on the planet he would have trusted least with his unconscious body.
Instead there was static.
Music too loud.
A bar he had not wanted to be in.
Ilya laughing at something across from him, head tipped back, mouth open, eyes bright in that ugly way people’s eyes got when they had been drinking.
A neon sign reflecting on glass.
Someone saying, do it.
Someone else cheering.
A hand around his wrist.
Gold.
Light.
Then nothing that stayed still long enough to hold.
His phone vibrated again on the nightstand.
Shane snatched it so hard it nearly slid out of his hand.
Twenty-three missed calls.
Fourteen texts.
Six from his agent.
Three from Ryan.
Two from his mother.
One from Wyatt.
A stack of notifications so dense he could barely make out the top of the screen.
His stomach dropped.
He unlocked the phone with fingers that did not feel steady and the first thing he saw was the time.
9:17 a.m.
The second thing he saw was the date.
The third was a text from his agent sent two minutes ago.
Call me the second you wake up. Do not talk to anyone. Do not leave your room. Call me now.
Shane stared at it.
His pulse got louder.
Then he noticed something else.
His left hand.
There was a ring on it.
His breath left him all at once.
It was simple. Gold. Clean band. No design. No engraving visible from where he sat. It should have looked cheap for what it meant. It did not. It sat on his finger with the kind of quiet certainty that made the room around him suddenly tilt.
For a moment he just looked at it.
Then he tore it off.
Or tried to.
It did not move.
He pulled harder. Skin dragged. Heat flashed up his hand. The ring stayed where it was.
Behind him, the sheets rustled.
“Jesus Christ,” a voice said, low and rough with sleep. “Do you always wake up like a hostage situation?”
Shane turned so fast his head throbbed.
Ilya was pushing himself up on one elbow, hair wrecked, eyes narrowed against the light. He looked like hell. He also looked infuriatingly real. Not like some distorted nightmare, not like a trick of hangover and bad sleep. He looked exactly like himself. Broad shoulders. Sharp face. That lazy cruelty always somewhere around his mouth even before he had fully woken up.
Then Ilya’s gaze dropped.
To Shane’s hand.
To the ring.
His face changed.
Not much. Just enough.
The last trace of sleep disappeared.
“What the fuck,” he said.
Shane laughed once.
It did not sound sane.
“You tell me.”
Ilya sat up fully, sheet slipping down his waist. He looked down at himself, at the clothes half on the floor, at his own left hand. There was a ring on it too.
For the first time since Shane had known him, Ilya Rozanov looked genuinely speechless.
The silence between them was ugly. Thick. Pressurized.
Shane got off the bed too fast and the room lurched. He caught himself on the edge of the mattress, jaw clenched hard enough to hurt, then forced himself upright and crossed the room in four quick steps like distance alone could bring oxygen back into it.
He went straight into the bathroom.
It was enormous. Marble counters. Double sinks. One of the tap lights still on. A champagne bucket melted down on the side table by the bath. Two flutes. A towel on the floor. His own suit jacket slung over the back of a chair. Ilya’s shirt inside out near the shower.
And on the counter, neatly propped against an ice bucket like some kind of joke designed by the devil himself, sat a white envelope embossed with gold.
He knew before he touched it.
He still touched it anyway.
His fingers felt numb opening it.
Inside was a folded certificate and a small printed card from a chapel with a cheerful scripted logo across the top.
Thank you for celebrating with us.
Shane stared at the words until they blurred.
His reflection in the bathroom mirror looked wrong. Too pale. Eyes too sharp. Hair flattened on one side from sleep. Mouth set so hard the line of it had gone bloodless.
He unfolded the paper.
Marriage License.
The names took a second to land.
Ilya Grigoryevich Rozanov.
Shane Mildred Hollander.
The date was today.
No, not today.
Yesterday.
His vision narrowed.
A sound left him before he could stop it, something halfway between a breath and a curse.
Footsteps behind him.
Ilya stopped at the bathroom doorway.
“What is that.”
Shane turned and held the paper out without a word.
Ilya took it.
Shane watched the exact moment he read enough to understand.
For the first time, there was no sarcasm. No immediate jab. No smirk pulled out of habit because he could not stand to let anyone see the wrong thing on his face for too long. There was just a stillness so sudden it made him look younger and harder at the same time.
Then he looked up.
“You married me?”
Shane took one step forward.
“I married you?”
“You were there.”
“So were you.”
“You think I would do this on purpose?”
“I think you do a lot of stupid things on purpose.”
Ilya’s eyes flashed.
Shane’s hand closed into a fist at his side.
The bathroom suddenly felt too small. Too bright. Every surface reflecting back more of them than Shane could stand. Him in an open shirt with a bruise on his collarbone. Ilya barefoot, hair a mess, holding a marriage certificate between two fingers like it might catch fire.
There were fragments trying to rise now, sharp enough to hurt.
A chapel door opening under too much light.
A woman with lacquered hair smiling too widely.
Ilya beside him, leaning too close, saying something into his ear over music or laughter or both.
You won’t do it.
Shane turning his head.
Watch me.
Then a blur of white.
A bouquet shoved into somebody’s hands.
Their hands.
The metallic slide of a ring over skin.
He shut it down before it could go any further.
“No,” he said, voice flat with the effort it took to keep it flat. “No. This gets fixed. Today.”
Ilya looked back at the paper.
“I don’t know if Vegas works that fast.”
“Then we find somebody who does.”
“You sound optimistic for a man wearing my wedding ring.”
Shane stared at him.
There it was. The reflex. The sneer. The thing Ilya did when he was cornered and wanted blood in the room because blood felt better than fear.
It worked on most people.
It had never worked on Shane.
He stepped closer until there were only inches between them.
“I am going to say this once,” he said quietly. “Do not joke right now.”
Something in Ilya’s face shifted again. Smaller this time. Faster. He looked at Shane, really looked at him, and whatever he saw there made the corner of his mouth flatten.
Then Shane’s phone started vibrating in the bedroom again.
And again.
And again.
He backed out of the bathroom first. Ilya followed a second later.
On the bed, both their phones were going off now. Not occasionally. Constantly. Screen after screen lighting up. Missed calls, texts, alerts, notifications stacking so fast it stopped looking like communication and started looking like impact.
Shane grabbed his first.
Another text from his agent.
Call me NOW.
The next one had no punctuation at all.
Shane I need you to answer me right now
His chest tightened.
Ilya was looking at his own screen, the color draining very slightly from his face in a way he probably thought was invisible.
“What,” Shane said.
Ilya did not answer.
“What.”
Slowly, Ilya turned the phone toward him.
There was a photo on the screen.
At first Shane did not understand what he was looking at. His brain registered pieces separately. Bright lights. A white arch. Flowers. A dark suit. A hand on a waist. Their faces close together.
Then it clicked.
It was them.
It was really them.
Ilya in a black suit with his tie hanging loose, one hand at the small of Shane’s back.
Shane standing in front of him, jacket off, shirt collar open, expression dazed and furious and flushed all at once.
The officiant smiling in the background.
The gold of both rings catching under chapel lights.
And the caption above it, already attached to a sports account Shane recognized, already climbing so fast it made him sick, read:
NHL RIVALS SHANE HOLLANDER AND ILYA ROZANOV REPORTEDLY MARRIED IN LAS VEGAS LAST NIGHT.
He snatched the phone.
There were thousands of comments already.
No fucking way.
This has to be fake.
I KNEW THE TENSION WAS WEIRD.
BRO WHAT???
years of rivalry just for them to be married is insane
there’s video
There’s what.
Shane’s thumb jerked downward.
A second post.
A blurry clip this time. Short. Bad angle. Somebody filming from the back of the chapel. Enough to make out the shapes of them turning toward each other. Enough to hear laughter. Enough to hear the officiant say, very clearly, you may kiss your husband.
The clip cut before whatever happened next.
Shane stopped breathing.
He could feel Ilya watching him.
He could feel the room all around him, every surface too sharp, every sound too loud, the air conditioning vent whispering from the ceiling, the elevator ding in the hall outside, the ice shifting in the melted bucket on the counter, and under all of it the roaring in his own head.
He dropped the phone onto the bed like it had burned him.
“This isn’t happening.”
Ilya barked out a humorless laugh.
“Oh, I think it very much is.”
Shane rounded on him.
“Who was filming.”
“How the fuck would I know?”
“You dragged me there.”
Ilya’s expression went cold.
“You agreed.”
Shane opened his mouth and stopped.
Because that was the part his brain hated most.
He could not say he had been dragged.
There had been a point, somewhere between the bar and the chapel and the terrible white lights, where he had still been standing upright, still been speaking, still been capable of making a choice.
He just could not remember why he had made the worst one available.
The silence that followed was not empty. It was packed so tight with accusation it practically hummed.
Then Shane’s phone rang.
His agent’s name lit up across the screen.
He stared at it for half a second, then answered.
“Hi,” she said, too fast, too sharp, not even pretending calm. “Tell me you’re alone.”
Shane looked at Ilya.
“No.”
A beat.
“Of course you’re not.” Paper rustled loudly on her end. “Fine. Put me on speaker. Both of you need to hear this.”
He did.
Ilya crossed his arms. Shane hated that he looked steadier now. Hated that the panic had burned out of him faster. Hated that somebody had to look steady in the room and it was not Shane.
His agent inhaled.
“There are photos. There is video. There is a copy of the license. Three major outlets have the story already. The league has called twice. Your mother has called four times. Ottawa’s front office is asking for a statement. Boston is refusing to comment until Rozanov answers his phone.”
Ilya reached for his own device without taking his eyes off Shane.
Shane said nothing.
He could hear blood in his ears.
“The story is everywhere,” she continued. “I need both of you to listen to me very carefully. Do not leave the room. Do not speak to press. Do not post anything. Do not call anyone back until legal gets on the line. I am on my way upstairs with Rozanov’s agent and two lawyers.”
Shane’s skin went cold.
“No.”
“Shane.”
“No lawyers. No statements. I’m ending this.”
He heard Ilya give a short, disbelieving exhale beside him.
His agent’s voice changed. Lower now. Harder.
“You are not hearing me. This is beyond ending it this morning and pretending it never happened. The story is bigger than both of you already.”
“I don’t care.”
“You should.”
That stopped him.
For a second nobody spoke.
Then she said, very clearly, “Your jersey sales doubled in the last forty minutes.”
Shane stared at the far wall like maybe if he looked long enough it would split open and let him out.
“What.”
“Every clip of the two of you is being reposted everywhere. The rivalry is being recut as a love story. Networks are running segments. Sponsors are calling. Not because they’re upset. Because they want in.”
Ilya let out a sound that might have been a curse.
Shane could not seem to unclench his jaw.
His agent kept going.
“There are already narratives forming. Secret relationship. Years of hiding. Forbidden romance. Hockey’s worst-kept secret. People are eating this alive.”
“This is insane,” Shane said.
“Yes,” she snapped. “It is. And it is real. Which means in about ten minutes I need you to be capable of acting like an adult long enough to keep this from becoming a complete career-ending disaster.”
Ilya moved first, picking up the hotel room landline and yanking the cord hard enough to silence it when it started ringing.
Press, probably. Or room service. Or another agent. Or God.
Shane had never been more aware of another person in his life than he was of Ilya in that moment. Every shift of his shoulders. Every flash of impatience in his mouth. The fact that he looked angry, yes, but not surprised by the cruelty of any of this. As if being turned into a spectacle was awful but familiar. As if he knew exactly what happened when people smelled blood and money at the same time.
That only made Shane angrier.
On speaker, his agent exhaled through her teeth.
“We’re outside.”
The knock hit the door an instant later.
Three sharp raps.
Nobody moved.
Then another voice from the hall, male this time, clipped and impatient.
“Open the door.”
Ilya looked at Shane.
Shane looked back at him.
His pulse was still everywhere. In his throat. In his wrists. Behind his eyes. There was a ring on his hand that would not come off and a marriage certificate on the bathroom counter and somewhere downstairs a hotel lobby filling up with cameras because the world had apparently decided to wake up hungry and point itself at them.
The knock came again.
Harder.
And in the silence right before one of them finally moved, Shane’s phone lit up one more time on the bed with a news alert so large he saw the headline before he even reached for it.
THE LEAGUE’S MOST HATED RIVALS JUST GOT MARRIED.
He looked up.
Ilya was already looking at him.
And for the first time since waking up, Shane had the sudden sickening feeling that the worst part of this was not the marriage.
It was that, in a matter of minutes, the entire world was going to want to see what kind of husbands they made.
And the door was still locked.