Chapter Text
The back door is open, Ilya pressing him lightly against the frame as he mouths at his jaw. Shane lets himself sink into it, and lets the rest of the world narrow down to what’s right in front of him.
The sound of the front door across the house being swung open comes faintly enough that it doesn’t register, but the footsteps that follow are loud enough to make them both jerk back at the same time.
When Shane can focus his eyes enough to realize who it is, his breath stutters.
Peyton - running at full speed, her backpack jumping against her shoulders with every step. wisps of dark hair clinging to her forehead.
The bounce in her step is accompanied by a big smile across flushed cheeks, excitement radiating off of her in the way it always does when she’s been counting down to seeing Shane again.
She skids to a stop when she really sees them, momentum carrying her forward an extra half-step before she catches herself. Her eyes lift, gaze landing on Ilya first.
Then to Shane, then back to Ilya again.
“What is he doin’ here?” She directs towards her father.
Shane’s mind goes completely blank.
He feels suspended in the moment, caught between the instinct to step toward her and the instinct to turn tail and bolt. Every possible response fractures and falls back down his throat with jagged scraping edges before it reaches his mouth. He can feel his pulse in his ears, loud and insistent.
David enters behind her, and his pulse skitters like it might stop completely.
Shane watches his dad’s eyes as they move from place to place -- from the open back door, to him, to Ilya, to Peyton and then back to the two of them. He blinks, mouth twitching without any noise coming out.
“Dad,” Shane starts, voice coming out squeaky.
David still doesn’t say anything, but his eyes are still fixed in their direction when he brings a hand down to Peyton’s shoulder.
“Let’s come back later bug,” He says to her eventually.
Peyton’s face tightens at once, just a flicker. She doesn’t argue, just presses her lips together and shifts her weight, shoulders drawing in a fraction as if she’s folding herself smaller around disappointment she knows isn’t worth arguing about.
She’d been perceptive like that since she was a baby, Shane thinks absently.
Less absently, he realizes he doesn’t want them to leave.
By the time he can get his feet to work and push away from Ilya’s side they’re already out the front door, and by the time he gets outside the car is already pulling out the driveway.
“Fuck!” Shane shouts when he comes back into the house and slams the front door behind him. Ilya is meeting him halfway in seconds, hands coming up to cup his face.
“Shane,”
He recoils, Ilya tugging him back gently.
“This is a fucking nightmare,” Shane says, the words tumbling out of him in a rush. "What the fuck, what the fuck am I supposed to do?”
His voice sounds wrong to his own ears, too loud and too broken all at ounce. His chest is tight enough that it hurts, every breath shallow and incomplete, like his lungs can’t quite agree on how much air they’re supposed to be pulling in. His hands are shaking, useless at his sides, fingers curling and uncurling usually.
“Hey,” Ilya says, thumbs circling slowly at his jaw. “Hey. We should go talk to him.”
“Oh fuck, my mom,” Shane blurts immediately, the thought detonating the moment it forms. “What if they don’t want to talk to me?”
“They will talk to you,” Ilya says without hesitation.
“Yeah, but I lied to them, for so long,” Shane says.
Suddenly there’s Peyton again, braid slipping loose, eyes curious. A breathing visceral reminder of what he’d been skirting around bringing up to Ilya from the time they pulled into the cottage driveway.
The realization lands like a shove into the boards that he isn’t just talking about lying to his parents anymore.
“This is my fucking nightmare,” Shane says again, quieter now, like if he lowers his voice the thing itself might shrink into something he can get his hands around. “This is my actual fucking nightmare.”
“Okay,” Ilya says, voice gentle but firm. “Then maybe, it’s time to wake up?”
Shane inhales. The breath stutters halfway in, catches, then forces its way through anyway. He lets it out and back in slowly. Then he does it again, and again and two more times.
When Ilya speaks again his words come slower.
“The girl,” He says gently. “That was… your sister?”
Shane stares at the floor.
“Yeah,” He says, voice coming out flat.
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” Ilya adds, not accusing, just surprised.
Shane swallows.
“She’s,” He starts and stops himself before he says too much. “Yeah. My sister.”
Ilya nods, accepting it without question, because why wouldn’t he? That’s the part that makes Shane’s chest ache the worst.
As soon as Ilya looks away, his thoughts turn on him.
What the fuck did you just do?
He's lied before. To reporters, to teammates. To everyone, really.
More than anything because that’s what she’d wanted. What she’d made him promise from the moment Peyton was born, and again when his career took off and the stakes got higher. She’d damn near had him by the ear when Hayden found out on accident.
And Shane had agreed to her terms without argument at every turn. It’d felt right for the most part, like it made sense to protect Peyton.
But standing here now, letting Ilya soothe the wrong wound after every conversation they’d had the past few days, makes his stomach turn over on itself.
“She would have loved you, like I love you.”
Shane swallows hard, chest tightening until it almost hurts to breathe. His thoughts lurch, unbidden, to a different woman.
He wonders if Ilya’s mother would’ve loved a liar.
He waits until Ilya is asleep to slip out of the room and call Hayden.
Hayden, who picks up on the second ring.
“I need to tell you something,” Shane spits out before he’s so much as halfway through a greeting.
“Okay,” Hayden says and there's some shuffling like he’s getting out of bed. “What’s up? Is Peyton okay?”
Just the mention of her name makes his chest start to ache all over again.
“No- yes, Peyton is fine. But I, I need to say this, and then I need you to shelf it because there’s, two parts here.”
“Okay,” Hayden says again. “Hit me.”
“Ilya Rozanov and I have been,” Shane stops. Starts again. Swipes his tongue over his bottom lip, trying to wet a mouth that’s gone dry. “We’ve been seeing each other. For a while. Years.” He swallows. “He’s here. At the cottage.”
The line is silent for a long few seconds.
“You’re gay?” Hayden asks finally, his voice softening instinctively.
“Yes,” Shane says, breath hitching. “I, yeah. But,”
“Sorry,” Hayden cuts in, recalibrating. “Ilya Rozanov?”
“Yes but you need to shelf that, now because that’s not, that’s not the problem.” Shane says.
When Hayden doesn’t interrupt, he keeps going.
“My dad brought Peyton to the cottage today, unannounced. No text or call, or anything, and they came in, and they saw us.”
He stares out the kitchen window as he talks, at the lake stretched out black and indifferent beyond the glass. He can still see it if he lets himself, the way Peyton ran in ahead of David, the way everything went wrong in a single breath.
“You and Rozanov?” Hayden asks and cuts through his thoughts.
“Yeah, and it was. We were, kissing. When they came in. He didn’t say anything,” Shane adds. “My dad. He just took her and left.”
Hayden swears under his breath.
“I know,” Shane says quietly, before Hayden can say anything else.
There’s another long pause.
“I’m assuming Ilya didn’t know who she was?” Hayden asks finally.
“He asked,” Shane starts. “And I told him she was my sister,”
“You lied,” Hayden says quietly.
“Yes.”
Hayden exhales slowly.
“Okay. We are unshelving Ilya now.”
Shane lets out a breath.
“Does he love you?” Hayden asks, no hedging.
His shoulders sag, spine bowing forward slightly,
“Yes.”
“And you love him?"
“Yes,” Shane says, and this time his voice fractures, the sound catching sharp in his throat. “Fuck, we just, we just said it. Out loud. And now,”
“You’re out of time,” Hayden says flatly.
His legs start to feel wobbly under him, and he has to brace himself against the counter to keep his footing -- palm growing sweaty where it’s gripping his phone.
“I was trying to protect her.”
“I know,” Hayden says.
His voice softens, just a fraction.
“And you did,” He continues. “For years. You really did.”
The brief validation almost hurts more than the rebuke the follows.
“But right now,” Hayden says and pauses for a beat. “Right now, you’re not protecting Peyton, you’re protecting yourself.”
Shane closes his eyes, and swallows hard.
“He’s asleep,” He says quietly. “He wants, we’re going to my parents tomorrow.”
There’s another pause.
“And you’re going to tell him,” Hayden says.
It’s not a question.
“Before you leave.”
“Yeah,” Shane says, feeling his eyes start to sting. “I am, okay. I’m gonna go, I gotta go.” He rushes out.
When he hangs up, his phone slips out of his grip and lands on the counter with a dull thunk.
Pressing his palms over his eyes is a futile effort when the pressure behind them breaks, tears coming fast into his hands. He hiccups once and then he’s really sobbing, driving his teeth into his bottom lip as his shoulders shake.