Page 144 of Heated Rivalry 1
Shane was about to flip him off, but remembered his parents. And then it all kind of hit him: his parents were here. With Ilya. The secret was out and they were all talking about Shane and Ilya as acouple.
And Shane suddenly felt a little light-headed.
It was all happening so fast: their confessions of love, being discovered by his parents, making plans for the future...
Oh god oh god oh god.
“Shane?” It was Ilya’s voice, all concern. Shane felt a hand on his shoulder, and then he realized that he had his head between his knees. “Are you okay?”
Shane inhaled and exhaled slowly, keeping his head down.
Ilya’s hand moved to Shane’s knee as he crouched beside him, seeking his eyes. “Shane?”
“I’m okay,” Shane said weakly. “I’m just...freaking out. Don’t worry about me.”
Ilya took his hands and rubbed his thumbs soothingly over the backs of them. “We are good here, yes?” he said. “Your family is here. And your boyfriend. And we are okay here.”
Shane raised his head slightly. “Boyfriend?”
Such a ridiculous word. Such a ridiculous, wonderful word.
Ilya shrugged and grinned. “I think, yes?”
“Yes.”
It was really too bad they were in his parents’ living room, and that his parents were definitely staring at them, because Shane wanted to jump into Ilya’s lap and kiss him into the floor.
“Since their rookie season,” Shane heard his mother say. “I can’t believe it.”
“Looking at them now, I kind of can,” his father said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
They left Shane’s parents’ cottage with a promise to come for dinner the following evening.
Ilya wasn’t sure how Shane felt about everything that had just happened, buthethought it had gone surprisingly well.
“Holy shit,” Shane said. He hadn’t even turned the engine on; he was just sitting in the driver’s seat with his forehead on the steering wheel.
“It was okay, yes?” Ilya offered.
“I don’t know. Do you think it was? Fuck. That was really weird.”
“Well. Now they know.”
Shane blew out a breath. “Yeah.”
“We should go home.”
Shane nodded against the steering wheel before sitting up and pressing the ignition button.
Ilya spent the entirety of the short drive back to Shane’s cottage wondering if it was weird that he’d just called Shane’s cottagehome. He knew his grip on the English language was tenuous, but referring to a place he was staying for two weeks as “home” wasn’t weird, was it?
If itwasweird, Shane wasn’t saying anything about it.
Shane actually didn’t say anything at all during the drive back, other than a few muttered curse words. His hands were tight on the wheel. When they got back to the cottage, he dropped his keys into a bowl and strode into the living room with a hand in his hair.
“I need some air,” he said, and he walked outside to the patio, leaving Ilya alone in the house.
