Page 7 of Heated Rivalry 1
“Next year these are gonna be in Ottawa. My hometown,” Hollander said.
Ilya finished his cigarette and dropped the butt on the ground. He decided to make an effort, since this guy seemed so determined to talk to him. “Is Ottawa more exciting?”
Hollander laughed. “Than here? I don’t know. A little. It’s just as cold.”
“Your parents are here.”
“For this? Yeah. They’re here. They always try to come see me play wherever I go.”
“Nice for you.”
“Yeah. I know. They’re great.”
Ilya didn’t have anything to add to that, so he stayed silent.
“I should probably go. They’re waiting for me,” Hollander said. He moved away from the wall and turned to face Ilya. Ilya’s eyes went right to those damn freckles. Hollander stuck out his hand again.
“Good luck in the tournament,” he said.
Ilya accepted the handshake and grinned. “You will not be so friendly when we beat you.”
“That’s not happening.”
Ilya knew that Hollander truly believed that. That he would get the gold medal and be the NHL’s number one draft pick because he was the fucking prince of hockey.
Maybe Hollander expected Ilya to wish him luck as well, but Ilya just dropped his hand and turned to go back inside the rink.
In the car, Shane told his parents that he had been talking to Ilya Rozanov.
“What’s he like?” his mother asked.
“Kind of a dick,” Shane said.
When the final game of the tournament was over, the Canadian team had to suffer one more humiliation. The Russians stopped celebrating long enough to line up so the teams could shake each other’s hands—a show of sportsmanship that, at that moment, Shane did not feel in his heart.
For one thing, the Russian team had beendirty. He had hated playing against them.
For another thing, Ilya Rozanov was really fucking good. Infuriatingly good. And over the course of the tournament, the media had put a lot of effort into building up their rivalry. Shanetried to ignore the press, but it was possible that they were stoking the flames of his hatred.
When he reached Rozanov in the handshake lineup, he could see camera flashes all around them. He made sure he looked Rozanov right in the eye when he tersely said, “Congratulations.”
Rozanov smirked and said, “See you at the draft.”
They hung a silver medal around Shane’s neck that may as well have been a dead rat, for all he wanted it. He respectfully endured the playing of the Russian national anthem, blinking back frustrated tears that he refused to let fall, and then he was finally allowed to leave the ice.
It wasn’t supposed to have gone like this. He was supposed to have led his country to goldinhis country. It was what the nation had expected. Canada’s hopes had been heaped onto his seventeen-year-old shoulders and he had let them all down.
Every face-off he had taken against Rozanov, the Russian had looked him dead in the eye and smirked. Shane was not easily shaken by anyone, but that goddamn smirk threw him off balance every time.
Maybe it was just that, after a life of playing at a level above everyone else, Shane had finally met his match.
He was sure that was all it was.
Chapter Two
June 2009—Los Angeles
“Shane, could you move a little closer to Ilya, please?”
