Chapter Text
these days, i think i owe my life
to flowers that were left here by my mother
ain't that like them, gifting life to you again
* * *
November 2016
When Ilya was a child, his mother kept the most beautiful flower garden in their entire neighborhood.
It was her pride and joy, the one thing that kept her fire lit during the harsh Moscow winters. Through the long, cold, gloomy days, she would prepare the seeds that would be planted in the following spring’s garden, sorting them into carefully labeled packets that would be kept safe in a drawer until the time was right to dig up the soil and bury the seeds in the thawed ground. The flowers would change every year, but the beauty never did. Ilya would press his nose against the window in his childhood bedroom and patiently wait for the explosion of color to surround their dacha, a welcome distraction from the dark cloud that followed them inside.
One snowy night during their last winter together, she spread the packets out on the kitchen table, sat Ilya down in the chair next to hers, and told him the stories behind each seed.
“These will grow into chamomiles,” she’d said, and a twelve-year-old Ilya had stared up at her with rapt attention, the dutiful pupil that he was. “You know the tea I make for you whenever you get sick? This is what that tea is made with. It is a small and simple flower, but we Russians have learned all the ways it can heal the body and soul—that is why chamomile is our national flower, for its simplicity and strength.
“These are aster seeds. ‘Aster’ means ‘star’ in Greek, did you know that? Each aster flower is a little burst of stars, like a constellation falling from the heavens to light up our garden. I will plant them along the path leading to our door, so you need only to look for the stars, Ilyusha, and they will always guide you home.
“These will become lilies-of-the-valley. Have I ever told you about the poem that Tchaikovsky wrote about them? ‘Let me but once again look upon the lilies-of-the-valley.’ He speaks of the hope that this flower brings, a sign that the happier, sunnier days of spring are coming. When you see them, you will know: ‘The tedium of winter days has passed without a trace.’”
And then she pointed to the brown bulbs she kept in a special, separate box. “These are my favorites. Can you tell me what they are?”
Ilya sat up straighter. He knew the answer to this; he would make his mother proud. “Tulips!” he cried, and his mother beamed with delight.
“Very good,” she said, ruffling the soft golden curls on top of his head. “Do you know why the yellow ones are my favorites?”
Ilya’s brows furrowed. It was something he never thought to question before, simply accepted as fact for as long as he could remember: the sky was blue, the grass was green, and Irina Rozanova’s favorite flower was a yellow tulip. It was the one constant in her garden, too—the only flower Ilya could count on seeing bloom every spring. He felt suddenly ashamed he never thought to ask her why.
“Why?” he finally asked then.
His mother tilted his chin up so he could meet her gaze. There was a sadness behind her pretty hazel eyes that Ilya didn’t yet understand, but it was veiled behind the love in her voice. “Yellow tulips are my favorites not because of what they look like,” she said. “They are very beautiful, to be sure, but tulips are so common, aren’t they? You see them in every corner shop, or being peddled by little old ladies on the street. They are not so special or unique compared to other flowers. But that does not matter to me, because I love yellow tulips most for what they symbolize—sunshine.”
She smiled brightly at him, and Ilya felt like he was ten feet tall. “And when I look at you, moye solnyshko,” she whispered so fondly, “I see sunshine in your smile, and nothing in the world brings me more happiness than that. I would have a garden full of your smiles, if I could. So I plant yellow tulips every year and wait for the sun.”
Ilya can still see the memory of that day with his mother, as vivid in his mind as if it had happened yesterday. He’d listened to the way the language of flowers rolled off his mother’s tongue—how she’d spoken like each flower had told her exactly what to say and she was just its interpreter—and soaked up every word that she imparted on him, like one of his mother’s thirsty plants drinking water up through its roots.
He had wanted to be just like her. And now, thirteen years later, Ilya is still desperately clinging on to the lessons she’d taught him about the transcendence of flowers to remind himself why he’d chosen to open his own flower shop in the heart of Montreal.
But on days like today, when he has to deal with his least favorite kind of customer request, those lessons are really fucking hard to remember.
“Two dozen roses,” he says flatly, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice.
The poor customer on the other side of the cash register is an innocent bystander to Ilya’s ire, but unluckily for him, he just so happened to be Ilya’s final straw, and such is life. Judging by the slight twitch in the other man’s jaw, though, Ilya was unsuccessful in masking his displeasure behind his usual customer service facade.
“Yes?” the man says, and Ilya can’t tell if he’s answering the question or asking his own.
“Okay,” Ilya responds. “Let me guess. Red?”
The other man swallows nervously. “Yes, please.”
Ilya raises an eyebrow. “Wow,” he says with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, which was exactly zero. “Red roses. How original.”
The blush creeping onto his customer’s cheeks deepens into the prettiest pink. Ilya watches the color travel down the long stretch of the man’s neck and wonders if he has any flowers in the store that would match the exact shade. “Is that a problem?” the man asks.
Ilya shrugs lazily. A sale is a sale, he supposes, but Jesus Christ.
He’s so fucking tired of red roses.
He used to love them. It would be blasphemy if he didn’t, as a florist—roses kept the lights on and the bills paid. But one could only bear the parade of men who came into his shop to buy the same fucking bouquet to serve as a pitiful, trite token of affection/gratitude/remorse/appreciation for their wives/girlfriends/mistresses/exes for so long before it started to wear him down. And, well, Ilya feels quite cynical toward roses now. They were all the same, these men.
Oh, it’s our twentieth wedding anniversary, and she’ll kill me if I don’t get her anything. It’s her birthday, and I forgot to buy her a real present. I fucked up, and I’m trying to get back into her good graces. Apparently I’m a terrible person who doesn’t even try anymore, so I guess I gotta get her some flowers.
Roses, please. Red. No, I don’t know what her favorite flower is. I’m sure she likes roses, what woman doesn’t? No, I don’t need to see what other flower arrangements you have, red roses are fine. These are going to die in a week anyways, so who cares?
Not a thought or ounce of effort behind them, those monotonous, soulless rose bouquets. They were mindless gestures that were only a task on a to-do list rather than a piece of someone’s heart. And where was the whimsy in that? Are flowers not tiny miracles in and of themselves? Hundreds of thousands of varieties, all humble offerings from the earth as reminders that there would always be uniqueness to behold and beauty worth celebrating—but no, the only flower to ever exist is a rose. Always a rose, and usually red.
Ilya feels nothing when he sees roses now. Give him peonies! Give him ranunculus! Give him hydrangeas, or marigolds, or poppies! Give him anything else but another! Fucking! Rose!
It’s a fitting thought, Ilya suddenly realizes, given this particular customer who’s currently standing in front of him and still waiting for him to respond.
He decides he can afford to be a little cheeky today.
“Who did you say these roses are for?” he asks the other man innocently, reaching for the stack of cards he keeps behind the register. He uncaps a pen and peers up with a knowing smirk on his face. “Rose, right? Rose Landry?”
At this, the man’s head snaps to attention. His eyes narrow in on Ilya, alert and wary. “I didn’t tell you what her name was,” he says cautiously.
And, see, here’s the thing—he didn’t have to. Ilya knows exactly who these flowers are going to, because he knows exactly who’s buying them.
He’d recognized Shane Hollander as soon as he’d walked through those front doors.
Captain of Montreal’s beloved Voyageurs, two-time Stanley Cup winner, the best damn player in the entire league, and currently making headlines for dating a certain Hollywood actress with more star power than the fucking Milky Way.
Honestly, it would have been harder not to recognize him.
Shane Hollander was the last person Ilya expected to see in his shop today. Shane Hollander did not belong here; he belonged in arenas packed with people chanting his name. He belonged on the ice lifting a trophy above his head. He belonged on television screens and bedroom posters and the glossy pages of a magazine spread.
He belonged in the recesses of nineteen-year-old Ilya Rozanov’s memory, when Ilya had been mindlessly flipping through television channels and somehow landed on a broadcast of a Voyageurs game and was immediately transfixed by that center on the first line who skated like he was born with blades strapped to his feet—like he was carving his presence into the ice, with his body bent menacingly low and his strong legs gliding over each other in a blur of movement, handling his stick as if it were an extension of his arm, guiding the puck around and through the other players like they weren’t even there, and then he was winding back and slapping the puck into the corner of the goal and celebrating with his teammates and—and—and Ilya was a lost cause, so he’d reached for his phone, typed the name he’d seen on the back of the jersey into the search bar with shaky fingers, clicked on the first picture that came up, and studied the perfect slope of Shane Hollander’s nose, the sharp lines of his jaw, the freckles dotted all over his cheeks…Ilya had wanted to stare until he could look upon this perfect specimen and not be overwhelmed by him, except that wasn’t possible because Shane Hollander was the most beautiful person Ilya had ever seen, both in the way he flew across the ice and the way his physical features seemed to have been gifted to him by the gods themselves, and he was entirely out of reach, and he belonged in his world while Ilya belonged all the way over here with only flowers to call friends, so Ilya had put his phone down and pushed Shane Hollander into a tidy compartment in his brain that he dared not open.
That was where Shane Hollander belonged. Shane Hollander did not belong in Ilya’s humble little flower shop, asking for roses for his new girlfriend, with only fifty-six inches of the checkout counter separating him from Ilya.
Fuck, he’s even prettier in person.
Everything about this real-life, up-close Shane is screaming please please PLEASE do not perceive me, from his nondescript clothes to the way his hands are stuffed in his pockets like a nervous teenager. He had shuffled his way up to the front of the store awkwardly, with his body hunched over like he was trying to shrink his unmistakable athletic build. His eyes were hidden behind dark shades when he first entered, but only when he realized there was no one else in here besides Ilya on this random weekday afternoon in the dying embers of autumn did he take them off, his broad shoulders relaxing out of his ears.
He looks nothing like the capable, confident hockey player that Ilya has seen on television and in pictures, and even less like the lucky man who had managed to capture the attention of Rose Landry. And now he’s wearing a grimace that reminds Ilya quite strongly of a kicked puppy, like he’s disappointed that Ilya has access to the internet and a working knowledge of the NHL.
“Relax, Hollander,” Ilya says. “It is not like you are the first famous person to ever walk into a flower shop.”
“No, of course not. It’s just—”
Shane lets out a deep breath and closes his eyes, as if to gather himself. When his eyes open again, Ilya is briefly struck by quiet warmth reflecting back at him. They’re the kind of soft brown eyes that, if Ilya stares too long, he’s in danger of melting right into.
“—I’ve never really done this before,” Shane finally says, snapping Ilya out of his reverie. Ilya blinks, long and slow.
“What, buy flowers for a girl?”
Shane shakes his head. “No—I mean, yeah, kind of.” He reaches up to scratch the back of his neck, and Ilya studiously avoids looking at the sliver of golden skin that peeks out over the waistband of Shane’s joggers. “I’ve, ah, never even really dated a girl long enough to give her flowers.”
It’s not what Ilya expected him to say, and he has to put in serious effort to keep the surprise off his face. “Really?” he tries not to say incredulously.
Surely it wasn’t for lack of attention. People have eyes, don’t they? Have they not seen those post-game locker room interviews where Shane is shirtless and glistening with sweat and all of his defined abs are on full display? Because Ilya has, and fucking hell. No chance anyone who saw that unfairly sculpted body in person didn’t also immediately want to pin him down and claim him for themselves. Even Cosmopolitan said so.
And his smile, fuck. That crooked, shy little smile of his, the one that comes out when Shane knows he’s just made an impossible shot appear routine, or when he’s smugly proud of himself for the witty insult he’d chirped at another player.
How has no one else fallen under the spell of that smile?
Well. Rose Landry has, Ilya supposes. He’s seen the paparazzi photos of the two of them (definitely only because those images happened to pop up on his social media feeds and definitely not because he follows several Shane Hollander update accounts, ha ha, what?). Rose is always glowing and smiling and incandescently stunning, and next to her, Shane always looks a little in awe, as if to say, I can’t believe she’s holding my hand, either.
Together, they look every bit the power couple the media has proclaimed them to be. Of course Shane’s type is someone as confident, elegant, and poised as Rose—but at the same time, of course Rose has excellent taste in men. Of course.
Ilya wants to probe more. He wants to ask how it’s possible that one of the most popular players in the NHL, who has a body like that and a smile that could end wars, has never had a serious girlfriend before going straight to dating Rose Landry.
Shane, though, looks like he wants to crawl into a hole and die.
“I’m a bit out of practice,” he mumbles under his breath, so low that Ilya has to lean forward to hear him. “I–I just want to do something nice for her, you know? But I’m not that great at this kind of stuff. Like, being in an actual relationship. I’ve been told that I should probably start by giving her some flowers, though.”
“You’ve been told, hm?” Ilya can’t help the grin creeping onto his face. It was such a pure, honest answer, more honest than he’d been expecting. It was…oddly endearing, and he hates himself for finding it so. “What, did you read it in a book or something?”
“No, the internet.”
Ilya throws his head back and laughs. Long and loud, like he’s never heard anything funnier in his life (he hasn’t).
“Fuck you,” Shane retorts, then winces when he realizes what he’d just said and who he’d just said it to. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—look, can I just get the roses, please?”
Ilya should have just said yes and ended this whole interaction right there and then.
Yes, Shane Hollander, you can have whatever you want. Just ask, and I will give it to you, even if what you want is to give your perfect girlfriend the most basic bouquet in the entire world. Here, take your stupid, boring roses and get out of my shop before you catch me trying to count your freckles. The pictures don’t do them justice, and I would quite like to know how many you have.
That would have been the wise thing to do. Except Ilya’s never been a particularly wise man (Svetlana would call him an idiot, actually). He’s more than a little fascinated by the contradiction of Shane Hollander: portrayed by the media as the fucking guy but in reality is this awkward and adorable and earnest man who laid all his cards on the table for Ilya to judge, even at the cost of his own pride and reputation.
And yeah, okay, the bar for men is in the pits of hell, but Ilya can tell Shane is actually, genuinely trying, and that’s more than he can say for ninety-nine percent of the husbands and boyfriends he deals with on a regular basis. Shane’s got that fear of being a disappointment to other people written all over his face—Ilya knows it well, has seen it in the mirror a million times before. It makes Shane appear dangerously vulnerable, and it makes Ilya want to keep peeling his layers back until he gets to the core of who Shane Hollander really is under that tough persona.
Also, he finds that he doesn’t want Shane to leave his store so soon. He hasn’t finished counting his freckles yet.
He wants to see if Shane will give him that smile.
“No,” he says.
Shane’s mouth drops open. “What?”
“I said no.” Ilya stares directly into those damn doe eyes that are wide with disbelief. “You will not give Rose Landry a bouquet of red roses. Not on my watch.”
Shane gapes at him, clearly at a loss for words. Has anyone ever told this man “no” in his entire life? Ilya wonders if he might be the first. “I–I don’t understand,” Shane stammers. “What do you mean I can’t give Rose roses?”
Ilya rolls his eyes up to the ceiling. “Do you even hear yourself, Hollander?” he sighs. “You want to give roses to a woman named Rose?”
“I mean—”
“You don’t think,” Ilya cuts him off, “that someone with the name Rose hasn’t gotten roses for every special occasion in her life? You don’t think she might be tired of people making this assumption about her? Oh, her name is Rose, so her favorite flower must surely be a rose. It’s cliché. It lacks imagination. With every rose she receives, she’s reduced to the sum of her name because it tells her that people do not care enough to want to know every single thing about her. The others, they’re not even trying to pay attention to what she truly likes or what they mean by the roses they’re giving her. Do you think they’re all trying to tell her how deeply they’re in love with her? Because that’s what red roses mean when you give them to another person. Is that what you want to tell Rose Landry, too?”
“I—”
“And you are not like the others, are you, Hollander?” Ilya holds Shane’s gaze, steady and sincere. Shane looks back at him with wide eyes and mouth agape.
“No, I don’t think you are,” he continues, cocking his head thoughtfully. “I think you actually care about getting this right, because I think you actually care about her. I don’t think you would look up how not to be a shitty boyfriend on the internet if you didn’t.”
Shane gives him a blank stare. “I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not,” he says.
“It is. And I will not let you embarrass yourself in front of your actress girlfriend with my flowers. So tell me, Hollander,” Ilya says, resting his elbows on the counter and leaning in closer, “will you let me help you or not?”
“Oh.” Shane looks deliciously flustered now, but his eyes don’t stray from Ilya’s. “Okay. I mean, yeah, sure. I guess.”
Ilya’s heart lurches. Oh, he was going to get that smile out of this man one way or another.
“Good,” he says, straightening back up and rubbing his hands together conspiratorially. “Let’s start with the easy stuff, yeah? Do you know what her favorite flower is?”
Shane hesitates. “Um…”
God help me, Ilya thinks.
But no matter. He’s good at what he does; he learned from the best, after all. “So that’s a no,” he says. “Tell me about her, then. What is she like?”
“She’s…” Shane takes a moment to search for the right word. “...nice.”
God, anyone, please, if you can hear me.
“Nice,” Ilya scoffs. “Is that all? She’s nice?”
“No, no, that’s not—” Shane groans, running a nervous hand through his short black hair. “Yes, she’s nice, but she’s also—she’s not what you’d expect a famous actress to be. Like, she’s still grounded and down to earth, you know? She’s genuinely kind to everyone she interacts with, which I feel like is rare for celebrities.”
Ilya nods. “Good. Keep going.” His mind is already racing, putting together the image of Rose Landry that Shane is painting with the one he’s seen on movie posters and in paparazzi shots. “What do you like most about her?”
Shane bites his lip in concentration (pull it TOGETHER, Rozanov). “I like that she’s a good listener. She asks me about my day and my job because she’s actually interested. She’s easy to talk to. She’s an extremely positive person, and she helps me remember not to take myself too seriously.”
Ilya watches Shane grow more animated as the words come pouring out of him. For the first time since he entered the shop, he seems…relaxed isn’t the right word, but perhaps…focused? Like he’s pleased to have been given a task that he knows how to do. Yes, these questions are within his realm of knowledge. Yes, he’s happy to give you the answers to them.
Fuck, Ilya thinks to himself.
He really thought his infatuation with Shane Hollander was just a passing teenage fancy. He never thought that, at twenty-five years old, he’d be face to face with the man himself and fucking smitten by the way Shane talks about someone he clearly cares about, with a tiny crinkle in his brow and the slightest upward twitch of his lips. He has the same look of resolve in his eyes that Ilya’s seen during his face-offs on the ice, like he’s determined not to fuck this up.
Oh, to be the object of Shane Hollander’s affections. Ilya can only imagine the way that this reserved, serious man must make the most attentive, sincere lover.
Rose, you lucky, lucky girl.
“What is her style like?” He needs to get this line of questioning back on course immediately. “Casual? Feminine? Vintage? Sporty? Something else?”
A bewildered expression crosses Shane’s face. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I suppose I don’t really pay attention to the type of clothes she wears.”
Huh. That’s…okay. Well.
Interesting.
He’s dating an A-list celebrity who’s known for her red carpet looks and impeccable wardrobe, yet doesn’t pay attention to what’s on her body. Nor did he list a single physical feature as one of his favorite traits of Rose’s…
“How about her favorite color?” Ilya tries again. “Anything helps, Hollander, just try to remember.”
“Okay, wait, I do know this,” Shane replies, scrunching his eyebrows in thought. “It’s pink. She was wearing a pink shirt the first time I met her. She wears a lot of pink, actually.”
Better. Getting warmer.
“And what would you like to say to Rose Landry?”
Shane frowns. “What do you mean?”
“Flowers,” Ilya tells him, “are not just pretty things to look at—they are an entire language of their own. Every flower has its own meaning, so they can talk for you when you cannot come up with the words yourself. You can tell someone you are in love with them, or you can tell them you never want to see them again, and you never even have to open your mouth. This is why you must be deliberate with the flowers you give to another person. Every bouquet is a conversation. What do you want this one to say?”
“Oh.” Shane doesn’t seem entirely convinced. Ilya’s not surprised; when most of the male population already has trouble grasping basic communication skills, the concept of floriography is usually foreign to them.
A part of him expects pushback. Maybe Shane will scoff at how silly this all is, change his mind, and walk out of the store altogether. Maybe Ilya misread the softness he thought he saw in Shane’s brown eyes and is just clinging on to the perception of him he’d built up in his head and Shane really is just a man after all.
But he shouldn’t have doubted his instincts, because Shane doesn’t even skip a beat when he says, “Well, she’s filming a movie in Montreal right now, and I think the schedule’s starting to wear her down. So maybe just something to cheer her up? Sorry, I know that’s kind of vague. I still don’t really get how this works.”
Ilya smiles. The pieces are falling together, the picture growing clearer.
Without another word, he winds around the counter, making his way toward the buckets of flowers that are displayed tidily in two staggered rows on low shelves against the wall. They’re overflowing with the season’s most colorful, luscious blooms available—Ilya is spoiled for choice, really.
The zinnias are looking particularly vibrant today, their ruffled petals opened proudly to the heavens. He could make a pretty arrangement out of them, perhaps with some eucalyptus mixed in, but something about them just isn’t quite right. They could be mistaken for a gesture of friendship, and Ilya doubted that was what Shane intended. No, better not to risk a flower that could get lost in translation.
He could go for sunflowers instead. What better way to cheer someone up than with the happiest, brightest flower that symbolizes joy and warmth and luck? The golden petals of the sunflowers he has in the store today are tinged with fiery orange streaks in their petals, a product of autumn. They’d be as unique as the actress they’d be gifted to, but no, sunflowers aren’t right either. Wrong color.
Ilya assesses the myriad of options before him. He can feel Shane’s pensive brown eyes burning through the back of his sweater and has to force himself to stay on task.
“Here,” Ilya says after a long moment. He reaches for a bucket in the right corner of the back row. “These ones.”
“What are they?” Shane asks.
“Dahlias.” Ilya picks up the bucket of the most perfect pink dahlias, carries it back behind the counter with him, and starts to pull the delicate stems out one by one.
“They’re nice,” Shane comments. “I would’ve never picked them.”
“That is because you are boring,” Ilya says. “You only notice the boring flowers.”
“Roses aren’t boring.”
“Yes, they are. You need to expand your horizon, Hollander.”
Shane falls silent, and the emptiness in the air settles between them, thick and heavy.
Ilya turns his focus back to the dahlias. They’re full and lush and the most exquisite pink—the color of a ripe summer peach in the peak of summer. He lays the flowers out on the counter to get a sense of what he’s working with. These dahlias are a little bigger than the size of his fist, like miniature pom poms, so he decides they can stand on their own without any filler foliage. He picks out only the ones with perfect petals and a few buds that will bloom in the next few days, just enough to be an armful for a petite actress. Then he trims away excess leaves, cuts the end of each stem on a bias, and starts to deftly rearrange the bunch. Slowly, they begin to form the shape of the whimsical bouquet that he’d pictured in his mind when Shane was describing Rose.
Like magic every time.
This is the best part of his job. It’s the entire reason Ilya has chosen this path for himself. He wants to be surrounded by beauty, he wants to create beauty, and he wants to share that beauty with as many people as possible.
…Including the very beautiful man currently watching him work, unabashedly transfixed by the way Ilya’s hands are doing what they love best. Ilya tries very hard to ignore how Shane has moved closer and closer until he’s fully leaning on the counter. He’s so close—too close. Not close enough.
Ilya binds the stalks of the loose flowers together with rubber bands, then wraps the whole bouquet in a sheet of brown wrapping paper. He’s wrangling a pink ribbon around the stems as the final touch when Shane finally breaks the silence.
“What do dahlias mean?” he asks. “When you give them to someone.”
Ilya looks up. “Hm? Oh, it depends.”
“On what?”
“Color.” Ilya wraps the ribbon around his fingers and winds the ends around the loops. “Color matters when you are giving flowers, too. Red is the most romantic color; it symbolizes passion, desire, and true love. Pink can also be romantic, but it is softer and more gentle, so it can symbolize admiration and femininity. Blue symbolizes peace and tranquility, while yellow symbolizes happiness and friendship. Of course, these are the general meanings, but when you put them with specific flowers, you can start to see the patterns.”
“Like how?”
Ilya chews his lip in consideration. “Like…take chrysanthemums. Red chrysanthemums mean, ‘I love you,’ but yellow chrysanthemums mean, ‘I feel slighted by you.’”
“But I thought yellow was a happy color,” Shane points out. His eyes dart down to Ilya’s chest, then quickly back up before Ilya has a chance to flex his muscles in this very nice mustard-yellow turtleneck he was wearing.
“It is a platonic color,” Ilya corrects.
Shane opens and closes his mouth a few times, but no words come out. He seems unsettled by the supposed contradiction of the explanation, but Ilya doesn’t hold it against him. Some people have encyclopedic knowledge on the esoteric language of flowers, and others lead normal lives.
Ilya finishes tying off the ribbon with a flourish. He takes a second to admire his work (impeccable, as per usual—goddamn, he was a good florist) before holding it out to Shane. “Pink dahlias symbolize kindness and beauty. That fits your Rose, no?”
Shane gives a small nod. “Yeah.” He gingerly takes the bouquet, and Ilya has to fight the indecent urges rising in his body when he sees his delicate flowers in the arms of this strong, imposing athlete who can throw a fully grown man onto his ass like a rag doll. “Looks great. I think she’ll love it.”
“Better than red roses, no?”
Shane huffs out a short, unamused breath that could be mistaken for laughter, but there’s a twinkle in his eye. “Fuck you.”
Ilya smirks. And then, with completely pure intentions, he shamelessly throws a wink at Shane.
And Shane blushes as pink as the dahlias in his arms.
(Well, look at that. Turns out there are flowers in the store that match the exact shade on those starry cheeks.)
Ilya honestly can’t remember writing the “Good luck with filming!” message Shane had given him for the small notecard tucked inside the bouquet, nor does he remember taking Shane’s credit card from him to process the payment. He just goes through the motions on autopilot, his mind vaguely aware that each second passing is a second closer to watching Shane walk out those doors back to his own stratosphere.
None of this felt real—Ilya was half sure he’d soon wake up and realize he’d dreamt this entire scenario in his head—and yet it had to be real, because even his dreams couldn’t fathom how he’d somehow gotten to see a fragment of the real Shane. Not the untouchable, intensely serious character that sports pundits made him out to be, but the Shane who let his guard down in front of a stranger and was more than willing to let someone else take control.
Luck was never usually on his side, but maybe Ilya should buy a lottery ticket today.
“Thanks for your help…” Shane trails off expectantly.
“Ilya.” He clears his throat. “Rozanov.”
Shane sticks out the hand that isn’t full of dahlias. “Shane Hollander.”
Ilya reaches across the counter. A shiver runs up his spine when their hands touch for the first time. “Yes, I know.”
Shane rolls his eyes. “Well, thanks again, Ilya Rozanov.”
He draws his hand away and turns on his heel to leave. When he reaches the edge of the shop, Shane glances over his shoulder and meets Ilya’s eyes.
He smiles. Crooked and genuine and beautiful.
And then Shane pushes the door open, walks back out into the real world, and leaves Ilya behind to wonder what the fuck just happened.