Chapter Text
“There’s still press outside the building. Fucking vultures. I can’t believe they haven’t got bored yet. There have been at least three juicier scandals in the past week. Why they’re still sitting in the rain waiting for a photograph of you going shopping or something, I will never understand.”
Rose dragged her eyes away from the window of the Montreal penthouse as if she could actually feel the reporters lurking below, their lenses pointed upward, patient and hungry. Even this high up, it felt like they could see everything.
Behind her, the television was talking over itself.
“…breaking situation this morning as photos…”
“…sources say the NHL is preparing a response…”
“…#ShaneHollanderGay continues to trend worldwide…”
“...first active player at this level…”
Rose lunged for the remote and muted it. The silence was worse. Or maybe it just made the rest more obvious.
Shane’s phone was vibrating on the kitchen island, lighting up again and again, screen flashing with names Rose recognised and names she didn’t. Text previews stacked one after another without being opened.
Hayden
Coach
Unknown Number
Mom
She glanced down at her own phone, reading the latest message from her driver.
“Jerry says he’ll drive around for a while and come back in an hour. The building concierge is going to get us out the service entrance. That’ll help us avoid the worst of them.”
There was no answer from the man curled up on the sofa.
He hadn’t moved in nearly an hour. Knees drawn tight to his chest, bare feet tucked under him, his body folded in on itself like he could make himself smaller, less visible. The hood of his soft, oversized sweater was pulled so far forward it half-covered his face.
Rose watched him for a moment, something tight and angry twisting in her chest, before she crossed the room and dropped down beside him. He didn’t react. She placed her hand lightly against his side, grounding, warm.
“Shane. Hey.” Her voice softened automatically. “Listen to me.”
Nothing.
“I promise you,” she went on gently, “it won’t be as bad as you think. Your mom is already working with Farah on a response. They’ll find a way to control the narrative. They’re both scary good at this, yeah?”
Nothing.
She grimaced, "God, listen to me. Forget the narrative. They'll deal with the press. You don't have to."
The apartment felt too big and bright: every sharp edge of it exposed in daylight. Floor-to-ceiling glass, open plan, no corners to hide in.
“Listen to me, baby. I love you, okay? I’m here for you.” She shifted closer, her shoulder touching his. “Your friends have been texting and calling all morning. People love you, Shane. It’s shitty that coming out wasn’t your choice. It’s shitty this has happened this way. But people are going to get over the fact that you’re gay. I promise you.”
Still nothing.
On the muted television, a ticker crawled steadily along the bottom of the screen.
#ShaneHollanderGay
She turned the television off and kept talking, softer but firmer now.
“You’re still a hockey legend. Still a three-time Stanley Cup winner. You’re Shane fucking Hollander. And this fucking dick taking photos of you doesn’t change that. He’s the one who should be hounded by the press. Not you. He’s a disgusting coward and once we find out where he is, we’ll destroy him, yeah?”
She leaned her head against his shoulder, wrapping her arms around him as much as his curled posture allowed.
For a long moment, nothing changed, then his fingers tightened in the fabric of his sleeves, and a small voice whispered out of him. “I wasn’t ready.”
It came out rough, scraped raw, barely more than breath.
“I know,” she replied quietly.
Shane shifted, just slightly, enough for the hood to fall back an inch. His voice was still muffled, but clearer now. “I didn’t get to tell anyone,” he said. “Not the team. Not my…” He cut himself off sharply, jaw tightening. “I'd spent ten years deciding how to do it. They just took that away from me.”
“I know,” she repeated.
“I hate this,” he said, flat and honest.
“I know.”
Another buzz. Another call. His mom again.
“I hate that I can’t even go outside,” he went on. “That you have to sneak me out of my own place like… like I’ve done something wrong.”
“Hey.” She nudged him gently. “You know you haven’t. You don’t owe anyone anything, OK?”
He didn’t respond and curled back in on himself on the sofa. Rose let the silence sit for a moment, then breathed out slowly and straightened a little.
“Okay,” she said, a decision colouring her voice. “We’re not doing this.”
Shane made a faint noise, noncommittal at best.
“We’re not sitting here waiting for it to get worse,” she continued. “We’re not letting them trap you in this apartment while they tear you apart on TV. Absolutely not.”
He made a small, broken murmur, that might have been a question and Rose’s mouth curved, just slightly.
“Instead you disappear. You leave. For a few weeks. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere no one gives a shit about hockey.”
That got a reaction, barely, but it was there. A small shift.
“The cottage,” she said automatically, wanting to wrap Shane in the comfort of his favourite place on earth.
Shane groaned slightly. “The cottage is out of the question. They found carpenter ants in one of the walls. It’s all torn apart while they’re treating it.”
There was a long pause.
“Of course they did,” Rose said, temporarily thwarted. “I know, I know.” She reached for her phone again, already scrolling. “So let’s go to… plan B.”
Shane didn’t look interested but Rose was undeterred. “You go abroad,” she said, angling the screen toward him anyway. “Somewhere anonymous. Somewhere nobody cares. I’ve got access to this house swap network for clients who need privacy. Rich people trading houses with other rich people who don’t want questions asked.”
A flicker of something crossed his face: scepticism, maybe. Rose tapped, pulled up a listing.
“Look. This one, Russian woman, Svetlana Petrova. She’s got two properties. A flat in London, although that’s too exposed, in my opinion, and a cottage in Yorkshire.” She scrolled, then held it steady. “She needs to be in Montreal for a month. Perfect timing.”
Shane didn’t move for a second. Then, slowly, he lowered his knees just enough to see the screen. Stone walls. Low ceilings. A small kitchen with mismatched cabinets. A garden that looked slightly overgrown. Grey sky. No neighbors in sight.
No cameras.
No glass.
No one watching.
“It’s… quiet,” he said.
“That’s the point,” Rose replied softly.
He hesitated, eyes lingering on the images.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “This is…”
“A temporary escape?” she suggested. “Exactly what you need?”
He huffed faintly but before he could argue, she tapped a few more times.
“There,” she said briskly. “I’ve put in your interest and sent it to your phone. You can back out if you hate it.”
“Rose…”
Her phone buzzed and she read the incoming text. “That’s Jerry, baby. I have to go,” she cut in, already standing, grabbing her bag. “I hate leaving you like this, but I can’t get out of this.”
She paused, softening. “Try to breathe a little.” She leaned down, pressing a quick kiss to the side of his head, then headed for the door. “Service exit,” she reminded him. “And don’t answer unknown numbers.”
The door clicked shut behind her.
Silence.
For about three seconds.
Then his phone started buzzing again. Sluggishly, as though he hadn’t walked for days, Shane dragged himself from the sofa and looked at his phone on the kitchen counter.
Mom.
He stared at it until it stopped.
Then it started again.
Hayden.
Another message pinged. Then another. Notifications stacking faster than he could read them.
The room felt smaller now. Louder, even in silence.
He dragged a hand down his face, exhaling shakily, and reached for the phone, flipping it over. He stared at nothing.
The phone continued to buzz.
Slowly his hand turned it back over and he opened it, navigating to the message from Rose. Opening it, he clicked on the link to her discrete house swap website and looked at the listing. Svetlana Petrova, Russian, Strategic Advisor. A cottage. It would be like his place, he told himself. Quiet. Isolated. Safe. No one would be there. No one would care about him. He couldn’t stay here in Montreal, that was the only certainty he could cling on to at the moment.
The phone buzzed again and he jumped. Another incoming call from his mom.
Finally, he hit answer and spoke before she could “Mom, can you get me a ticket to Yorkshire, England?”
*
The rental car smelled faintly of air freshener and something citrus that didn't quite cover the underlying damp. Shane gripped the steering wheel harder than necessary, knuckles pale against the black leather, eyes fixed firmly on the ribbon of road unspooling ahead of him.
He still wasn't used to being on the wrong side. Every instinct he’d built over fifteen years of driving insisted he should be sitting on the other side of the car, in the other lane. Every right-hand bend made him flinch. Every approaching vehicle looked, for a split second, like it was driving straight at him.
"Stay left," he muttered under his breath. "Stay left..."
The first hour out of Newcastle Airport had been manageable enough. Motorways. Multiple lanes. Familiar road markings, even if everything was mirrored. Then the satnav had guided him onto smaller roads. Then smaller still.
Now...
Now there was just this.
Grey ribbon-like tarmac threading its way through rolling green hills, hemmed in on both sides by dry stone walls that looked older than Canada itself. Beyond them, sheep dotted the fields like scraps of dirty wool, lifting incurious faces as he crawled past. The light was strange here: flat and silvery, as though the sun was somewhere overhead but couldn't quite be bothered to make an appearance. Every now and then the road climbed high enough for the North Sea to appear between the hills, vast and slate-grey beneath the cloud cover before disappearing again behind another rise.
It was beautiful.
Not the dramatic beauty of the lakes back home. This landscape seemed quieter than that. Soft green hills folded into one another, stitched together with ancient stone walls and narrow lanes that looked as though they hadn't changed in centuries.
A sign flashed past.
He had learned in the last hour that it meant: ‘Single track road with passing places’. He really, really hated that sign. English signs had rapidly become his least favourite things.
A sign had warned him to watch for sheep.
Another had warned him about concealed entrances.
Another simply announced: ‘Give Way’
He’d had to Google that one while waiting at a petrol station.
“Yield,” he muttered under his breath. “You could just say yield.”
As if on cue, the satnav's pleasant English voice announced,
"Continue for two miles."
"Two miles of this?"
The road narrowed again. It shouldn't have been physically possible, and yet somehow it happened. Stone walls pressed close enough that he found himself drawing in a breath, as though making himself smaller might somehow help the car fit between them. A battered Land Rover appeared around the next bend, faster than it had any right to be. Too close. Entirely on what his brain insisted was his side of the road.
“Jesus!”
He swerved instinctively toward the stone wall, heart lurching, convinced he was about to sideswipe either the car or several hundred years of Yorkshire infrastructure. Instead, the other driver slowed with practiced ease and pulled into a gap in the wall Shane hadn't even realised was there, completely relaxed, one hand on the wheel. Like this wasn’t a near-fatal experience.
A passing place.
The rental slipped by with inches to spare. The driver lifted two fingers from the steering wheel in a casual wave. Shane stared at him in despair. “Right,” Shane breathed. “Sure. Totally normal.” The road narrowed even further. He didn’t understand how that was possible, but it did. And now a soft strip of grass and moss ran down the centre of the road. That felt like it might not be a good thing for a Canadian driver in a rental car drenched in growing panic.
Slowly, the road climbed steadily higher, twisting around blind corners bordered by foxgloves and ferns. His shoulders nudged higher, hunched about his ears, his knuckles white around his death grip on the steering wheel. Another sharp, blind bend, taken at a crawl, to face a cluster of sheep standing directly in the centre of the road. Shane hit the brakes a little harder than he'd intended, The car rocking gently to a stop, as the animals turned their heads toward him in slow, collective confusion.
The sheep looked at him.
He looked at the sheep.
"...You've got to be kidding me."
One of them bleated forlornly.
"Yeah," Shane muttered. "No, I get it."
His imagination conjured images of battered land rovers screeching around the bend and smashing into the back of his rental. Or worse, pulling up on the other side of the sheep. A Yorkshire stand-off ensuing. He really needed to move.
He tapped the horn.
Nothing.
Another, slightly longer press.
One sheep wandered vaguely towards the verge. Another appeared to be ruminating on the meaning of existence. The rest simply stood there, chewing thoughtfully.
Shane dragged a hand down his face. "This isn’t real."
Eventually he eased forward and the sheep reluctantly and balefully moved to the sides of the narrow road. For a while there was nothing except the crunch of the tyres on the broken road, the wind pushing gently against the car, and the occasional cry of gulls carried inland from somewhere beyond the hills.
Then the satnav chimed again.
"Turn right."
"There is no right." he muttered.
And there wasn't.
There was, maybe, the barest suggestion of one: a break in the stone wall leading onto something that looked less like an actual road and more like someone had repeatedly driven across a field until the grass had surrendered and pretended to be a road.
"This is a driveway."
"Turn right."
He hesitated, and then, because apparently he’d committed to this entire sequence of increasingly questionable decisions, he slowed and turned. The car bumped vigorously onto rougher ground. The lane became even narrower, grass brushing against the doors on either side. The stone walls fell away in places, replaced by open moorland where the wind flattened long grasses into purple waves.
Then the sea appeared.
It stretched along the horizon in endless shades of blue-grey, merging almost seamlessly with the sky. Far away, tucked into a curve of the coastline, sat a cluster of red roofs and narrow streets surrounding a harbour. Close enough to see, but far enough away to feel entirely disconnected.
The satnav chimed one last time.
“You have reached your destination.”
He looked around.
“There’s nothing…”
Then he saw it. Half-hidden, crouched behind a crooked hawthorn hedge sat a low stone cottage. Grey-coloured stone walls, a weathered slate roof, two squat chimneys. Ivy creeping lazily across one side and a narrow gravel drive curved toward an open wooden gate.Beyond it, the land fell away sharply toward the sea, the coastline stretching north in a jagged line of cliffs and surf.
It was terrifyingly, gloriously isolated.
No neighbours.
No glass towers.
No cameras.
Only wind in the long grass and the distant sound of the sea.
Shane pulled the car up by the gate and switched off the engine. His phone, face down in the cup holder, said nothing. He turned it over almost cautiously. No messages. No missed calls forcing their way through.
No signal.
He sat there for a moment, hands still resting on the steering wheel. Rose had been right. Nobody here knew who he was. Nobody here cared. Outside, a lone sheep in the next field lifted its head, regarded him with complete and utter indifference, then went back to eating grass. Shane let out a slow breath. It was, he decided, the warmest welcome he'd received all week. He reached for the door handle and stepped out of the car.
*
The wind hit him first.
Cold and immediate, cutting clean through his jacket the moment he opened the car door. Not just cool, but damp.
“Right,” Shane muttered, stepping out and squinting up at the sky. “Love that.”
The cottage was considerably smaller than it had looked in the photographs. Shane had called his own open, glass cabin a ‘cottage’ for years and had expected something equivalent. It was not. It was small and squat, and the arrangement of doors and windows leant it a vaguely judgemental expression.
The door was thick wood, slightly warped and painted a blue that might once have been brighter. There was no keypad. No keyless entry. No anything, really. Svetlana had sent a number of messages about the cottage and he had remembered to print them out at the last minute. He fumbled in his bag and pulled out the paper, which instantly became a little damp and a little crumpled in the Yorkshire air. He found a line reminding him about a lockbox, but there wasn’t one of those visible either. He set off to explore the perimeter of the cottage.
He found it eventually, fixed a little crookedly to the wall beside a lean-to. It took him three tries to get the code right, fingers slightly numb from the wind, before it clicked open with a small, deeply satisfying sound. Inside: a single, very solid-looking brass key.
“Wow,” he exhaled. “Vintage.”
The key didn't work.
Shane frowned at the lock, tried repeatedly, before once again fumbling in his pocket for the notes from Svetlana. ‘Lift handle before turning key.’
"...Of course."
He lifted the worn brass handle and the lock clicked immediately. He felt an absurd rush of triumph, but then the door stuck when he pushed it. “Come on,” he muttered, leaning his shoulder into it. It gave all at once, swinging inward with a faint groan.
There was a strange chill inside, that rippled through him. How was it colder than the outside? He stepped inside anyway, dragging his bags after him, and shut the door firmly against the wind. The cottage smelled faintly of woodsmoke and lavender. As he closed the front door, it fell silent except for the faint ticking of what sounded like an ancient clock somewhere deeper in the house.
He stood in what was apparently the main room.
It was...
Cosy.
Cosy, in the way people used when they meant small.
The photographs hadn't really conveyed how small it was. There was a low ceiling, whitewashed walls and heavy wooden beams crossing overhead. A large squashy fabric sofa was pushed up against one wall and an enormous stone fireplace took up most of the opposite side. Drawing it together was a large worn Persian rug, placed over the battered, but varnished wooden floorboards. Where possible, there were books overflowing from mismatched shelves, and a window seat piled high with faded cushions beneath tall sash windows. Dried flowers sat in a chipped blue jug on the mantelpiece and someone had left a knitted blanket folded neatly over the arm of the sofa.
It didn't look like a holiday rental. It looked lived in. Loved.
His shoulders loosened before he realised they had. He smiled slightly.
The cottage was quirky. But quirky was okay. It had a fireplace and was isolated and…
"...Is that a fish?"
A large stuffed fish stared at him from its vantage point on the wall, with an expression of permanent surprise.
Shane stared back.
"...Right."
That was a choice.
A doorway led into the kitchen, which was somehow even smaller. The cupboards were painted in mismatched colours and lined with checked fabric. The wooden worktops were worn silky smooth with age. A Belfast sink beneath another sash window looking out across windswept fields towards the sea, and copper pans hung from a rack above an old-fashioned range cooker.
Everything was spotless.
Everything was also at least thirty years older than anything he'd owned since he was drafted. He turned slowly and opened the closest cupboards. There was no coffee machine. There was, however, a kettle: A bright pink kettle, sitting proudly on the counter beside a dizzying quantity of Yorkshire Tea.
A welcome basket sat on the table with bread, butter, eggs, cheese and jam. A packet of Chocolate Hobnobs was sticking jauntily out of the top, alongside something labelled Yorkshire Tea Cakes.
A handwritten card rested on top, decorated with small flowers.
Welcome, Shane!
Help yourself to anything. The milk is in the fridge. Boiler instructions are in the blue folder. Please don't let Boris the hedgehog into the house if he visits. He means well, but he has no manners.
—Sveta
Shane read it twice.
He wasn't entirely convinced she was joking.
The chill had settled somewhere between his skin and his bones. He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. If Britain insisted on being cold in June, the least it could do was provide tea. He clicked on the switch of the kettle. Nothing happened. He tried again, then reached for the round lightswitch on the wall, shaped vaguely like a breast, and flicked the nipple. His inner child sniggered.
Nothing happened… Electricity then.
The blue folder lay exactly where Svetlana had promised.
WELCOME TO BRAMBLE COTTAGE
He opened it, flipping past neat handwritten sections.
Heating.
Hot water.
Aga instructions (important!).
Electricity.
There were twenty-seven pages: a mixture of official documents and handwritten instructions.
Emergency Numbers.
Recycling Collection Days.
The Wood Burner.
The Septic Tank.
Television.
Boiler.
Boiler.
Additional Boiler Notes.
"...There are three sections on the boiler?"
As he flicked through the folder, the headings became increasingly unhinged. A second style of handwriting began appearing more and more often: jagged, emphatic block capitals contrasting with the looping cursive he assumed belonged to Svetlana.
If the upstairs toilet whistles, ignore…
The back gate sticks in the wet …
The sheep belong to Malcolm. Please …
The gulls cannot be reasoned with ...
Boris is not allowed inside after The Incident…
Shane realised that this wasn’t an instruction manual, it was an extended record of cottage lore.
He sighed and turned back to the start.
Step One: Switch immersion heater on at wall.
Wall? He looked around, searching until he found it: an ordinary seeming light switch beside the small pantry. He flicked it and was unsurprised when nothing happened. He tried again, then glanced down at the note scrawled in the jagged handwriting beneath it: ‘NO. NOT THIS ONE. OTHER ONE. BEHIND KETTLE.’, underlined twice. He turned and saw, tucked discreetly behind the kettle, another switch.
He flicked that and a tiny orange light glowed to life. The kettle clicked on.
He allowed himself a tiny nod of satisfaction. "...Your electricity has electricity." He murmured, returning to the pantry switch and shaking his head in despair thinking about the maze of wiring that must be tangled somewhere inside the walls.
Britain was exhausting.
His phone battery had slipped below five percent during the drive. Even though there was a stubborn lack of reception, he could not let it die, so he dug out his travel adapter, plugged it into the wall and connected the cable.
Nothing.
He stared. Unplugged it. Plugged it back in.
Still nothing.
After five increasingly irritated attempts he noticed the tiny red switch beside the socket. He pressed it and the charger immediately sprang to life. Shane looked at it for a long moment.
"You people don't trust your own plugs."
Shane made himself a cup of tea. The cupboards had revealed an assortment of crockery, all mismatched. There were at least seventeen different mugs. He had chosen one with the word ‘Whitby’ scrawled in a gothic font in front of an image of what appeared to be Dracula. It made no sense to Shane, but the tea was hot and bitter. He had added a splash of fresh ‘full cream farm milk’ and groaned at how good it tasted. As he drank, he idly reached for the welcome basket note, smiling at the hand drawn flowers. He flipped it in his fingers and saw the spiky, jagged handwriting on the back. “EAT THE HOBNOBS. SO GOOD!” Underlined twice.
Shane frowned slightly. He looked at the packet, then looked back at the note. Whoever this second person was, they seemed oddly invested. He opened the packet.
They were right.
They were so good.
*
His suitcase bumped against every other stair as he hauled it upstairs. The staircase was narrow and steeper than he expected, the steps worn slightly uneven in the middle. He had to dip his head to avoid headbutting one of the ancient beams.
“Definitely up to code,” he murmured.
The bedroom was… beautiful.
One large bed, with a handcrafted patchwork quilt thrown over it in pinks, reds and yellows. Beneath it, crisp white cotton sheets, soft and smooth. The ceiling was low, and another sash window framed a view of the sea and sky merging to one. Next to the window was a delicate vase filled with fresh wildflowers, arranged chaotically but charmingly. There was a book by the bedside table: Yorkshire Folk Tales, and a warm blanket folded over an overstuffed floral chair.
Outside, rain began tapping softly against the window. He crossed the bedroom and tried to open it. It refused to budge. He frowned at it: was it painted closed? He pushed harder.
Nothing.
After a brief wrestling match with Victorian engineering, he finally noticed the little brass catch at the top, he turned it and the lower half of the window slid smoothly upwards.
"...Well."
Cold, salt-scented air drifted inside. Somewhere beyond the fields he could hear gulls crying and the breath of a wind.
He rested both hands on the old wooden sill and closed his eyes. The cottage creaked quietly around him, settling into itself and he felt a wave of tiredness brushing against him.
The en suite bathroom was the most modern thing he had seen for the last few hours. A shower stall and a bathtub, with separate taps.
“Hot and cold?” he said, staring at them. “You’re kidding.”
He turned one cautiously. Water spluttered out, aggressively cold. He turned the other and waited as something somewhere inside the walls gurgled ominously, and then jerked his hand back as a burst of scalding water spluttered out.
“Great. Excellent system. No notes.”
By the bobbled obscure glass window hung a message, absurdly in embroidery, the letters starting a little muddled, before the confidence of the artist clearly grew: PLEASE LEAVE THE WINDOW AJAR. Okay. He smiled and turned to exit, before crouching slightly. He stood straight, then crouched again, frowning at the ornate brass framed mirror on the wall. It had been hung at the perfect height for someone who was very much under six feet tall. Shane could only see his chest reflected, unless he crouched low. Assuming the position, he looked at himself in the mirror. It had tiny black spots where the silver backing had worn away and one corner of the frame had been repaired with glue. His eyes scanned these details before settling, briefly, on his reflection. Pale face, dark smudges under his eyes.
He stood straight and leaned against the small sink, taking it in. It was… ridiculous. Completely impractical and slightly inconvenient in almost every possible way.
And yet, there was something about it.
About the quiet. The thick walls. The fact that nothing here was trying particularly hard to impress anyone.
No glass walls.
No city noise.
No phones ringing themselves into oblivion.
Just a small, stubborn, slightly chaotic cottage on a cliff in the middle of nowhere.
Shane let out a slow breath, some of the tension he’d been carrying since Montreal easing, just slightly.Downstairs, the pipes clanked again, a little louder this time, as the cottage slowly, reluctantly, began to warm.
“Okay,” he said softly. “This might work.”
After unpacking his suitcase, the travel and time difference finally caught up with Shane. He pulled on his softest pyjamas and crawled into the enormous bed beneath the patchwork quilt. The mattress dipped comfortably beneath him, warm and unexpectedly forgiving. He’d barely put on his glasses and opened ‘Yorkshire Folk Tales’ before the words began to blur and the book slid down onto his chest.
A minute later, he was asleep.
*
The rain woke him, and not gently. It hammered against the cottage, drumming on the slate roof and rattling the sash window hard enough to make the old glass shiver in its frame.
Shane jerked upright, heart racing. For one disoriented, panicked second, his mind scrabbled for context.
Photos.
Montreal.
Reporters
No.
Stone walls.
England.
The cottage.
A flash of lightning split the room, bleaching everything white before plunging it back into darkness. Thunder followed a heartbeat later, rolling across the cliffs hard enough to make the bedframe hum beneath him.
“Jesus Christ.”
His eyes snapped to the en suite bathroom and the painstakingly embroidered sign: PLEASE LEAVE THE WINDOW AJAR.
“Absolutely not.”
He stumbled out of bed, bare feet recoiling against the cold floorboards, and crossed the room. Rain had forced its way through the narrow opening, speckling the windowsill and dampening the chair beneath. The brass catch was slick with rain and resisted him for several seconds before finally giving way with a sharp click. He shoved the window down and immediately, the storm became distant. Shane stood there for a moment, resting one hand against the old wooden frame and looked out through the rain-streaked glass.
The sea had vanished entirely, swallowed by darkness and weather. Every so often lightning revealed the cliffs in brief, ghostly flashes, before they disappeared again. The wind howled around the cottage.
Something downstairs creaked. Then clunked.
The pipes, he told himself firmly. Just an old house with opinionated pipes.
Another gust, another creak, and the clock downstairs ticked on with infuriating calm. Shane climbed back into bed and dragged the quilt up to his chin. The cottage settled around him with soft groans and sighs, as if the storm had woken it up as well.
Eventually, his breathing slowed, and he listened, learning the rhythm and pattern of the house. His eyes drifted closed.
*Click*
His eyes snapped open again and he stared into the darkness, frowning, listening as hard as he could. Just as he felt the need to breathe in again, he heard another creak. The wind.
Probably.
*Click*
No.
That hadn’t been the wind. That had been metal. The definite sound of metal. A key. A key turning in a lock. Shane’s entire body went rigid as he listened to the unmistakable sound of the groaning front door swinging open.
Someone muttered something downstairs. The words were unfamiliar, but they landed with all the weary emphasis of a curse. A deep male voice and Shane couldn't understand the words spoken, his panicked, tired mind struggling to organise what was happening.
The front door closed with a heavy thud.
Silence.
Then the sound of footsteps, slow and unhurried.
Shane’s pulse slammed against his ribs.
The reporters…
No.
No reporter would have a key.
…would they?
His brain supplied a quick, unhelpful list:
Wrong cottage.
Burglar.
Serial killer.
British serial killer. (Worse somehow.)
He slid silently out of bed. There wasn’t much in the bedroom that qualified as a weapon.
A lamp: too flimsy.
The book: not ideal.
He eased the door open and stepped onto the landing. The staircase dropped away into darkness. There was another creak from below and a sigh.
Shane glanced around wildly, still failing to see anything that could be used as a weapon. He crept halfway down the stairs and peered around the bend. The sitting room flickered with intermittent lightning from the front windows and Shane saw the shape of a man standing with his back to him, shrugging off a rain-soaked coat. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with dark hair plastered to his head by the rain. He was humming to himself while picking up what looked suspiciously like groceries.
What kind of burglar brought groceries?
Lightning flashed again and Shane gasped. The man turned quickly and their eyes met. For one suspended heartbeat, neither of them moved.
Then…
They both screamed.
Instinct took over and Shane lunged for the closest object within reach. The stuffed fish came cleanly off the wall and he gripped it in both hands like a baseball bat.
The man stared at him, water dripping steadily from his hair, down his nose, onto the floor.
A long, incredulous silence pulled taut between them.
Finally, in a rich Russian accent, the man said, “Don’t threaten me with a dead fish.”
Shane tightened his grip. “Who the hell are you?”
The man blinked. “I was just about to ask you exactly the same thing.”
Shane’s heartbeat was pounding in his chest and throat, as he stared at the intruder, brandishing the fish like a weapon. The accusatory tone had taken him by surprise and his fear was starting to crystallise into indignation.
“I’m supposed to be here.” He announced, frustrated at the way his voice cracked slightly. He cleared his throat and regrouped. “I have a reservation,”which felt like an important detail under the circumstances. Yes, that was better: a tight, clipped voice that conveyed his confidence.
Then the stranger took a step towards him and he raised the fish slightly, fingers tightening. The man stopped and raised a hand slightly, in what could have been a placating gesture and he seemed to be trying to make his body physically smaller and less threatening. It was not working.
“I think, maybe, there has been a mix up” he said in a low, calm voice, his eyes gazing steadily at Shane, a small smile quirking the corner of his mouth. “Perhaps you could put Freddy down and we can talk?”
Shane blinked and raised the fish higher, squaring his body and trying to look fierce and capable. “Freddy?”
“Yes”, the man gestured at Shane. “Freddy Fish. He has maybe had a difficult life, yes? We should let him rest.”
He grinned. A broad, wide smile that revealed his teeth.
To Shane’s overstimulated mind, it looked terrifying.
He gripped the fish tighter and tried to look fierce. “Why are you in my house?”
“Is not your house.”
“Excuse me?”
The man tilted his head and raised his eyebrows, “Is mine.”
For one awful, heart dropping moment, Shane thought maybe he had stumbled into the wrong isolated Yorkshire cottage and had made himself at home in a stranger's house. His brain skidded to a halt, before regrouping and realising that that was ridiculous: he had the notes from Sveta and the welcome basket. Of course this was the right cottage.
“No. It isn’t” he argued firmly. “It’s Svetlana Petrova’s. I’m Shane Hollander. I’m here from Canada. As a house swap. She’s at my Montreal apartment. You’re in the wrong place and I need you to leave.”
The man looked at him intently, before closing his eyes and letting out a deep, frustrated sigh.
“Ok,” he said tiredly. “Ok. I think maybe there has been a mix up. A mistake. Something.” He waved his arm tiredly around the room, as if it could help him explain. “Please put down Freddy Fish. He looks so scared it is hurting my heart.” He placed one big hand over his own heart and directed a small, boyish half smile at Shane.
The change of energy in the room left Shane feeling ridiculous. He slowly placed the stuffed fish on a shelf, not quite relaxing and not taking his eyes off the man, whose smile deepened and, oh my god, he had actual dimples. Shane noticed them, and then was instantly irritated that he had done so. He covered his stray thoughts with a deep frown.
“So who are you and why are you here?” he demanded again and the man gave a small bow.
"Ilya Rozanov. Cousin of Svetlana Petrova. Wet. Cold. Very hungry." He gave a tiny shrug. "Owner of Bramble Cottage. I think."
“You think?”
“Is late, I’m so tired. But yes, I think is my house.” He pointed to a shelf, upon which was a small, framed photograph of a man and a woman laughing at the camera. The woman was beautiful with curly hair blowing in the breeze. Beside her grinned the man who was currently standing, dripping, in the living room of Shane's escape cottage. Behind them was Bramble Cottage, dazzling in bright sunlight.
“But I have documents…”
“Svetlana.” Ilya sighed and moved to rest on the arm of the sofa. “She is on her fancy house swap website, yes? And people stay at her flat in Mayfair. But also she offers Bramble Cottage.” He waved his hand again. “Which is not hers. Is mine.”
Shane felt the fragile peace he'd so carefully wrapped around himself begin to splinter apart. “Have I been scammed? Is this a trick?” he whispered.
Shane didn’t know what his face was doing: it was numb. But something on it caused the man, Ilya, to stand and hold out his hand, making soothing noises. “No, no no.” he said softly. “Is not a scam. Is a mistake, yes? I thought Sveta said her swap guest had changed his mind. Wanted to stay in London, yes? I thought Bramble Cottage was empty. Is just a misunderstanding. Easy to fix.”
He was watching Shane like he was a skittish wild animal.
Shane swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “So,” he said, with forced steadiness, “you’re saying this is a mistake.”
“Yes.” Ilya nodded, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. “A very stupid mistake, but still a mistake.”
“And you just… walked in.”
“Is my house,” Ilya replied mildly. “I thought it was empty. I did not expect to be attacked by a man with a dead fish.”
Shane pressed his lips together. “It was a reasonable response in the circumstances.”
Ilya’s grin returned to his face. “Of course,” he said. “Was very tactical.”
Shane nodded and attempted to reconstruct the framework of his life. “Right. Fine. So. This is clearly Svetlana’s fault.”
“Yes,” Ilya agreed immediately, with deep conviction. “This is definitely Svetlana’s fault.”
That, at least, was common ground. It was so sensible that Shane felt some of the panic begin to loosen its grip and the tightness in his chest eased just a fraction. “Okay. Good. Then we’ll call her in the morning and she can… fix it.”
“Yes.”
They both stilled and looked at each other. Great. That was tomorrow pencilled in. Shane felt his body tightening awkwardly. The storm rattled against the cottage windows, a low, persistent roar pressing in around them. The lights flickered once, briefly, then steadied again. Shane glanced toward the window, then back to Ilya.
“And in the meantime,” he said carefully, “you’ll… leave?”
Ilya blinked at him.
“Leave,” Shane repeated, more firmly. “And come back tomorrow. And then we can sort this out.”
Ilya glanced over his shoulder toward the door, where rain was still lashing against the wood in relentless sheets. Then he looked back at Shane.
“Is two in the morning,” he said.
Shane hesitated.
“I walked six miles to get here,” Ilya added, “In the dark. In the rain.” He gestured vaguely toward his still-damp clothes. “I am not going back out there.”
Shane followed the gesture despite his better instincts. His jeans were soaked through. Water was still dripping steadily from the ends of his curls, pooling faintly on the wooden floor. And his top had plastered itself to an annoyingly impressive chest.
“You didn’t drive?” Shane asked weakly.
Ilya shrugged. “Where is the fun in that?”
Shane stared at him. “This isn’t fun,” he said.
Ilya smiled. “You were holding a stuffed fish like a weapon in a storm, in the middle of nowhere. It is a little bit fun.”
Shane didn’t rise to that. He pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, he looked tired and resigned, understanding the way this scene had to play out.
“Fine,” he said, shortly. “Fine. You can stay. For tonight.”
Ilya inclined his head slightly, accepting this as if it had never been in doubt.
“We’ll call Svetlana in the morning if we can get reception somewhere,” Shane continued, already restructuring the situation into something manageable. “And she’ll sort out where you’re supposed to be and where I’m supposed to be. And then you’ll leave.”
“Yes,” Ilya agreed easily.
Shane nodded, once. “Good.”
Another small pause settled between them. Less sharp now, but still awkward. Shane glanced up the stairs and then down. His feet shuffled slightly.
Ilya glanced toward the sofa. “I will sleep here,” he said.
Shane looked at it too, then back at him. “That’s… probably best.”
“Yes.”
“Right,” he said. “Well. Good. That’s settled.”
They stood there for another few seconds, neither apparently sure how two strangers accidentally sharing a cottage were supposed to end the conversation. Rain hammered against the windows. The old pipes clanked somewhere in the walls, a hollow, echoing sound.
“Do you need blankets?” he asked stiffly, gesturing vaguely toward the sofa without looking directly at Ilya. “I think there are some upstairs. Somewhere. And… tea. There’s so much tea in the kitchen if you want it.”
“I always want tea,” Ilya smiled. “Is my house Shane Hollander. I know where spare blankets are.”
Of course. Idiot. Shane hesitated, just long enough to almost add something else, then thought better of it.
“Good night?” he said instead.
Ilya nodded solemnly.
"Goodnight, Shane Hollander from Canada."
"Goodnight, man who may or may not own this cottage."
"I think I do."
That earned the smallest ghost of a smile from Shane. He picked up Freddy Fish from the shelf where he'd abandoned him, regarded him thoughtfully for a second, before carefully rehanging him on his hook.
"There."
Ilya watched approvingly. "Better. He looks happier now"
This was a lie. The fish looked as outraged as he ever had. But the comment settled something in place, and Shane turned to leave.
He climbed the narrow stairs, every tread creaking beneath his feet. He paused outside the bedroom door and listened. Nothing. Just the steady hiss of rain against the windows and, after a few moments, the soft rustle of blankets as Ilya settled onto the sofa below.
He closed the bedroom door.
Downstairs, Ilya stared up at the heavy oak beams above him. The sofa was approximately six inches shorter than he was. He sighed.
Upstairs, Shane lay awake staring into the darkness, every creak of the cottage making him wonder why he had just agreed to spend the night under the same roof as a complete stranger.
Downstairs, Ilya wondered what kind of man instinctively armed himself with a stuffed fish.
The storm continued to sweep across the fields around them.
Neither of them slept particularly well.