United States

The United States is both a career destination and a contested home in the novel: Ilya Rozanov moves from Russia to Boston to begin his NHL life, while Boston becomes a discreet but increasingly intimate setting for his relationship with Shane Hollander. The country’s significance is closely tied to professional hockey, movement between cities, and the strain of building a private life within a highly visible career.

Career Destination and a New Independence

In the lead-up to his move, Ilya imagines what leaving Russia will mean: he will live in Boston, begin his NHL career, become rich and famous, and, most importantly, become his own man away from his family. He has never spent more than a couple of weeks outside Russia at a time, so the move represents a major break with the life he has known as well as a professional beginning. The United States initially holds the promise of independence and opportunity, but that promise is bound to the demands of a public, team-centered career.

Boston anchors that new professional life. By the time Shane visits, the two teams have arrived that morning, held a short practice in the afternoon, and have a game scheduled for the following afternoon. The narrow interval between practice and competition makes the players’ free evening feel like a temporary opening in a tightly ordered work schedule. Later, Ilya considers leaving Boston when his contract makes him a free agent after the next season, and wonders about joining a Canadian team instead. His possible departure shows that the United States is a consequential home, but not necessarily the final one he imagines for himself.

Boston as Home and Meeting Place

The city’s importance shifts from professional destination to private setting. After arranging their Boston hookups in hotel rooms, Ilya and Shane move them to Ilya’s Boston penthouse. Shane worries that entering the building could expose them, but recognizes that this is not his only objection: meeting in Ilya’s actual home makes their relationship feel more personal. The penthouse unsettles the boundary Shane tries to maintain between a secret encounter and a shared life.

That change is sharpened by the places they used before. Shane’s investment property offered a degree of separation from his own daily life; Ilya’s home does not. On one Boston visit, Shane leaves his hotel, takes a short cab ride to the building, and texts Ilya from the steps. The ordinary logistics of the visit sit beside Shane’s continuing fear of being seen, while the decision to meet at home gives their long-running relationship a greater sense of intimacy.

A Cross-Border Hockey World

The United States appears through a network of hockey cities and travel rather than as an extensively described landscape. Boston is the central American setting for Ilya’s move and the couple’s meetings; Nashville enters as a destination on the teams’ schedule, and a flight carrying Ilya passes over Pennsylvania. These details place the players’ lives in constant motion, with air travel, practices, and games shaping when they can meet and where they can be.

The novel also keeps the United States within a broader international frame. At the Sochi Olympics, Shane encounters Scott Hunter, captain of Team USA’s men’s hockey team, and Carter Vaughan, Hunter’s teammate both at the Games and with the New York Admirals. The scene takes place in Russia, not the United States, but it presents American hockey identity as one part of a competition that crosses national borders. Likewise, the pressures surrounding sexuality are described as conditions within the NHL: Shane doubts that its claimed inclusiveness matches the slurs and hostility he has encountered on the ice and in dressing rooms. That league-wide climate shapes the characters’ choices across their different homes; it should not be mistaken for a detailed account of American society alone.

The Limits of Staying

Boston gives Ilya a first home away from Russia and becomes a place where the secret relationship can acquire domestic weight. Yet the future the couple eventually discusses points beyond the United States. Shane offers Ilya access to his real Montreal apartment, even the space for a toothbrush, and plans to sell the separate building he bought out of fear. The contrast reframes Boston: it is indispensable to their history, but their imagined shared life is no longer confined to Ilya’s American home. The United States matters as a place of beginnings, work, and secrecy, while the possibility of moving elsewhere marks the couple’s effort to make a home on different terms.