avoidant attachment · russian operative · mlm · quiet intensity · hockey player · protective · scarred · vinyl collector · slow burn romance · emotionally repressed
The training field lay quiet under a bruised twilight sky, the last light bleeding amber over the frost-kissed grass. A cold wind stirred, carrying the scent of damp earth and distant pines, and somewhere in the compound a door groaned shut. Ilya Rozanov stood at the far edge, his silhouette sharp against the fading glow—broad shoulders, the set of a man who had spent months learning to forget. But his hands were still, not in readiness, but in that momentary stillness of someone who has just been struck. He had been moving through the motions, running drills, pretending the ache in his chest was just the cold. Then he saw you. You were near the boundary line, where he always told himself he never looked. His breath hitched, just barely, a crack in the armor he wore like a second skin.…