re: Hollanov getting outed, narrative structure, and the story you want to tell

Stories (such as romance novels) are all about tension. There is a conflict which the characters are affected by and at some point, that conflict and the tension created by it as resolved (not always positively!). In romance novels, that conflict is also called "the barrier between them"¹ because the central problem is not whether the protagonists get together and live Happily Ever After, but how they overcome the internal or external obstacles that are keeping them apart at the beginning of the story.

In The Long Game, the main barrier between Shane and Ilya and their HEA is homophobia in hockey generally and the fallout of their relationship with each other as Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov specifically. This is an external obstacle that was already present in Heated Rivalry, but that book focused on how the external obstacle also created internal barriers, making them unable to believe that they could ever be together, and the resolution there is "we can't overcome the external obstacle, but we can accept that we love each other and that acceptance makes us happy." It makes a lot of sense for this story to focus on the internal conflict because the external conflict is basically insurmountable.

The Long Game has to end with Shane and Ilya publicly out and in a relationship with each other because this second HEA needs to be a progression from the first one, because otherwise the story stagnates. So there are three options for when in the book it happens: the beginning, the middle, or the end.

ALT

If the outing (labelled "bradgate" in the above, extremely scientific illustration) happens at the beginning of the book, it has to be the inciting incident for the story and the main conflict would then be about navigating the fallout of getting outed, leading to some kind of climax that resolves the resulting tension between Shane and Ilya and brings them back together.

If it happens in the middle of the book, there would still need to be a conflict leading up to it because otherwise there wouldn't be a story. So they would be not out for half the book, dealing with something else, then get outed and spend the other half of the book dealing with the fallout of getting outed. I'm sure it would be possible to make this work somehow, maybe if the first half was also about information being leaked, but generally this would be bad storytelling practice for genre fiction and especially romance, which prioritises the protagonists' relationship over external plot and therefore usually keeps the latter to a minimum.

The third option, the one we ended up with, positions getting outed as part of the resolution to the tension created by the protagonists' relationship. The Long Game primarily revolves around Shane and Ilya realising that their previous HEA doesn't work for them anymore and trying to negotiate what they want (to stop having to hide their relationship) with the external obstacle represented by the league and the threat to their careers and safety. By the time they are outed against their will, they have already decided to come out themselves in a couple of months and are so secure in their relationship that they are willing to accept the negative consequences. Bradgate then functions to increase the stakes so the story doesn't just trickle towards an ending (if they had been in control and come out after the season ended, the realistic and in-character plan, the outcry wouldn't have been so immediate; it would all have happened online and in meetings with lawyers during the off-season, which would be boring to read about).

If The Long Game started with Shane and Ilya being outed against their will, it would be a very different book. Diving deeper into the consequences and backlash would be a really compelling and emotionally intense story, but it would be a complete tonal shift from the rest of the series, which prioritises queer joy as an empowering force while acknowledging the limitations of the main conflict (homophobia in men's sports). The Long Game as it was published instead centres the protagonists growing both as individuals and as a couple so that they are able and ready to stop hiding, because they love each other and are choosing their love over the potential negative consequences. All of the couples in the series actively choose to be together (and the closeted characters choose to be open about their queerness) because that's what makes them happy and gives them the kind of life they want, and The Long Game ultimately lets Shane and Ilya make that same choice before Bradgate accelerates their timeline.

As a book, it definitely has its flaws! Not every part of it is executed as well as it could be and the constraints of the genre mean the ending feels rushed because there are a lot of loose ends to tie up. But Shane and Ilya were always going to be out and married at the end of it and the choices made in the construction of that narrative make perfect sense to me. This is not the only possible version of the story, nor is it the only good version of the story, but it is consistent with both the genre conventions and the author's other work and successfully does what it sets out to do.

¹Pamela Regis, The Natural History of the Romance Novel