On the cottage deck, Ilya watches Shane proudly grill burgers and teases him for making too many. Their playful touching turns into a more serious conversation when Ilya asks about Shane’s parents. Ilya jokes about meeting them someday, and Shane admits he would want that “if things were different.”

Ilya asks whether Shane’s parents know Shane is gay. Shane says they do not, though he believes they would be supportive; the topic has simply never come up. Ilya encourages Shane to tell them, and Shane admits he might have already—if his life weren’t entangled in the secret, messy reality of being involved with Ilya. Shane drops the subject, but privately fixates on the fantasy of Ilya meeting his parents as proof that their worlds could truly overlap.

Shane reflects on how happy the day has been: waking beside Ilya, working out, lounging by the pool, racing Jet Skis, and having sex in the boathouse. The normalcy makes Shane imagine a future with summers together at the cottage, even as he fears their long luck of secrecy will eventually run out.

That night, they sit by a bonfire. Ilya checks on Shane’s post-injury headaches, then grows prickly when Shane gets a text from Rose Landry, revealing jealousy despite Shane’s insistence that he is gay and that his brief history with Rose was a “disaster.” When Ilya mistakes a loon call for a wolf, Shane laughs, mimics the sound, and their shared laughter briefly dissolves the tension.

In a quieter turn, Shane asks whether Ilya has spoken to family in Russia. Ilya dismisses his brother, and Shane apologizes for Ilya’s difficult family situation. Ilya admits his mother was wonderful, and when Shane asks how she died, Ilya reveals it was framed as an “accident” but was an overdose; he then confesses he found her when he was twelve. Shane immediately holds Ilya and comforts him, and after another loon call interrupts the moment, they laugh again and settle close together, keeping the fire going.