Page 50 of The Last Inch Of Ice
With his parka hood still up, shadowing his face, snowflakes caught in his blonde hair, he looks like something out of a goddamn fairy tale. A beautiful, angry prince stranded in a fluorescent hellscape.
Nazar forces himself to look away.
Burke is on his phone near the entrance, his expression progressively grimmer as the conversation continues. When he hangs up, he waves everyone over.
“Okay, here’s the situation,” he announces. “The TV crew that was supposed to cover the charity game is still planning to come pick us up. They’ve got a van with four-wheel drive and a camera operator who used to do extreme weather coverage, so they’re better equipped than we are. They’re waiting for a window in the storm—the weather service says there should be a break in about two to three hours. They’ll come get us then.”
“Two to three hours?” Sam asks, looking around the convenience store with visible dismay. “Here?”
“There’s a motel attached,” Burke says, pointing toward a door at the back of the store with a hand-written sign that says “MOTEL OFFICE →“. “We can wait in the lobby. It’ll be more comfortable than standing around in here.”
“Define ‘comfortable,’” Kai murmurs, but he’s already moving toward the door.
Nazar grabs coffee from the pot by the counter—his fourth cup of the day. He knows he should stop. He’s already jittery with caffeine and adrenaline.
He drains half the cup in one swallow anyway. The bitter heat does nothing to calm the energy crawling under his skin.
Across the store, Sam is showing Kai something on his phone. Kai leans in, and a small, genuine smile graces his lips for exactly half a second before his usual mask slides back into place.
It’s unsettling how quickly Kai has managed to win them over.
A month ago—hell, two weeks ago—most of the team wouldn’t have crossed the street to help him. Now they orbit him like he has his own gravitational field, drawn in by his sharp wit and that understated authority Nazar is only just beginning to recognize.
Kai has somehow made himself indispensable. He knows everyone’s coffee order. He remembers the names of their girlfriends and pets. He gives brutally honest feedback about gameplay that somehow doesn’t feel like criticism. He loans Sam his Spotify Premium login when Sam’s subscription lapses. He brings extra phone chargers to away games because Alex always forgets his.
He socializes with all of them in his own arrogant, detached way.
With everyone except Nazar.
* * *
An hour later, they’ve migrated to the attached motel lobby.
The front desk is unmanned, a hand-written sign saying “BACK IN 15 MIN” that looks like it’s been there for significantly longer than fifteen minutes.
They scatter into worn armchairs and a sagging couch, a loose constellation of bored hockey players with nowhere to be and nothing to do except scroll through their phones and wait for the storm to pass.
Burke is on his phone with the TV crew again. Chase and Armstrong are playing some kind of card game on the coffee table. Sam is showing Vyachovsky YouTube videos that apparently involve people doing stupid things on motorcycles.
Kai sits slightly apart from the group, in an armchair near the vending machines, scrolling through his phone with Bonifazio’s carrier at his feet.
The cat has finally stopped yowling and appears to be sleeping, which is probably the most peace any of them will get today.
Nazar watches from his position across the lobby, trying to look like he’s not watching. Trying to look like he’s absorbed in his own phone, reading some article about training techniques that he’s not actually processing at all.
He sees the exact moment Kai gets up. Sees him glance around the lobby, checking who’s paying attention—no one except Nazar—before heading toward the vending machine tucked away at the end of a short, dim corridor.
Nazar is on his feet before his brain has fully processed the decision.
He doesn’t follow directly. That would be obvious, stupid.
Instead he cuts through another hallway that runs parallel to the main lobby—past bathrooms that smell like industrial cleaner, past a door marked “EMPLOYEES ONLY”—circling around to approach the vending machine from the opposite direction.
He positions himself in a blind spot from the main seating area, leaning against the wall, watching.
Kai studies the vending machine’s contents with the same focused intensity he brings to analyzing game footage. His brow is furrowed in concentration, like the choice between Doritos and Cheetos is a matter of life and death.
He doesn’t look at Nazar, but the slight tightening of his shoulders says he knows exactly who’s standing ten feet away.
