Page 80 of The Last Inch Of Ice
The rage is a flash flood. Hot and blinding, sweeping away all reason and self-control.
The words are out of his mouth before his brain can engage any kind of filter.
“Isn’t it enough that you stole my fucking teammates? The team I wanted?” His voice is harsh, ugly. “Now you’re trying to steal my grandmother too?”
Kai flinches like Nazar has physically struck him.
The color drains from his face, leaving the faint red scar on his cheekbone standing out in stark relief against pale skin. He looks at Nazar with an expression Nazar has never seen before—not mockery, not that careful blankness he uses as armor.
Just pain.
Kai opens his mouth like he might say something. Then closes it. Swallows visibly.
He gives a tight, formal nod to Halina—a gesture of respect and apology that somehow makes everything worse—then turns and walks away.
His back is ramrod straight. His stride is measured, controlled. He doesn’t look back.
Nazar stands frozen on the front path, his heart hammering against his ribs like it’s trying to escape his chest.
The echo of his own ugly words hangs in the cold January air like visible breath.
His grandmother is looking at him. Her smile is gone. Her expression is something Nazar has seen only a handful of times in his life—when he got suspended from school for fighting, when he came home drunk at sixteen, when he told her he was quitting university to focus on hockey.
It’s disappointment.
“Nazar Oleksandrovych,” she says quietly, using his full name in the way that means he has seriously fucked up. “Come inside.”
But Nazar is watching Kai’s retreating figure. Watching until he turns the corner and disappears from sight.
The regret that washes over him is so profound it’s physically nauseating. His stomach clenches.
He hadn’t meant it. Not really. Not the way it came out.
It was absurd. Ridiculous. The idea that Kai would be here to somehow spite him, to take something that belonged to Nazar. His rational brain knows that’s insane.
But he’s so fucking tormented by the fact that Callahan—the one person he wants to talk to more than anyone else in the world—seems perfectly happy to talk to everyone except him.
Kai has Sam’s number. Vyachovsky’s. Miller’s. Apparently his grandmother’s fucking phone number and address. He’s kept in touch with half the Wolverines roster. He’s built relationships, maintained friendships.
But not with Nazar.
Never with Nazar.
And seeing him here, in this place that should have been safe from their complicated mess, laughing and promising to come back… it broke something in Nazar’s chest and the rage came pouring out before he could stop it.
Now he’s probably guaranteed that Kai will never speak to him again. Will never look at him with anything except that wounded expression. Will never give him another chance to not fuck everything up.
The emptiness that floods through him is absolute.
“Nazar,” his grandmother says again. “Inside. Now.”
He follows her into the house, past the familiar furniture and family photos, into the kitchen where the borscht is still simmering on the stove.
She doesn’t speak for a long moment. Just busies herself with putting food into containers.
“That boy has been visiting me for two months.”
Nazar’s head snaps up. “What?”
