Page 97 of The Last Inch Of Ice
Kai feels the words slam into him.
Generational talent.
It’s the kind of over-the-top platitude commentators use, the kind of hyperbole that means nothing.
But coming from Rykov—from a guy who once blamed Kai for ruining his draft position, who spent years treating him like a nepotism case with a pretty face — it’s something else.
Oh yeah.
It’s a fucking pity.
Kai knows with sickening certainty what this is. Rykov, after that night in the shower, after seeing him shattered and broken and begging him to leave, has decided that what Kai needs is a public relations boost. A pat on the head from the league’s new golden boy. A charitable act disguised as sports commentary.
The fragile shell cracks.
All the grief, the anger, the bone-deep exhaustion of the last few months—it comes rushing in like a tidal wave. Pure rage that feels stronger than anything he’s felt since Liam died.
He pulls out his phone before he can talk himself out of it. Types out a message to a number he’s never deleted despite every rational reason to do so.
Kai:Next time you’re in Toronto, we need to talk.
The message sits there for a long moment, delivered but not read.
Then three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.
Nazar:when?
Kai:Whenever you’re here next. I don’t care when.
Nazar:tuesday next week? or I could fly in tonight
Kai:Fine. Tuesday. Next week.
He throws the phone across the room where it bounces off the hotel armchair and lands safely on carpet. His hands are shaking. He doesn’t know if it’s from anger or something else.
The week passes in the same blur. Games and practices and mandatory media appearances where he gives the samemeaningless quotes about “taking it one game at a time” and “focusing on team success.”
Tuesday arrives too quickly.
They meet on a street corner in the Annex, near the university.
Rykov is already there when Kai arrives. He always looks bigger in person than on TV. His hands are shoved in his pockets, his shoulders hunched slightly.
When he sees Kai, something shifts in his expression. Softens. It makes Kai even angrier.
“If you say one moregoodword about me in the press,” Kai says without preamble, his voice shaking with barely controlled rage, “I will fucking kill you.”
Rykov just looks at him. Those dark, unreadable eyes taking him in. Then he shrugs — a slow movement that somehow manages to be both dismissive and accepting at once.
“Then you’ll have to kill me,” he replies simply. “Because I’m not going to stop.”
The calm certainty throws Kai completely off balance. All the arguments he’d prepared, the speeches about pity and condescension and not needing Rykov’s charity, die in his throat.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Rykov says. “There’s a park near here.”
The domestic absurdity of the suggestion is a shock to Kai’s system. A walk. In the park. Like they’re normal people having a normal conversation instead of whatever twisted thing they actually are.
“No.” A different impulse takes over. Reckless, self-destructive, but at least it feels like choosing something instead of being carried along by everyone else’s decisions. “Invite me to your place.”
