Page 106 of The Last Inch Of Ice
The rumors started three weeks ago—whispers on hockey Twitter, blind items on gossip sites, grainy photos from paparazzi with telephoto lenses. Kai and some pop singer. A guy named Rey something.
Nazar looked him up once, hated himself for doing it, and did it three more times anyway.
Rey Tinnery. Country singer who’d gone pop. Recently came out as gay in a very public, very strategic way that got him on every talk show and magazine cover.
The photos show them together at clubs, restaurants, leaving hotels. Kai’s hand on his arm. Rey leaning in close to whisper something. Both of them looking comfortable, familiar.
When Nazar looks at it, he doesn’tbelieve it.
He knows Kai too well. Maybe he’s fooling himself, mistaking desire for reality, but not a single cell in his body thinks Kai had anything to do with that singer.
It drives Nazar absolutely insane. The not-knowing. The imagining. The way his brain supplies scenarios he doesn’t want to picture—Kai laughing at something Rey said, Kai in Rey’s bed, Kai giving someone else the vulnerability he’d shown Nazar in Toronto.
It’s exactly the kind of chaotic, public spectacle Kai would orchestrate. A deliberate middle finger to everyone who’d ever questioned him. A statement:Yes, I’m gay. Yes, I’m dating someone famous. Cope with it.
And on one level, Nazar gets it. Respects it, even. The balls it takes to come out in professional hockey, where the culture is still stuck somewhere in 1987. The courage to do it on his own terms, publicly, defiantly.
But whynow? Why with someone else when they’d just — when Toronto had felt like the beginning of something real?
Nazar’s jaw clenches so hard his teeth ache. He remembers his own words, his own promise:I won’t be responsible for my actions.
He’d meant it as reassurance. As a declaration that he wasn’t going anywhere, that Kai couldn’t push him away forever. But now it feels prophetic in ways he didn’t intend.
He had spent weeks after Toronto imagining a future. Lying awake in hotel rooms, staring at dark ceilings, working through dozens of scenarios.
How they could make it work. How it would affect their careers—his specifically, since he had more to lose in termsof endorsements and public image. The Comets’ management. His teammates’ reactions. His grandmother’s reaction, which he dreaded and anticipated in equal measure.
He’d decided he would take the risk. All of it. Would come out if that’s what it took to be with Kai openly. Wouldn’t hide or lie or treat what they had like it was shameful.
The only part he hadn’t been able to solve was how to protect Kai from the inevitable backlash. How to shield him from the worst of it: the slurs, the violence, the professional consequences that always seemed to land harder on people who didn’t have the luxury of looking straight.
Andfucking nowit seems Kai has decided to come out on his own terms.With someone else. Not with Nazar. Not for Nazar.With someone who looks good in photos and has a publicist and knows how to work the media cycle.
The rational part of Nazar’s brain—the part that still functions despite everything— knows he has no right to be that angry about this. They never defined what they were. Never had the relationship conversation. He can’t claim ownership of someone who never agreed to be claimed.
But the other part—the part that remembers Kai’s voice in that Toronto bedroom, the way he’d whispered “okay” like it cost him everything — that part feels betrayed. Dismissed. Replaced.
“Yo, Rykov!” Sam’s voice cuts through his spiral. “Dude, did you see this?”
Nazar looks up from where he’s been staring at the bench press without actually touching it. Sam is huddled with Vyachovsky and Norskiy near the water fountain, all of them staring at someone’s phone with expressions that make Nazar’s stomach drop.
He stalks over, a cold dread snaking its way up his spine. “What?”
Sam looks up, and there’s something in his face, pity mixed with shock, that makes everything worse.
“It’s Callahan,” Vyachovsky says quietly. “Someone got photos. They’re everywhere.”
Nazar doesn’t ask. Just takes Sam’s phone from his hand and looks at the screen.
The ground disappears from under his feet.
It’s a series of grainy, long-lens paparazzi photos, the kind that get sold to tabloids for obscene amounts of money.
Kai emerging from what looks like a car or building entrance, his face half-hidden by his hand as he tries to shield himself from the camera flashes. His signature move, that defensive gesture Nazar has seen in hundreds of photos.
But in one shot, his hand is down. Just for a second. Just long enough.
And Nazar’s breath catches in his throat, his vision tunneling.
