Page 108 of The Last Inch Of Ice
Don’t tell me not to come
If you don’t want to see me, too bad
He deletes them all. Kai would just read them and run. Would disappear before Nazar could arrive. Would protectwhatever image he’s trying to project at the expense of his own safety.
So Nazar says nothing. Just shows up. Takes action.
It’s what he’s always done. What he knows how to do.
The rest—the talking, the explaining, the emotional processing—he’ll figure out when he gets there.
The jet is small, luxurious in ways that make Nazar uncomfortable. Leather seats that recline into beds. A flight attendant who offers him champagne he doesn’t want.
Kai is down there somewhere. Hurt. Possibly in danger. Definitely shutting Nazar out.
The flight takes just over two hours. Nazar spends it staring at his phone, looking at those photos again and again. Studying the bruise, the angle of it, trying to figure out exactly how someone would have to hit Kai to leave that mark.
His hands are shaking by the time they land.
It’s past midnight when he arrives at the building.
Nazar stands on the sidewalk for a moment, looking up at the lit windows high above.
He heads for the entrance, his jaw set, his purpose clear.
Whatever happens next, whatever Kai says or doesn’t say, at least Nazar will know he tried. That when it mattered, he showed up.
Even if Kai doesn’t want him there.
32
Chapter 32 Kai
Kai sees him on the security camera feed. A hulking, frantic shape on the front step of his building.
The figure is pacing, running his hands through his hair, checking his phone, pacing again. Even through the grainy black-and-white footage, Kai recognizes the particular brand of barely-contained chaos.
His heart doesn’t just leap into his throat, it performs an entire Olympic gymnastics routine.
Nazar Rykov. Here. In Toronto. At his building. At almost one in the morning.
Kai’s thumb hovers over the intercom button. He should let him stand there. Should ignore this. Should maintain the careful distance he’s spent weeks constructing brick by agonizing brick.
But the alternative—the sound of Rykov breaking down his front door, which looks entirely possible based on his bodylanguage—is a level of drama even Kai isn’t prepared to deal with. He doesn’t need to add property damage to the list.
He buzzes him in.
The sound of the door unlocking echoes through the intercom, and he watches Nazar disappear from the camera frame.
Kai has maybe forty-five seconds before he reaches the seventeenth floor. Forty-five seconds to prepare himself for whatever confrontation is about to happen.
He adjusts his sunglasses. Celine, oversized, the kind that could hide a whole face. And positions himself in the hallway. Casual. Unbothered. Like he’s not currently having a minor cardiac event.
The elevator dings.
Nazar bursts into the corridor like he’s been shot from a cannon. His hair is disheveled, his jacket half-zipped, his sport bag slung over one shoulder. He looks like he dressed in the dark and then ran several miles. He probably did.
He stops when he sees Kai. Just stops dead, ten feet away, and stares.
