Page 112 of The Last Inch Of Ice
“What kind of cream do you use? For the bruise.”
The question is so unexpected that Kai actually laughs. It comes out broken, slightly hysterical. “Arnica gel. From Whole Foods. It’s in the medicine cabinet.”
“I’ll get you more tomorrow.”
“You have a game in Boston.”
“I’ll return to you.”
“You can’t—”
“Watch me.”
Kai doesn’t have the energy to argue. His body is heavy with exhaustion, bone-deep and complete. The kind of tired that sleep won’t fix but might make bearable.
He reaches for his phone on the nightstand.
His Instagram has 847 new notifications. Twitter is probably worse. He doesn’t want to look but does anyway because he’s apparently a masochist.
He sees it before he can stop himself.
Someone’s tagged him in a clip from a podcast, one of those bro-heavy hockey discussion shows that are ninety percent dick jokes and ten percent questionable takes on zone defense.
A player named Kahl—Dallas Stars, very talented, very aggressive—has made a joke at Kai’s expense. Something about fisting and Kai’s “new lifestyle choices” and how maybe that’s why his game’s been off.
The hosts are laughing.
The dark humor of it should roll off him by now. He should be immune. Should have built up enough scar tissue that this kind of casual cruelty doesn’t register anymore.
But he’s tired. So fucking tired. And the cruelty lands anyway, sharp and precise as a scalpel.
Nazar leans over—Kai hadn’t realized he was watching—and takes the phone from his hand. Sets it face-down on the nightstand with a definitive click.
Then he kisses Kai again. A soft, gentle press of lips that asks for nothing. No heat, no demand. Just contact. Reassurance.I’m here.
It might be the most pleasant sensation Kai’s ever felt. Not the sex—though that was fantastic—but this. This quiet care from someone who has every reason to hate him and chooses not to.
Overwhelmed by weariness, Kai feels his eyelids begin to droop. The combination of emotions and adrenaline crash and Nazar’s solid warmth beside him is pulling him under like anesthesia.
He’s drifting off, that space between waking and sleep where thoughts get strange and unfiltered, when he hears it.
Nazar’s voice, whisper-quiet against his hair. The words vibrating through his skull where Nazar’s mouth rests against his temple.
“I swear to God, Kai. I am going to destroy your father. He will never touch you again.”
Kai should tell him no. Should explain that you don’t just destroy Doyle Callahan. People have tried and ended up destroyed themselves. Should warn him that his father has connections and resources and a complete absence of conscience that makes him extremely dangerous.
But he’s too tired. And some small, vindictive part of him—the part that still has Liam’s voice in his head, the part thatremembers being seven years old and asking why his father never came to his training—that part wants to see someone try.
So he says nothing. Just lets himself drift off, cocooned in Nazar’s warmth.
33
Chapter 33 Nazar
Nazar ends the call with Oksana, setting his phone down on the hotel desk with care when what he really wants to do is throw it through the window.
“Yes,” he’d told her, his voice steady despite the rage simmering in his gut. “Set up the meeting. But only journalists you trust completely. People who won’t fold when the Callahan lawyers come knocking.”
