Page 116 of The Last Inch Of Ice
He skates toward the exit.
“Rykov?” Someone calls his name—Miller, maybe. “You good?”
He doesn’t answer. Can’t answer. Just keeps skating until he hits the tunnel leading to the locker rooms.
In the empty hallway, he braces his hands against the cold concrete wall and tries to remember how to breathe.
Nazar had spent years hating Kai. Blaming him. Convinced himself that the Callahan name was poison, that Kai was everything wrong with hockey.
When all along, Kai was the reason Derek died.
Not because Kai did anything wrong. But because Derek saw a kid who needed protecting and did what Derek always did — tried to help. Tried to be decent in an indecent world.
And paid for it with everything.
Derek had tried to save Kai.
In that moment, Nazar feels closer to his brother than he ever has, and nothing feels more certain than his need to fight for Kai.
He needs to talk to him. Needs to know if Kai knows the connection between Derek and himself.
But first, he has to stop shaking, has to wrestle control over the rage and grief threatening to consume him.
34
Chapter 34 Kai
Afew days pass, and a strange, unfamiliar anxiety begins to creep in.
It starts small. A check of his phone every fifteen minutes. A hyperawareness of every notification sound, every buzz. The way his heart jumps every time the hotel elevator dings on his floor.
After the charity event something fundamental had shifted.
No text. No call. No knock on his hotel room door at two AM. Just silence, vast and echoing.
Kai tells himself it’s fine. That he’s overthinking it. That Nazar probably just needs time to process.
But three days stretch into four, then five, and the silence starts feeling less like processing and more like abandonment.
Kai could reach out himself. He knows this. The words are right there, composed and deleted a dozen times on his phone:Tonight. We need to talk.
But something stops him every time. Pride, maybe. Or fear. The bone-deep terror that if he reaches out and gets rejected, it will confirm what he’s always suspected — that he wants this more than Nazar does.
So he waits. And hates himself for waiting. And checks his phone obsessively anyway.
The last night they’d spent together had felt different. Like they’d crossed some invisible line from whatever they were before into something real.
Nazar had shown him that he wanted to be with him. Not just physically. But actuallywithhim. Present. Attentive. Tender in ways Kai hadn’t known he was capable of.
And Kai had wanted it more than he’d ever wanted anything. Had already started planning in his head. Figuring out logistics. How they could keep it quiet, protect Nazar from his father’s reach. It should be safe now — Kai had done his part, created the public distraction with Rey, muddied the waters enough that no one would be looking at Nazar.
But it was always better to be careful. Always safer to assume his father had eyes everywhere.
So maybe that’s why Nazar hasn’t reached out. Maybe he’s being careful too. Maybe the silence is strategic rather than personal.
Kai repeats this to himself like a mantra while he packs up his condo for the off-season. Sorting through equipment that needs to be shipped, throwing out protein powder that expired three months ago and trying to decide what to do about the small garden of dying houseplants he’s neglected all season.
Bonifazio watches him from his cat tree.
