Page 45 of The Last Inch Of Ice
He looks away quickly, feeling like he’s seen something private he wasn’t meant to see.
When he comes back out into the hallway, Kai is just turning the corner from what must be the bedroom, his face set in a frown.
They’re alone for the first time since Nazar arrived, the noise of the living room a distant buzz.
Kai stops walking. They’re standing maybe six feet apart in the dim hallway.
“I’m in my pajamas because I’m at home, Rykov,” Kai says, his voice a low, clipped murmur. So he’d waited until they were alone to finally deliver the response. “But if I had known you were coming, I would have worn a tuxedo. Obviously.”
Nazar’s blood pressure spikes. His brain cycles frantically through a thousand possible responses—apologies, explanations, defensive remarks—but before he can land on anything coherent, Sam comes bounding into the corridor, laughing as he shoves his phone in Vyachovsky’s face.
“Look at this! Armstrong just sent me a picture of that chick with a piece of spring roll—”
The moment is gone. Kai slips past them both and back into the living room without another glance at Nazar.
Nazar has no choice but to follow, seething in silence.
* * *
Later, as people settle back onto various furniture surfaces, Kai picks up the remote and starts scrolling through his TV’s home screen.
Nazar watches from his position in the armchair. The folders are meticulously organized.
‘90s Power Plays. European Transition Drills. Obscure Goalie Techniques 1960-1980. Swedish Defensive Systems. Soviet-Era Training Methods.
Categories Nazar has never even heard of, let alone thought to study.
His gaze drifts beyond the television to the dining area, where floor-to-ceiling bookshelves line an entire wall.
About thirty minutes later, he slips quietly into that room.
The shelves are full—overflowing, really. Sports biographies. Tactical manuals. Histories of the game in three different languages. Coaching philosophy. Sports psychology. The physics of skating and body mechanics.
Most of the books are worn at the edges, spines cracked, some pages marked with tabs or scribbled notes in the margins. Not just owned—but studied. Revisited.
A strange, sharp pang of something hits Nazar’s chest. Shame, maybe. Or embarrassment.
He’s snooping, studying, an uninvited guest learning secrets he has no right to know. And it’s becoming sickeningly clear that Kai’s casual brilliance, his seemingly effortless understanding of hockey—it isn’t an act.
It’s not some trust fund kid playing at being smart about sports.
The guy is genuinely obsessed. Has been for years, maybe his whole life. His passion for the game, so obvious when he was analyzing that Oilers footage earlier, is completely real.
It’s like watching someone forget to turn on their filter. Forget to be the scandalous Callahan offspring, the problematic player, the headline generator. And just become a person who loves something more than anything else in the world.
The thought makes Nazar’s heart do something painful and complicated in his chest. A hot, sweetly aching sensation spreads through his ribs.
He wants to see that again. Wants to see the Kai who forgets the performance and justis.
He’s seen it before—in fleeting moments. In the dazed, unguarded aftermath of pleasure, when Kai came undone beneath his hands and forgot to be defensive or sarcastic or anything except present.
The realization hits him with sudden, gut-wrenching certainty: he’s hooked on those moments.
Addicted to those brief, incandescent flashes of the real Kai Callahan like a fucking drug he can’t quit.
14
Chapter 14 Kai
