Page 86 of The Last Inch Of Ice
Something in Nazar’s chest tightens painfully.
“Does she know?” Kai asks suddenly. “About… this? Whatever this is?”
“No.” The answer is immediate, instinctive. “She can’t.”
“Right.” Kai’s smile is bitter now. “Of course not. God forbid anyone know that Nazar Rykov is capable of wanting something messy and complicated that doesn’t fit into his perfect narrative.”
“That’s not—” Nazar stops, frustrated. “It’s not about that.”
“Then what is it about?”
The question hangs between them. Nazar doesn’t have an answer. Or he does, but it’s too complicated to articulate, too tangled up in his own fears and Derek’s ghost and the weight of expectations he’s been carrying for so long he’s forgotten what it feels like to be without them.
“I think about you constantly.” The admission is raw, unplanned. “It’s fucking ridiculous. I’ll be in the middle of a game and suddenly I’m wondering what you’re doing, if you’re watching, if you saw that pass. Or I’ll hear some song and thinkyou’d probably hate it because it’s too mainstream or whatever. Or I’ll see someone order some pretentious coffee drink and—”
He stops, realizing he’s rambling. That Kai is staring at him with an expression he can’t read.
“You think about me,” Kai repeats slowly.
“All the fucking time.” Nazar sets his mug down harder than intended. “Since Vancouver. Since before Vancouver, if I’m being honest. Since that draft combine when I fell on you and couldn’t breathe properly for three days afterward because I couldn’t stop thinking about—”
He cuts himself off, but it’s too late.
Kai’s eyes have gone wide. “You couldn’t stop thinking about what?”
Nazar feels his face heat. This is not how this conversation was supposed to go. “Nothing. Forget it.”
“No.” Kai sets his own mug down and takes a step closer. “Say it. You’ve been thinking about me since the combine? Since we were eighteen years old?”
“Nineteen,” Nazar corrects automatically. “I was nineteen. You were eighteen.”
“Jesus Christ.” Kai runs a hand through his hair.
“But I’m done running from it.”
“From w-what?”
“From this!” Nazar gestures between them. “From wanting something I couldn’t have. From needing someone who represented everything I was supposed to hate. Your father destroyed my brother’s career. Did you know that? My brother played for Toronto. For your dad’s team. And Doyle Callahan made sure he’d never play professional hockey again because my brother had the audacity to stand up to him. And now my brother is dead.”
Kai’s face has gone pale. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know about your brother. "
“Why would you?” The bitterness in Nazar’s voice surprises even himself. “You were busy being the golden child, getting everything handed to you.”
“Handed to me.” Kai’s voice goes flat. “Is that what you think?”
“What else am I supposed to think?”
“That maybe I worked my ass off despite my father actively trying to sabotage me at every turn? That maybe having his last name made everything harder, not easier? That I spent my entire childhood proving I wasn’t just some rich kid playing at being an athlete?” Kai’s hands are shaking now. “You want to hate me for things I didn’t do, fine. But don’t you dare accuse me of not earning what I have.”
The silence that follows is electric, charged.
“I’m sorry,” Nazar says finally. “For that. For a lot of things.”
“I visited your grandmother because she was lonely,” Kai says after a long moment. “And because I was lonely. And because for one hour every two weeks, I got to be in a place where no one expected me to perform or explain myself or be anything other than a person who likes cats and bad Ukrainian TV dramas.”
“She makes you watch those?”
“I make her watch them. There’s this one about a vampire who runs a restaurant in Kyiv—it’s terrible and I’m obsessed with it.”
