Page 93 of The Last Inch Of Ice
It’s insane.
But he’s already running, not for the elevators but for the stairs, taking them three at a time, his hand sliding on the metal railing.
He bursts through a service exit into the cool night air. The shock of it after the hotel’s climate control making his eyes water.
He rounds the building, his dress shoes slipping on wet pavement still slick from earlier rain. He looks up. Third floor. That window.
Below it, there’s a decorative ledge. Above that, architectural detail that might hold weight. Might not.
This is insane. He could die. He could fall and crack his skull open on the concrete below and die for nothing because Kai won’t even want him there.
But the image of Kai’s face in that hallway — empty and broken — propels him forward.
Nazar has been climbing things his entire life. Trees as a kid in Ukraine and then Canada. The fence behind his grandmother’s house when he snuck out at fifteen. Rock climbing walls in off-season training.
This is different. This is three stories up in dress shoes on wet brick with no safety equipment and the very real possibility of dying stupidly.
He starts to climb anyway.
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Chapter 28 Nazar
His fingers find edges, his shoes scrape against stone, and he’s moving on pure animal instinct. The blood roars in his ears, drowning out the rational part of his brain.
His hands are already scraped raw.
The street below is just far enough away that he doesn’t look down. Can’t look down. If he looks down, he’ll remember that falling from this height would kill him, or at best leave him paralyzed, and his career would be over and his grandmother would have to identify his body and—
Don’t think about it. Just climb.
Third floor. His lungs are burning, his muscles screaming.
The decorative ledge he’s using is narrower than it looked from the ground, and one of his shoes loses purchase entirely for a heart-stopping second before he catches himself.
Finally. The window he saw Kai standing in earlier. Except it’s closed now. Locked.
Panic spikes through him. He didn’t consider this possibility—that Kai would close the window, that he’d climb three stories for nothing.
He knocks on the glass. His knuckles are bleeding, leaving red smears. He knocks again, harder, desperate, not caring if he breaks it.
For an endless moment, nothing happens.
Then a pale face appears in the darkness beyond the glass.
Kai.
His eyes are red-rimmed, his cute face blotchy.
He presses his pink nose against the pane, staring at Nazar like he’s a hallucination. Like his brain can’t process what it’s seeing.
They stare at each other through the glass.
Nazar can see the exact moment comprehension hits—Kai’s eyes widening, his mouth forming a silent “what the fuck.”
The window slides open with a soft whoosh.
Nazar hauls himself over the sill in a graceless heap, landing hard on plush carpet.
