Chapter 20 Nazar
For Nazar, All-Star Weekend always felt like a sensory overload, designed by someone who’d never actually experienced joy—only a corporate approximation of what fun was supposed to look like.
LED screens flashed sponsor logos. Manufactured cheers blared through speakers.
And players, who spent the rest of the season trying to tear each other apart on the ice, were forced into awkward displays of camaraderie.
Nazar moves through the various skills competitions and press junkets like he’s wading through concrete, utterly unable to match the manic energy everyone else seems to be performing.
He can see the way other players give him a wider berth than usual.
He’s never been known for his sunshine personality—Alex once described him as “a storm cloud that learned to skate”—but today he’s radiating pure exhaustion and something darker.
Even Miller, who’s usually too oblivious to notice emotional weather patterns, approaches him with visible caution in the players’ lounge.
“Hey, man.” Miller sits down next to him, holding a protein shake that’s an alarming shade of green. “Everything okay? You look like you’re about to commit a felony.”
“Fine,” Nazar grunts, not looking up from his phone. “Just tired of this circus.”
“Right.” Miller doesn’t sound convinced. “Because you normally love media circuses. Big fan of clowns and performative bullshit.”
Nazar finally looks at him. “Did you need something specific, or are you just here to practice your therapy voice?”
“Jesus. Okay.” Miller holds up his hands in surrender. “Forget I asked. But for the record, you’re scaring the rookies.”
He knows he needs to focus. This isn’t just a meaningless spectacle—though it mostly is.
His performance here, after such a dominant first half of the season, could be career-defining. The kind of thing that ends up in highlight reels and gets dissected during contract negotiations—especially if he’s hoping for a spot with the Toronto Wardens.
But the practical voice of discipline that usually governs his entire existence is muffled, shoved aside by the constant, agonizing noise of one person.
Kai.
Nazar has forbidden himself from thinking about that night in detail. Has literally made it a rule: Do not replay the awards ceremony. Do not examine what happened. Move forward.
But the images flash anyway, intrusive and brutal: the cold, slick tiles of the men’s bathroom.
The desperate heat of their bodies pressed against porcelain and chrome. And Kai’s voice—that ragged, heartbreaking sound that Nazar will apparently carry with him until he dies.
“Nazar, please. Take me. Now.”
He feels like he’s aged a decade since he forced himself to say no. The restraint in that moment — the adult maturity it required — cost him something he can’t quite name.
Kai’s broken whisper seems to have taken up permanent residence beneath his skin, resonating with every heartbeat.
He desperately needs to talk to Kai. Two days after the awards, Nazar had texted him. Something stupid and transparent. Enough trivial that both of them would recognize as an excuse.
Kai didn’t reply.
Nazar had stared at his phone for an hour, watching the “delivered” notification like it might spontaneously change to “read.” He’d debated calling. Typed out three different follow-up messages and deleted them all.
He hadn’t called.
Now, standing in the arena’s main corridor, he scans the bustling halls. Clusters of athletes in expensive athleisure. Agents in suits that cost more than most people’s monthly rent. Camera crews looking for content.
No flash of golden hair. No sharp blue eyes tracking him across a room.
The Skills Competition begins—a garish blur of timed shooting drills and passing competitions designed to look impressive on social media.
Nazar executes his events with robotic precision, hitting every mark, nailing every shot. The crowd cheers. Someone from ESPN wants a quote about his technique.
He goes through the motions and sees nothing.
“Where’s Callahan?” he asks Miller between events, catching him as he’s strapping on his helmet for the accuracy shooting.
Miller shrugs. “He’s not coming, man. Family thing. You didn’t hear?”
“What family thing?”
“I don’t know, some emergency or whatever. His agent put out a statement this morning.”
Nearby, a small knot of player s—two Bruins defensemen and a Rangers forward— exchange looks and low chuckles.
“Family thing,” one of them repeats, making air quotes. “Sure. Daddy probably needed him for some corporate photo op.”
“Or didn’t want him embarrassing the family name on national television,” another adds.
They’re not being particularly quiet about it. The casual cruelty of locker room culture, where Kai’s reputation is still a punchline.
A knot of icy panic tightens in Nazar’s stomach, completely disproportionate to the situation.
He’d been living for this weekend. Had convinced himself, with increasing desperation, that he’d see Kai here.
That he’d be able to corner him somewhere and make him look at him.
Make him listen. Break this pattern and move forward.
He finds a quiet corner by the tunnels and pulls out his phone. His thumb hovers over Kai’s name in his contacts for a full thirty seconds before he presses it.
It goes straight to voicemail. That automated voice means Kai has either turned off his phone entirely or blocked his number.
Nazar’s panic congeals into something heavier—a sinking feeling that drags at his energy like he’s skating through mud.
He forces himself to finish his obligations. Smiles for one mandatory photo.
Gives one monosyllabic interview where the reporter looks increasingly uncomfortable.
His agent, David, finally corners him after the last drill, practically dragging him into an empty press room.
“Nazar, listen. I’ve been trying to get a moment with you all weekend.
” David looks wound up, rubbing his hands together in that way he does when he’s about to pitch something he thinks Nazar really likes.
“The mid-season discussions are already underway, and trust me, there are serious conversations happening about moving you. Toronto’s interested.
Montreal’s interested. Very interested. They’re talking numbers that would make your current contract look like—”
David’s words dissolve into muffled static.
Nazar is suddenly floating in fog, untethered from the conversation. The panic of nights ago—the bathroom, Kai’s voice, the monumental effort it took to say no. The ache of what he’d refused. And now the crushing reality of Kai’s absence, the unanswered text, the blocked call.
It all conspires to dull his senses, to make him feel like he’s hearing David from underwater.
Moving you to… What? Where? He can’t process it. He’s usually hyper-aware, able to cut through bullshit and focus on essential facts with surgical precision. This inability to concentrate is highly irregular. Foreign.
“We’ll talk later,” he manages to say, his voice coming from somewhere far away. “Before the game.”
“But Nazar, this is—”
“Later.”
He walks away, leaving David staring after him.
Nazar is consumed by the gnawing problem of Callahan, and nothing else seems to penetrate.
He’s used to acting, to pushing through obstacles with discipline and focus.
But this time, the internal logic loop is unbreakable: I need to fix this with Kai before I can think straight.
I can only talk to Kai if I can find him.
I can’t find him because he’s not here and won’t answer. So I am stuck.
It’s the kind of circular reasoning he’d mock if he saw it in someone else.
* * *
Sunday. The final day.
The official All-Star Game is hours away, but the players are mingling in a massive temporary hospitality suite that’s been set up in one of the arena’s luxury boxes.
There’s a catered spread that no one’s eating, a full bar that several people are definitely using, and about fifteen different conversations happening simultaneously.
Nazar stands by the coffee station—because of course he’s having coffee while everyone else is drinking champagne at eleven a.m.—watching a group of veteran players huddled around a mounted flat-screen, muttering conspiratorially about something.
He pays them no mind. His thoughts are orbiting Vancouver and a certain blond nightmare.
Then, a sudden, collective sharp intake of breath ripples through the room.
The kind of sound that makes everyone stop talking. The kind that precedes bad news or spectacular gossip.
Nazar looks up at the massive television screen mounted over the bar.
It’s showing live sports coverage. TSN, the Canadian network that treats hockey like a religion. The graphic below the anchors is flashing in aggressive red.
The headline reads: ‘MID-SEASON BLOCKBUSTER: MAJOR SIGNING ANNOUNCED’
The subtext below it makes Nazar’s heart stop: ‘CALLAHAN TO WARDENS’
They cut to video footage. A shot of the official press conference area in Arena in Toronto. And there he is.
Kai Callahan. Dressed in a stark black suit, standing at a microphone with the kind of posture that suggests someone has a gun to his back just off-camera.
The podium logo is the snarling blue wolf of the Toronto Wardens.
The news anchor’s voice cuts through the shocked silence in the hospitality suite: “—a bombshell announcement that’s sending shockwaves through the league this morning.
Multiple sources now confirming that winger Kaisyn Callahan has officially signed with the Toronto Wardens.
The team, owned by his father, Doyle Callahan, announced the acquisition just hours ago, describing it as a ‘direct personal signing’ rather than a standard trade.
The contract is for three years, with player options and—”
Nazar’s world tilts sideways.
The Toronto Wardens.
Derek’s team. The team that destroyed his brother’s career and then his life.
The team Kai had publicly, explicitly, repeatedly sworn he would never join. Nazar remembers reading the interview in The Athletic last year—Kai being asked about Toronto and responding with something like, “I’d rather play beer league hockey in a barn than wear my father’s logo.”
The team that Nazar, with his model behavior and quiet, methodical determination, had always seen as his endgame. The ultimate goal. Get good enough, important enough, that Toronto would want him. Then get inside and find a way to make Doyle Callahan pay for what he did to Derek.
The team Kai knew — knew — meant everything to Nazar.
He stares at the screen. At the clean, expensive lines of Kai’s suit. At the set of his jaw, which looks like it’s carved from marble.
At the Wardens logo behind him, huge and unmistakable.
Nazar can’t breathe. His lungs have forgotten how to function.
It’s impossible. It feels like betrayal. Not just of the team, not just of Kai’s own public statements, but of Nazar specifically. Personally.
Will finally playing on his father’s team give him the influence to block the Wardens from acquiring Nazar? Was Kai even truthful when he said his father disapproved of his career, or was it just a pity tale meant to manipulate Nazar and make a fool of him?
A terrible, blinding surge of emotion crashes over him—confusion, jealousy, rage.
Everything Kai had ever said—the vulnerability in that hotel room, the unfiltered passion in dark corners and borrowed spaces, the confession about the draft and his father—all of it crashes down like a house of cards, proving once and for all that it was nothing but an elaborate performance.
Another lie from Kaisyn Callahan, who lies as easily as he breathes.
“Holy shit,” Miller says somewhere to Nazar’s left. “Did you know about this?”
On screen, Kai is speaking now. His voice is steady, professional, empty of anything real: “I’m honored to join the Toronto Wardens organization. This represents an exciting new chapter in my career, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to contribute to a team with such a storied history…”
It’s all corporate script. All meaningless platitudes. But the fact remains.
Kai Callahan is now a Toronto Warden.
And Nazar is still standing here, holding cold coffee, watching his entire carefully constructed plan explode on live television.
Someone near him laughs. “Guess Daddy finally reeled him in. Probably doubled his salary just to get him to wear the family logo.”
“Three years,” someone else says. “That’s a long leash.”
Nazar sets his coffee down before he crushes the cup. He needs to leave. Needs to get out of this room before he does something stupid in front of fifty witnesses and a dozen camera crews.
He walks out without saying goodbye to anyone.
In the empty hallway, he pulls out his phone and opens Kai’s contact. His thumb hovers over the call button.
Shit. He still wants to hear him.
He starts the call, then aborts it immediately. He needs to stop. At least for today. Before he says something he’ll regret.
He had let himself believe they were trapped together, two damaged fighters caught in a desperate circle. He had allowed himself to be soft for a pretty boy.
But Kai Callahan was never trapped. He was always maneuvering.