Chapter 22 Kai
The game is brutal.
It’s the kind of hockey Kai hates with the passion of a thousand suns.
Grinding board battles, bodies crashing into corners, and a neutral zone so clogged with defensive positioning that moving the puck forward feels like pushing a boulder uphill. No flow. No creativity. Just attrition warfare on ice.
Kai and Rykov only cross paths a few times during the game—they’re on different lines, different defensive pairings to contend with—but each encounter is a contained explosion.
Rykov’s aggression has evolved over the past eighteen months. It’s no longer the raw, impulsive force it used to be. Now it’s sharpened, honed to a disciplined edge. He plays with more surgical precision, his checks perfectly timed, his positioning immaculate.
The sports media loves it. They call him one of the league’s most complete players. A Selke Trophy candidate. The kind of two-way center every team wants.
So this time Kai meets that polished aggression and raises him a healthy dose of cunning.
A subtle trip as they round the net, not obvious enough to draw a whistle, just enough to throw Rykov’s timing off.
A perfectly-timed stick lift that makes Rykov’s pass go wide.
Little acts of sabotage that don’t show up on the scoresheet but leave Rykov’s jaw clenched and his dark eyes burning with that familiar, satisfying fury Kai remembers from the past.
In the third period, they end up in a battle for a loose puck along the boards. It’s violent —both of them throwing their weight around, sticks tangling, shoulders colliding. The refs let it play out because it’s technically clean, just hard hockey.
Rykov gets the puck, but Kai’s already positioned himself to cut off the passing lane. Their eyes meet for exactly half a second through their face shields.
Rykov’s expression is pure concentrated rage.
Oh please. Always so serious.
Kai smiles.
The personal war between them doesn’t change the outcome of the game — the Wardens lose in a dismal shootout, 1-0—but Kai knows what the sports commentators will say tomorrow. They’ll praise his “newfound grit.” They’ll say he’s finally playing with an edge.
They have no idea that the edge is named Nazar Rykov, and that his very existence on this planet forces Kai into a state of heightened, infuriated focus.
He hates him for it.
* * *
Back at the hotel, the wet streets are reflecting neon signs in smears of pink and blue and yellow.
The Four Seasons is exactly where Kai expected it to be—King Street West, all glass and modern luxury. He’s stayed here before. Knows the layout.
He’s approaching the entrance, his hood up against the rain, when he spots him through the gleaming glass of the lobby doors.
A familiar, impossibly broad-shouldered silhouette standing near the concierge desk.
Rykov.
Ice floods Kai’s veins.
Not only did they just lose, but now this bastard has materialized here. In his hotel. In the lobby of the hotel where Kai is staying.
No. That’s impossible.
The Comets are staying at the Shangri-La. Kai knows this because he checked. He made absolutely certain. He has a Google alert set up for the Comets’ travel schedule. He’s planned his entire post-season around not being in the same places at the same times.
What the hell is Rykov doing here?
Did they change hotels last minute? Why would they do that? The Shangri-La is perfectly fine. Did Rykov request a different hotel specifically? Is he—
No. That’s insane. Paranoid thinking.
Kai spins on his heel, his mind racing, already calculating the fastest route to the service entrance around the corner on Wellington Street.
But just then, the hotel’s ridiculously cheerful concierge steps out from under the awning, blocking his path.
“Mr. Callahan! What a pleasure to have you back with us!” Jean-Paul’s smile is professionally enthusiastic, the kind that comes from years of hospitality training. “Quite the game tonight, eh? Tough loss in the shootout. And chilly one out here! You must be frozen.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Kai can see Rykov turning. His gaze sweeps the lobby in that methodical way he has, checking his surroundings.
Kai watches him look through the glass. His head stopped moving. His entire body goes still as his focus locks onto Kai standing outside.
“Yes, lovely weather,” Kai says through a smile so forced his face hurts. “Always such a pleasure to visit in November. Really captures the city’s charm.”
He tries to sidestep Jean-Paul, but the man is determined to complete his customer service obligations.
“Will you be needing anything sent up to your room? Extra towels? We have a new pillow menu if you’d like to—”
“No, thank you, Jean-Paul. I’m all set. Really. Just need to get inside and warm up.”
But it’s too late. Through the glass, Kai sees Rykov start moving toward the doors.
Fuck.
Kai makes a split-second decision.
He turns and walks away from the main entrance, his stride deliberately casual, like he just remembered something he needs to do. He rounds the corner onto Wellington, the rain soaking through his hood now, and heads for the service entrance he knows is back here somewhere.
It takes him three tries to find the right door—one leads to a loading dock, another to what looks like a mechanical room—but finally he locates the staff entrance.
A housekeeper is coming out, and Kai catches the door before it closes, giving her his most charming smile.
“Thanks. Left something in the restaurant earlier.”
She nods and continues past him without question. The perks of being recognizable.
He takes the service elevator up to the seventeenth floor. It’s a petty act of avoidance that feels both childish and absolutely necessary.
* * *
In his room Kai paces like a caged animal.
The sheer audacity of Rykov, showing up at this hotel. Being in the same hotel at all feels like a violation of the unspoken agreement they’ve had for eighteen months.
Eighteen months of careful distance and of Kai enduring endless articles insinuating that his father engineered his exit from Wolverines, that he’s a locker room cancer who can’t play well with others, that the teams are better without him.
He’s swallowed all of that bullshit.
All of it designed to avoid this exact situation. To avoid being in proximity to Nazar Rykov outside the controlled environment of a hockey game.
Because Kai knows himself well enough to know what happens when they’re alone.
He paces from the window to the bathroom and back, his wet clothes leaving a trail of water on the expensive carpet. He should change. Should order room service. Should do literally anything productive.
Instead, a treacherous part of him—a part he loathes with every fiber of his being— starts imagining scenarios.
Imagines Rykov texting him. A one-word demand, arrogant and presumptuous: Room number?
Imagines him showing up at the door, using some excuse. A question about tomorrow’s practice schedule. A missing piece of equipment.
And in this fantasy, Kai would be strong. Would push him away. Would tell him to fuck off and mean it.
But Rykov would just get more insolent, more insistent. Would push back. Would crowd into Kai’s space with that overwhelming physical presence, and—
Kai stops pacing.
The fantasy is too vivid. Too dangerous. His body is already responding to thoughts alone, which is humiliating and infuriating and completely predictable.
He strips off his wet clothes, leaving them in a pile on the bathroom floor. Stands under a scalding shower for ten minutes, trying to wash away the game, the loss, the memory of seeing Rykov through that glass.
It doesn’t work.
When he emerges, skin pink from the heat, he knows what’s going to happen. Has known since the moment he saw Rykov in the lobby.
He sinks to his knees on the bed.
The memories are there, stored in his body like muscle memory. The weight of Rykov’s body pressing him against walls. The rough scrape of stubble against his neck.
And that voice. That surprisingly eloquent voice when it comes to sex, saying things that make Kai’s entire nervous system light up.
He closes his eyes and lets himself remember. Lets himself want.
The wanting feels like drowning.
He thinks about things that will never happen. About Rykov actually following through, actually giving Kai what he’s been too afraid to ask for since that night at the awards ceremony.
The memory of that refusal still burns. The humiliation of begging. The cold finality of being told no.
The image of Rykov fucking him, his mouth hot against his ear, whispering filthy promises flashes through his mind
He groans, stroking himself faster, his hips starting to move in a desperate rhythm.
Rykov thinks he’s easy. Thinks Kai lets anyone touch him, fuck him, use him. Kai had let him believe it. It’s working. Just another piece of defensive armor, another way to keep people at a distance.
But the truth is more complicated. After one disastrous, clumsy encounter years ago with someone whose name Kai can’t even remember, he realized how much he wanted it — to be fucked.
That was when Kai understood that he is, like, bottom-bottom.
Very bottom. No other options. He craved that specific kind of surrender with someone he trusted.
And he never let anyone fuck him again after that first disastrous time.
And Rykov—the one person Kai had finally let himself want it with—had held that desire in his hands and crushed it.
Had made it clear that whatever this thing between them was, it didn’t include that. Didn’t include Kai getting what he actually needed.
The shame of it mixes with the want, turning into something hot and painful in his gut.
When he finishes, it’s with a choked sound he buries in his forearm. His forehead presses against the pillow, his whole body trembling.
A name sits on his tongue, unspoken. Nazar.
For a long moment, he just stays there on his hands and knees, breathing hard, feeling pathetic and furious and completely undone.
Then his phone buzzes on the nightstand.
He forces himself to stand, his legs unsteady. Grabs the phone.
It’s a text from Liam, his brother: Dad wants you at the house Sunday for dinner again. Command performance. Can’t get you out of it this time, sorry.
Kai stares at the message.
Of course. Of course his father wants to see him. Probably to critique his performance tonight, to remind him that losing in a shootout is unacceptable, to make sure Kai knows he’s still not living up to the Callahan name.
He types back: I’ll be there.
Then he deletes it and types: Can’t. Prior commitment.
Then he deletes that too and just sends: Fine.
He drops the phone on the bed and looks at himself in the full-length mirror near the closet.
He looks exactly how he feels: wrecked. Used up. A mess.
This has to stop. This pattern of destruction he’s locked himself into. Where thinking about Nazar Rykov reduces him to this, to falling apart alone in hotel rooms.
Eighteen months of distance haven’t helped. Haven’t made it better. Haven’t made him want it less.
If anything, it’s worse now. The wanting has metastasized, spread through his entire system like a disease he can’t cure.
Kai knows what Mrs. Butterly would say if she were still alive. She’d tell him this is avoidance behavior. That he’s using fantasy as a substitute for addressing the actual problem. That he needs to either confront Rykov directly or find a way to genuinely move on.
But Mrs. Butterly is dead. And Kai is twenty-four years old and standing naked in a hotel room, having just gotten himself off to memories of someone who made it abundantly clear he doesn’t want Kai the way Kai wants him.
He climbs into bed, pulling the covers up despite not being particularly cold.
Tomorrow there will be practice. Tomorrow he’ll put the mask back on, play the part, pretend none of this happened.
But tonight—tonight he lets himself acknowledge the truth he’s been running from for eighteen months:
He’s not over Rykov.
He might never be over him.