Chapter 27 Nazar
Weeks pass.
They pass in a blur of identical airport lounges and pre-packaged salads, pre-game skates where his legs move on autopilot, and hotel rooms that all smell like the same scent no matter what city he’s in.
Nazar’s obsession with Kai doesn’t fade. If anything, it gets worse. It becomes a ritual, something he does without thinking, like brushing his teeth or checking his phone.
After every game —his own, or one of the Wardens’ — he finds the highlights. He knows which accounts post them first, which streamers have the best quality, which analytics accounts break down plays in slow motion.
He sits in the dark of whatever hotel room he’s occupying that week, phone glowing in his hand, and watches.
He watches Kai split the defense with a burst of speed that shouldn’t be possible on tired legs in the third period.
He listens to the commentators praise his “evolution as a player,” his “newfound maturity.”
He replays a single, beautiful goal twenty times, the way Kai’s stick blade catches the puck at an impossible angle, the arc of the shot, the way the goalie doesn’t even move because it’s already past him.
Nazar traces the path of the puck with his thumb on the screen like he’s trying to understand it through touch. Like if he watches it enough times, he’ll figure out what went wrong between them. How to fix it.
He feels a strange surge of something that’s not quite pride and not quite rage.
It’s possessive and painful and completely irrational — Kai isn’t his, has never been his, has made it abundantly clear he never will be his.
But that doesn’t stop the feeling from flooding through him every time Kai scores, every time some commentator calls him underrated, every time the camera catches him laughing with teammates.
It’s become the fuel Nazar runs on. This toxic cocktail of want and regret and the memory of one perfect night in Los Angeles that he destroyed with his own stupidity.
The Comets are having their best season in franchise history.
Nazar’s putting up career numbers, on pace for a hundred points if he maintains his current rate.
He should be happy. Should be focused on the playoffs, on the Cup, on all the things he’s worked his entire life for.
Instead, he’s in his hotel room at two AM, watching a streamable clip of Kai Callahan fighting a Bruins defenseman who hit him from behind.
Kai loses the fight — he always does, he’s just not built for fighting — but he doesn’t back down. Just takes his five-minute penalty and skates to the box with blood on his chin, looking more alive than Nazar has felt in months.
He replays it three more times before forcing himself to put the phone down.
This is pathetic. He knows it’s pathetic. Sam caught him watching Wardens highlights last week and made a joke about “scouting the competition,” but there was a question in his eyes that Nazar didn’t want to answer.
The league awards ceremony is, as always, a black-tie hellscape of manufactured excitement.
Nazar arrives at the hotel in a sea of other players, everyone performing confidence they may or may not actually feel and clapping each other on the back and talking shit in that particular way hockey players do when they’re pretending last night’s brutal game didn’t happen.
He’s collecting his bag, when something makes him look up.
A flicker of movement. Third floor. An open window.
He shouldn’t be able to tell from this distance, from this angle, with all the chaos happening around him.
But he knows that silhouette the way he knows his own reflection. The way he knows the weight of his stick, the feel of ice under his blades.
Kai.
He’s standing in the window, leaning against the frame with one hand braced on the sill. Not looking down at the circus of arriving players and flashing cameras. Looking out, past all of it, at the skyline going dark in the distance.
For a long moment, Kai is perfectly still. There’s something about his posture that makes Nazar’s chest tighten.
Then, as if sensing he’s being watched, Kai turns his head. His gaze drifts down, across the chaos of the driveway, and lands with unerring accuracy on Nazar.
Their eyes lock across a hundred feet of air.
The connection is instantaneous—a jolt that makes Nazar forget to breathe, forget where he is, forget everything except the fact that Kai is looking at him.
Then Kai steps back from the window and disappears into the shadows of his room.
The spell breaks.
Someone jostles Nazar’s shoulder. It’s Vyachovsky, saying something about dinner plans. Nazar nods automatically, not hearing, still staring at the now-empty window.
“You good, man?” Vyachovsky asks.
“Yeah. Fine. Just tired.”
The party after the ceremony is exactly what Nazar expected: a crush of bodies in expensive clothes, champagne that costs more than it should, and conversations that all blend together into meaningless noise.
He spots Kai across the room almost immediately. It’s like his brain has developed a specific radar for him, so he can find Kai in any crowd, any context, without even trying.
Kai is alone, nursing a drink that might be whiskey or might be cola, standing near a column like he’s trying to blend into the architecture.
He’s in a suit that makes him look like he stepped out of a cologne ad. But his usual energy is gone.
It’s wrong. Kai without his defenses doesn’t look free. He looks exposed. Vulnerable in a way that makes Nazar’s protective instincts surge.
Nazar watches him decline a conversation with a reporter. Then he checks his phone three times in five minutes, his thumb hovering over the screen like he’s composing messages he never sends. He takes a sip of his drink without seeming to taste it.
Shit. It drives Nazar insane. He knows Kai—knows that stillness is a lie, that it’s hiding something.
And the fact that Kai refuses to even acknowledge his presence with so much as a sneer, that he’s keeping himself so carefully controlled, is a special kind of torment.
Nazar decides to play his own game. It’s juvenile and he knows it, but desperation makes him always stupid.
He positions himself near the bar and launches into an animated conversation with Miller and Sam. Laughing too loud at Miller’s mediocre joke about the open bar. Clapping Sam on the back when he mentions his girlfriend.
Being the most social, charismatic version of himself that he knows how to perform.
He glances over his shoulder. Kai is looking. Of course he is, Nazar can feel his gaze like a physical touch. But his expression is utterly blank. He might as well be looking at the wallpaper.
Nazar gives up.
His patience, already worn thin by months of this torture, snaps completely. He needs air.
By the time he comes back, Kai has disappeared.
He circles the ballroom, checking the terrace, the lobby, the quieter lounges set up for VIPs who want to escape the main party. Nothing. Kai has vanished like smoke.
He’s heading back toward the elevators. Maybe he’ll just go to his room, order something from room service, stop torturing himself.
And then he sees him again.
Down a quiet corridor that leads away from the main ballroom, past a men’s room and some administrative offices that are closed for the night. Kai is standing motionless, his side to Nazar, one hand braced against the wall like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.
Something is wrong.
The hair on Nazar’s arms stands up.
A cold, prickling dread crawls up his spine. The same instinct that tells him when a hit is coming, when danger is about to materialize.
“Callahan?”
His voice comes out rougher than intended, echoing slightly in the empty corridor.
Kai turns his head slowly, like it takes effort. The fluorescent lighting is harsh, washing all the color from his face.
He looks hollowed out, cheekbones too sharp, eyes like two dark, empty pools.
He looks broken.
“Not today, Rykov.” The words are raw, ragged. All the music stripped out of his voice, leaving just hurt and exhaustion.
He turns to walk away, his movements careful and controlled in a way that suggests he’s holding himself together by force of will alone.
The sight of his retreating back triggers something fierce and protective in Nazar’s chest.
“Wait—what happened? Kai, what’s wrong?”
Kai doesn’t answer. Just keeps walking.
“Kai!”
He disappears around the corner.
Every instinct in Nazar’s body is screaming at him to follow. To chase him down, grab him, demand answers, force him to accept help even if he doesn’t want it.
But the memory of Kai’s face — that desolate emptiness, the way he couldn’t even muster the energy for sarcasm — stops him.
Whatever’s wrong, it’s bad enough that Kai can’t hide it. And Kai can hide fucking everything.
Nazar forces himself to stay put, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. He counts to ten. Then twenty. Gives Kai time to get to his room, to be alone with whatever’s destroying him from the inside.
Then he turns and walks back to the party on legs that feel disconnected from his brain. He grabs a drink from a passing waiter. Vodka, maybe. He doesn’t care.
“Nazar!” Norskiy appears at his elbow, slightly drunk, talking about next season’s prospects. Nazar nods along, making appropriate sounds, while his mind races.
He finds an excuse to leave after twenty minutes that feel like hours. Takes the elevator up to his floor — fifth, two above Kai’s third — and lets himself into his room.
The silence is oppressive after the noise of the party.
He strips off his suit jacket, loosens his tie, turns on the TV just for the background noise. CNN or MSNBC or one of those. He’s not paying attention, just needs the sound of other humans existing to fill the space.
He’s pulling off his shoes when the headline scrolls across the bottom of the screen.
brEAKING: LIAM CALLAHAN, CEO OF CALLAHAN HOLDINGS, DEAD AT 34. INITIAL REPORTS SUGGEST SUICIDE.
The world tilts.
Nazar’s vision tunnels, everything going gray at the edges.
He sits down hard on the edge of the bed, the air knocked out of his lungs like he’s taken a hit from behind.
Liam Callahan. The brother. The one from that awards party eighteen months ago who’d ruffled Kai’s hair and made him laugh. That real, unguarded laugh Nazar had been so jealous of because he’d never heard it directed at himself.
His mind supplies images with horrible clarity: Kai on the phone, looking happy. Kai in his hotel room in Boston, mentioning his brother fixing things. Kai at that photo shoot, talking to Sam about family.
The timeline assembles itself with sickening accuracy. The awards ceremony started at seven. The news must have broken sometime during it. Someone would have called Kai. Maybe multiple people. And then Kai had been standing in that hallway alone.
Not today, Rykov.
And Nazar had let him walk away.
He’s moving before he consciously decides to. Out of his room, down the hallway, his dress shoes slapping against the carpet.
The elevator takes too long, so Nazar runs to the stairs while his heart hammers against his ribs.
Third floor. He doesn’t know Kai’s room number but the hotel layout is identical to his floor. He tries to remember where Kai had been standing at that window, calculate the angle, estimate which room—
307. Has to be.
He slams his fist against the door hard enough that pain shoots up his arm. “Kai! Open the door!”
Silence.
“Callahan, I know you’re in there. Open the fucking door!”
He pounds on it again, not caring that he’s probably waking up other guests, not caring about anything except getting through this barrier.
A voice comes from the other side, muffled and broken. “Go away, Rykov.”
The utter devastation is worse than any hit Nazar has ever taken. He knows with horrible certainty that Kai won’t open the door. That he’s completely shut out.
Nazar stands there with his forehead pressed against the cool wood, his mind racing. There has to be a way. There has to be something he can do.
Then he remembers: the window.
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.