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.
He lies there for a second, breathing hard, his entire body shaking from exertion and the delayed realization of how monumentally stupid what he just did was.
He gets to his feet on legs that feel like water. His tuxedo is ruined, covered in brick dust and streaked with grime.
The living area is empty. He hears a soft sound from the adjacent bedroom, something between a sob and a gasp for air, and follows it.
Kai is sitting on the edge of the bed, backlit by the glow of the city through the windows. His white dress shirt is unbuttoned halfway down his chest, the bow tie hanging loose around his neck.
His hair is a mess, not artfully tousled but actually disheveled, like he’s been pulling at it. His face is tear-stained, cheeks still damp, eyes swollen.
Nazar’s brain short-circuits completely.
He just stands in the doorway, staring at Kai Callahan, realizing he’s climbed the fucking building to see him and completely forgotten what he was going to say.
He’s never seen Kai cry. Has imagined it, in his darkest moments—imagined breaking through that armor, making Kai feel something real. But those fantasies were about anger or passion or desperate want. Not this. Never this hollow devastation.
“Hey.” His voice comes out as a rough croak. “You okay?”
The sheer, monumental stupidity of the question makes him want to sink through the floor into the room below. Of course he’s not okay. His brother is dead.
Kai doesn’t answer. Just stares at the far wall like Nazar isn’t there. Like nothing is there.
His jaw is clenched so tight Nazar can see the muscle jumping, and fresh tears are tracking slowly down his face. He’s not even trying to wipe them away anymore.
Nazar’s body responds in a way that makes him hate himself. He gets hard—a full, aching erection at the sight of Kai’s cry. The realization makes him feel sick, perverted.
But it’s not just lust. Or it is, but it’s tangled up with something fiercer. Something protective and possessive that makes him want to physically shield Kai from the world.
He wants to absorb the pain somehow. Take it into himself so Kai doesn’t have to feel it.
He crosses the room and crouches in front of Kai, bringing them eye level. His mind is completely blank. Every impulse he has feels wrong. Touching seems presumptuous, speaking seems inadequate, leaving is impossible.
“You want a Red Bull?” The words come out before he can stop them. “Or like, water? Food? I could order room service—”
Kai’s head snaps up.
He looks at Nazar, really looks at him for the first time, and his eyes are filled with something that makes Nazar’s blood run cold. Not sadness. A chilling, self-destructive emptiness.
“You want to fuck me?” Kai’s voice is flat, dead. “I can stretch myself out first if you want. Make it easier. Or don’t bother—whatever works for you.” He lets out a laugh that sounds broken.
Nazar’s hands shoot out on instinct, his palms landing on Kai’s knees, grip tight enough to ground them both. “Stop it.” His own voice surprises him. Calm, steady, when everything inside him is screaming. “Don’t. I forbid you to talk about yourself like that.”
Of course, he wants to fuck him. Always wants to fuck him. But the thought of doing it now—of taking advantage of this shattered vulnerability—makes him feel physically ill.
Kai shoves his hands away with surprising strength. “I hope you’re satisfied with the performance.” The venom is back in his voice, that familiar cutting edge. “Front row seat to the Callahan family tragedy. Tweet about it later.”
He stands abruptly and stalks toward the hallway, his movements too controlled, like he’s forcing his body to cooperate through sheer will.
Nazar is after him in a second, following him into a bathroom. Nazar flicks on the light—harsh overhead fluorescents that make everything look clinical.
“Don’t!” Kai lunges for the switch, plunging them back into darkness. “Don’t turn on the light. And get out.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Nazar’s voice is steady, certain. He’s never been more certain of anything.
Kai turns on the shower instead. Hot steam billows out immediately. There’s a small recessed light inside the stall, just enough to see by.
“I’m not undressing in front of you,” Kai says, his back still to Nazar. “So you need to leave.”
“A fucking army couldn’t drag me out of here right now.”
With a sound of frustrated rage, Kai tears off his shirt. Buttons scattering, one pinging off the marble floor.
He stalks into the shower fully clothed otherwise, his dress pants and shoes still on, not even bothering to take off his watch.
Nazar follows him in without hesitation. Fully clothed. The rental tuxedo is already ruined anyway.
The scalding water hits him like a physical blow, soaking through the shirt instantly, making it a dead weight on his shoulders. Steam fills the space, making it hard to see, hard to breathe.
“What else do you want from me?” Kai’s voice is tired, weak. All the fight drained out. “Haven’t you seen enough?”
“Look at me.” Nazar frames Kai’s face with his bleeding hands, pressing their foreheads together. “Please.”
“I don’t want to.” Kai’s eyes are closed, his jaw clenched.
“Kai. Please. Look at me. I’m here.” The words feel inadequate but they’re all he has. “I’m right here.”
“I know.” There’s a ghost of broken laughter in Kai’s voice. “It’s impossible to get rid of you. Like a fucking curse.”
Damn right.
“Rykov—” Kai’s face contorts with fresh pain, his breath catching. “Just five minutes. Then you’ll leave quietly.”
“No.”
“Five minutes and you leave! Promise me.” The desperation in his voice is unbearable. “Promise you’ll leave in five minutes. I can’t—I can’t do this with you here. I can’t fall apart in front of you.”
The words are a knife between Nazar’s ribs. “Kai—”
“Promise me!” It comes out as a sob. “Please. Just promise.”
Every instinct Nazar has is screaming at him to refuse. To say no, to stay, to not make a promise he knows will destroy him to keep.
But Kai is looking at him with such raw desperation, and Nazar has already hurt him so many times.
“Okay. I promise.”
Fresh tears spill down Kai’s cheeks, mixing with the shower water. Nazar cups his face again, thumbs trying to wipe them away in a gesture that’s completely futile under the cascade.
“You can cry,” he says, his voice rough. “It’s just us. No one else will know.”
“Rykov—” Kai sobs, the sound torn from somewhere deep. “I can’t calm down. I can’t—I don’t know how to stop.”
“Baby, you don’t need to calm down right now. Just talk to me. Look at me. You can do anything you want and no one will ever know.”
He reaches out and pulls the glass door of the shower closed, as if the thin barrier could somehow protect them. Make this space sacred. Keep the rest of the world out.
“How could he do this to me?” The words tumble out of Kai in a rush.
“How could he leave me? Without—I didn’t know anything was wrong.
I thought everything was fine. He was fine.
He always had everything under control.” His voice breaks.
“Do you understand? Unlike me. I’m the mess.
The problem child. He was supposed to be—he was the one who had it together. ”
“Shhh. You’re not a mess.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do now.” Kai’s voice drops to almost a whisper. “I don’t know how to—he was the only one who—”
“Kai.” Nazar peppers his face with light kisses. Trying to offer comfort the only way he knows how.
“He never said anything. Never told me he was struggling. I should have known. I should have—”
“These things happen sometimes.” The words are hopelessly inadequate. Nazar knows it even as he says them. “People hide things. Even from the people closest to them.”
“He was ten years older than me,” Kai says, like that explains something. “He was supposed to—I needed him. And now I’m completely alone.”
“You are not alone.” Nazar’s voice is fierce. “I’m here. You’re not alone.”
Kai freezes at the words. His whole body goes rigid. A fresh wave of tears spills from his eyes and he turns his face away, pulling out of Nazar’s grasp.
“It’s time for you to go.”
“No. Kai, no—”
“You promised.” His voice is shaking but determined. “You swore you’d leave.”
“Fuck the promise. I’m not—”
“I’m asking you to leave.” Kai still won’t look at him. “As you promised. Please.”
The please breaks him.
Nazar steps out of the shower, his waterlogged clothes weighing him down, clinging to his skin. Water pools around his feet on the marble floor. He should grab a towel. Should at least take off the ruined jacket.
He doesn’t.
He just walks to the door, each step requiring more willpower than climbing the building did.
Every nerve screams to turn back, but he can’t break the promise. Taking that last step out of the room feels like the hardest thing he’s ever done.