Chapter 31 Nazar
Normally, the familiar burn in his muscles quiets the noise in his head, the repetitive count of reps providing a structure his chaotic thoughts can’t penetrate. Ten. Nine. Eight. The weight of the barbell becomes the only reality that matters.
Today, it’s not working.
The burn does nothing. The structure collapses. His mind is a wasps’ nest, thoughts swarming and stinging, and at the center of it all—like always, like fucking always—is Kai.
Nazar drops the barbell back onto the rack with a metallic clang that draws annoyed looks from nearby lifters. His hands are shaking slightly. Not from exertion, from the effort of not punching something.
He’s replaying it again. The hit. The one he’s been replaying in an endless loop for days now, torturing himself with the memory.
Kai going into the boards. The sickening crunch of his body hitting—not the normal, expected impact of a hockey check, but something harder. Something wrong. The angle bad. Kai’s head snapping forward. His body crumpling.
And the red wave of fury that had washed over Nazar — instantaneous, total, blinding. A rage so pure and protective it obliterated every other thought, all rules about professionalism and self-control.
He’d attacked his own teammate. On national television. In front of millions of viewers and every GM in the league.
Career-threateningly stupid doesn’t even begin to cover it.
He’s been suspended for five games. Fined an amount his agent won’t stop emailing him about. Every sports analyst from ESPN to The Athletic has weighed in on his “disturbing episode of lack of discipline” and “concerning pattern of aggression.”
His own coach had looked at him with a mixture of disappointment and bafflement that Nazar can still feel like a physical weight.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Bodrov had asked in his office, the door closed, just the two of them. “That was Garrett. Your own defenseman. A guy you’ve played with for two years. What possible—”
Nazar hadn’t had an answer. Still doesn’t. What was he supposed to say? I saw Kai fall and something in my brain just snapped. I became a different person. I would have killed anyone who touched him.
He’s replayed it a thousand times, examining it from every angle like game footage, and he still can’t fully explain what happened. The protective rage is still there, coiled in his gut like a living thing. Still ready to strike.
And for what?
He had finally gotten him. Had Kai in his bed, pliant and open and vulnerable in ways Nazar had never imagined he’d be allowed to see.
Had fucked him slow and deep until they were both boneless and spent.
Had held him afterward in the gray morning light and felt, for the first time in his entire life, like he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
He’d seen a future in that quiet dawn. Had made plans. Vancouver. A promise of more than stolen moments. A promise of something real.
And in return? Silence. A wall of it so complete it might as well be made of brick.
Nazar grabs a towel and wipes his face, his reflection in the gym’s mirror showing someone who looks hollowed out.
He’s lost weight he couldn’t afford to lose, his face sharper, his eyes shadowed. He looks like he’s in training for a marathon no one signed up for.
He knows Kai likes to play games. Knows the sarcasm and the scandals are armor. Defense mechanisms against a world that’s been trying to chew him up and spit him out since the day his name became public property. Nazar understands it intellectually, can trace the patterns, see the psychology of it.
But knowing doesn’t make it hurt less.
He knows Kai is more vulnerable than anyone gives him credit for. He has seen glimpses of the real person underneath all that performance—in his grandmother’s house, in that classroom with those kids, in the shower after the awards ceremony when he was completely shattered.
And it makes him sick with a protective rage so fierce it feels like he’s going to choke on it.
The constant ridicule from the press. The think pieces about his “attitude problems”. The whispers in locker rooms across the league—nepotism case, rich kid, can’t win when it matters.
The contempt from some fans who’ve decided Kai represents everything wrong with modern hockey.
And Nazar himself had been part of it. He had helped build that narrative with his own resentment and assumptions. Had treated Kai like a problem to be solved rather than a person to be understood.
The guilt of that sits in his chest like a stone he can’t cough up.
And now—now they were throwing drinks at him.
Blue fucking bottles with whatever toxic sludge that was, thrown by grown adults who thought attacking someone in public was acceptable behavior. They had probably gone home and told their families about it over dinner like it was a fun anecdote.
The footage is burned into Nazar’s brain. Kai standing there soaked in bright blue, his security team scrambling, his teammates staring in horror. And Kai’s face… that careful blankness that Nazar now recognizes as his pain response. The way he shut down instead of reacting.
It’s not something Nazar can tolerate. Kai doesn’t deserve it. Doesn’t deserve any of this.
He moves to the bench press, loads weight with more force than necessary. A guy doing cable flies nearby gives him a nervous look and moves to a different machine.
And now there’s this new development. This particularly infuriating piece of theater.
The rumors started three weeks ago—whispers on hockey Twitter, blind items on gossip sites, grainy photos from paparazzi with telephoto lenses. Kai and some pop singer. A guy named Rey something.
Nazar looked him up once, hated himself for doing it, and did it three more times anyway.
Rey Tinnery. Country singer who’d gone pop. Recently came out as gay in a very public, very strategic way that got him on every talk show and magazine cover.
The photos show them together at clubs, restaurants, leaving hotels. Kai’s hand on his arm. Rey leaning in close to whisper something. Both of them looking comfortable, familiar.
When Nazar looks at it, he doesn’t believe it.
He knows Kai too well. Maybe he’s fooling himself, mistaking desire for reality, but not a single cell in his body thinks Kai had anything to do with that singer.
It drives Nazar absolutely insane. The not-knowing. The imagining. The way his brain supplies scenarios he doesn’t want to picture—Kai laughing at something Rey said, Kai in Rey’s bed, Kai giving someone else the vulnerability he’d shown Nazar in Toronto.
It’s exactly the kind of chaotic, public spectacle Kai would orchestrate. A deliberate middle finger to everyone who’d ever questioned him. A statement: Yes, I’m gay. Yes, I’m dating someone famous. Cope with it.
And on one level, Nazar gets it. Respects it, even. The balls it takes to come out in professional hockey, where the culture is still stuck somewhere in 1987. The courage to do it on his own terms, publicly, defiantly.
But why now? Why with someone else when they’d just — when Toronto had felt like the beginning of something real?
Nazar’s jaw clenches so hard his teeth ache. He remembers his own words, his own promise: I won’t be responsible for my actions.
He’d meant it as reassurance. As a declaration that he wasn’t going anywhere, that Kai couldn’t push him away forever. But now it feels prophetic in ways he didn’t intend.
He had spent weeks after Toronto imagining a future. Lying awake in hotel rooms, staring at dark ceilings, working through dozens of scenarios.
How they could make it work. How it would affect their careers—his specifically, since he had more to lose in terms of endorsements and public image. The Comets’ management. His teammates’ reactions. His grandmother’s reaction, which he dreaded and anticipated in equal measure.
He’d decided he would take the risk. All of it. Would come out if that’s what it took to be with Kai openly. Wouldn’t hide or lie or treat what they had like it was shameful.
The only part he hadn’t been able to solve was how to protect Kai from the inevitable backlash. How to shield him from the worst of it: the slurs, the violence, the professional consequences that always seemed to land harder on people who didn’t have the luxury of looking straight.
And fucking now it seems Kai has decided to come out on his own terms. With someone else. Not with Nazar. Not for Nazar. With someone who looks good in photos and has a publicist and knows how to work the media cycle.
The rational part of Nazar’s brain—the part that still functions despite everything— knows he has no right to be that angry about this. They never defined what they were. Never had the relationship conversation. He can’t claim ownership of someone who never agreed to be claimed.
But the other part—the part that remembers Kai’s voice in that Toronto bedroom, the way he’d whispered “okay” like it cost him everything — that part feels betrayed. Dismissed. Replaced.
“Yo, Rykov!” Sam’s voice cuts through his spiral. “Dude, did you see this?”
Nazar looks up from where he’s been staring at the bench press without actually touching it. Sam is huddled with Vyachovsky and Norskiy near the water fountain, all of them staring at someone’s phone with expressions that make Nazar’s stomach drop.
He stalks over, a cold dread snaking its way up his spine. “What?”
Sam looks up, and there’s something in his face, pity mixed with shock, that makes everything worse.
“It’s Callahan,” Vyachovsky says quietly. “Someone got photos. They’re everywhere.”
Nazar doesn’t ask. Just takes Sam’s phone from his hand and looks at the screen.
The ground disappears from under his feet.
It’s a series of grainy, long-lens paparazzi photos, the kind that get sold to tabloids for obscene amounts of money.