Chapter 3 Sloan #2
“You’re actually taking me skating? Isn’t that a bit cliché?
Us alone in this empty rink?” I ask, folding myself down on the bench, arms still wrapped around my chest, like maybe I need protection—it’s an old habit—but I look at him, sharp features thrown into contrast by the arena lights, and I think I might be safe in here with him.
“Probably.” Bohdan gives me a wry shrug before rifling through the cupboard, searching for two skates in the same size. He runs his finger across the blades of a few different pairs before continuing. “I’m not good at much, but I know I’m good at this. Maybe I want to impress you.”
“Why do you want to impress me?” I tip my chin up, smiling.
He looks back over his shoulder, thumb pressed into the spur of a skate, cheekbones carving across his face and grey eyes honest. “Because you’re beautiful.”
“No, I’m not.” I give a small, stubborn shake of my head.
I don’t really think about the way I look—I see myself in the mirror, and I think, objectively, I’m just fine. But my brain spends so much time telling me how horrible and ugly and terrible the inside of me is, and it’s hard to imagine it doesn’t bleed through and paint the outside of me, too.
“Okay, Sloan,” he laughs, eyes rolling before he pushes to stand, two seemingly acceptable skates held in his hands. “You’re right. You’re hideous. You remind me of that ogre. What’s his name? Starts with an S.”
“Shrek? You aren’t even going to say Fiona?
” My mouth parts, incredulous, but my cheeks have that faint bit of hurt starting from a smile that might go on too long.
One of Bohdan’s brows lifts, and he drops into a crouch in front of me, sliding off each of my boots in turn, his fingers skating across the arches of my feet.
It’s colder in here than it is outside—but I feel heat flame across my cheeks.
He doesn’t say anything when he slides each of my feet into the skates, fingers moving around my ankles like he’s testing for something, before moving to the laces.
“At least give me Shrek from Shrek 2. It’s the—” I start.
“Best one,” Bohdan finishes for me, eyes lifting with one corner of his mouth when he tugs the laces of the skate tighter.
“Yes,” I whisper, and we stare for a bit too long before he smiles, eyes flicking back down to my skates. I watch him lace them, fingers traipsing over the cotton, tugging and tying with a practiced dexterity that makes my skin hot. “Maybe we can watch it sometime.”
“Whatever you want, Sloan.” He says it softly and with a quiet smile, stretching with promise.
It’s only the third time he’s said my name, and I think I like it more and more each time. That there’s a part of me who might like being Sloan, if she’s someone whose name gets to sit on Bohdan Novotnak’s lips.
I watch him finish with my laces, his gaze meeting mine when he’s seemingly done. “They feel okay? Tight enough?”
Twirling each of my ankles around, I nod. “I think so. It doesn’t feel like I’m going to roll my ankle and fall or anything.”
“I won’t let you fall.” Bohdan pushes to stand, turning back to the cupboard, grabbing a pair of skates seemingly at random.
“Are those yours?”
He shakes his head, sitting beside me and tying the skates with less care than he did mine. “I don’t wear my skates outside of games.”
“Superstition?” I ask when he stands, pushing open the door to the ice.
“Something like that.” He tips his chin towards the stretching ice pad, sparkling and waiting to be carved up by the likes of him. “You ready?”
I nod softly, and he waits for me to step out first, one hand hovering just above the small of my back, but I don’t fall.
It’s quiet. So quiet out here on this ice with him, and I look around at the empty arena, probably a bit in wonder, eyes wide because I think my brain might be tired, asleep for the first time in a very long time, while I stumble like a baby animal alongside Bohdan’s practiced, purposeful strokes.
“I can pull you,” he offers, voice low, and when I nod, he turns with quicker precision than I’ve ever achieved at anything in my life, skating backward in front of me, warm hands wrapping around my wrists.
I watch the world go by, utterly transfixed by empty seats, glowing lights, a boy with watchful grey eyes and safe hands, because the whole thing really feels a bit like a movie.
“Why were you crying?” Bohdan cocks his head, and I wrinkle my nose, confused, before he points his chin in the general direction of the stands. “At the game. I saw you.”
“Oh.” I sniff, considering, but Bohdan keeps skating backward slowly, his pace almost lazy while he waits for my answer. “My parents say I’m too sensitive. But my therapist says I get overstimulated.”
“What’s that like?” he asks, and he looks at me like he really wants to know.
“Loud,” I tell him truthfully.
“I’m not loud.”
“No,” I say with a small smile, “you’re not.”
We skate for three hours.
Maybe it’s more accurate to say Bohdan skates for three hours, backward the entire time, hands journeying from my wrists to my palms, until his fingers laced with mine.
I’d say it was to keep me from falling, but after a few minutes my legs weren’t wobbling as much, my movements steadier.
I just don’t think he wanted to let go.
And he didn’t.
Even when he skated as fast as he could, the entire arena a quiet, wonderful blur.
But never as beautiful and wonderful as the boy pulling me along—face alight, grin wide and somehow the loveliest thing I’d ever seen.
He doesn’t even let go of my hand the entire way back to my dorm. Not until we walk up the steps, the entire campus somehow still, just a shadow of what it was earlier.
We pause in front of the door, a cracked light flickering above us, sharpening the lines of his jaw.
His hand moves from mine, finding the side of my face, rough palm cupping it gently. He stares at me before he drops his voice to a low whisper. “Good night, Sloan.”
I inhale, and I think the sound of him saying my name fills up my lungs the way oxygen does. “Aren’t you going to kiss me?”
“No,” he says with a shake of his head, followed by rough, quiet words that make my breath hitch. “Not tonight.”
His thumb grazes my bottom lip, pausing in the centre before he scores a line down to my chin, across my jawbone, to the skin where it meets my ear—skin I’ve never really thought of as being terribly important or sensitive before, but it is, it’s on fire.
I’m on fire.
Burning up here while the snow falls and Bohdan’s fingers trace my cheek, moving to tuck errant hair behind my ear.
His mouth curves into a grin, and he murmurs something I don’t understand. It sounds like it starts with a Z.
“What does that mean?” I whisper, so quiet because I’m afraid someone might hear us and whatever bubble we’re existing in might burst.
His palm cups my cheek again, grey eyes rove over my face, categorizing or memorizing or something that seems beyond the capacity of most twenty-year-old boys, and he takes a measured step back, hand finding its way to his pocket.
The absence of him touching me feels a bit jarring, and I blink too much, watching him walk backward down the dorm steps, like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
He grins when he gets to the bottom, calling up to me, “I’ll tell you what it means if you go out with me again.”
I do go out with him again.
And again.
And again.