Chapter 14 Bohdan
Bohdan
I thought seeing Sloan again was painful.
That spending a day in such close proximity, sneaking glances at her sitting there, book propped up on her knees, chin in her hand, and headphones firmly in her ears while she ignored the rest of us was hard.
That it was torture, really, to be so close to her brain—the one she hates but I know is beautiful, wonderful, endlessly fascinating—and not be able to lean over, take one of those headphones out, press my mouth to the spot where her neck meets her collarbone, and ask her what she’s thinking.
I thought the last year and a half of my life was objectively brutal without her.
But I guess it was all just preparing me for this.
For her walking into the dining room of this godforsaken ship.
For her hair lifting off her exposed shoulders in a phantom breeze, eyes bright and maybe happy for the first time since she saw me again.
For her head tipped back in laughter, showing me the lines of her neck I used to sink my teeth into while she laughs at something Tia says.
For her skin glowing from the sun and her legs stretching out from underneath this yellow silk dress that hits her mid-thigh.
The B on her shoulder tucked away under its thin straps.
“Fuck,” I mutter, absentmindedly rubbing at my chest.
I don’t think there’s ever been a more beautiful person on the planet.
Jay tips his wineglass towards her with a low whistle. “Think she wore that dress on purpose?”
I give him a flat look and grab my beer, swishing it around before taking a too-large swallow.
Talon cranes his head, eyes sweeping over Sloan before he lets out a bark of laughter. “You’re so fucked.”
“Thanks to you.” I empty the glass, wishing I’d had the foresight to ask the server for more than one.
I debate reaching across the table and taking the rest of Jay’s wine and draining that when Sloan and Tia reach the table.
Tia smiles warmly at me, looking like she might feel a bit sorry for me. Sloan pointedly ignores me, even though Tia took the only other open chair, beside Jay, and now she has to sit next to me.
Talon glances back and forth between us, eyes pinched and smile strained, while Sloan grabs the edges of her chair and tries to shift it further away from me.
He waits, like he’s expecting one of us to give in, turn and drop to our knees and declare our still undying love for each other.
My love is undying, but judging by the way she’s trying to get every single millimetre of distance from me she can, I’d say hers is well and dead.
I press my fingers to my temple and try to pretend I’m not bleeding out in the dining room on a fucking Mediterranean cruise.
“Well.” Talon clears his throat, clapping once before raising his glass of scotch. “A toast to me and my retirement then. I’d say it was a pretty successful career.”
Sloan raises her glass, arm twisted at an awkward angle to avoid brushing her skin against mine.
It’s for the best. I don’t know what I’d do if we touched.
I still love her, and she looks like that.
Our glasses meet, the clink barely audible over the noise of the dining room, and Sloan breaks away quicker than anyone else, snatching her drink back to her chest like she’s risking contamination by it being so close to mine.
Tia cringes, nose wrinkling. Jay looks anywhere but at us, and Talon carries on like nothing’s wrong.
“You know,” Talon starts, leaning forward, waving his glass around. “I only have one regret. No cup.”
Jay’s eyes finally snap back to the table. “That’s on you, Talon. You’re the one who got the great idea to go play in Sweden after college. You had interest. And now I have two cup rings, Bohdan has one, and you have none.”
“Where do you keep your cup ring?” Talon angles his scotch glass towards my hand, like I’d be wearing it right now, splayed against the table—the only place it’s safe from acting on my shitty impulse control and trying to play with the hem of Sloan’s dress under the table.
“Lost it.” I shrug a shoulder and try to pretend I don’t care.
I couldn’t find it after I left Seattle, and it felt like a fitting punishment, so I tried my best to forget that I lost the only relic of my prematurely ended career that mattered.
Jay pulls his head back. “How’d you lose your fucking cup ring? I don’t even let anyone touch mine. They’re in my trophy room.”
“Jay’s got a shrine to himself.” Talon grins. “That tracks.”
I’m about to make up an excuse—something that doesn’t have to do with me leaving the love of my life behind with my failed dreams in a post-concussion-induced mental breakdown and not really being able to keep track of my own mind, let alone my personal belongings—when yellow silk flashes in my periphery.
Angling my head, I watch Sloan shift in her seat, tugging at the hem of her dress before rolling her shoulders back and sitting up straighter than necessary.
I almost laugh, but I tip my chin towards her. “You have it.”
Sloan pulls her head back, giving it a shake and rolling her eyes before reaching for her wine. “No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do, you little shit.” I shift in my seat to face her, and I press my fist to my mouth before a smile splits across my face.
I feel a bit torn, sort of like throttling her for being so stubborn and petulant; but the girl I’ve loved since I was twenty sits beside me, acting just like she used to before she hated me, looking like something that walked right out of the recesses of my imagination.
The yellow silk dress wrapped around her, just enough skin on display to drive me insane: the lines of her shoulders, the jut of her collarbone, legs stretching out underneath the table. The tiny constellation of freckles under her eye on her left cheek more vibrant from the sun.
One shoulder rises, the thin strap of her dress brushing against her skin. “A baseless assumption.”
“No. Not baseless.” I raise my eyebrows, point at her. “You’re shifting in your seat. You’ve blinked a few too many times.”
“You don’t know anything about my body language.” Sloan scoffs, taking a sip of wine, but I catch the way her lips pause against the glass, the way her cheeks start to heat.
“Oh really?” I do grin now, leaning forward and closer to her than I probably should, but it’s always been like this.
She’s the sun, and I’ll be in her orbit forever.
I lower my voice, and I don’t mean for it to be, but it’s rough.
“I think I do. I know everything about you, Sloan. I know what you look like when you’re mad.
When you’re sad. When you’re frustrated.
When you’re happy. When you’re lying. When you’re coming—”
“That’s indecent.” Sloan inhales, nostrils flaring, and her eyes go wide.
“This feels like a private conversation.” Jay gestures between us, mouth tugging to the side behind his wineglass.
“I’m starting to regret this.” Talon nods, but his eyes move back and forth between us like he doesn’t want to miss a single second.
Tia leans across the table, snatching the open bottle of wine and pouring a too-full glass. “It doesn’t exactly feel like normal dinnertime conversation. Should we talk about the time Jay and I had sex?”
Talon drops his glass, scotch splashing on the formerly pristine white tablecloth. “You had sex with my sister?”
“Jesus.” Jay scrubs his face, groaning into his hands. “No, Talon. She’s joking.”
“You don’t remember?” Tia slaps a manicured hand to her chest, smile visible over the curved crystal edge of her wineglass, eyes glinting. “I’m hurt, Jay.”
I think Talon shouts something about Jay having not only the audacity to have sex with his sister, but the audacity to not remember it. Jay might lean back in his chair, tugging on the ends of his hair while Tia bats her eyelashes at both of them like she didn’t just cause a shitstorm.
But I know why she did it.
She did it for her best friend.
For Sloan, who sits, back ramrod straight, blinking too much, eyes too blue, and her grip on the stem of her wineglass too tight, breathing in and out.
“Sloan.” I can’t help myself and I reach forward, tugging on the ends of her hair. “Why do you have my ring?”
I’m hoping for an answer I’m not going to get and one that I don’t deserve—that it means something more than it does.
That it means she doesn’t hate me.
I’ll learn to live without her, because it’s what’s best—but I don’t think I can live knowing she hates me as much as it seems like she does.
She jerks away from my hand, and I raise it in surrender.
“In your”—she inhales again, teeth coming down on the inside of her cheek, and I know what she’s about to say hurts her—“haste to leave me, you left quite a bit behind.”
I wasn’t in a hurry to leave her. I dragged my feet for months even though I knew she deserved better and always had.
She takes a small sip of wine, straightens her shoulders, and starts ticking things off on her fingers. “Clothes. Shoes. Books. Your cup ring, sitting on the nightstand on what was once your side of the bed.”
Her words trail off with a tiny crack of her voice, and she wipes a knuckle along her lash line before the tears start to fall.
I know what else I left behind. The word she won’t say.
Me.
It hangs heavy in the air, unsaid, and that fake fucking pain lances across my temple.
I press my fist into my thigh, kneading against the muscle so I don’t reach forward and try to smooth out the frown wrinkling her brow, kiss away the tears sitting on those freckles.
Sloan waves a hand, like we’re speaking about an errant nuisance in our past, not the destruction of our relationship by my hands, before she keeps talking. “And seeing as I had no means to contact you—”
“No means to contact me?” I cut in, incredulous. “My number didn’t change.”
I kept it the same—because I’m unhealed and selfish and a pathetic part of me hoped she’d call.
She tips her chin up. “I deleted your number. And then I deleted it from my brain.”
“That’s not how numbers work with you.”