Chapter 15 Sloan
Sloan
Then - College
I can see it from where I’m sitting, back against the cupboards, the green light mocking me as shadows from the kitchen window slink across the floor, closer and closer to me.
I sort of hope they’ll eat me alive.
It makes sense. The game was at seven, and then they had a postgame press conference because it was the qualifier for Frozen Four—they won and Bohdan scored twice—and I didn’t show up for either.
Not because I didn’t want to.
I wanted to quite badly.
I press the heels of my palms into my eyes. I’m trying to work up the courage to stand, but I hear a key turn in the lock of the door, and then I hear his voice.
“Sloan?” He sounds panicked, and I don’t get up from my spot on the floor, but I can imagine him—suit jacket undone, tie haphazard around his neck, wide hands gripping the doorframe as he leans into the apartment I share with Tia, one wave curling over his forehead, caramel hair almost ebony from the shower. “Are you in here?”
I take a shaky inhale, and I try to steady my voice. “In the kitchen.”
It doesn’t work. I’m crying again.
And they’re these really loud, pathetic, guttural sobs that echo throughout the apartment.
Bohdan’s frame fills the doorway, and then he’s crouched down in front of me. He’s a bit of a blur, but I think he cocks his head to the side, that his mouth pulls into a frown, that his fingers flex before they tip my chin up. “Baby, why are you on the floor?”
“It’s comfy down here.” I try to smile at him, but it feels all wrong. I squeeze my eyes shut, and another horrible sob sounds from my throat.
I hear him exhale, and he waits until I’m blinking away the tears before he asks, gently, like the way his fingers hold my chin, “What happened? I looked for you before the game, and again after.”
I happened.
Me, and the brain I was born with.
I don’t say that though. It’s not that Bohdan isn’t a safe space—he’s the safest. But one day, he might wake up and realize he doesn’t want to be my safe space.
That he wants a nice, normal girlfriend who doesn’t count and doesn’t cry when her clothes feel weird on her skin and doesn’t think about what a colossal loser she is on a regular basis.
He’ll want someone just right.
Not me.
Not someone too much and not enough.
I jerk back, away from his hands, holding my own in the air before trying to wipe away the tears. “I’m sorry. It was an important game and I missed it. You must be so disappointed.”
Bohdan interrupts me with a thumb brushing across my mouth. “I’m disappointed, Sloan, but not in you.”
“That can’t be true,” I whisper with a shake of my head.
He gives me a resigned smile before shrugging out of his suit jacket and tugging off his tie.
He tosses them haphazardly onto the kitchen floor and settles beside me against the cupboards.
One leg stretched out—he winces when he does it—and the other raised, his hand drumming against his knee before he flips his palm up for me. “Were you here the whole time?”
“Not the whole time.” I sniff, setting my hand gently in his.
His fingers close over mine, and he turns to me, waiting.
I throw my other hand in the air. “I didn’t know what to wear and then there was part of one of those plastic tags stuck in the sleeve of my sweater, and I could feel it against my skin.
Nothing fit right. Nothing looked right and I tried to call my mom and she said she didn’t understand and to just pick something and then it was after seven and I’d missed the start of the game and—”
“That’s okay,” he says, like it’s a simple thing and it’s fine that I missed one of the most important games of his collegiate career.
“No, it’s not! How is it okay?” I try to tug my hand away, but his fingers stay firm in mine. “I’m so proud of you and I wanted to be there shouting for you like everyone else, but I missed one of your most important games of the season because of my stupid brain.”
“Your brain isn’t stupid.” Bohdan brings the back of my hand to his mouth, shrugging one shoulder. “And it wasn’t that important of a game.”
“Yes it was!”
“No,” he says firmly, turning to face me. “It wasn’t. It was a qualifier. It won’t even be my first time in the Frozen Four.”
“But it’ll be your last,” I murmur. “You’re a senior, and next year you’ll—”
“Be playing significantly more important hockey games on a regular basis.” He leans forward, pressing his mouth to the tears on my cheeks.
I start to shake my head. “I let you down.”
“You couldn’t let me down if you tried, Sloan,” he says against my skin. “Do you want to talk about it?”
My eyes flutter, and I think my breathing starts to even out for the first time all night. “I don’t know what to say. It’s nothing new. Just me and all the things wrong with me that I’m stuck with and one day you’re going to wake up and realize you don’t want to be shackled to.”
“Impossible.” His lips skate across the apple of my cheek, down the side of my jaw, until they find mine. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“Bohdan. My brain doesn’t fucking work.”
“No. It works differently.” He pulls back and emphasizes the word, like it’s somehow special and wonderful, lovely and effervescent, and not the thing that’s made me feel alone in rooms full of people and haunted me when I was a child, peeking out of my backpack to whisper to me like some sort of monster that lived under the bed, always there to remind me of the ways I was wrong.
I start to roll my eyes, but he grips my chin again. He shakes his head, one wayward piece of hair curling over his ears, left side of his mouth lifting just so, sharp planes of his face and stubble peppering his jaw.
He’s special and wonderful, lovely and effervescent.
I’m none of those things.
“Sloan. Zlatí?ko. Listen to me,” he states, like he’s ready to make a declaration. “I’m not going to get sick of you, or the way your brain works.”
“You probably should.” I sniff. “You’re what—the top-ranked hockey player in the world?
And you look like that?” He grins when I gesture wildly at him, his smile splitting me open, shining a light and chasing away the shadows in this dark kitchen, and maybe, some of the ones that live in me.
“You should be with someone who has cute, curated outfits and knows exactly what she’s going to wear to all your games and coordinates with the other partners. A blonde, maybe.”
Bohdan lifts a brow. “I don’t like blondes.”
I do roll my eyes this time. But my words don’t have the same bravado.
They’re small and sad. “Someone who can show up for you, the way you show up for them. You’re always doing things like this—rushing into the kitchen of my apartment or helping me count and learning new languages. What do you get out of it?”
“You,” he says simply. “You, and all the things about you that you don’t see.
How curious you are. How thoughtful. How intentional in your actions you are.
How funny you are. The way you snort sometimes when you laugh too much.
The way you get excited when you flip through pictures of artefacts, and how that excitement brightens everything it touches.
How your brain might be mean to you, but it actually makes you more understanding and lets you offer kindness to people who might not otherwise deserve it. ”
“Those sound made up,” I whisper.
Bohdan’s mouth tugs to the side in a rueful line. “I imagine they would to you. But they’re real to me.”
“What if it’s always like this?” I ask quietly, afraid of the answer. “You giving more than you get?”
“It won’t be. I can hold you up now, you can hold me up later.” He presses his thumb to each of my freckles. “We’re a team.”
“A team?” I wrinkle my nose. “What position do I play?”
“Left wing, like Talon, but I’ll probably make you ride the bench during the important games. I’ve seen you try to skate and shoot a puck at the same time.” He gives me a wry grin.
I shove at his shoulder, and he grabs my wrist, brushing his mouth across the sensitive skin before he tucks me into the crook of his neck, and drops his head back against the cupboard.
“How’d you get so mature for your age?” I place a hand across his chest, moving it around until I can feel his heartbeat against my palm.
“Slavic stoicism,” he deadpans, pressing his lips to the crown of my head. “Do you want to leave the kitchen? We can go to your room, or I’ll take you back to my place. But I think Talon and Jay were planning on throwing a party.”
“No.” I sniff a laugh. “I live down here now.”
“I guess I’ll have to move in, too.” I feel him grin into my hair. “Good thing because I don’t think I’ll be able to move my fucking legs.”
“Should we start decorating then? You’ve got a good eye.” I pull back, smiling softly up at him.
He nods, eyes sweeping across the kitchen like he’s being thoughtful about the whole thing.
He points to the fridge. “That’s too empty.
I’ve got the perfect thing we can hang there.
” Reaching into the back pocket of his suit pants, he pulls out his wallet, flicks through the bills and plastic cards, until he pulls out something from behind his ID, and holds it out to me between two fingers.
I take it, hesitant, running my fingers over the softened edges, and the black ink with my name and number scrawled on the back that’s starting to smudge.
The picture of eighteen-year-old me, frozen in time with tears in her eyes and absolutely no idea how lucky she really was that day.
I take a tiny inhale, glancing back up and blinking at him, another tear slipping down my cheek. “You kept the Polaroid?”
“Yeah, Zlatí?ko. I did. Start of the rest of my life, the night I got that.”
Bohdan might be the special, wonderful, lovely, effervescent one.
But he’s never, not for a single second, made me feel alone.