Chapter 19 Sloan
Sloan
Then - College
I’m trying not to move around too much. It’s not my bed, after all.
I usually like staying at Bohdan’s. His bed feels just as much mine as my own.
But tonight—everything is so loud, the sheets aren’t sitting right against my skin, and all I can think about are all the things I’ve done wrong.
I’d try to untangle myself, but he has one arm around my waist, his chin at home in the crook of my neck.
He’s so exhausted. He crawled into bed right after his second practice of the day, barely bothering to take off his clothes.
I don’t want to wake him, but my brain won’t shut up—so I try counting.
I know the thoughts won’t go away, I just don’t want them to be so loud.
Tapping my fingers against my chest in time with the words, I mouth, One, two, three.
“Sloan,” Bohdan mumbles, half asleep and voice rough. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” My fingers still.
I swallow.
I blink.
I even try to shake it out of my head.
But it doesn’t go anywhere.
It’s a stupid mantra, but it’s the one I’ve been singing to the tune of worries a child shouldn’t have as far back as I remember.
Everyone hates you. No one loves you. You’re not enough.
Do you remember when you were at lunch with Tia and her friends from her math class?
Your laugh was too loud.
Everyone found it grating.
“Sloan,” he repeats, murmuring into my neck. “What’s wrong?”
Pressing my eyes shut, I give another jerk of my head. “Nothing.”
Bohdan’s hand finds my chin, his fingers gentle. “Zlatí?ko, don’t lie.”
“Your Czech is so much better when you’re exhausted,” I say through a wet laugh, and I reach one hand up to bat away the tears running down my cheek.
His grip tightens against my chin, his arm tensing around my waist, before he rolls me over to face him.
Bohdan isn’t someone you’d describe as beautiful—he’s too serious, all sharp lines and edges and dark eyes that only ever seem to lighten when he looks at me.
But he looks something like beautiful now, milky light streaming through the window of his bedroom, hitting the planes of his face and those grey eyes in a way that make him look like he should be on a billboard somewhere.
He blinks, thumb brushing across my mouth before his hand wraps around the back of my neck. “Baby.”
He doesn’t repeat himself. He doesn’t ask again.
It’s all he says.
An invitation.
I take it.
“What if . . .” I lean down, afraid to look him in the eye when I tell him in case he thinks it’s true, too. “What if . . . what if everyone hates me?”
He doesn’t even blink, but his fingers tighten against the nape of my neck. “No one could hate you.” He says it like it’s a simple fact.
“But they might.”
“Did something happen today, Sloan? Or is your brain telling you something that isn’t true?”
It’s another thing that’s so stupid, so embarrassing, and it’s going to seem small to him, but it’s not to me even though I wish so badly it was. “I laughed.”
“You laughed,” he repeats.
I wait for him to do the thing that’s been plaguing me—to tip his head back, expose his neck with all those magnificent lines and cords in laughter that’s not for me, but at me.
He doesn’t.
“Then whoever heard you was lucky.”
I roll my eyes with a wet scoff, slapping at my cheeks now. “But what if it was too loud? What if I was annoying? Do you think I’m annoying?”
“It wasn’t, and no. I don’t. I think you’re fascinating.
” Bohdan takes a steady exhale. “What do you need me to do, Sloan? Do you need me to tell you that no one thinks you’re too loud, that no one thinks you’re annoying, that no one hates you?
If you need reassurance, I’ll give it. I’ll stay up all night. ”
“My therapist says . . . reassurances aren’t always good. Because they can just be temporary, and then the obsession is going to chase the reassurance I get from the compulsion of asking . . . and I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.” Bohdan moves his hand to my chin again, tipping it up. He looks at me in that way, stoic, serious about two things—and how lucky am I that one of them is me—and somehow, a man when he’s surrounded by twenty-one-year-old boys. “And I’m not temporary.”
I blink, and I tell him another fear. Maybe the biggest, scariest one I have. “You might be.”
Bohdan closes his eyes with a slow shake of his head. “I’m not.”
“You’re twenty-one.”
“You’re nineteen.”
“We aren’t just reciting facts, Bohdan,” I say softly.
Bohdan runs his thumb along my chin before moving it to my bottom lip. “Here’s a fact for you. I’ve only really loved one thing in my life, and then I met you. Now I love you more.”
“That’s a reassurance,” I whisper.
“No. It’s a fact.” Bohdan moves his thumb to my cheek. “Can I tell you three facts?”
I barely nod.
He presses his thumb to the first freckle.
“Jedna. Your eyes go wider when you’re talking about archeology more than anything else.
” He moves to the second. “Dvě. You snore when you’re napping, but not when you’re sleeping through the night.
” He smiles on the last one. “T?i. You’ve got terrible taste in television. ”
His mouth replaces his thumb, a brush across each freckle, before his lips find mine with a whisper. “And they’re all things I love about you.”
“You love those boring facts about me?” I smile against his mouth. The questions and the noises are all still there, they’re just . . . quieter. At least for now.
Bohdan slides his hand across the back of my neck, cradling my head. He nods, mouth shifting into a smile, too. “Next time you think someone hates you, or that they don’t love you, remember those three, boring facts about you that I love.”
“Not a reassurance?” I murmur.
He shakes his head. “Not a reassurance.”
“Can you tell me more tomorrow?”
“Every night before bed, for the rest of our lives. I’ll tell you three facts before you go to sleep.”