Chapter 26 Sloan
Sloan
Knowing Bohdan again feels a bit like waking up in your own bed after a long, long trip. Sunlight you haven’t seen in months streaming through the window, sheets freshly washed, crisp and soft against your skin, head on a pillow that’s meant to hold all the worries of the brain that lives in it.
Trying to forget him was like wearing around a second skin—one that was never touched by him, and never really fit right.
I spend a lot of time not liking the skin I’m in—metaphorically, and literally.
Metaphorically, because I have this brain that worries all the time about things I’ve only ever been brave enough to speak out loud to Bohdan, that wants to tear me down so I never escape its cycle, that thrives on its obsession with hating me.
Literally, because sometimes my brain tricks me and I feel like my skin’s crawling.
Nothing sits right against it.
But right now, it feels just fine.
Warm from the sun baking down, and okay with being exposed and on display, my shoulders out under my tank top, legs only covered by loose denim shorts, and maybe, remembering what it was like to be loved by the man beside me whose arm brushes against mine from time to time.
“This ship is fucking huge. What a nightmare.” Bohdan grips his jaw with a terse shake of his head.
He put a shirt on, fortunately for me, and everyone around him who stares when he walks by.
A statue, hewed from marble and stone and wonderful things, brought to life and walking around their ship.
I nod, cringing behind my sunglasses. “I really think I would have preferred the riverboat.”
He holds his arms wide, muscles tensing. “We haven’t even made one full loop around.”
“Are you sure?” I point to a bar with fake palm trees on either side, casting shade down on the throngs of cruise goers lined up, some already holding giant, towering frozen drinks with curling plastic straws and umbrellas dotting the rims of their glasses.
“I’m almost positive we passed that same bar. ”
Bohdan shakes his head again, and I can practically see his eyes rolling from behind the dark lenses of his prescription sunglasses. “They have them spread out all over the ship. I don’t even know where we are.”
“I bet there’s a map included with our itinerary,” I offer dryly.
He cracks a sideways grin just as we pass the bar, stepping under the awning of the ship and back into the shade. Shops and restaurants line the path, and passengers spill out onto the deck in no particular order, with no real care.
At one point, Bohdan sidesteps two teenagers sprinting past us, knocking into me. He reaches out, hands gripping my shoulders to stop me from tripping. We stay like that, immobilized until he clears his throat, and his hands find their way to his pockets.
We don’t really have a destination—but I didn’t think it was wise for us to sit still anywhere. My brain gets louder, crueler, when I sit still, and I can’t imagine the horrible things it would have to say if I was alone with him.
We haven’t said much either. It’s not an awkward silence—those disappeared between us a long, long time ago. I don’t think it’s possible to feel awkward around someone who’s as much yourself as you are.
But I try to break the silence anyway, because I’m not sure it’s something that belongs between us.
“Is your—” I glance at him, pointing towards his sunglasses.
Bohdan speaks at the same time, hand scrubbing across a lightly stubbled jaw. “So you’re—sorry,” he says, a sort of sheepish grin playing across those sharp features in a way that makes my heart perk up, awake but still drowsy, and my lungs take this deep inhale I don’t think I have any control of.
I blink, staring at the planes of his face before resting my eyes on his lips. Full, lovely.
Sensuous.
The word pops into my head, and I remember our first date, thinking it’s how Tia would describe his mouth if given the chance.
She wouldn’t have been wrong, but it’s an absurd descriptor for Bohdan, and I snort, trying not to laugh.
“What?” Bohdan asks, and I can tell his eyes narrow behind his sunglasses by the way his brows come together.
“Nothing.”
“Sloan,” he says flatly. “You’re a terrible liar.”
I roll my eyes, holding a hand in the air. “Tia’s always said you have a sensuous mouth.”
He stills, and one hand comes out of a pocket, slowly taking his sunglasses off, folding them in the neck of his shirt where they tug down, revealing another sliver of bronzed skin, and he blinks grey eyes at me.
“That sounds like something she would say. But I know you’re lying.” He tips his chin to my fingers, feathering over my bicep.
I glance down. I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I narrow my eyes at him, a bit annoyed he can still see right through me. It’s something we used to share. I could have told you everything there was to know about Bohdan Novotnak.
The good: that this steadfast, patient, endlessly compassionate man lives behind all those features that look like they were made from stone and could cut it, too; that he’s got this dry sense of humour, and even though he doesn’t speak often, you’re so, so lucky when he does.
That he swears in this funny mix of English and Czech when he’s angry.
That you’ll never beat him at chess because he’s more patient than you.
That he always holds the door open for others, and he always waits to make sure you’ve gotten inside safely when he drops you off somewhere.
That he learned to count to six in five languages.
That he loves his grandmother more than anyone on the planet—except for, maybe, the time he spent loving me.
The bad—there’s really not much, and it’s only bad because I wish he could see himself the way I do: He holds himself to impossibly high standards, and I’ve seen him break more hockey sticks than I think his equipment manager liked when he didn’t perform to those standards.
But when he cut open his head, I think all those things bled out onto the ice and he faded away, something a bit like a ghost.
And I don’t know anything about ghosts.
But when he grins at me, under the sunlight and just one person in a sea of people, he doesn’t look like a ghost. He looks more corporeal than I’ve seen him in the last three years. “Do you think I have a sensuous mouth, Sloan?”
“I don’t think there’s anything sensuous about you.” I angle my head. “Everything was always quite . . . hard.”
His grin shifts to a smirk. “It’s a good thing we scrapped the strike system. You’d be losing.”
“Shut up.” I smile softly, and I wonder if he can see the way the corners furl downward, a bit wilted, a bit sad.
Because I did lose.
So did he.
Another teenager knocks into me, sprinting by with a pool floatie around their waist. Bohdan’s hands find my shoulders again, his jaw tenses, and he looks like he’s about to tell them off, but they’re already gone.
“You okay?” His thumb presses into my shoulder, and I feel it—the electricity that might live in him, maybe his eyes, because they’re the colour of a storm, after all, going through all my limbs.
“Fine.” I nod, offering him a tight smile and stepping back from his grip a bit later than I should. “We should move. It’s growing hazardous just standing here.”
Bohdan’s fingers flex against the empty space I used to occupy, and he nods, shoving his hands in his pockets again.
But when we round the corner, we come to the end of this section of the deck.
And there’s a giant neon sign flashing above the thoroughfare.
Below Zero
Ice Skating
It’s just a skating rink on a cruise ship. Something for children, probably.
Nothing like the arenas we spent time in.
But my eyes find Bohdan, and it hurts all the same.
He rolls his shoulders back, eyes flashing with something that looks a lot like pain, and he stands, stoic and still, wonderful and lovely, but horrible all the same, looking back at something he used to have.
“Do you want to go in?” I whisper.
He nods, muscles in his neck taut, and one hand hovers above his sunglasses still hanging on the collar of his shirt, like he’s debating putting them back on.
He runs it through his hair instead, sending the golden-brown waves everywhere, one curling over his ear and another dropping down on his forehead right along the scar.
It’s a practiced move. Intentional, and I know he must do it a lot—know just how to hide it in plain sight whenever he needs to.
The cool air and distinct smell of ice permeates everything when Bohdan pushes the door open. One palm against the glass, his arm angled upwards and all the muscles tense.
I smile gently at him, and duck under his arm, careful not to breathe. The last thing I need is to smell him, too.
It’s a small rink in comparison to what Bohdan was used to, just a pad of circular ice with surrounding stands and banners hanging down from the ceiling, advertising the different events and shows they host. Enough room to move, but I can’t imagine how crowded it gets.
And somehow, maybe because we’re at a popular port destination or there’s a talent show happening on board somewhere—right now, it’s empty.
There’s a skate rental stand to our left, with an employee in the standard black polo, the cruise line embroidered on the left breast in gold stitching.
He’s got his feet kicked up, one hand behind his head, the other scrolling aimlessly on his phone. His eyes flick to us when the door shuts quietly, and he has to do a double take, practically falling when he hurries to sit up, straightening papers on his desk.
“Sorry—sorry. We haven’t been busy today.” He flushes, sitting up straight and folding his hands demurely. He can’t be more than eighteen.
“It’s okay.” I smile softly. “We just wanted out of the sun for a bit. Can we—is the rink open?”
I glance away from the attendant when I say it. Bohdan hasn’t said anything, and I’m a bit scared to look.
It’s just a sheet of ice—but it’s not, not really.