Chapter 27 Sloan
Sloan
At least, I try in the skates.
He’s always been quicker than me—an above-average muscle composition will do that to a person—and he’s on me in a second, beside me with a hand suspended in midair just above my lower back so he can catch me if I fall, and I might, the way I’m stumbling around, just trying to get back to the bench.
“Breathe,” he instructs when I take a shaky inhale.
I don’t want to listen to him, but I do because my body has only ever been able to respond to two things: whatever vitriol my brain likes to spew, and Bohdan Novotnak’s voice.
The tip of my skate catches as I step off the ice, and before I can even brace myself against the boards, he’s got an arm around my stomach, the other hand pressing against my low back when I stumble towards the bench.
“Breathe, Zlatí?ko,” he whispers, and he’s much too close. I can feel the ghost of his mouth kiss my ear.
“Don’t.” I push away, hands scrambling at his arms and trying to get so far away from him but it hurts so much, and the only place I can really go is the bench.
I sit down, fingers wrapping around the edge of the wood instead of trying to untie my skates. It’s cool against my palms, and I try to focus on that, but it’s impossible when he’s right here and every bad thing I’ve ever thought about myself sits so heavy on my chest it might as well be a piano.
Instead, it’s the words I love you, followed by I’m leaving over and over and over again.
“Okay.” He nods, dropping into a crouch in front of the bench and getting to work on my skates.
I love you.
I’m leaving.
I love you.
I’m leaving.
I love you.
I’m leaving.
“Woah—is she—are you alright? Do you need an incident form?” I think Enrique stands to attention again, legs swinging off his desk and scrambling through stacks of paper on his desk.
“We’re fine.” Bohdan doesn’t look away from me.
He unties my laces in movements of three—a tug in the middle, and one more on either end, right by the eye.
I don’t think he realizes he’s doing it—it becomes unconscious when you know someone the way we know each other, to mirror them the way he mirrors my breathing. Three seconds in, three seconds out.
He’s gentle when he pulls my skates off, careful like he always was with me except for that one time, and his rough hands feel soft when he rolls the socks off, they’re reverent almost, when he slides my sandals back on.
I go to stand when he’s done—but he sits beside me, stretching his own legs out, and he places a hand over mine, still white-knuckling the edge of the bench. “Wait, please.”
I nod, blinking.
I should go—I shouldn’t wait for him. I should run, leave him behind the way he did me.
But my palms tingle, and the thoughts start.
They follow me the whole way back to our suite.
So does Bohdan.
Right behind me, hand hovering between my shoulder blades.
The thoughts hover, too.
All over me, and they puncture my skin with each step, each movement he takes to mirror mine.
Vile.
A brush of his thumb across the neck of my tank top to let me know he’s there.
Pathetic.
A whisper of his voice, telling me to keep breathing.
Really fucking wretched, actually.
His hand pushing open the door to the suite.
So easy to leave.
Just us, alone here in this stupid, giant room with those giant windows that look a bit too much like the ones back in our old home.
“Keep breathing, and tell me what I said.” Bohdan leans against the back of the couch, kicking a leg up, lines of his face set, somehow still endlessly patient with me.
“You lied,” I whisper, hands clenching in and out of fists.
“I lied?”
“You lied. You said that if you had one wish—it wouldn’t be for hockey again. It wouldn’t be to skate, it wouldn’t be for your career.” I sniff with a tiny shake of my head, tears spilling down over my cheeks. “You said it would be for me.”
“That’s not a lie, Sloan. That’s a fact.” He shakes his head slowly.
“Don’t you dare.” I point at him and try to clench my teeth so my sob doesn’t escape but it does.
Loud and ugly and awful and taking up too much space, just like me.
He’s never lied to me before, not about a fact.
But there’s no way this one can possibly be true.
“Don’t you dare throw a fact in my face.
It can’t be a fact, Bohdan, because you left.
You left when I was trying, so, so hard to help you.
I did everything I could—I learned so much and I spent so much time on the internet and I brought home acupressure mats and I rearranged our furniture and I—”
His nostrils flare, and he bites down on the inside of his cheek with a slow shake of his head. “You were drowning in your own goddamn brain, Sloan.”
I narrow my eyes, still pointing at him. “So what, you decided to shove my fucking head under the water for good measure?”
“It’s not that simple!” Bohdan throws his hands wide before scrubbing his face and bringing two fingers to his temple, right at the precipice of the scar.
He slams them there, punctuating each word.
“My fucking brain wasn’t working, Sloan!
I couldn’t—I was useless! I couldn’t fucking do anything, except hurt you. ”
I’m not a resentful person.
At least, not actively.
And it’s not an emotion I’d have ever thought I’d associate with Bohdan, but it’s what bubbles up right now, just there, right under the surface, and it’s horribly ugly, uglier than most of my own thoughts.
I give him a tight smile, and I wish my words were biting, but they aren’t. They’re just quiet and sad. “Well, you were certainly good at that.”
Bohdan’s eyes pinch closed, and he scrubs his face. “Don’t I know it.”
We’re not very far apart—maybe a few feet. Him, propped up against the couch in this way that seemed like he was trying to be patient with me, but now I wonder if he’s just trying to keep himself upright.
Me, standing here staring at him with the ocean visible just beyond him through those giant floor-to-ceiling windows, sparkling in this way that looks like possibility but actually might be cruelty.
“Why?” I whisper.
He presses a fist to his mouth.
He’s not going to answer. But I’m resentful and sad and maybe a bit spiteful and I need to know, I need to know whether it really was me at the end of the day, that everything I tried wasn’t enough and that it never would be.
“You said—you promised this morning. You said before we got back, you’d tell me why. That you’d give me everything I wanted.”
I don’t tell him everything I’ve ever wanted stands in front me with wide grey eyes, full lips parted with his rough breathing, a living thief hidden under tumbling golden waves on his forehead.
“Before we go back,” he says, matter-of-fact. “I’ll tell you before we go back.”
“Now.” I try to stand up taller, stand my ground, demand this thing I think I’m owed. But one of my proverbial feet slips on the edge of that awful hole of ugly things between us, and I add, practically begging, “Please.”
“Just give me these next few days, Sloan. I promise I’ll tell you, I just, please—these next few days of you .
. . it’s—” He pushes off the couch, whatever words he was going to say tumbling into nothing, and he closes those few feet between us, tucking my hair behind my ears before he cups my cheek, thumb curving over the smattering of freckles and pressing in on each one.
“I wasn’t lying, Sloan. In any life, in any world, in any universe—it’d be you. ”
I let my eyes flutter closed, and I lean into his hand. I shouldn’t—because as good and lovely as it feels, it’s maybe one of the most painful things that I’ve ever experienced.
But then he says his next words, and I think I’ve fallen down the hill and broken every bone in my body along the way.
“I might have left, but I never stopped loving you.” His hand moves to grip my chin, and he tips my face up to his. “That’s a fact.”
“You’re lying.” My words sound like I’ve fallen, too, maybe caused quite a bit of irreparable internal damage along the way—cracking and sad and like I’m in so, so much pain.
“I’m not.” He gives another resigned shake of his head. “Lie to me, then. The way you think I lied to you.”
I say the only thing I can think of. The biggest lie I could ever tell. “I don’t love you anymore.”
The blow lands, and so does the duality of it.
His eyes flash, his jaw tenses before he swallows, and I can see it all over him—the way those words hurt and heal him all at the same time.
“I’d like to be alone now.” I inhale, taking a small step back.
Another lie, and I think he knows, and I think this one hurts him, too, but he bites down on his lip, nodding, before he presses a rough kiss to my forehead and listens to me.