Chapter 44 Bohdan
Bohdan
I don’t think Talon was thinking about anyone but himself when he picked the cruise itinerary.
He certainly wasn’t thinking about me and Sloan.
Or, if he was, it was probably something like, “Bohdan liked rocks in college and Sloan loves ancient shit—they’ll love Pompeii.”
He wasn’t thinking about the fact that we were already an eruption the size of Mount Vesuvius that left nothing but ash and dust in our wake.
He wasn’t thinking about the fact that we’re Pompeii, wrecked and dead and frozen in time.
He wasn’t thinking about the fact that somehow, we’d find each other again here, and against all my better judgement, because I love her more than anyone has ever loved anything in the history of the universe, I’d let her convince me to crawl up out of the rubble and go back in time for two days before everything erupts again.
It’s not lost on me when I watch the early-morning sun inch across her skin and her eyelashes flutter in her sleep, study her hands and her fingers where they’re curled into the pillow, and try to memorize the way her hair falls across her collarbone and how her nose twitches with these tiny snores I’d listen to on repeat from now into eternity.
It’s not lost on me when she blinks her eyes open, sleepy and slow.
Or when her lips shift into a pout, when they open for mine, and my tongue meets hers, her legs wrapping around my waist and inviting me inside her, and we move together under the morning sun, languid and unhurried like we’ve got all the time in the world.
We don’t have any, not at all.
It’s the last day and tomorrow, she’s going to trade me the cup ring for a Polaroid I’d have died to keep and the answer to her question I’d have rather taken to my grave.
We’re the volcano, not dormant at all, and I feel the pressure building inside her when she starts to tighten around me, her moans into my neck are the shifting of tectonic plates, and I come when she does, but it’s her whisper against my ear that causes the eruption.
“I wish this didn’t have to end.”