Chapter 49 Sloan
Sloan
“You look beautiful.” Tia squeezes my fingers. “Grey is a great colour for you.”
I glance down, tugging at the silk dress clinging to my thighs. “Oh. Thanks. It seems kind of like a waste to dress up like this. I didn’t realize the five-course dinner to cap off the cruise would be on our balcony.”
She nods thoughtfully, tapping her index finger to her pouted lower lip, somehow avoiding smudging the pink lipstick she spent ten minutes in the mirror expertly painting.
“It is a bit odd, Talon usually likes to make a spectacle. But you heard him going on and on today when we were in the shuttle—how this is one of the only ships in the world equipped with a suite like this.”
I give her a look. “It was quite the soliloquy.”
“He really should consider public speaking as a future career now that this cruise is over.” Tia wrinkles her nose before straightening the front of her own dress.
When she’s decided it all lies exactly as it should, she peers up at me, all furtive.
“Or . . . matchmaking. He’s going home with you?
That’s not walking away from him tomorrow morning, Sloan. ”
Her eyes cut to the glass doors of the balcony, to Talon, Jay, and Bohdan standing out there beside a table set with decorations that border on ostentatious, ornate crystal glasses and gold-rimmed charger plates keeping the white tablecloth from catching on the ocean breeze.
“Because I don’t want to walk away. I don’t want it to end.” I shift back and forth on my feet, and I try to smile at my best friend, but it catches on something.
“Sloan.” She breathes, her fingers feathering in space before they brush across my shoulder.
She pauses at the tattoo, like she’s afraid to touch it, before she makes a show of straightening the straps of my dress.
“Is that . . . is it the best idea for you two to just jump right back into things? I’ve watched you these last few days, and I get it, I do.
There’s never been a love for you like his, and there’ll never be a love for him like yours. But—”
I don’t get to hear what she’s going to say next because Talon knocks on the balcony door, eyes wide and expectant. He doesn’t say anything, but he taps an invisible watch on his wrist.
Tia makes a waving motion before she rolls her eyes, muttering, “I have no idea why he’s in such a hurry. It’s not like we’re going to miss a reservation. The whole dinner was already catered!”
“You don’t think it’s a good idea?” I whisper, but she’s wise to my tricks and she knows it’s a sad plea for reassurance.
She exhales, smoothing back imaginary escaped curls from her bun. Her words say one thing, but her eyes say another. “I just want you to be happy.”
My lips part, another plea ready, but Talon throws open the door. He leans forward, hands gripping the frame, causing the shoulders of his tux to buckle. “Guys, come on. You only have to play along for one more night.”
He blinks pleading eyes at us, and I force a smile, gathering the skirt of my dress to follow Tia out onto the balcony into the night air.
Tia pats her brother’s chest as she walks past. “We’ve had a blast, don’t worry. Maybe we should make it an annual thing?”
“Really?” Talon perks up, standing taller on the balls of his feet.
“No,” Jay answers, shrugging off his white dinner jacket and tossing it onto the back of one of the chairs before he sits down.
“It’s been fun, Talon.” I try to smile at him, but my eyes wander right on by everything else and land on Bohdan.
One leg kicked up against the glass railing surrounding the balcony, hands shoved into the pockets of his suit pants.
Black jacket stretching across perfect shoulders, the top three buttons of his white dress shirt undone, one wave of hair curling down and hiding the scar.
He angles his head. “Zlatí?ko. You look beautiful.”
“Thank you,” I murmur, brushing out invisible wrinkles in the front of my dress when Bohdan kicks off the railing to hold my chair out for me.
“You’re welcome, Sloany.” Talon grins, tapping my shoulder affectionately before pulling out his chair.
“She wasn’t thanking you.” Jay runs a hand through his hair, sending the ebony strands falling every which way.
Talon shrugs one shoulder, reaching across the table and pouring a too-full glass of scotch from a crystal decanter. “She should be. No retirement river cruise, no getting absolutely dicked—”
“Do not finish that fucking sentence.” Bohdan cuts a glare at Talon, brushing his fingers along the stretch of my shoulder before he tucks my chair in and takes the seat beside me, a hand resting across my thigh.
“Well.” Talon waves him off before knocking his fist against the table and raising his glass of scotch, the amber liquid sparkling beyond the intricate crystal detailing. “The retirement river cruise is officially coming to an end.”
“Not a river,” Tia mutters, ripping a bread roll in half and attacking it with a butter knife.
“What a shame.” Jay raises his brows before emptying his wine and grabbing the bottle on the table to refill it.
“I personally think it’s been very enjoyable.” Talon bothers to look affronted for two seconds before he turns to Bohdan, grin catlike. “Bohdan, did you have a good time? Maybe you’d like to give a toast. Anything you want to thank me for?”
Bohdan shrugs, the corners of his lips turning down, but I can tell by the way his left cheek twitches that he’s fighting a smile. “No, I’m good.”
Talon scoffs, leaning back in his chair, waving the glass of scotch around again. “Shay might want to rethink that whole mental health sports thing. Like pulling fucking teeth trying to get you to talk.”
I blink.
Bohdan stills, hand suspended midair as he reaches halfway across the table for his glass of water. The other tightens against my thigh.
I shift, turning to face him, almost preternaturally slow and still.
I think I’m back in the horror movie we stumbled into when I saw Bohdan for the first time on the gangway.
There is something in the room with us, and it never left.
A breeze lifts off the ocean. Stars wink in the sky above us. But I don’t notice them. I blink again. “What mental health sports thing?”
Talon doesn’t notice anything either. He gestures to Bohdan, the cuff links on his tux catching under the moonlight. “Network wants to make Bohdan the face of athletes’ mental health. Imagine him, on TV? Talking about his feelings?”
“No,” I say quietly. “I can’t.”
Bohdan runs a hand down his face before palming his jaw with a slow shake of his head.
“You’re going to what? Host an entire show?” I push back from the table with shaky hands and an even shakier heart. “When you couldn’t even talk to me?”
“Sloan—” he starts, grabbing the edges of my chair like he’s going to try to drag me closer to him.
I dig my heels into the ground, childlike. “Don’t.”
He presses his eyes closed and flashes his palms in the air before pushing his own chair back.
“Oh . . . no.” Talon cringes, tugging on the ends of his hair before straightening his bow tie.
Jay groans into his fist. “Jesus Christ, Talon. You can’t keep your mouth shut to save your fucking life.”
“What did you do?” Tia asks, but she’s not looking at her brother, she’s looking at Bohdan.
Told you, my brain exhales, sympathetic and scornful all at once. What have you ever mattered?
I inhale, the air sharp and stabbing and painful. My voice cracks. “I begged for you to talk to me. I begged.”
“I wasn’t going to take the job, Sloan. Why would I want to do that? When that’s what fucking cost me you?” Bohdan holds his arms open, eyes sharp and on me before he tugs at his hair, wincing when his fingers graze his scar. “I asked Shay to find me something back home—”
“That’s not the point, Bohdan!” I raise my voice at him for the first time since before he got hurt.
We fought sometimes, in the way that all couples do.
When he turned into a shadow in front of me, things got so, so quiet.
And not the good kind of quiet I used to beg for.
It wasn’t a reprieve for my brain. Sometimes, I thought about screaming or yelling or begging him to hear me.
But the idea that my voice might scare away whatever parts of him were left, as silent and lifeless as they were—the idea that he might realize all those things I’d been telling him about myself for years were true—had me whispering.
But I don’t feel like whispering now. “You still can’t talk to me. Can you?”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.” He presses his fingers to his temple.
“Sloany—” Talon starts, leaning across the table with an open hand, like he’s expecting me to take it. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not a big deal, I swear. I—”
“Let her yell, Talon,” Bohdan says, words firm, eyes never leaving me.
Tia reaches forward, grabbing her brother’s hand where it stays outstretched on the table. Talon Valdez is so many things—facetious, absurd, ridiculous—but he loves his friends so, so much. It’s painted all over his face, how much it hurts him that he hurt us.
She interlaces her fingers with her brother’s and gives his hand a reassuring squeeze before glancing to Jay, who’s already halfway out of his seat. “We’ll go back inside. You guys can meet us later.”
“No. Stay.” Bohdan gives a sharp jerk of his chin. “I deserve it.”
Jay cringes, drops back into his seat and stares pointedly at the ocean.
“Sloan?” Tia looks at me, imploring, like she’s waiting for direction, and I think if I asked her, she’d do her very best to throw Bohdan overboard even though she’s half his size.