I inhale, the air sharp and stabbing and painful. My voice cracks. “I begged for you to talk to me. Ibegged.”
“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’ta 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.
“Why’d you leave?” I tip my chin up, wrap my arms around my chest, try to inhale and prepare for the thing I’ve been dreading for so long. That he’ll tell me how horrible and vile I am. That Iwas right all along. But his eyes close, resigned, his fingers find the bridge of his nose, and it’s then I realize. I shake my head, words hardly a whisper. “You don’t even have a good reason, do you?”
You’re not even worth having a legitimate reason. I imagine my brain doing something mundane—a horrible, evil girl from middle school who barely spares you a glance while she’s filing her nails.
The set of his jaw sharpens. Grey eyes turn to stone and he stares, assessing, before he tells me the truth. “Because I couldn’t love you without hurting you.”
A laugh catches in my throat. It cuts me open, I think.
It’s horribly painful. Not quite ironic—but it’s something. That he could look so beautiful out here under the moonlight, silhouette framed by the ocean, and give me this simple answer to this question I tried to make into this giant thing that would finally, finally free me.
It doesn’t free me.
Not at all.
It shackles me.
My worst fear—my biggest worry—wasn’t that all the bad, evil, horrible things I’ve thought about myself were true.
It was this. That I was so worthless, sonothing, that there wasn’t even a good reason to explain it all away.
I watch as my brain turns new keys in new locks and whispers cruel new things, and I think I’m right back where I started.
“It wasn’t just your choice though, was it?” I try not to cry, but I feel the tears sting my cheeks when the breeze hits my face, and this dam inside me I’ve spent so, so long keeping closed bursts. “You said we were a team—you said that when we were practically just kids. And when it was my turn to take care of you—it just wasn’t good enough. You what, got bored of waiting forme to figure out how to do it properly? You left me. You gave up on me.”
“It was me who wasn’t enough, Sloan.” He says it so quietly, my brain tramples right over it. “I gave up on me. Not you. Never you.”
I point at him with a shaking finger and push to stand. “I gave up so much for you. I gave and I gave and I gave because that stupid game was your dream.”
“It wasn’t my dream.”
“How is it possible that it wasn’t? When it was gone, so were you!”
