“It’s a big lecture hall,” he says with a hint of pride.
“It is.” I nod softly.
Bohdan takes a measured step forward, across the trench between us we’ve both started to fill, and he lands safely on the other side, here in the doorway of this apartment with me. His eyes pinch, lines dig in around the corners like the years between us but neither of us fall in, and his voice cracks. “I’m all healed up now. Can I come home?”
“I think it’s going to be a lot of work.” I press the certificate and Polaroid right above my heart.
He nods again, thoughtful, but a real grin—corporeal, not a ghost, not a shadow—carves across his face. “Yeah. That’s alright. Looking forward to it, actually.”
“Me too,” I whisper.
And I am. Very much so.
His thumb swipes across my cheek one more time before it travels across my jaw, whispering over my lips, and his fingers tangle in my hair at the nape of my neck.
He doesn’t count my freckles. I don’t need him to, and I don’t want him to.
Bohdan angles his head down, his mouth hovering just over mine. He speaks, words low, vibrating with promise, and they breathe new air into my lungs. “You’d spend the rest of your life working on building a whole new home with some guy?”
My lips meet his and the words might get lost when our mouths slot together, a brand-new piece to a brand-new puzzle, but I think he hears them anyway. “Only ever you.”
Bohdan
Three Months Later
“Gavin can’t be our first guest.”
“And why not, Jay?” Talon gives him a contemptuous look, getting a bit too close to his own computer.
Jay flicks his hand, like he can wave Talon off through his screen. “It feels a bit like ... nepotism, I don’t know.”
I lean back in my chair. “That doesn’t exactly fit the definition of nepotism.”
“I said I didn’t know!” Jay throws his hands in the air before giving me a sarcastic thumbs-up. “Hey, great guest spot covering the game last night, by the way. Real riveting television.”
I arch a brow. “It was the most boring game I’ve ever seen in my life. I didn’t have a lot to work with. What did you want me to do?”
He runs an absentminded hand through his hair. “I don’t know—talk a bit more? Haven’t you been working on that for like a year?”
“It was boring because I wasn’t playing.” Talon flashes us both a grin.
Jay opens his mouth like he’s about to argue when the door to this makeshift office I’ve made in our apartment while the three of us try to sort this out creaks open.
“Hi.” Sloan peeks her head around it, fingers curling against the edges of the wood.
My eyes skate over them—I see her thumb twitch, but she doesn’t start tapping.
“Sloany!” Talon’s grin grows, and he waves his hand in invitation. “Come settle a debate for us. We’re trying to decide on our first guest. Jay says it should be our coach from MSU, but I think it should be Gavin.”
She doesn’t. She widens her eyes at Talon before folding herself down in my lap, hands interlacing around the back of my neck.
“Hey.” I brush my mouth against hers.
“Hi,” she whispers back.
I hear Talon. “Oh. They’re ignoring us.”
“It’s just like college,” Jay echoes.
