I’ve seen him in pain too much for my liking over the last two years. I’ve seen him with too many cuts to count: a thin slice along his jaw that didn’t end up needing stitches, but left a faint scar you can only really see when he’s clean-shaven and there’s no stubble dusting it. A gash through his eyebrow that had to be taped, but if you look closely, you can see a tiny bump of raised skin that sits above the left brow; and more than one concussion.
None so severe he was out for more than a week, but I don’t actively enjoy seeing him hit the boards at all, let alone when his head makes contact with anything.
I think he might be a little too high above it all right now for anything to bother him.
A graduating senior who holds more on-ice records than he cares to remember, the best centre in MSU history with not one, but now two Frozen Four titles.
First overall in the draft, and so many bright, lovely things waiting for him in his future.
A big, beautiful life on the West Coast, where he says he’ll wait for me, too.
It’s not just Bohdan I’ve seen win and lose and get hurt and get back up over the last two years; I’ve seen Jay and Talon do the same and get hurt right beside him. But even though they’re just as high in the stratosphere as he is, and Jay’s no stranger to ink—tiny tattoos dot his arms in patchwork sleeves—they both wince when the needles pierce their skin.
Bohdan’s eyes cut to the tattoo gun as it presses down, but they don’t stay there long. They’re back on me, perched beside Tia on the end of Jay’s neatly made king bed, watching the three of them stretched out across Jay’s room—the biggest in the house, a point of pride for him over the last two years. Bohdan has one leg kicked up, lying back on a padded table, his left arm extended out into space, with a tattoo artist hunched over his bicep, making tiny, precise strokes with the needle.
Talon and Jay sit on either end of another table, opposite legs stretched out with artists hovering over the pop of muscle above each of their knees.
“This doesn’t feel sterile. Shouldn’t we have gone to the tattoo parlour?” Tia frowns, apprehensive.
Jay glances up from the tattoo artist, hunched over his thigh where she moves the gun up and down in a way that tells me she’s drawing the twenty-two for Talon. His mouth pulls tight and his nostrils flare, but he shakes his head at Tia. “My dads gave me money as a present for winning the Frozen Four twice. Said I could do whatever I wanted with it.”
A brow flicks up on her forehead. “So you called a mobile tattoo truck and thought that permanently scarring your body with all your respective numbers from the ‘only line to ever exist’”—she pauses so we can all give appropriate deferenceto her exaggerated air quotes—“was a good use of their hard-earned money?”
Jay grins before he exhales sharply when the gun carves above his kneecap. “I’ll pay them back. I’m about to have a lot of my own hard-earned money.”
“The only line to ever exist.” Talon’s smile splits across his face. He holds a palm up, and Jay looks like he might reach out for it, but the artist working on Talon moves to the second number, seventeen for Bohdan, and her eyes don’t leave his quad when she cuts in, “Do not move.”
Talon flashes his other palm in apology, but he’s still smiling. “Tell Mr. Choi and Mr. Solorzano thank you very much.”
The corners of Bohdan’s mouth twitch, like he’s vaguely amused, the left corner just a bit higher, and he winks at me before looking back towards the needle. “You okay over there, Zlatícko?”
“I’m fine, thank you.” I roll my eyes, but my hands curl around the edge of the mattress and I lean forward to get a closer look. “Does it hurt?”
Bohdan gives a jerk of his chin at the same time Jay says, “Yes,” and Talon inhales with a hiss.
“You can come watch, baby.” He gives another jerk of his head, but this one in invitation.
Talon jumps backward in age by about ten years and starts making high-pitched kissing noises when Jay snorts and lifts his brows at Tia. “You can come watch, too, baby.”
I can practically hear Tia’s eye roll when I stand, head tilting as I cross the room, watching the needle whir across the stretch of Bohdan’s muscle. The artist just finished with his number, and she’s moving to the next one—twenty for Jay—when Bohdan’s hand finds mine.
He laces our fingers together, pressing his lips to the back of my hand, and he does the whole thing in these sharp, precisemovements—the way he does everything. Careful, thoughtful, measured. So much so that the tattoo artist doesn’t look up, she doesn’t reprimand him or warn him not to move.
His skin touches mine and it always feels like the first time.
It’s been two years—but it’s never really stopped. Not with us.
I smile softly, tightening my grip on his hand.
I’ve been afraid of so many things in my life.
My own mind usually contends for first place. But now, I think the thing that scares me most in the entire world is the idea that one day, my hands won’t know his.
Bohdan cocks his head. “Do you want one?”
“Pardon me?” I blink.
“A tattoo.” His hand tenses in mine, and he points a finger towards the shining, black ink stretching across his bicep. “Do you want one?”
