But she asks for the one thing I can’t, won’t, don’t want to give her.
The two things, actually.
“I want the Polaroid back.” Her voice splinters, and she shrinks, in real life, in real time, right in front of me.
Small again, the way I made her.
“And I want to know why.”
My eyes close, my scar throbs, and I feel like I’m going to be fucking sick.
But she mistakes my silence for something else—not the confrontation of the worst thing I’ve ever done that I’ll never be able to justify.
“Unless ... unless you don’t have it?”
Her voice rises, and I can hear the sob caught there.
She thinks I threw it away.
I open my eyes, and there they are—escaped tears, streaming down her cheeks. Beautiful under the empty sky.
I shake my head. “Of course I still have it.”
Sloan blinks away her tears, nodding once before she pushes to stand. “Great. It’s decided then. I look forward to seeing you for the first time this week tomorrow morning at breakfast. The itinerary says we’re getting off in Mallorca for a cooking class.”
She gives me what she might think is a bright smile—but she’s forgotten already, no matter how much she might want to pretend otherwise, I know her the exact way she knows me.
I can see her brain whirring to life, and I can almost hear it, whispering cruel things in her ear when she turns on her heel and leaves me with one last view of that stupid yellow dress.
Fishing my wallet out of my pocket, I raise a hand to the bartender and tip my chin towards my empty glass. I’d ask for the bottle if that wouldn’t fuck up my brain even more than usual.
I lay the picture flat against the table, eyes roving over eighteen-year-old Sloan—trapped in time before she meets me and the ruination of her life immortalized with her, a decade in the making.
The only thing I have left of her and the only thing I really care about.
The one thing I would never willingly offer up for anything.
But if she wants it back, I’ll hand it over, because it’s the only thing she asked for that I can give her.
Sloan
Then - College
The pounding on the door starts when the clock on the stove says 10:37 p.m.
I can see it from where I’m sitting, back against the cupboards, the green light mocking me as shadows from the kitchen window slink across the floor, closer and closer to me.
I sort of hope they’ll eat me alive.
It makes sense. The game was at seven, and then they had a postgame press conference because it was the qualifier for Frozen Four—they won and Bohdan scored twice—and I didn’t show up for either.
Not because I didn’t want to.
I wanted to quite badly.
I press the heels of my palms into my eyes. I’m trying to work up the courage to stand, but I hear a key turn in the lock of the door, and then I hear his voice.
“Sloan?” He sounds panicked, and I don’t get up from my spot on the floor, but I can imagine him—suit jacket undone, tie haphazard around his neck, wide hands gripping the doorframeas he leans into the apartment I share with Tia, one wave curling over his forehead, caramel hair almost ebony from the shower. “Are you in here?”
