But the truth is, I’m not sure I can survive another minute of knowing this version of me.
I can’t tell her that, I can’t tell anyone that. The only person I could tell all of the horrible, depraved things that my brain tells me left. So I settle on telling her a different kind of truth, a more palatable one. “Well, your brain doesn’t work like mine, Tia.”
“I know. I know.” Her words are soft. She holds her palms up in surrender before slowly prying mine off the chair and interlacing our fingers. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“A little late for that, no?” I ask dryly.
Tia gives me a watery smile, blinking away her own tears, shining under the early-morning sun. “She’s still got jokes.”
I don’t have time to answer, because the door to the suite gets thrown open by Talon, who steps out, arms wide. The sleeves of his blue striped linen button-up bunch against the muscles of his arms, and the matching shorts ride up his thighs. He slides his Ray-Bans down over his eyes. “Who’s ready to cook?”
Tia raises her hand with a half-hearted “Me,” and I watch Jay step out after him, cuffed denim shorts that only he could pulloff straining against his quads, oversized white T-shirt hanging down with the gold of the chain around his neck glinting under the morning light.
“Why are we going to a cooking class? You’re thirty years old, Talon.” Jay slides his sunglasses up his head, but wisps of ebony hair still escape when he shakes it at Talon, who looks like he’s testing the length of his wingspan as he stretches his arms and shoulders against the glass railing surrounding the balcony.
Talon glances over his shoulder, leaning to his left and inching his hand further across the glass. “Team had a nutritionist. We had one in college. I’ve barely cooked for myself my entire life. I can’t lose my physique now.”
Tia rolls her eyes, mouthing the wordsmy physiquebefore flopping back on the lounge chair, stretching out her legs, and lifting her tank top to tan her stomach.
“You’re thirty.” Jay holds his arms open. “Why’d you even retire? You probably had—” He eyes Talon, like he’s assessing the athletic prowess still living in his legs as he lunges in front of the glass. “Four or five years left, especially in a European league.”
“Especially in a European league,” Talon parrots, his middle finger flicking up when he inches his feet back together. He raises each knee to his chest in turn before seemingly deciding he’s done. He shrugs, considering. “I dunno. I was bored of it, I guess. Time for the next great adventure and all that.”
It’s not a bad thing to say. Talon’s always known who he is, even when he didn’t know what he was doing.
But it’s ill-timed, because he says it right as Bohdan steps out onto the deck. Another white linen shirt lifting, pushing against his chest and abdomen in the breeze, doing nothing to conceal the ridges of muscle stretching across his stomach. Tan linen shorts practically moulded to the muscles of his thighs, golden-brown hair tousled just so, eyes hidden behind impossibly darkblack sunglasses that look like they’re prescription, and theSscrawled across the cords of his forearm muscle stark against his skin.
Talon pales, one shoulder lifting and a cringe settling on his face. “Sorry, Novo.”
Bohdan shrugs, but a muscle ticks in his cheek, dusted with stubble, cutting down his jawline and making him look like one of those statues you’d probably find in any museum just beyond the port.
“Bohds? You okay?” Tia sits up, frowning and tugging on a loose curl before she points at his sunglasses. “Those are your prescription ones.”
I can’t see his eyes, the frames are practically opaque to block out as much of the sun as possible, but there’s a small, hopeful part of me that imagines his eyes flick to me before he answers.
It’s squashed, trampled on, and tilled into the earth by my brain reciting the only fact it knows when he speaks, the shrug of one shoulder, like it’s all nothing. “Yeah. Just didn’t sleep, that’s all.”
Not enough, not enough, not enough.
Bright red tomatoes spill out from vines tumbling along the garden path, winding along crumbled stones that line the hillside giving way to the ocean. I’m careful not to step on any as I trail behind Talon, Tia, and Jay, the skin splitting open on some, tiny seeds visible just underneath.
Dishes and glassware rattle from the open kitchen in the restaurant behind me. The hosts sent us out here to collect our own ingredients from the garden, and Talon, the self-proclaimed vegetable expert, ran ahead.
Tia followed, because she’s nothing if not competitive, and probably didn’t want to be bested by a pepper picked by herbrother. Jay seemed more interested in whatever he was doing on his phone, following them without much care to notice the garden path.
Bohdan seemed more inclined to spend his afternoon studying the rocks jutting out of the restaurant wall, one thumb trailing over the rough edges with a reverence I recognized all too well.
But I know his footsteps without having to look.
He’s always had this way of shortening his strides to match mine that never made me feel like he was slowing down so I could keep up, but like that’s just how it was supposed to be my whole life: him and me, side by side forever.
I do look, because I can’t help it.
He’s beautiful, sunlight sketching across the sharp planes of his face, full lips set in this serious line that makes you want to know what he’s thinking.
It turns out I don’t have to ask because he takes one handout of his pocket, and he extends it, the ropes of muscle stretching down his forearms tensing when he does.
“Hi,” Bohdan says, voice low and one side of his mouth kicking up like the ghost of a grin sits ready and waiting. “I’m Bohdan.”
