I stop, the edge of my sandal catching on a stray rock lining the dirt path of the garden. “What are you doing?”
“Introducing myself.”
“Why?” I ask, wrapping my arms around myself more out of habit than anything.
“You seem like someone I’d want to get to know.” He does smile now, a slow, lazy thing that stretches across his face, stealing all the sharpness painted there by time and by the shining sun, and he almost looks like the boy I used to know.
I give him a flat look and pretend my heart, still half asleep, doesn’t stir in my chest.
One brow lifts with the shrug of a shoulder. “You said to act like we didn’t know each other.”
I blink, before a scoff sounds from the back of my throat, and I stab my finger towards his still outstretched hand. “This is not what I meant. In fact, I actually think this is in violation of one of the other rules: no touching.”
“You count a handshake as touching? It’s our palms, Sloan.”
“With you?” I narrow my eyes, jabbing my finger at the offending appendage again. “Yes. Trust me, any contact counts.”
The smile shifts into a grin, and Bohdan shifts with it. Back to the person he was before that scar I can barely bring myself to look at stole from him. This too-serious, stoic boy who became this driven, endlessly patient, steadfast, obstinate man with this secret playful side, who wanted nothing more than to be the best at the only things that mattered to him: hockey, and me.
And when that scar became a thief, it took his first love, and it made him forget about his second.
I forget that, though, that he forgot how to love me, because he angles his head down, one wave of hair flops forward onto his forehead, and those lips form rough words that skitter down my spine and make me shiver under the sunlight.
“How do you know? We don’t know each other.” He still has his sunglasses on, but I can feel his eyes all over me. “If you want to test out what contact with me feels like, I can think of a few more interesting things we could do other than shake hands.”
“Indecent.” I tip my chin up, but my stomach twists and I feel the blush on my cheeks.
The Bohdan I knew loved when I blushed. He said it made the three freckles—the only constellation he cared about—stand out even more.
I press my palms to my cheeks, not because I’m flushing, but because I’m not sure he deserves to see those freckles anymore.
“You used to like that,” he says, words heavy with far too much meaning than appropriate for the public garden at a family-owned restaurant.
“How do you know?” I shriek, waving a hand between us. “We don’t know each other!”
Bohdan leans forward, full mouth curving into a different kind of smile—one that tells me he wants to devour me, the way he used to.
But he doesn’t. Whatever he’s about to say—or do—gets interrupted by a shout from Talon.
“Look at this tomato!”
I glance sideways towards Talon, standing probably right where he shouldn’t—in the middle of the vines tangled across the ground, holding what’s objectively a giant tomato in his palm.
Tia stands to the side with Jay—who looks like he’s a second from dropping to his knees and begging whatever God might be listening to please, please save him from this—and she widens her eyes at me, tapping her fingers against her bicep. “Hurry up. It’s time to make the dough for pasta.”
Talon holds his tomato up in the air.
Bohdan doesn’t look away from me. “Cool.”
I give a tiny shake of my head, and I’m about to step around him, to take the path back to the restaurant, when he tips his chin towards his hand, still there, still waiting for me. “I’ll wait all day, Sloan.”
“Fine.” I roll my eyes, meeting his hand with mine.
He’s right, by technicality. It’s just our palms touching. Not even particularly sensitive skin.
But it is.
Because he’s him and I’m me, and my heart might have gone to sleep when he left, but it’s wide-awake when he touches me.
