My supervisor stands there, dark hair pulled back, tiny threads of grey interspersed and visible in her ponytail. She has her arms crossed, casual, and a kind smile on her face. “Sloan.”
“Dr. Amore.” I slam the laptop shut, sitting up straight and blinking a bit too much. “I was just doing a bit of research. It’s been quiet today.”
“For your proposal?”
It’s what I should be researching.
But I haven’t picked up my proposal for my dissertation since the day Bohdan got injured. If it were real and on paper, not stuffed in a folder on my computer, it’d be covered in three months’ worth of dust.
“Oh. No. Sorry—I know I’m late on it, I just—”
She shakes her head softly, her smile moving from kind to a sort of patient understanding that makes me feel like shrinking down beneath my desk.
“It’s okay, Sloan. You can take as long as you need. You’ve got a lot going on.”
Sympathy flashes in her eyes.
I swallow, nodding, and start tapping my fingers on the desk. “I’ll be back on top of it soon. Bohdan just needs—”
“How’s he feeling?” she interrupts, but it’s not unkind. It’s laced with the same pity living in her eyes. “I saw he retired.”
He did. Sort of.
He announced he wouldn’t be playing the rest of the season at a press conference a few weeks ago.
Those were the words his publicist gave him, anyway. That he’d be focused on conditioning and his health so he could try to come back next season.
The words weren’t written like a death sentence. But when he said them out loud, wincing under all those bright lights and against the flashing cameras, and when he stumbled over the wordtry—they sounded like one.
Like someone was ringing a bell in an old town square, welcoming the world to his execution.
“He’s just taking a break. For the rest of the season.” I force a smile, my throat burns, and the tapping of my fingers increases.
Dr. Amore’s eyes cut down to my hands, a crease sketches between her brow, and she nods. “I’m sorry, I misspoke. And how are you doing?”
“Me?” I blink. There’s a funny sort of irony to her question.
I’ve spent my whole life thinking about myself—how rotten, how bad, how maybe secretly evil I must be—and the only thing that’s ever rewritten the story was Bohdan’s injury.
His headaches are my intrusive thoughts.
The blood in his brain that cleared up on its own is what haunts me when I look in the mirror.
Bohdan. Bohdan. Bohdan.
And everything I can do to make him feel better.
To fix him the way he fixed me when he picked me out of a crowd of thousands of people and made me feel like I was worthy for the first time in my life.
I blink again with a shake of my head. “I’m okay. I’ve learned a lot about alternative therapies for migraines. Acupuncture. Feng shui—I just bought some new sheets. They’re a light green. It’s supposed to be soothing. I thought it might help.”
She looks at me like she feels a bit sorry for me.
But she shouldn’t, he’s going to love them.
And it’s not that he doesn’t.
He might, I can’t be sure.
