Page 102 of The Fall

These are the kinds of things that burn themselves into memory, but I have two playing simultaneously.

My head reels, trying to track which memories are real and which version of events I lived.

I remember this game, remember the sting of the trainer’s needle, the way Blair’s eyes went dark when he saw blood on my jersey, and I also remember hearing this story and having no idea what was about to come out of Hayes’s mouth next.

I remember being lost, everyone knowing what had happened and what I’d done. Last time?—

No.

There was no last time. That didn’t happen. That was all in my head, all made up. That was a concussion; I dreamed of Tampa, but that life wasn’t… It wasn’t real.

If I keep repeating it, will it become true?

“Kicks goes down, hard,” Hayes continues. “And that’s when our fearless captain here loses his goddamn mind.”

“I wasn’t?—”

“On the contrary, Captain, you were.” Hayes smiles and tips his beer toward Blair. “You dropped the gloves before Wheton even knew what hit him. Just absolutely demolished the guy, old-school, feed him all-day-long hockey justice.”

Blair’s knee pushes against mine, steady pressure that says I’d do it again .

“So Kicks goes to the tunnel to get sewn up,” Hayes barrels on, “and we go on the power play. And when our boy Kicks comes back for the next face-off, three fresh stitches decorating that pretty face, what does he do?”

Everyone turns to look at me.

“He scores with eleven seconds left!” Hayes slaps the table. “And then—” Hayes pauses for maximum drama. “In overtime, after all that heroics, all that blood and beauty… Who gets the game-winner?”

I’ve forgotten how to breathe.

“Fucking Divot! ”

Chaos erupts. Divot takes a mock bow while Novak wrestles him into a headlock.

Divot has a heart of gold, but he’s the definition of a plug.

He’s got feet for hands and skates like a fridge, but he can hit like a train and pick, pick, pick at the other team.

He’s known for his bulk, not his season point total.

Three stitches on my cheek. I touch my face.

I’d wanted , so much, before New Year’s.

“You okay?” Blair asks.

“Yeah. Just remembering.”

Hayes leans back into his seat, extremely satisfied with his performance. “Point is, Boston brings out the best in us, especially you, Calle.”

My laughter joins in with the rest of the guys as Blair shakes his head.

Then his hand settles on my lower back, and the heat from his palm maps a new territory along my skin. All the surrounding noise of the team collapses into a distant hum, and the dim bar lights play across his face as he gazes at me. Each sweep of his thumb rewrites what I know about wanting.

“When you laugh like that...” His words hang there, and the air thickens, pulling all my focus into the charged space between us. “I think it’s my favorite sound in the world.”

His eyes lock on mine, that drowning blue that pulled me under months ago and has never let me surface. My heart hammers as his gaze drops to my mouth, then back up. The space between us crackles.

His fingers slide away, but the heat of his touch remains branded on my skin.

“Let’s get refills,” Blair says, rising, his voice rough.

I follow him through the crowd, weaving between tables and groups deep in their own celebrations. The bar is packed, bodies pressed together, voices competing with music I hadn’t noticed before.

A space at the bar opens, a pocket of quiet meant for us. Blair leans his hip against the worn wood, but his body stays turned toward mine. When the bartender approaches, he says, “Two more virgin pina coladas.”

The bartender’s eyebrows climb. Blair stares him down.

“You know,” he starts. “I was thinking about my brother earlier.”

Déjà vu hits like vertigo, like missing a step in the dark. My throat closes; I know these words.

The change in Blair is a subtle drop in barometric pressure, a shift so small the rest of the world misses it. His focus has collapsed inward. I know exactly why he’s thinking about Cody tonight. Because we won. Because he’s happy. Because guilt comes for him whenever joy gets too close.

“We were playing juniors, his rookie season,” Blair continues, his eyes fixed on some point beyond the wall of liquor bottles. His gaze is distant, unseeing. “He was always running his mouth, but this one game, he was on another level. Just relentless.”

A small smile touches his lips. It’s a memory worn thin from handling. “He decided to make this one guy on the other team, a defenseman built like a brick shithouse, his personal project for the night.”

The muscle in Blair’s jaw jumps, a tiny, repetitive clench.

“Before face-off, he skates right up to him. Says, ‘Hey, big guy. Your girl called. Said she left your balls on the nightstand.’”

His laugh is a shard of sound that doesn’t fit the shape of his mouth. I lean closer and let my thumb move in a slow, steady arc against his hipbone.

“I spent the next two periods tangled up with him, trying to keep him from turning my little brother into a smear on the ice.”

His story hangs there, a small, bright, painful thing, but he’s not talking about a hockey game.

He’s talking about everything that came after, about the silence in his life where his brother’s voice used to be.

The space Cody left behind is a vacuum Blair is still trying to fill, a wound that doesn’t know how to scar over.

Cody isn’t here, he won’t ever be here, and Blair would take a thousand more hits if it meant having his brother back.

No, this is about the silence that rushed in to take his brother’s place, a permanent quiet where all that life used to be. It’s about being a big brother, and discovering his big-brother protection had limits Blair never wanted to face.

Last time, this moment hollowed me out with everything I didn’t know, but now it breaks me differently, knowing too much.

Grief rewrites at the cellular level. It changes how love moves through your body.

Blair’s grief moves like a fatal riptide, invisible from shore, but powerful enough to drag you under.

I recognize the careful way he tells his stories, how he parses out memory in small doses.

In his stories, Cody lives again, brilliant, reckless, beloved Cody, who Blair couldn’t save.

His eyes are deep water when they lock onto me. I squeeze his hand. “He knew you’d always be there to back him up.”

A long, slow breath leaves him; it’s the slow receding of a wave.

He brings our joined hands up to rest on the bar, fingers threaded together. The move is a full sentence, a conversation without words. My thumb runs over the back of his hand, saying I’m here and you’re not alone and Cody would be proud of who you’ve become .

The bartender sets our drinks down—extra cherries, double umbrellas.

Blair pays, and then we head back into the crowd. He walks close enough that I exist in his shadow.

The table explodes with laughter when we return. Divot’s deep into a story about fighting a raccoon, but all I can focus on is Blair and how his fingers brush mine when he reaches for his drink, how the light catches in his hair as if it’s been gold all along.

“What am I missing down there?” Blair leans in, voice low enough to raise goosebumps.

Everything , I want to say. Y ou’re missing how I dream about you in places we’ve never been, how sometimes I wake up and am afraid you’ll be gone like you vanished once before, like you were never real at all. Loving you feels like remembering something I’m not supposed to.

“Yo, Cap.” Simmer calls down the table. “If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, but it had to be something from the arena, what would it be? And why is it nachos?”

The debate is passionate and ridiculous. Blair argues for buffalo chicken sandwiches with the same intensity he brings to power play strategies. His hand settles on my thigh again. This time I cover it with mine, lace our fingers together where no one can see.

The night unspools lazy as honey. Blair touches me constantly: a hand on my leg, an arm around my chair, fingers tracing patterns on my knee that probably spell out confessions to the whole world. I burn and burn and burn, and he keeps pouring fuel on the fire with every casual touch.

He knows what he’s doing. The small smile playing at his lips tells me he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Eventually, the night winds toward curfew. Credit cards appear. Chairs scrape. Phones come out to call rides.

“Who’s on coffee duty tomorrow?” Hayes asks.

“Not it!” Novak shouts.

“Bus leaves at eight,” Blair’s captain voice cuts through the noise. “Don’t be late.”

Hockey players don’t leave anywhere quickly. The guys scatter, distracted by fire pits and city views, and Blair takes my hand, bold as anything, to pull me inside. We turn down a hallway lit soft as candlelight, where shadow and glow take turns with his face.

The noise fades behind us. Blair stops walking, turns, and pulls me against him until there’s nothing between us.

Our hearts beat a matched rhythm. His breath stirs my hair, and in the dim light, his eyes hold galaxies.

I trace the edge of his jaw with my fingertips, marveling at how perfectly we fit in this space, this moment, as if the universe engineered every molecule to align us here.

His fingers are impossibly gentle against my cheek. Our foreheads touch. His lips brush mine, a question, a hesitation that lasts a single, infinite second before he closes the distance.

The kiss is soft and tastes of pineapple and coconut, of salt from the ocean air, of summer nights and future mornings, of him .

I hold him close while he kisses me as if we have forever and we’re not stealing moments in dark hallways.

We kiss like we’re trying to crawl inside each other, like we could fuse at the molecular level if we press close enough.

The world makes sense only when he is this near.

“Yo!” Hayes’s voice echoes down the hall. “If you’re down here, hurry your asses up. Ubers are pulling up!”

Our kiss breaks, but he stays close. His eyes are brilliant, holding me, and something in them dares me to meet him in his forever, where no one else has ever been.

He’s given me everything: all of his strength, all of his loyalty, every battered hope he’s patched together after the years of his storms. His trust, his grief, his brother’s memory, his whole heart laid bare.

Everything he is—history, hope, loyalty that tastes like salt and sunrise—sits between us.

I’d stand between him and any storm. If life tries to pull him under, I’ll be his mooring.

For every scar he hides, I’ll press a promise against it: you’re not alone.

I want to be the undoing that doesn’t wreck him, the safe place after where he can shelter his soul.

Already, my heart carries him everywhere, the way the tide always carries the shore.

I won’t lose him to clocks unwinding or days repeating. The world can try to erase what we’ve built, but my memory of him is set deeper than time can touch. I’ll find him in every version of reality, every timeline where he exists.

Whatever cosmic force thinks it can separate us doesn’t understand. We have chosen each other across impossibilities, always and forever. We belong in the same story, on the same pages. Our love defies the physics of space and time.

Nothing will stop me from loving Blair.