Page 104 of The Fall

I could be crazy. Brain-damaged and trapped in some trauma response that makes me feel like I’m reliving moments that are simply similar to others.

Hockey players live in patterns—same hotels, same routines, same conversations cycling through a season.

Maybe my mind is misfiring, creating false memories from these rhythms.

But I know better.

I thought I knew about how time moves. Forward only. No rewinds. No second chances.

Except I am getting one. Or I’m trapped in one. Or I’m losing my mind thinking I have one.

Blair meets me at the bus door, his hand settling on the small of my back as I climb the steps. “You’ve been quiet.”

I turn on the step, putting us eye to eye. The morning sun catches in his hair, turns his eyes that impossible shade of blue. I’ve seen this exact light on his face before. I know I have.

“Just thinking.”

“About?”

About how I have held you before. About blood and glass and dark water. About waking up screaming your name in Vancouver. About loving you so hard it shatters the rules of physics.

“The game,” I lie. Blair knows—of course he knows—that I’m lying, but he doesn’t push.

What else could I tell him? I want to grab him and hold him so tight that whatever is trying to tear us apart can’t take him, but that’s not how this works. You can’t outmuscle fate. You can’t check destiny into the boards.

I’m terrified that I’m the problem, that whatever destroys us starts with me, with some choice I take or don’t take, some word I say or swallow. I don’t know if loving him harder saves us or damns us. I don’t know if pulling away protects him or pushes him toward whatever darkness waits.

Everything is wrong when you don’t know what leads to ruin.

Blair shifts, his knee resting against mine. He knows I’m off-balance, even if he doesn’t know the impossible reason.

What I have isn’t foresight, or a superpower, or premonition; it’s a bad echo, so quiet I can’t parse it until I’ve already fallen into the same sequence, the same acts, the same damn loop.

I never have more than a second’s warning.

Each moment flows into the next without a ripple of warning.

But there has to be something: a sign, a trigger, a crack where I can wedge my fingers and pry reality open.

How can I change where we’re going if I can’t remember ?

All I can feel is the dread of what’s coming, the momentum of our inevitability building and building.

The only thing I can control is whether I walk this with him or walk away.

I’ve already lived through the hell of being without him before. I won’t choose that. I can’t .

I will become the shield. I will be the body that takes the hit. Let me be the one who breaks this time, as long as he gets to walk away whole.

That is the only choice I have.

Our charter jet cuts through the dark, a silver needle stitching one city to the next.

Inside, the cabin is a pocket of quiet folded around the drone of the engines, and low light bleeds color from the world, leaving only shapes and shades of blue.

Most of the team is out, lost in the dead-to-the-world exhaustion that follows a victory.

Hayes is sprawled across the aisle, his socked foot a pale flag.

Our row is an island, and our privacy makes me greedy. I lean my cheek against Blair’s shoulder and the worn fabric of his hoodie.

“You were incredible tonight,” he whispers.

“You weren’t so bad yourself.”

“That save you made? Unreal.”

I am not remembering his words or this moment; I am arriving here for the second time.

Outside the window, the stars are cold and impossibly distant, and below us, cities glow against the black earth like embers. The night rubs against the glass, empty except for those frozen stars, those blurred lights.

How do you fight a shadow? How do you dodge a blow you can’t see coming?

What if I’m supposed to fail? What if watching Blair die is my punishment for something I did or didn’t do, some cosmic debt I keep paying? I am in a thousand versions of this moment where I tell him different lies and where I swallow different truths.

What if nothing I do matters?

What if?—

“What if what?” Blair asks.

What if I’m in love with you in every timeline that there is and I’m always destined to lose you?

I shake my head, forcing a crooked half-smile.

Blair doesn’t look away. His gaze stays locked on mine like he might pull the answer straight from me. “What if we make this work?”

God, it’s the opening notes of a song I can’t name but know will break my heart. I want to tell him. I want to scream that we are suspended over waves, that the stars are falling, that his blood is on my hands. I want to confess the whole impossible truth, but I can’t. I can’t .

He cradles my palm, and his thumb traces the tendons of my wrist where the ache of the game has settled. He digs into a tender spot there, taking care of me. He knows where to go, which bruises need soothing most. His touch gentles at the worst knots. All my muscles want to melt under his hands.

As he works my wrists, I catch him wincing. He’s hiding his own pain. The gravelly grind of his shoulder is the sound of hundreds of games wearing out his body.

“Here,” I say, shifting. “Let me.”

“I’m fine?—”

“Seriously. Let me take care of you for once.”

A flicker crosses his face. “You do take care of me, all the time.”

“Well then—” I motion for him to turn.

He sighs, a small surrender, and twists.

My thumbs find the tight, ropy muscle above his deltoid, and when I grind into a deep burr in his shoulders, his breath hitches. If muscles could tell stories, these knots would speak only in collisions and near-misses.

“Right there?”

A nod is his only answer. His eyes are closed, his head tipped forward. If I could hold him like this forever, maybe he’d never have to hurt again.

Eventually, he captures my hand and brings my palm to his lips. “Thank you.”

I lay my cheek back on his shoulder. His lips brush my hair.

We are a single shape in the deep blue of the cabin. We can steal this time. We can claim this bubble of quiet between earth and sky.

We can beat time, if only I can figure it out.

“I do want to make this work,” I whisper.

The whistle sounds, and I crash over the boards with Blair behind me.

The cold of Buffalo’s arena is the same as my dream memories of this game. The puck dumps deep into Buffalo’s zone, and a gear clicks inside me, an alignment of past and present. Yes, it’s happening again.

When one of Buffalo’s forwards aims a shot from the blue line, I lunge, and the puck deflects from my shoulder. I am between the goal and the puck on my knees. Another player scoops it up and fires again, point-blank.

He doesn’t score. Instead, Blair levels him with a collision that vibrates through the ice and up into my teeth.

It is the sound of his loyalty, but it will not be enough to save him.

Last time during this same game, I wanted to kiss him for that hit. Now, wanting to kiss him is as good as mourning him. It is the same as before, again.

The grin he gives me is the cruelest part. It is unguarded, beautiful, and completely unaware. “Let’s go kick some ass.”

Another face-off. Our zone. Buffalo is a tide of aggression, but it doesn’t matter. We are winning this game; the outcome is already written.

The puck drops. I win it and pass it to Hayes. He clears it. Buffalo surges back. The clock is a tyrant, counting down the seconds of this life. My lungs are thin and stripped. Blair is beside me, blocking a pass.

Thirty seconds.

Blair has the puck. A perfect, sliding pass lands on my stick. A defender closes, so I pass back to Blair.

Fifteen seconds.

He draws two opponents. A no-look pass arcs back to me, the puck connecting with my tape in a soft clap.

Ten seconds.

The goalie challenges. I know his moves. Fake left, go right. He commits, and I drop a pass into the high slot.

Five seconds.

Blair is there; I do not need to see him. He is exactly where he is supposed to be.

Three. Two.

The red light flashes. The goal horn blares. The game is ours.

And a darker clock continues to tick.