Page 107 of The Fall

Fifty-Three

I am home.

I cut the engine in Blair’s truck and sit in the driveway. Exhaustion seeps into me; my hands fall from the steering wheel to my lap. I am wearing down beneath the waiting, the hoping, and the fearing.

The team’s so close. We’re so close. One more win and we’re in the playoffs.

The anticipation was too overwhelming for Hayes this afternoon.

He’d dragged me to the rink, his nerves spilling over like a shaken bottle finally uncapped.

I welcomed the distraction, the cone drills, pucks, and each other.

Blair had kissed me before we left, his mouth warm against mine, grumbling about the bathroom sink that wouldn’t stop dripping.

I grab my duffel from the passenger seat and climb out. The walk to the front door steadies me with each step, and by the time I reach for the handle, the day’s weight has lifted enough that I can breathe again.

“Blair?” My duffel thuds against the kitchen floor, and I set his keys on the counter. No quiet curses drift from down the hall, no tools clink against pipes, and there’s no gush of running water. The house breathes in silence, lights dimmed as though waiting.

A thin wedge of flickering light spills through the partially-open sliding door to the lanai. Outside, the Florida sky unfurls in sunset, a gradual surrender of blue to fire, then to deep-bruised purple along each cloud.

I push the door wider and step outside, and the world I know falls away. My hazy, indistinct memory of this night, a gossamer dream I’ve clung to for a year, solidifies even as the world fractures into a thousand points of impossible light.

Candles burn everywhere, dozens of them, their flames protected in hurricane glasses, tiny flames quivering in the falling twilight. The lights overhead are a private galaxy of captured stars. Music I hadn’t noticed drifts from the speakers, a trumpet playing rich and soulful notes.

It’s a moment I thought I’d made up. A memory I’d imagined. I remember Thanksgiving, and looking up at these lights on Blair’s patio, and aching ?—

Every detail is here: the table is set with delicate sushi rolls on fine china, folded cloth napkins that stand like birds of paradise, crystal glasses throwing shattered rainbows?—

That dance right to Blair.

He’s standing at the table’s edge, backlit by sunset and candlelight. Caught in the candlelight, he gleams in ways only the sea gets right, tide-polished and dangerous. He’s dressed soft in a fitted T-shirt. Light and shadow trace the planes of his face. The whole of my world anchors in his gaze.

He, and this lanai, are absurdly, staggeringly beautiful.

“Surprise.”

My heart tries to outrun time. The pieces of my life, the real and the remembered, settle into a mosaic with Blair at the center.

“The leaky faucet was a bigger project than I thought.”

He holds out his hand. “I needed a few hours. Hayes provided the distraction.”

So this is it; this is what it is to love so completely that it terrifies you. Blair’s calloused palm closes around mine, and he guides me through the constellation of flames at our feet. He pulls out a chair. The world spins slowly, softly, around him.

His fingers brush my arm as he sits, our knees touching as his foot nudges mine under the table, his ankle hooking around mine.

Blair pulls out a bottle of Gatorade from a silver champagne bucket and unscrews the lid. “May I interest you in our house specialty? A 2025 Glacier Cherry, an excellent vintage with robust notes of electrolytes.”

I hold my glass out, and he pours with a sommelier’s grave focus. I swirl the ghost-colored liquid. “I’m detecting a subtle bouquet of… artificial flavoring?”

“Your palate is impeccable, sir.”

Laughter escapes me, real and full. “God, you’re ridiculous. I love it. And you.”

“Yeah?” He pours his own glass and sets the bottle back into the ice. His full attention returns to me. The shine in his eyes is a deep, consuming fire, and for a second I am staring into memory: what I lost, what I didn’t know how to want until it was ripped from me.

For tonight, for this, for him, please ; let me keep this love.

The sushi is impossibly beautiful. We dip rolls into wasabi and tell each other stories about our childhood, about teammates, about disasters averted and embarrassments endured.

I cannot escape his eyes; they deepen as the sun surrenders to the night.

No one has ever looked at me the way he does, as if I am the only thing in the world worth seeing.

It feels obscene how beautiful one person can be. The sharp angle of his jaw, the gentle arc of his mouth when he smiles, the way he leans forward, his elbows on the table as he tells me all the secrets of the universe or of his laugh.

I am lost in the stories he’s telling. “...so I’m totally turned around in Prague, lost on the metro, and this ancient babushka is yelling at me in what I think is Russian?—”

“Please tell me you didn’t try to flirt your way out of it.”

He flushes, looks away. I laugh loudly, imagining it. A Romeo, my Blair is not.

We finish eating, hands linking together on the table as starlight arrives in increments. I ask, “What was it like when Lily was born?”

“Chaos,” he says with a soft laugh. “Hayes looked like he’d been run over by a Zamboni for three straight weeks. Utterly terrified and completely in love.”

“I bet. He’s a great father.”

“He is, but it was a steep learning curve for him.”

I smile. “Must’ve been amazing to be there for it.”

His grip tightens on my hand. “Now they get to do it all over again.”

The candles, the stars, the soft music; they all dissolve into the light in his eyes. Quiet surrounds us, broken only by the rustle of the palms. He’s staring at me as if there are things words aren’t large enough to carry, but he’s going to try.

His pulse jumps against my fingers. “You know, I’ve been thinking recently about what comes after hockey.”

“What do you see?”

“Coaching, maybe. A way to stay close to the game.”

“You’d be incredible at that,” I say, and I mean it. “A perfect fit.”

“What about you?”

Our eyes lock. This is the part where the ground feels both solid and paper-thin. My fingers tighten around his, a reflex, seeking the undeniable truth of him right here. The warmth of his skin, the steady thrum beneath; they tell me what I already know in my soul.

I’d follow him anywhere, and I have. Into fear, into vulnerability, into love. Into forever.

“Honestly? I want to be wherever you are.”

I see him swallow. When he speaks, his voice is a vow. “I want it all, Torey. You. This. Us. For the rest of our lives.” He takes my hand and brings it to his mouth. “I’m ready,” he says. “To tell the team, the league, whoever wants to know. I’m ready for all of it.”

He is golden and warm, alive and breathing. I will not lose him; I cannot. “I am too.”

He stands, pulling me from my chair. His hand in mine is a map of our shared life. He leads me to an open space among the candles and pulls me into his arms. We sway to the slow rhythm of the music, to the wind in the palms, the lapping of the water.

“I can see us growing old together.” His voice is a whisper. “Still chirping each other when we’re gray and wrinkled.” His smile shifts, and he tries out a chirp: “You know for a guy who spends most of his time on ice, you’re pretty hot.”

I groan as he twirls me out and pulls me back. “That was atrocious.”

His laugh is a breath against my ear. We sway, and his hand comes up to cup my jaw. Our noses brush. When he dips his head, my breath catches, and his lips graze the corner of my mouth in a half-kiss. He holds me so close our hearts keep time together.

Candlelight jumps across his profile; music curls at the margins. Blair folds his fingers around mine, cradling my hand against his heart. One of his fingertips slowly moves along the curve of my ring finger and across the whole of my future.

“I’ve also been thinking,” he says, his voice softer. “About how this finger looks a little bare.” His eyes stay fixed on our joined hands like he’s tracing a path only he can see.

Everything stops. The music, the water, the wind, it all stills.

My next breath catches midway in my chest. Each point where our skin touches burns hotter than the night, and I drink in the open yearning on his face, the way his eyes flick between my hand and my face, gauging, hoping.

“Are you… is this you asking me to marry you?”

The blue in his eyes runs deeper than any ocean trench. “Not yet,” Blair says. “When I do, you’ll know. Trust me.” His chest rises, falls. The candlelight catches in his eyes. “Torey…” My name is a prayer in his mouth. “Do you want to be asked?”

Blair is the reason that storms break, the man who grieved without breaking and loved without pride, and he waits for my answer.

Between us sits everything I yearn for. Longing is a ribbon dragged from his heart to my finger.

Every inhale I take is him, and God, I could breathe him in forever.

In his eyes, I see the man I love, and behind him, the ghost of the man I lost.

A desperate screaming builds inside me. How many times will I stand here, caught in this beautiful trap? How many times will I lose this future that hasn’t even begun? I’ve fought so hard for this, clawed my way through time to reach this moment.

I want forever with him. That one true answer cuts through the noise, a single, clear note that silences my screaming.

The ghost behind him can flicker and warn, but Blair is solid, and his heart beats steady under my palm.

There are no words for this feeling, none that haven’t been spoken before, none that haven’t turned to ash in my mouth.

I close the distance between us and pour my answer into my kiss.

I am his across any and every life. I will never let him go, not in any timeline, not in any reality, not in any version of our story.

“Ask me,” I breathe.