Page 109 of The Fall

Each gasping inhale we take threatens to break this fragile stasis, and the room holds its breath with us.

Even the shadows seem frozen, caught between one heartbeat and the next.

Every tiny adjustment sends ripples through me.

This moment stretches like honey, thick and golden and impossibly sweet.

Blair’s lips brush mine. His free hand slides down my side, fingertips mapping me until his palm settles against my hip. His hips rock forward, just barely.

A broken sound escapes me. Blair swallows it, kissing me deep and slow as he begins to move. He withdraws until only his head catches on my rim, then sinks back in one long, devastating stroke.

The slow drag of him inside me ignites a molten river, like he’s pouring himself into me, filling every empty space I have.

His hand takes mine, threads our fingers together, and lifts both above my head, holding me to the mattress.

Everywhere is open to him; everywhere is claimed by him.

Like this, pinned beneath him, I feel every pulse of his cock like a second heartbeat within me, feel every tremor in his muscles as if they are my own.

He is my beginning, my middle, my forever. There’s only this, only us.

His forehead rests against mine again, and his eyes, those endless blue depths, hold mine for a moment before fluttering shut.

He’s slow at first, agonizing slides in and out that leave me gasping.

The flare of friction as his cock drags over my prostate rips a helpless cry from me.

His thumb strokes circles against the back of my hand where our fingers are laced tight, anchoring me as he sinks back in with one smooth stroke that stretches me wide.

He groans as I squeeze around him, so deep now I swear I can feel the shape of him inside me.

Each thrust drives the air from my lungs; each withdrawal leaves me clutching for more. I listen to the slap of skin on skin as he bottoms out again and again. We move together, chasing the same rhythm, kissing more than breathing.

His tongue licks into my mouth as he pounds into me harder.

My legs clamp around his waist, and I pull him deeper still.

My cock drags slick through the mess between our bellies with every thrust. Blair’s free hand skims down to wrap around it, stroking in time to his rhythm inside me.

I buck helplessly between his hands and cock at once.

“There?” His voice is wrecked.

I nod, panting.

“God,” he pants against my lips, breath hot and shaking. “You feel so fucking good.”

I can’t answer. All I can do is choke out broken sounds as he slams into me again and again until all I am is sensation: this burning stretch, his hot fullness, the slippery glide of skin on skin. The bed rocks beneath us; sweat slicks our bodies together.

I careen toward release, his name breaking on my lips while he fucks me through wave after wave.

Is it possible to come undone any further?

I catch his gaze—wild, desperate—and that look alone threatens to finish me.

He grinds deep and holds there, and the sound of his soft moan in my ear makes me shiver, makes my eyes roll back in my head.

I’m nothing but heat and friction and the frantic need to let go under him.

Blair grabs my leg and hikes it over his shoulder, and his cock pushes deeper than I thought possible, stretching me wide around every thick inch of him.

My body splits to accommodate him, the base of him grinding against me with each thrust. The slick drag as he pulls nearly all the way out before plunging back in rips a shout from me.

Each time he bottoms out, the blunt crown of his cock pounds brutally into my prostate.

My legs tremble around his waist, stretched so wide for him it aches in the best way.

He’s everywhere, filling me so completely that I can’t tell where he ends and I begin. Sweat drips from his chest onto mine as he drives into me with punishing force; the bed frame rattles with every thrust. I clench down around him and he groans, lost.

“Again,” I gasp.

His voice is a hot rasp against my ear. “That’s it. Let go for me.”

The pressure builds, a tidal surge threatening to swallow everything, tightening until heat coils vicious and bright at the base of my spine, ready to snap loose at any second.

Every ragged inhale tastes like him, like coconut and salt-skin, like heat rising off us in waves so thick I could drown in them.

My fingers dig into his muscles, still trembling from restraint as I arch helplessly beneath him.

Every part of me screams for release but refuses to let go without one more desperate rush of friction, one more savage grind of his cock deep inside me.

His teeth graze my jaw as he drives in again, again, again.

It’s a gathering storm inside me, pulling everything taut, tight, hot, hotter?—

I bury my hands in the slope where his neck meets his back and breathe in all the salt and sunlight I can drag into my lungs, wound tight as the tide. If I can remember enough, hold enough, maybe I can?—

Our eyes meet and I fall. “Blair,” I gasp. His name is the only word I have left.

Everything fractures—blinding heat, a wild shudder—and I cry out, clutching him as obliterating pleasure rips through me, white-hot.

He swallows the sound with his mouth on mine.

We tumble over together, locked tight. He shakes against me, emptying deep as his release follows mine.

Our bodies strain and cling while aftershocks ripple through us both.

Sweat slicks our skin; breath tangles with breath.

Slowly, the world filters back in: the faint flicker of candlelight across tangled sheets, the echo of our hearts thundering in tandem. Blair gathers me close and collapses on top of me, his head over my heart.

Nothing matters but his body holding me here, the rise and fall of our breathing finally evening out.

Warmth bleeds outward from where he settles against me, and he shifts just enough for his nose to nudge behind my ear. He hums low in his throat, his arms tightening around my waist. I don’t need to look at him to know he’s watching me. His lips brush my skin as he says softly, “I’ve got you.”

The candles gutter on the dresser. Their light slides over his shoulder and across the rumpled line of his jaw. Damp hair clings to his brow, and sweat cools on our skin. His breath stirs the hair at my temple.

“I love you,” he whispers. “Never forget that.”

I close my eyes for a heartbeat, long enough to feel his lips on my brow. If this is what forever tastes like, let it linger; let it echo.

“Say it again,” I breathe into the dark.

His lips find the shell of my ear. “I love you.” Then softer, like a secret: “I love you.” Once more: “I love you.”

Three times, like a spell.

“I will never forget you,” I promise.

If love could anchor us, we’d never fall. But time doesn’t suspend itself for love.

I have fought and failed and found myself in him, and each day I love him sharper, deeper, truer than the one before.

I will love him when he is beyond reach, and I will love him when he is beside me, always, always.

This moment—his breath against my skin, his arm across my waist, the moonlight catching the curve of his shoulder—is what I choose to carry forward. This is what I refuse to lose.

I try to burn this into my soul: the salt-sweet taste of his skin, how his fingers curl around mine, the impossible tenderness in the space between his heartbeat and mine.

If I’m going to lose this again, if I’m destined to watch it all unravel, then I’ll take this with me.

Every cell, every nerve ending, every fragment of my soul will remember.

If time is a loop, let tonight be the axis it turns on.

The fall is forever.

There is no air, no light, only the rush of wind and the gut-hollowing certainty of impact. A spray of shattered glass hangs suspended in the black, each shard a tiny, dead star. Metal shrieks. Water closes over my head and?—

My eyes snap open.

For a single, suspended heartbeat, nothing moves. My lungs still haven’t caught up in the dark of our bedroom.

Then the world jolts back, and I know?—

My hand shoots out, desperately searching across the sheets until I find Blair.

He shifts beside me, his face pale and serene and mashed into his pillow.

The doors to the lanai spill a muted blue across the sheets, a watercolor wash over the history of us.

The sleek lines of the dresser emerge from the shadows, the silhouette of a hockey bag against the wall. This is our home.

This is the life I have lived twice.

I know where I am. More than that, I know when this is; all the versions of my life coalesce.

I am here and now, and I was there and then, and I know the sickening certainty of what follows.

I understand now; I’m back at the beginning that was really the middle, heading toward an ending I’ve already endured.

On all of my worst nights, I mourned a life I thought never existed, and on all of my best days, I ran toward Blair, sure that we could outrun fate and build a new life together.

Those lives are one and the same, a loop I’ve lived, a circle I’ve walked, and Blair moves through all of my lives like a storm system I’ve been tracking forever.

Tires scream, a high-pitched whine that shreds the silence, and I’m back there, trapped in memory as blood and fear flood my mouth.

I remember falling, free fall, the world tilting, gravity claiming us, dark water rushing up.

My stomach drops even now, safe in this bed, because some part of me is still falling and will always be falling.

Blair sleeps beside me, unaware that I’ve loved him across time, that I’ve lost him already, that I might lose him again. Each breath he takes is a beat in a song I am about to forget.

The shadows in the room deepen, bleeding out from the corners.

Remember.

My brain shuffles recent memory and distant nightmare without bothering to mark the handoff. The way his hand goes slack in mine, the terrible silence after?—

Think, Torey. Remember. Remember how to save him. Remember if you ever could.

My hand cups his face in the darkness. He turns into the touch and mutters something lost to sleep.

A fire burns inside Blair, a love so fierce it could consume the whole world, but I’ve seen that fire extinguished. I felt its last embers grow cold before the fall. I will do anything—rewrite destiny, break the loop, or die trying—to keep him alive.

If this is all I get, then I’ll love him fiercely enough to echo across all of time. I’ll hold him close enough to leave marks on eternity, and when the fall comes, I’ll face it knowing this:

I loved him once without knowing why.

I love him now knowing everything.

I’ll love him always, even when time steals him away again.