Page 110 of The Fall

Fifty-Four

Everything is exactly as it was, exactly as I remember it being.

Stale air coats my throat. My jersey catches on my shoulder pads, tugging a little each time I move. This isn’t nerves; that flood of adrenaline and anticipation has been scraped out and replaced with dread.

Blair speaks with Hawks, his head cocked to listen, those wide shoulders built to weather the next storm. No one else on the roster fills out a jersey like Blair. He draws something out of the team that I could never replicate, not in a hundred seasons.

Hawks laughs, and Hollow finally fires the puck into Hayes’s lap. Cue up the memory: I’ve lived through this before.

I bend to lace up my skates. My fingers fumble the knots. I wish I could forget. I wish I could unknow all of it.

I count my breaths—once, twice. Inhale. Exhale. Face the ice. I lift my gaze from the scuffed tile, my focus sliding to Blair. He’s watching me, and my thoughts become a simple, stark line. He is radiating strength and certainty while I splinter.

I want to grab his jersey and drag him out of here.

The noise outside thickens; it leaks through the seams in the walls, rising and falling. Somewhere inside me, a small voice begs for one more chance to change everything. This entire world is dust without him.

Hollow’s shoulder bumps mine. “Ready to punch our ticket?”

“Born ready.” The lie burns on my tongue; my molars grind together. Hollow’s eyes crinkle at the corners. He believes it, believes me, and why wouldn’t he? I’ve worn this same pre-game face a hundred times before.

The room shifts around me as the guys stand. Skate guards clatter against the floor. Someone’s stick taps the doorframe three times for luck. The rubber matting gives under my blades. The fluorescents hum overhead, their buzz mixing with the rumble from the arena.

Minutes now. Only minutes until?—

Blair’s voice rises above the clamor. “Tonight is the night. We were born to do this, boys, and to do it together. Let’s leave it all on the ice. Let’s go, let’s go!”

Hayes wraps an arm around my neck as everyone roars. “Let’s fucking go, Kicks!”

The concrete tunnel embraces us, our footsteps a drumbeat marching toward the inevitable. With each step, the tunnel grows brighter, and the crowd’s roar builds, vibrating through the concrete beneath our skates.

Please, please—I want my love for him to be enough to change everything.

“Hey.” Blair’s shoulder nudges mine. “We got this.” His gloved hand covers mine on my stick. There’s so much love there, so much trust.

My throat closes. He has no idea what’s coming, and I know how this ends.

This year is a scar, and our perfect season has become a perfect path to a cruel and shattered end.

I fought to return to him, to our love, and I have led him right to the edge of an abyss.

Every cell in my body wants to refuse, to break this pattern, to prove I’m not locked into this loop, but?—

We skate out onto the ice.

The brilliance of the arena whites out my vision, leaves afterimages dancing on my retinas, a memory of shattered glass glittering in the air. For a heartbeat I’m nowhere, suspended between what was and what might be.

I skate, trying to outrun the future. Every push is a denial, every glide a lie I tell myself.

I move, but I am going nowhere, carving the same circles on a path that is already set.

The bright lights fracture everything into shards, and for a second, I see Blair not as he is now but as a ghost I am already chasing.

We drift into position, lining up for the anthem.

The air feels ready to snap, and my lips are sealed shut around a scream.

When the anthem ends, the roar that follows is bone-shattering.

At the bench, Hayes locks his chinstrap beside me, all business now.

The ice glows blue and gold under our blades, and I squeeze my stick so hard my gloves creak.

Blair tilts his helmet toward mine, one last look before chaos starts. Our eyes meet.

He is the calm at the center of my cataclysm, my only fixed coordinate, my shore in the tides pulling me out to sea.

“You and me, Kicks,” he says.

He is what the universe will take from me.

“You and me, forever.”

He’s making a vow he doesn’t know he’s breaking. Forever is not an open expanse of days; it’s a closed loop with an ending that rips me open every time I reach it. His forever is a promise; mine is a memory I’m doomed to relive.

The referee’s whistle slices through the din. Instinct takes over: crouch at center ice, muscles coiled. Hayes barks something sharp behind me; I nod, barely hearing him over the crowd. I set for the draw, every sense tuned to Blair at my wing—my axis, my reason. He taps his stick once on the ice.

My forever is the handful of seconds right now: the glare of the lights on his visor, the set of his jaw, the certainty in his eyes. I’ve tried to find the variable to rewrite our ending, but what if there isn’t one? What if loving him more fiercely, playing harder, being braver?—

What if none of it matters?

If none of it matters, then everything matters, not for what I do, but why I do it. Every second, every breath, every choice, everything?—

For him.

The game demands its due. We’re tied with a minute left on the clock, and we line up for a draw. My focus narrows onto the puck, the official’s hand, the twitch in the opposing center’s jaw.

What good is focus when every thought leads back to the same end?

Each breath counts down another fraction of time I’ll never get back.

And what good is breathing when tomorrow he’ll be gone?

If the loop resets and I live this all again, I’ll be without him again.

I’ll wake up alone and screaming in a hospital bed, and I’ll remember his touch and his voice and the taste of his lips, and I’ll be without him, again.

And again and again and again, if I can never save him.

I scratch the world back into focus. Fight for him. Never let him go.

The puck drops. Chaos blooms. Hollow wins the draw and kicks it back. I collect it, see the lanes form and dissolve.

Blair’s shadow crosses the line and I feather the puck through traffic.

He touches it—tap, gather, heel-to-toe—and then slings it wing-ward.

A clear path to the net opens for Hayes, and he barrels through the high slot and bombs it, a clap that bends the twine and seals our fate.

For a shattering instant, the arena is silent, until the cheers and shouts and cannons explode alongside the goal horn.

Victory is my damnation. I fought for a year to rebuild this life, and I have only succeeded in reconstructing the path to the grave.

Hayes crushes me in a hug that lifts my skates from the ice. Other bodies slam into us; Hawks yells, and Hollow’s glove thumps my helmet. We are a tangle of limbs and sticks and ecstatic shouts. Blair is there an instant later, his arms wrapping around me and burying his face in my neck.

“Told you.” His face is hidden in my neck. “You and me, Kicks. Always.”

His breath is hot against my skin, his words muffled but unshakable. Arms locked around him, I squeeze tighter, refusing to let the moment dissolve. The ice is chaos and celebration, sweat and adrenaline fusing us into one mass of victory and relief.

But this is how it begins: with joy, with us.

If I hold on tight enough, maybe I can graft him to me, make us one inseparable being so the future can’t tear him away.

I follow the guys off the ice and down the tunnel, and the cheers follow us, bouncing off concrete walls.

Blair walks with me at the end of the line.

We hang back while the guys spill through the door to the locker room ahead of us.

He takes my hand in his and kisses my knuckles when we’re alone, so quick, so fast. I squeeze down and hold on, never wanting to let him go.

I’ll need these memories. I’ll need all of them.

Blair tugs me with him, and for a second I resist, wanting to freeze this moment before we step inside, before the clock starts ticking down.

But I can’t stop time.

The room detonates when we return, every man is a fuse.

Some of the guys fling their equipment over their heads.

Victory music throws itself from the locker room speakers as streams of Gatorade arc through the air, splashing against bare, sweaty shoulders.

Hollow whips his jersey over his head and lets out a victor’s howl.

Hayes finds the bin of melted ice from the trainer’s table and upends it over Axel’s head.

Coach appears and holds up his hand until a sliver of quiet emerges. “Outstanding effort tonight,” he barks. “Every single one of you. Enjoy this!”

The room explodes again.

My hands are unsteady as I pull off my jersey. There’s a cold place beneath my sternum where the hum of this triumph should be. I drop the sweat-soaked jersey into my stall and stare at the Mutineers’ flag. The fabric bunches, hiding part of the logo from view.

The guys’ voices blur around me into white noise. The sound, the light, the air; it all scrapes against the raw places inside of me.

A warmth envelops me from behind as arms slide around my waist, and Blair’s chin hooks over my shoulder. “We fucking did it.” I lean back, my hands landing on top of his. He kisses my jaw, and I turn my face into his, nuzzling him.

Everyone sees. Hayes raises a bottle of Gatorade. Hollow catches my eye and shoots us a thumbs-up. Hawks mouths something that looks like finally . No one is surprised.

Blair’s arms tighten. “Was that okay?”

“More than okay.” I turn in his arms, my heart beating so hard he must feel it.

Around us, the celebrations continue, but we exist in our own pocket of quiet.

Blair’s forehead touches mine. His hands rest at my waist, and the smile that unfolds across his face and lights up his eyes is a blade of beautiful light.

It cuts through me, that smile. God, I love him.