Page 112 of The Fall

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. The road hums. My thoughts thicken, stretch, tear off in strips. I lock on the far shore, a thin, hard line where black water kisses city light. Sodium lamps throw jaundiced bands across the hood, three heartbeats apart.

I’ve got the wheel. That’s the difference. That’s the only difference.

We crest the spine. Halfway. The far bank glitters, solid ground promised in beads of white and orange. We are going to make it. We have to. This time I’m?—

“Almost there,” Hayes calls, leaning forward. “Erin says they’ve got the roof deck all set up for us.”

The limo shows up in my rearview, a long, black shape pulled from another line of time.

It wanders, a drift so small you’d miss it if you didn’t know to watch for it; I do. The drift comes again, a lazy kiss to the double yellow. The driver’s head dips, a shadow shrug. The future I remember hits play.

Now.

I punch the brakes and snap the wheel right. Seatbelts lock; the Escalade shrieks. We skate into the outer lane and the limo howls past, missing our bumper by inches. Blair’s hand clamps my forearm.

The limo fishtails, a wrong-angle jolt that throws its tail wide.

It corrects too hard, spits across lanes, scrapes the guardrail.

Sparks spit and die in the wind. Horns blast. It whips left, then right, rubber screaming, glass shattering and coughing into the night.

The long body tosses, tips, and then it rolls, steel tearing, windows blowing, the whole world in that car turning over and over.

We hear the sickening, final crumple of metal as the limo comes to a rest, pinned against the rail, smoke pouring from its frame as it lies knotted up against the rail.

“Holy shit,” Hayes breathes, already wrestling his buckle. “Everyone good? Blair?”

“We’re good,” Blair says, his voice tight. “Torey. You good?”

The limo ticks and groans. Inside, someone yells for help. The bay waits below, implacable, the night leaning in to listen. The guys pile out, rushing toward the wreckage. Other cars are stopping, drivers emerging. Someone’s shouting about a fire extinguisher.

My hands won’t let go of the wheel. I watch them go, my band of brothers charging into a disaster I averted for them.

I did it. The loop tore, and I’m standing on the other side.

Blair is alive. He’s right there, phone to his ear, calling 911. He’s so breathtakingly, beautifully alive.

I shut my eyes. This is the seam. This is the future I wanted, and all it took was finding the one detail, the one choice I had to make. The timeline cracked and let us through. Hope flickers; I want to scream, to laugh, to sob. He’s alive, he’s right there. He’s safe?—

A horn blasts, and I jerk my head up.

I remember Blair’s words, spoken in whispers beside different waters: I’m terrified of missing something important again.

In my rearview mirror, headlights bloom like miniature suns. They belong to a semi-truck barreling down the bridge, and they are high and wide and coming too fast. The driver’s lost control; it’s jackknifed. Physics has taken over.

But it’s not aiming for the limo, or the guys trying to help, or Blair, still on the phone with 911?—

It’s aiming for me.

Time is as patient as a spider and keeps all its threads intact. The loop completes itself differently, but completes nonetheless, and when fate threads its needle, it stitches through my chest.

The truck’s horn blares. Blair’s face glows in the wash of the truck’s headlights, shifting from confusion to horror as he understands what is about to happen.

He is safe. That is my first thought.

He will live. That is my last.

Light explodes across the windshield. My vision splinters, a firework’s afterimage melting into black and gold. I hear fragments of sound: far-off sirens, people screaming, tires shrieking, and Blair, ripping my name out of himself like he can haul me back with it.

The impact, when it comes, is almost gentle; a push that becomes a shove, then a rollover punch that folds the Escalade’s frame. Windows burst into diamond dust. The world inverts. The guardrail rips away and night opens underneath me.

The Escalade lifts, tips. For a carved-thin instant I hang at the edge of water, poised above where I began: staring at black waters and waiting to be claimed.

This is where I was always headed, to dark waters at midnight, to waves reaching for me, to my horizon swimming away from the light.

This water has been waiting for me my whole life: beneath the ice, on the far side of every beach, inside the salt-threaded light in Blair’s blue eyes, and at the bottom of this long, dark drop.

I have always known that I would end here. Dark water calls to dark water, the ocean inside me rising to meet its larger self. It’s like coming home, like closing a circle, an ending that chews its tail and calls itself a beginning.

And then?—

Free fall.

Gravity grabs me and yanks.

Take me. Let them stand on that bridge yelling my name and breathing. Let Erin laugh tomorrow. Let Hayes dance with his little girl. Let Blair walk out of this night. I’d pay that price twice.

That’s my final, fixed fact. I’m grateful, I am. I wanted forever, but I only ever had a year, a minute, a heartbeat. Still, I’d give it all up for him. He is my ocean, and he is finally free of the storm.

A memory riptides through me: Blair, slick with ocean water, the sunlight cracked over his shoulders, his fingertips stained with sand and the tide washing over us in gold and shimmers and foaming edges. Every time he goes under, I want to follow, but not here; not this time.

Blair is at the edge of the bridge, reaching out as if he could catch gravity, as if his hands and will could spin the world backward.

It was always going to end this way, always in dark water, remembering your mouth and the taste of salt on your skin. I love you ? —

Time breathes out.