Page 117 of The Fall

How many times does he have to give up what matters most? Does loyalty always mean putting someone else’s future ahead of your own? Guilt gnaws at me, feeding on the memory of every time I’ve watched him lead through his own pain and come out hungrier for victory.

What if this is one sacrifice too many?

Nothing moves in him except the slow drag of breath. Not even his eyes—they’re fixed on me, ocean-deep and unyielding.

This isn’t how our story was supposed to go. We were supposed to chase the Cup together and stand side by side as champions. Instead, he’s choosing hospital corridors over arena tunnels, vigil over victory.

“Blair—” The word comes out fractured.

“Don’t.” His jaw tightens.

“When are you coming home?” Lily asks me, interrupting.

A question with no clean answer. “Soon, I hope.” I have no idea if that’s true.

“I miss playing Nerf with you.”

“Me too, Lily-bean.”

My father holds out his hand. “Hayes, Lily. Thank you for coming. It’s good to see you.” It’s a dismissal, gentle but firm.

Lily hugs me tighter before letting go. Hayes guides Lily off the bed and toward the door, her small hand tucked in his. He pauses before leaving, his gaze bouncing between me and Blair. “Call if you need anything. Anything.”

Then they’re gone; the door closes behind them.

Blair won’t look at me. He stands with his back to the door, a solid wall of muscle and misery, his eyes locked on the screen with my brain scans.

“You’re not playing,” I say. It’s not a question.

A universe of pain is in Blair’s eyes. “No.”

“You’re not even going with them.”

He shakes his head. “I can’t leave you. I can’t .”

The words crack something open in him, and suddenly he’s moving, closing the distance between us. His hands frame my face as he holds me.

“You think I could step onto the ice knowing you’re here? You think I could focus on zones and matchups while you’re—” He stops. His forehead drops to mine.

How does he carry this much love? Where does this fierce, relentless devotion live in him? The playoffs were supposed to be our victory lap, the culmination of everything we’d built this season. He would rather lose all of that than risk losing me again.

“The team needs you,” I whisper.

“You need me more. And I need to be here, with you. That’s not negotiable, Torey.”

This lesion inside of me threatens more than tissue and memory—it reaches through me to him, to this man who would set his dreams on fire to keep me warm. He’s anchoring himself to me at the cost of everything he’s fought for, and I don’t know how to bear being chosen like this.

Shouldn’t I force him out that door, back into the bright glare of playoff lights where he belongs? But if our places were reversed?—

No, there’s no world where I’d leave him either.

“I don’t want you to regret this,” I say.

He shakes his head. “The only thing I’d regret is not being here.” His jaw quivers, then hardens. “I won’t ever make the mistake of not being where I’m needed again.”

“This isn’t the same,” I tell him. “And you never abandoned him.” He never abandoned Cody, but he’ll never believe that, not ever.

“Someone I love is facing something I can’t fix or fight. You think I care about hockey right now? You think anything matters except being here?” His voice cracks on the last word, the sound of a man being torn apart.

He isn’t choosing me over the playoffs; the playoffs no longer exist. The world has collapsed to the size of this bed and this moment. Every counterargument I had, every plea for him to go, disintegrates. Pushing him away now would be the cruelest act of all. For him, staying isn’t a sacrifice.

There’s nothing left to argue. Pushing him away won’t save him from the pain; it will only make him live it alone.

“Okay,” I whisper.

His head jerks up.

“Stay. Stay with me. Please.” He will not leave, and I will not make him.

The tension breaks in him like watching a dam crumble, a slow collapse that empties all the fight from his shoulders. His breath shudders out, and his forehead falls against mine.

My dad moves from his post by the window and places a hand on Blair’s shoulder. He sees what I see: that Blair’s place is here, that his heart is physically incapable of being anywhere else.

The monitor still displays that gray shadow, that smudge within me, two centimeters that holds my future hostage.

Dr. Khatri can map the lesion’s boundaries, but he has zero way to predict which moments live in that tissue Could I lose the first time Blair smiled at me, or the exact shade of starlight reflecting off the midnight waves when he told me he loved me?

What stays and what goes? The brain compensates, Dr. Khatri said.

Other regions adapt. But something gets cut away before the healing begins.

And, six to twelve months before I can—maybe—play again.

And Blair?—

The way he looks at me across the ice during warm-ups, that private smile he gives no one else when we score goals.

The rhythm we’ve built, reading each other before thought becomes action.

Every assist, every goal, every collision into the boards where we come up laughing—those are written into my soul as much as my mind.

Six months feels like forever when you’re twenty-four. Twelve months? An eternity. But never skating with Blair again, never feeling that perfect synchronization when we connect on a play?

The playoffs start tomorrow. Next season starts in October. Time keeps moving whether I’m on the ice or not. And if there’s even a chance I can come back, if there’s a possibility of lacing up beside him again and chasing down everything we’ve dreamed?—

Hockey taught me that sometimes the only way through is straight into the collision. You brace, you commit, you trust your body to remember how to fall and get back up.

Dad shifts beside the window, his reflection caught in the glass. The morning light frames him in gold, and I see him as he was when I was five, teaching me to fall properly on the ice. Get back up, Torey. Always get back up.

This smudge wants to steal my future? Fine. Let it try.

Two centimeters of tissue between who I am and who I might become, between remembering Blair’s laugh and losing it forever, between skating again and watching from the stands while life moves on without me.

I can’t control the lesion, but I can control the choice. “I’m going to have the surgery.”

My words land in the room like dropped glass. Blair’s breath catches. He knows me well enough to see past my brave words. My fingers find his and thread together. We squeeze until our knuckles go white.

Dad steps closer. “You’re sure?”

Sure is for line changes and power plays, not for letting someone open your skull and excavate the thing trying to steal your future.

“Yeah. I’m sure. I’m doing it.” The words are the steadiest I’ve said all day. “I’m not losing you, Blair, and I’m not losing us, on the ice or off it. We’re going to have everything.”

Our love is the greatest truth I have ever known.

This is my fight now, for him, for the future he’s willing to burn down his present for.

Blair and I were meant to fly across that ice together, to read each other’s thoughts in the split second before a pass connects, to celebrate crashing together against the boards.

That future exists. I just have to reach through fire to grab it.

Blair’s eyes search mine, looking for doubt, for hesitation, for any crack in my resolve. He won’t find one. “When?”

“As soon as possible.” The sooner we start, the sooner I heal, and the sooner we get back to where we belong.

“Okay,” he whispers on an exhale of fear and faith. “Okay.”

The horrible indecision from earlier drains out of the room, leaving a terrifying path for us to walk together.

“I’ll call Dr. Khatri,” my father says. Action. A plan. This is how my father shows his love, by doing, by organizing manageable steps.

Blair nods. His fear is still in the blue depths of his eyes, but it has changed shape, no longer wild and panicked.

He will use his fear as a shield for me.

“I’ll handle everything,” he says. “You don’t worry about anything outside this room.

That’s my job now. Your only job is to get through this. ”

All I have to do is win the battle inside my own head.