Page 121 of The Fall

Tonight, I lay him on me so my heartbeat is a steady rhythm against his ear. His therapist says the nightmares will fade, but for now we weather them together. I run a hand through his hair until his breathing evens out.

“Sorry,” he whispers.

“Don’t.” I drop a kiss to his temple. “Don’t apologize. There’s nothing to apologize for.”

He holds me tighter, and I match my breathing to his. Outside, a gentle rain has started, droplets tapping against the bedroom’s glass sliding door.

“What time is it?” he asks eventually.

I glance at the bedside clock. “Nearly five.”

“Might as well get up.”

“Want to swim?” The pool has become our sanctuary. The water supports my body, gives me freedom of movement I can’t find on land, and it cradles Blair when he needs the world to slow down.

“Yeah. Let’s do it.”

Outside, the rain has eased to a light drizzle.

The pool’s underwater lights cast a blue glow across the lanai, and the moon scatters itself across the water’s surface.

We strip naked, and he slides in easily.

I go more carefully. Water still sometimes triggers a momentary panic before recognition sets in.

This is safe water, chosen water, and it embraces me.

Blair surfaces beside me, hair slicked back and eyes reflecting the light. “How’s the head?”

“Good.” And it is. The water takes the strain from my healing muscles and lets me move without pain. “Really good.”

We float on our backs, our hands linked between us.

Blair’s nightmare has been washed away. We’re suspended between worlds, and I focus on his palm against mine and the gentle rise and fall of the water with our breathing.

Each breath sends ripples across the surface, connecting us in invisible ways.

“You’re coming back to yourself.”

“A different version.” A wisp of cloud drifts in front of the moon. “I don’t think I can ever be exactly who I was before.”

“I know.” His voice is soft. “I’m not the same either.”

I think about how water remembers, how it holds the impression of everything that touches it, if only for a moment. “How many versions of ourselves do you think there have been?” I ask.

He turns his head, the water barely rippling around him. “I don’t know, but I feel bad for all of them. None of them get to be here now.”

In the distance, an early morning bird tests its voice. I float closer until our shoulders touch, skin warm despite the cool water.

“This version of you,” I whisper as the first hint of dawn illuminates his profile, “is my favorite.”

Blair’s eyes find mine, ocean-blue and endless in the pool’s glow. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

We float, suspended in our private universe as the sky begins its slow transformation from black to deep blue.

“I used to think strength meant never showing cracks,” Blair says after a while. “Never letting anyone see what was happening inside.”

He turns his head toward me, water lapping gently at his jaw.

“Now I know that’s not true. You make me brave enough to be vulnerable.”

“We make each other brave,” I whisper back. I’ve learned new depths of courage as he faces his grief, his nightmares, his truths—all of them leaving him stripped bare and exposed.

A slow warmth unfurls across his face, reaching his eyes and crinkling the corners. His hand trails down my spine, counting vertebrae, and I arch into his touch like a cat.

“I love seeing you come back to yourself,” he says, his voice low. “You’re already doing more than the doctors thought possible. Torey Kendrick doesn’t do anything halfway, not even recovery from near-death.”

I rest my forehead against his. “I have a reason to fight.”

“Me too.”

The water holds us, cradles our confessions, our healing bodies, our quiet revelations. Blair’s eyes reflect the changing light, rippling like the swells of the ocean. I’ve learned to swim in those waters.

The sky continues to lighten, pink and gold threading through blue. The world around us slowly wakes, and we watch as night retreats, neither of us ready to leave this moment, this perfect suspension between what was and what will be.

The drive to Cody’s grave takes forty minutes, and Blair’s hand rests on my thigh the whole way.

“You sure about this?” I ask as we park.

“Yeah.” But he takes a moment before he climbs out of the truck. “I want—I need to introduce you properly.”

The cemetery is peaceful in the morning light, dew still clinging to the grass.

Cody’s headstone is simple granite, listing his name and the dates of his birth and death.

Blair kneels, arranging the flowers we brought beside a Mutineers bobble head of himself that he told me Cody would have howled over.

I hang back, letting him set the pace.

His hand traces his brother’s name. This is the first time Blair has visited since he laid his brother in the ground.

“Hey, buddy,” Blair says softly. “Sorry it’s been so long.”

I watch as his shoulders rise and fall.

“I brought someone I want you to meet,” he continues. “This is Torey. He’s...” Blair pauses. His voice crawls up from somewhere deep. “Everything.”

He speaks softly, quietly. I catch fragments—“…saved me…” and “...he gets me to laugh the way you used to...”—but I give Blair and Cody their privacy. And when Blair’s voice drops to whispers, I study the trees, the way the light filters through the leaves.

But I can’t miss when he says clearly, “I’m happy now, Cody. Really happy.” Then, so softly I almost miss it: “Thank you.”

His words ripple through the air, holding in the hush between wind and birdsong, and I remember Blair telling me Cody’s last words to him: he wished he could make him happy again.

A breeze stirs the grass around my ankles. It smells like wet earth and cut stems, like morning trying to undo a long night.

I step up beside him, close enough that the heat of him meets the chill off the granite.

Cody wished he could make Blair happy again, and I feel his wish moving through the grass, through the breath Blair drags in, through our past, through time, all the way back to the beginning.

Where is the beginning? Is it with a brother’s wish?

A hand reaching through time, gathering together what only he could know, how our two souls were made to be together? Did he…?

Birdsong swells, a thin silver thread stitching through the leaves. A single shaft of light slides through the trees and skims across the engraving. For a heartbeat, it looks as if the name is lit from within.

Science can explain so much.

But not everything.

Blair kisses the tips of his fingers and touches them to Cody’s name. “I’ll be back soon,” he promises. “Love you, little brother.”

We stand in silence for several minutes, the morning sun warming our shoulders. Birds call overhead, and Blair looks up as they cross the clear-blue sky. A cardinal hops down from a branch and peers at us.

“Cody loved cardinals,” Blair says. “He thought they were show-offs, same as him.”

I lay my bouquet on Cody’s headstone, and I whisper, “I’ll take care of him.”

Sunlight glints on the polished granite of his headstone, a flash as bright and light as a laugh.

Disney World unfolds before us in full Saturday glory, Hayes already strategizing Lightning Lane times while Lily bounces between Blair and me.

“Uncle Blair! Uncle Blair! The pirate ship is this way!” Lily tugs on Blair’s hand and hauls him through the crowd. Her Mickey ears are askew on her head, glittering in the sunshine.

“Lead the way, Captain Lily,” Blair says.

The park spreads out around us, colorful and chaotic, and I follow Blair, Lily, and Hayes. Erin walks beside me, seven months pregnant and radiant despite the heat. “You sure you’re up for this?” she asks. “We can take breaks whenever.”

“I’m good.” And I am. Four months post-surgery, my stamina has returned enough for adventure.

Erin rubs her rounded belly. “Well, this little guy is making me need a break every twenty minutes.”

“Perfect excuse for ice cream stops,” Hayes says, dropping back to join us.

Erin snorts.

Ahead, Blair lifts Lily onto his shoulders to see over the crowd, and she spots a princess meet-and-greet she cannot miss. We all hear the squeal. Everyone in the zip code heard the squeal.

We navigate rides and sugar crashes for hours, Lily’s hand in mine for half the day. At lunch, we break for chicken fingers and churros and find a shaded bench.

“Six more weeks until I can start skating again,” I say, sipping water.

“Dr. Lin thinks you’ll be ready?” Hayes asks.

“She says we’ll evaluate then, but the signs are all good.”

Blair beams at me.

“When you come back to playing hockey,” Lily asks, “will you and Uncle Blair have your names on each other’s jerseys?”

Hayes chokes on his Dole Whip. “Lily, baby?—”

“You said they were old and married, Daddy!”

Blair laughs. “We might, hon. We might.” His eyes meet mine over Lily’s head. “You’d look good in a Callahan jersey.”

A smudge of cinnamon sugar clings to Lily’s cheek. I wipe it away with my thumb. “You’d look better in a Kendrick jersey,” I tease back.

Hayes clears his throat. “So, Space Mountain again? Pirates? The teacups?” He’s scrolling through the park app, but I catch the grin he’s trying to smother beneath his pink cheeks.

Erin shifts beside me, one hand on her rounded belly. “Baby Rocket and I will sit this one out. We’ll be at the ice cream parlor for our third round.”

“You okay?” I ask.

“He’s practicing his kicks,” she says, patting her stomach. “Future soccer star, this one.”

“Hockey,” Hayes corrects automatically. “He’s practicing his shot.”

Blair stands, stretching, and holds out his hand to me. “Ready for another adventure?”

When night falls, we hunt for a spot for fireworks.

Blair’s fingers hook through mine as we weave between families and balloon strings and tired toddlers negotiating for five more minutes.

We drift together, our little flotilla cutting through the slow-moving sea.

The lagoon to our right mirrors our walk, water black and glassy, and for a heartbeat I see the reflection of us: Blair in pale-blue, my hand tethered to his. Harbor lights and safe passage.

We claim our spot right on time, and Lily curls up in my arms, her breath feathering my collarbone, warm and sweet with churro sugar.

Hayes tips his forehead to Erin’s temple, their silhouettes cut out in gold.

And Blair stands behind me, both his arms wrapped around my waist, his chin on my shoulder for the whole world to see.

The first burst blooms across the sky, and colors dance across Blair’s face. He catches me watching him and smiles. “What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I say. “Just happy.” Tonight feels like summer I want to keep in a jar.

The water ripples when the next burst blooms, colors sliding over Blair’s forearms where they lock around my waist. I think of all the water that’s carried us: dark waters and golden shores and breakers that tore through our lives, and the rain that sometimes wakes us, soft as whispers from another world.

I think about time slips and second chances, about love that transcends logic, about brothers who still love each other from the beyond, and about the terrible grace of losing everything and the fierce joy of working to build it back.

Another crack splits the sky, and Lily tucks closer. I sway her without thinking, and Blair sways with us. He threads our fingers together and I smile; I want the whole world to know I belong to him.

“I love you,” Blair says beneath the boom and the sparkle.

“I love you, too.”

The grand finale starts, and for a second, everything is noise and color and heat.

I lean back into him and hold on. The sky explodes, reds and blues and golds bursting like stars being born right above us.

The reflection on the water doubles the magic, a mirror world where everything is just as beautiful, but softer.

When the final volley lights up the entire sky, the whole park seems to hold its breath before the fireworks fade to smoke and stars, and Lily stirs, mumbling about one more ride.

“Tomorrow, pirate,” I whisper into her hair, sugar and sunscreen clinging in the strands.

The crowd starts to flow, a tide pulling us toward the exit. Blair unwinds his arms from my waist but keeps one hand at the small of my back as the current of people swallows us. At the gates, the noise thins. Night bugs chirr in the landscaping.

By the time we reach the car, Lily is dead weight, mouth open, breathing slow.

Erin lowers herself into the passenger seat with a sigh that has a laugh tucked inside it.

Blair opens my door and waits until I’m in to lean down, forearm braced on the frame.

“Tomorrow we sleep in,” he says. “I’ll feed you pancakes in bed until you explode. ”

The park recedes behind us, glitter and music fading to a memory that already feels golden.

We drive home in peace, stinking of glitter and sunscreen and sugar.

Blair finds my thigh without looking, his thumb rubbing absent-mindedly into muscle.

Lights strobe across our faces on the highway.

Palms blur into tall, dark smudges. My body loosens, everything inside me settling like sand after a wave.

Every circle Blair traces says I’ve got you in his quiet, steady way.

I turn my hand over on my thigh, lacing our fingers together.

“Today was good,” he says simply.

I kiss him, tasting salt and sweetness. “The best.”