Page 124 of The Fall

Blair studies me, head tilted like he’s caught at the edge of a read, and I force my grip to loosen, force my breathing to steady. My hands are white-knuckling the edge of the table, the pleather top squeaking beneath my cold-sweat palms.

Calgary. The name burns through my chest, spreading outward until every nerve ending screams. My mind races backward, searching for dates, timelines, anything that might tell me if?—

Blair’s still watching me; I’ve been silent too long. I blink, swallow hard. “Sorry. Thinking about the play.”

For a second, I think he’s going to call me on it. His gaze sharpens, searching my face, before he hops off the table. He lets it go.

“We should head back.” He pulls the door open, and the sounds of practice flood in—pucks hitting boards, skates cutting up ice, Coach’s voice. He looks back at me as I slide off the table. “We’re going to blow it up tonight, Kicks. You and me.”

I spend warm-ups chasing my ass. My stick wobbles through puck-handling drills, telegraphing my every move. Each shot I take ricochets wide or dies in the goalie’s chest protector. Other guys flow through their routines, but I’m stuttering. I have no zip, no snap.

The arena fills up around us. Bodies bang on the glass, phones flash, music thumps through the speakers. None of ithelps me find my rhythm. When we circle up for our final stretches, Blair catches my eye. His gaze stays steady on mine for three heartbeats, and then he looks away.

Back in the room, I retape my stick. The wrap job’s still garbage, but time’s up. We line up for the walk to the bench; my legs are like concrete.

Before the anthem, Coach leans in on the bench and whispers to me, “So you know, this wasn’t my call. It was his.” He jerks his chin to Blair, where he’s shifting from skate to skate and staring up into the dark rafters. A muscle in his neck fires, fast as a rubber band.

Coach’s mouth quirks. “So don’t fuck it up.”

I fuck up immediately. On my first shift, the puck bounces off my stick like it wants nothing to do with me.

I chip the pass behind Hollow’s heels; it caroms wide. We cycle once, twice, fall out of sync, and the backcheck comes fast. The turnover happens before I register it, only the heels of the defenseman vanishing down the boards, already out of my reach.

When Coach calls for a line change, I return to the bench with nothing accomplished.

“Breathe,” Blair says as we sit.

I pull air into my lungs, hold it, let it out slowly. The bench is hard beneath me, my gear heavy and hot.

“Watch their left D,” he says, eyes tracking the play.

The crowd roars around us. Our third line grinds it out in the corner, bodies crashing into boards. Hayes drops beside me, gasping after his change. “Fuck, they’re fast tonight.”

“They’re sloppy,” Blair corrects. “Fast and sloppy.”

Coach barks something at Divot, and the puck squirts free; then we’re back over the boards.

My skates hit ice and everything shifts. Blair glides beside me, and his breathing syncs with mine—in, out, in. The ice makes sense again.

I beat their winger to the puck, not by much but enough. Blair cuts left without looking back; he knows I’ll find him. Their left D—the one Blair spotted—overcommits. He bites hard on Blair’s fake.

Their center tries to close the gap, but I slip the puck through his feet, a move I’ve made a thousand times in practice but couldn’t find in the first period. Hayes appears on my right, calling for it, but I hold. Wait. Blair’s still moving, still pulling defenders with him like he’s got them on strings.

Now.

I fire it cross-ice to Hayes; he one-times it back to me. The goalie’s sliding post-to-post, trying to track our movement, but we’re ahead of him now.

Blair appears at my side. We’re two stars locked in shared orbit. I know where he’ll be before he moves, and the puck leaps from my stick to his like it’s an extension of us both. Time snaps back like a rubber band about to break. It’s the moment of truth, the moment I answer the question echoing in my head: Who the hell am I?

Blair’s voice echoes in my head:Again.

Black rubber kisses my blade as my muscles coil and release. Everything hinges on this split-second: one shot, one chance to rewrite the ending. I shoot?—

And the puck rockets off my stick exactly as it should, rising in a perfect arc through the air. The sound tells me everything: that satisfying ping as it hits the perfect spot where crossbar meets post before dropping in behind the goalie who never had a chance.

My arms rise. Joy floods my system, drowning out everything. The roar of the crowd rushes in a heartbeat later, and I’m spinning on my skates, searching for blue and white, for ocean eyes, for him.

Blair crashes into me before I finish the turn. He hauls me against the boards, and the impact rattles through me, but I don’t care. Hayes slams into us from behind, then Hollow, then the rest of the line, a tangle of helmets and shoulders and adrenaline.