Page 146 of The Fall

I shake my head. “You had every reason?—”

“No.” The word cuts through the night air. “I didn’t.”

His denial is absolute. It leaves no room for argument, no space for the excuses I try to build for him. He won’t accept my defense of his actions. Water laps against the pool edge. Someone laughs, the sound carrying across the yard.

“You proved me wrong. You proved everyone wrong. No onegaveyou a chance; you took everything you earned yourself.”

I swallow hard.

“You’ve changed this team,” he says. “You make everyone around you better. You should be fucking proud of that.”

All the struggle, the pain, the fight to stay sober and prove myself... it was never for the team. It was never for me. His approval was the finish line I never admitted I was racing toward. This should be a victory, a relief, but instead, it’s a total collapse. He looks at me, waiting, but I’m stripped bare, reduced to the one thing I’ve tried so hard to hide from myself, from him, from everyone.

“I only want to make you proud,” I whisper.

Blair goes very, very still.

For a long second, then two, there is only the frantic beat of my own heart in my ears. Then, his throat works as he swallows. He turns his head slowly, and his eyes find mine in the dim light.

I brace for him to recoil, to laugh, to say anything that will shatter this moment into a million jagged pieces I deserve.

His voice, when he finally speaks, is a low rasp that slices right through me. “You already have.”

Three words. They’re only three words, but they hit me in my soul. I tear my eyes away from his and stare at the lights overhead, strung in the same perfect arcs from my dream. They dissolve, blur, go double.

He doesn’t say anything else, and eventually he gets up quietly and walks back inside.

Inside me, the world has ended, but these little lights keep casting their glow. I’m not alive. I’m not breathing. I’m not anything. I’m not anything except his, and I belong to him, and I belong to him, and I always have, and I always will, and?—

God, these lights turned Blair’s eyes into midnight sparklers. He spun me in a circle, kissed my knuckles. He held me close; we had forever.

I close my eyes and let every broken piece of my mind—from a night that never happened, under these same lights that never saw us dance—slash into my heart and bleed through me.

Iwant.

And I break.

Thirty-Two

The buzzer sounds;we’ve notched another win, the second one this week. Dallas’s crowd is silent as Hawks loops an arm around my neck. “Four-point night for Kicks!”

I try to smile, but any happiness I have sinks into a little pool of black that’s been growing inside of me.

Our locker room after the game overflows with New Year’s Eve plans. There’s no shortage of options for fun in Dallas, and the consensus seems to be building toward “do everything.”

“What about you, Kicks?” Hawks calls. “What are you in the mood for?”

“Think I’ll pass.”

“It’s New Year’s,” Divot protests. “There’s a hundred parties out there.”

“Not feeling it tonight,” I say, peeling off my base layers. “Too tired.” I’m not in the mood.

“Bullshit,” Hollow says. “It’s not even ten! What are you, old?”

“We’re gonna get you laid tonight!” Hawks chimes in.

Blair glances over, towel around his neck.