Page 150 of The Fall

“When he and I played together, hockey was effortless. It was pure, and fun, and I was alive. And when you and I skate together,” he continues, slower now, “it’s the same. I feel aliveagain. You’re not him, but skating with you helps me love the game again, the way I did when I first fell in love with skating with Cody when we were little kids.”

It’s too much. His confession is a wave that crests and crashes over the precarious wall I’ve built around my own heart.

“I haven’t felt anything like that since he died. Until you.”

His words crack me open, split me right down the middle. My mind races backward through every pass, every goal, every moment on the ice. How could I have known that underneath everything was this? When I landed in Tampa, Blair’s heart was shattered, and his soul was splintered and weeping. “Is that why you hated me so much when I got here?”

“I was sure you were going to break me. I couldn’t be near you without the whole fucking world caving in.”

He faces the city again, and his hand grips the railing so hard his knuckles go white. “Itriedto hate you, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do much of anything when it came to you. I wanted to be the guy who helped you, but I was another loser who abandoned you. Everything you’ve done this season, all the greatness you’ve achieved, you did on your own. You shouldn’t want me to be proud of you; you should be proud of yourself for showing us all how wrong we were.” He exhales. “I’m so fucking sorry, Torey.”

He’s wrong about so many things. About me doing it alone, about not needing his pride.

“You didn’t abandon me,” I finally manage. My voice sounds strange, rough with everything I’m not saying. “You were drowning.”

His jaw flexes. The city below us continues its relentless beat, but up here we’re suspended.

“That’s not an excuse.” The words are barely audible over the next explosion of color above us. Red this time, showering down like falling stars. “You needed someone to fight for you, and I?—”

“Stop.” His head snaps toward me, eyes wide at my tone. “Stop casting yourself as the villain in my story. You’re not.”

Another firework screams upward, and in the brief flash of green light, I want to tell him he was—and is—every reason I had to keep going, to keep fighting, to keep building, that he was my sun when everything turned to darkness. He is my sun and my moon and every star in my sky.

Fireworks paint his face in flashes—shadow then light, darkness then color. He watches another firework climb into the sky, waiting until it bursts into a shower of silver before he speaks again. “With you, the game isn’t broken, Torey. With you,I’mnot broken.” He tries—and fails—to smile. “Even if I am.”

I breathe in the night air. My hands shake. I hide them in my pockets where he won’t see. “You’re not broken,” I say. “Not to me.”

Gold fades into violet, and another firework rises behind it, cobalt this time, spiraling skyward before it explodes. Whistling cuts through the night, and then we’re surrounded by color, every hue and shade rising and bursting before us.

The display grows wilder. Red bleeds into green bleeds into white-hot silver. Smoke drifts across the rooftop, carrying sulfur and burned paper. Blair’s ocean eyes reflect every color, but underneath it all, they’re watching me.

The last firework climbs higher than all the rest. When it detonates, the explosion is pure white and blinding. For a moment, the whole city disappears. There’s only light and sound and Blair beside me.

Then darkness rushes back in. The smoke thickens, drifting in lazy spirals. Somewhere below, people cheer. Car horns blare. The city celebrates another year survived.

“Happy New Year, Torey,” Blair whispers.

“Happy New Year,” I whisper back.

He shifts, and for a heartbeat I think he might reach for me. My breath catches. But then he turns back to the skyline, and the moment passes like smoke through my fingers.

“We should probably head back,” he says, but he doesn’t move. Neither do I.

The rooftop is a different world, separate from everything waiting for us below. Up here, we’re not captain and rookie. We’re not the guy who lost his brother and the guy who might remind him of that loss. We’re Blair and Torey, standing at the edge of a new year with the taste of truth still fresh between us.

“Yeah,” I agree, even though leaving feels like breaking a spell.

He pushes off the railing first, and I follow.

We move toward the door, our footsteps echoing in the rooftop quiet. I’m hyperaware of him when he holds the door open for me. There’s something unfinished hanging in the air between us, words unspoken, possibilities unexplored.

But we let it go, let it dissolve as we walk back to reality.

We’re halfway down the stairs before he nudges my hip with his. “I’ve got a favor to ask.”

“Anything.”

“I have a tradition,” he says. “You could call it an annual one.”