Page 161 of The Fall

I nod.

“Good.” She squeezes my shoulder before guiding me toward the door. “Let’s get you home.”

Thirty-Four

I pacethe length of my living room. Eight steps, turn, eight steps, turn. My walls don’t give me answers. My feet don’t carry me far enough from what happened.

Blair’s face flickers behind my eyes. The way he stared at my sketchbook, how he stilled on the page where I’d drawn him in a bed we’ve never shared. A drawing I never should have sketched, never should have kept, never should have let him see.

You don’t draw someone like that unless you’re drowning in them.

I pull my hood tighter over my head. My apartment stretches around me, too quiet, too empty.

Eight steps. Turn. Eight steps. Turn.

My fingers itch for a pencil, for the comfort of graphite on paper, but I can’t. Not now. God, I drew him smiling at me. I drew him in bed. I drew him in moments that existed only in my head. He saw everything. Every desperate stroke, every careful shadow, every truth I’ve been choking on.

Eight steps. Turn. Eight steps. Turn.

Of course he walked away.

That should be a sentence I can survive. Blair is my captain, my linemate, and that’s all. He asked for a solid hockey player tocenter his line, and I’m the broken-minded fool who can’t stop drawing his face or seeking his ghost in empty rooms.

What did I expect him to do? Laugh it off? Tell me he was flattered? Kiss me?

No. I knew exactly what would happen if he ever saw my drawings.

He knows the truth now. He saw my desperate, suffocating need laid bare across those pages.

He saw my obsession.

Now what? How do I face him? How do I look him in the eyes on the ice? Is it even possible to be a Mutineer without Blair’s trust?

Maybe he’s already told management. Maybe they’re drafting trade papers right now. Can’t have a player who draws his captain like that. Can’t have someone whose focus splits between the puck and the curve of Blair’s lips when he laughs.

Maybe I should leave, run before Blair has to deal with the awkwardness of me. The team is his family; I’m the intruder now.

I picture packing in the dark, throwing jerseys and sticks into a duffel, sliding sketches into the trash like that could fix anything. I could disappear, spare everyone the trouble. Spare him.

Eight steps. Turn.

God, I can’t unsee the look on his face. Can’t unhear the silence that followed as he stared at that final drawing, the most incriminating one of all.

I’m in love with him. Helplessly, hopelessly in love, and now he knows it in lurid black and white. He’s in my veins, under my skin.

My apartment feels smaller. The walls press closer. My breath comes shorter. Eight steps. Turn. Eight steps. Turn.

I squeeze my eyes shut, but that only makes everything worse. Behind my lids, I see every drawing I’ve ever made of him. The careful shading of his stubble. The exact angle of his smile. The way his hair falls across his forehead when he’s exhausted after practice.

Pathetic. I’m pathetic.

A fist hammers my front door. My panicked pacing turns into a stumble; I catch myself on the arm of the sofa.

My legs carry me forward; I cross the room in a few long strides and wrench the door inward.

It’s Blair. He’s here.

He stands in my doorway, wild-eyed and wind-burned. His ocean-blue eyes zero in on me.