Page 166 of The Fall

“You’re a quick study.” He brushes my shoulder blade as he moves behind me. “One more. This time, I’m going to push from behind. Don’t anticipate it. React.”

I wait, eyes closed, every nerve ending aware of him.

“There you go.” Both his hands rest on my shoulders, thumbs working into my muscles. “Feel the difference? Your body knows what to do when you stop overthinking it.”

We work through a series of postures, simple at first, then increasingly complex. He steadies me with a hand at my waist when I waver. “Pause when you need to.”

“I need to be steady.”

“So take your time becoming it.”

My body remembers this, the pressure of his hands on these same spots.

“Breathe through it.” His thumb moves over my hipbone. “Your body wants to compensate by leaning. Don’t let it.”

I focus on standing, existing in this space with him behind me. The carpet beneath my left foot. The way my right calf already burns from holding position. His breathing becomes my metronome.

“Hold here,” he says. “Five more seconds.”

When we finish, my head is clearer than it has been in weeks. My body is lighter, more aligned. The constant pressure behind my eyes has subsided.

“Better?” Blair asks.

“Much.” I open my eyes and turn to face him. “Thank you.”

We’re standing close again, the air between us charged. The ghost of every adjustment he made, every steadying touch of his hands, is messing with my head. My skin buzzes where he touched me.

I want to step back. I need to step forward. My body remembers his in ways my mind can’t reconcile, the muscle memory of us together versus the reality of our lives. This is the first time we’ve ever kissed. These are the first moments he’s touched me.

There’s sweat at my hairline, and he reaches up to brush it away with his thumb. “Hungry?”

My stomach answers for me with a growl. I let out a shaky laugh and step back to break the tension before it pulls me under. “I could eat.”

He pulls out his phone. “Thai okay?”

Blair Callahan is standing in my living room, ordering dinner for us like it’s the most natural thing in the world. I smile. “Thai’s perfect.”

When the food arrives, we eat cross-legged on the floor at my coffee table. He tells me stories while we eat: about Hayes before he met Erin, about road trip disasters and practical jokes, about his first concussion. “I got hit hard. Ducked wrong, took a shoulder directly to the ear. “It took me months to stop living on a carousel. The balance work and stretching helped.”

He tells me about Calgary, about his first years in major junior. A wistful roundness sneaks into his consonants.

Then he tells me about Cody.

They billeted together, sharing a room like when they were kids. They’d talk between their bunks late into the night, about everything that teenage boys talk about: girls, the meaning of life, hockey plays, fart jokes. “He asked me if I had a thing for anyof the guys on the team.” Blair huffs a quiet laugh. “That’s how he told me he knew.”

They practically lived at the rink. Some mornings, they’d open up the barn and turn on the lights. He used to quiz Cody on his schoolwork while they worked on passes and backward crossovers and bank shots. “He was a natural. Beautiful skater. He could feather a pass through five guys without blinking.”

“Why didn’t he get drafted?”

He swallows. “He got hurt. Fucked his knee. He was having his best season. Seventeen goals by Christmas break. Then some guy—” He stops himself, jaw working. “Doesn’t matter. Knee bent the wrong way. Career over in three seconds. No scouts were willing to take a gamble on a repaired ACL. He played in Europe for a while, but…”

But.

He lets out a breath. “I’d kill to have those mornings back.”

His face shifts as memory pulls at him. His chopsticks rest forgotten against the edge of his pad thai container. I reach across the coffee table and touch his wrist. He turns his hand over, lacing our fingers together.

After dinner, I perch on the counter beside the sink while Blair rolls up his sleeves and does the dishes. My heel hooks on the back of his knee.