Page 22 of The Fall

I’m ready for anything—puck-drop, forecheck, breakout. I’m locked in, all instinct. There is only the chase, the drive to put rubber behind their goalie. Shouts from coaches, teammates, and fans blur in my periphery. I am an arrow loosed from its bow, focused on a single point.

Faster. Harder. More.

The first period ends with us leading 2–0. The guys are blazing. It’s nothing but high-octane fuel during the break, raw energy pumped straight into our veins.

We go back out for the second period and keep rolling with breakaways, power plays, and goals. The game is a brutal, beautiful blur.

Each time we score, each time Blair and I connect, another piece of me slides back into place.

The third period starts with us leading 4–0 and ends with us winning 6–0.

It’s a shutout for Axel, two goals for Hollow, and a hat trick for me that feels like redemption.

We get to the locker room, and it’s chaos.

The guys are whooping and hollering, spraying each other with water bottles, blasting music.

I’m swept up in the euphoria. But we’re wheels-up out of Boston in a few hours, so we shift from chaos into the hectic crush of postgame routines. Bikes, cooldowns, stretches, showers.

I finally catch a breath sitting in front of my locker. The adrenaline rush is fading, replaced by the settling ache in my wrists, my thighs, my calves. It’s a beautiful soreness, a pain I relish and have missed.

I replay every moment of tonight’s game over and over. What changed this past year? How did I become this person?

What will change next?

The plane’s cabin is a hollow of deep night. A steady thrumming from the engines runs through the floor, and a good ache hums in me along with it.

Most of the guys are out, sprawled in their seats and surrendered to sleep, but Hayes is in a class all his own, sleep mask on, one socked foot dangling in the aisle.

We are alone in our row, and Blair’s shoulder is solid against mine.

“You were incredible tonight.” His voice is low and only for me.

I smile into the soft fabric of his hoodie. “You weren’t so bad yourself.” My voice is shredded from hours of adrenaline and shouting.

“That save you made? Unreal.”

He brushes his fingers against my knuckles, the ghost of a touch in this sleeping cabin.

Again, I’m rocked by the question, the same question, always: How did we get here? Why does he look at me like I’m everything he’s ever needed or dreamed of having in his life?

How can any of this be real? Through the window, stars scatter against an impossible black. It’s the same sky that hung over that Vancouver beach, but the world beneath it is another planet entirely.

What did I do to deserve this?

And what if?—

“What if what?” Blair asks, his voice soft as a secret.

Shit. I can’t speak; my throat closes. I shake my head, try to act exhausted or brain-dead, too wiped out to make any sense. My thoughts race. What if we could tell the whole world? But what if this ends? Or what if this lasts? What if the ground beneath my feet is a dream I’m about to wake from?

What if it’s not?

He leans closer. His breath is gentle against my lips. “What if we make this work?”

The question hangs there, more real than the plane, than the sky. He cradles my palm, his thumb tracing the tendons of my wrist. I wince as he kneads the sore spots, working out the pain from the game.

He knows what he’s doing, knows how to really knead out the stiffness. I close my eyes and lean into him.

Blair tries, but he can’t fully hide his flinch. I pull back and catch his grimace, watch him rotate his shoulder and try to ease out a cramp. In the stillness, his shoulder makes a crunching, gravel-on-gravel sound. Hockey aging. It sneaks up on us all.

“Here,” I say, shifting. “Let me.” I want to kiss his aches away, soothe the pain and make him whole again.

“I’m fine?—”

“Seriously. You’re not. Let me take care of you for once.”

He hesitates. There’s a flicker of something in his eyes, surprise or…

“You do take care of me. All the time.”

“Well then—” I motion for him to twist, give me a better angle to reach his shoulder.

I dig my thumbs into the dense muscle over his shoulder. It’s a landscape of knots and tension, and when I find one particularly brutal spot, he sucks in a sharp breath.

“Right there?”

He nods, eyes closed, and exhales slowly. He settles his hand on my thigh.

After a long moment, he takes my hand from his shoulder, lifts it to his mouth, and presses his lips to my palm. “Thank you,” he breathes. He slides his fingers between mine, callus against callus.

I rest my head on his shoulder again. He touches his lips to my hair, lets them settle there before laying his cheek against the top of my head.

“I do want to make this work,” I whisper.

He tightens his grip on my hand, as if no one has said yes when it mattered. Outside the window, the world is a black ocean of stars, and we are suspended in the swells, caught between where we were and where we are going.

If this is dreaming, I don’t want to wake up.

If this is real, I don’t know if I deserve it, but I’m not letting it go.

I crash over the boards, Blair right behind me. The ice is slick under my skates, the air choked with sweat and adrenaline. My focus snaps into place, centered on the puck and Blair.

Buffalo’s captain, a bruiser with a reputation for cheap shots, is coming hard and fast. The look on his face says he wants to hurt me.

Mine says he’ll have to try harder. I spin away from the open-ice check, and he eats air and ice shavings when he goes down hard to the ice. The puck pops free, and Blair’s there, collecting it in one smooth motion.

I lock eyes with Blair. No one can touch us.

Buffalo gets organized fast after that. They win the puck and pass crisply and quickly around the perimeter, looking for seams in our defense. One of their forwards takes aim from the blue line, an easy shot if he can get it off cleanly, but I’m there first, lunging across the slot.

The puck ricochets off my shoulder pads and clatters back into the fray. Another Buffalo player scoops it up and fires again from point-blank range while I’m still on one knee trying to shake off the stinger.

But the puck never makes it to the net. Blair appears, leveling the Buffalo player with a hit that echoes through the arena, and I want to kiss him. Right here, right now, in front of everyone.

After that, Buffalo wants blood, and they aren’t hiding it.

The puck drops. I win it and sling it to Hayes. He clears, but Buffalo surges forward. The clock ticks down. Buffalo’s desperation radiates off them.

I steal the puck on their next entry and chip it out. Buffalo storms back in. Sweat stings my eyes. Blair appears at my side, blocking a pass. We lock eyes for a split second.

Thirty seconds left. My legs burn with every stride.

Blair has the puck. He slides it right to my stick. I push forward, weaving through blue jerseys.

Fifteen seconds.

Blair dangles, drawing two opponents.

Ten seconds.

The goalie challenges. I fake left, go right. He bites.

Drop pass, back to the high slot?—

Five seconds.

Blair is there. I feel it. I don’t see him, but that doesn’t matter. I know he’s right where I need him to be.

The arena goes silent as we take the shot?—

Three. Two.

Goal.