Page 225 of The Fall

“Torey?” His voice is blurry, sweet, uncertain. “What’s wrong?” He nuzzles deeper into the pillow, and his left hand sweeps out, palm open, casual as the tide.

I want to reach for him. I want to slide back under those sheets and let his warmth chase away the chill, but the shadows from my dream still cling to me. My head is throbbing.

Everything is wrong. Nothing is wrong. I don’t know what’s wrong.

I twist out of bed and grab my phone from the nightstand. My legs are unsteady; the nightmare left me hollow and scraped out. My bare feet stick to the floor as I stagger upright, bracing against the wall for balance while red-black spots dance across my vision. The moonlight cuts sharp angles across the floor, and the corners of the room shift and warp. My stomach churns; acid crawls up my throat. The taste of saltwater still coats my tongue, the aftertaste of terror, the same churn of the ocean when a breaker knocks me under.

I slip inside the bathroom and cling to the edge of my sink. The man in the mirror has my face, but his eyes are wide and wild, like I’ve seen something I can’t unsee. I look like I’m running from something. But what?

A spike of pain drives me to my knees. I brace against the vanity, forehead pressed against the marble, working through the breathing exercises Blair taught me. I can’t get my nightmare unstuck from the backs of my eyes. Moonlight and neon over water, the scream of metal, someone shouting, falling, falling?—

I grip the sink, knuckles white, and let the stone leech the heat from my skin. The air feels used, like I’m breathing in someone else’s exhale. Something’s picking at me, something tiny and sharp inside me.

“Torey?” It’s Blair. He’s here. “You okay, babe?”

His voice cuts through the fog in my head, but I can’t turn around. A tremor starts in my palms. I grip harder, trying tostop the shaking from spreading. The bathroom feels too small; the walls are caving in. The moonlight through the doorway splinters my reflection.

“Blair…” I shut my eyes, but the darkness behind them is worse. Black waters burn?—

My stomach lurches.

I lunge for the toilet, drop to my knees, clutch the rim, and vomit. Each retch drags something out of me: shame, exhaustion, dread. I feel like I wandered into the wrong body and the wrong night.

“Blair,” I croak.

He’s behind me, rubbing my back, keeping me breathing between painful heaves. “It’s okay,” he says. “You’re okay, I’ve got you.”

I bury my face in the curve of the toilet seat and gulp fistfuls of air like there’s water closing over me; the nightmare won’t let me go.

“Easy, babe. Easy.” He drops to the floor beside me. “You went through it.” His lips are against my temple. “That hit was rougher than we thought, yeah?”

The hit. Zolotarev. The boards, the ice, my head whiplashing. I can’t stop shaking. Pain wraps around my skull, tightening with each heartbeat.

“We’ll go see Dr. Lin first thing in the morning.” He rubs the base of my neck. “Head still spinning?”

I nod. My stomach’s a riot, but the worst of it is gone now with him beside me.

He helps me shift, my back settling between the toilet and the wall, then rises and pads away. The bathroom feels colder without him, until he returns with a blanket and a bottle of water. He drapes the blanket over my shoulders and hands me the water as he sits down again.

I lean into his side, and his arms come around me. The room settles, breath by breath. I want to rest, but the adrenaline will not let go.

My phone is lying screen-down by my foot. When I reach for it, it blazes to life, the time innocent and ordinary: March 22, 2:37 a.m.

This is a bad night. It’s nerves. It’s the hit. I haven’t had enough sleep, there was too much pressure on that game. There are a thousand reasons for me to be on this floor, feeling like shit. I’ve had concussions before. I know the symptoms, the way they can mess with your head and give you night terrors, scramble your mind, twist your thoughts. This is that: post-game adrenaline, nightmares recycling old fears.

But in the silence, recognition circles slowly.

This is not the first time I’ve woken up flayed by fear. Bits of the nightmare glint and vanish, glint and vanish. I’ve been here before, on this same bathroom floor, this same sick dread pooling in my stomach, Blair’s voice pulling me from the panic.

No, I haven’t. I’d remember that. I haven’t.

But my hands recognize the grit of these tiles. My body recognizes the angle of this corner. The words Blair spoke—“You went through it”—they echo, a half-remembered song.

And that nightmare felt like a memory.

Stop. You took a hard hit and you got your bell rung. That’s all this is.

In the morning, I’ll feel better. In the morning, this will all seem silly. I match my breathing to Blair’s until my chest stops leaping ahead of itself. I slide my foot beneath Blair’s thigh.