Page 238 of The Fall

On the plane, bags slam into overhead bins, music blares from someone’s phone, and Hollow’s already dealing cards before we’ve found our seats. I slide in next to the window, and Blair stops in the aisle beside me. The white fabric of his shirt pulls taut across his shoulders as he rolls up his sleeves, revealing the corded muscle of his forearms. I’ve traced those muscles with my tongue.

He drops into the seat beside me.

“Kicks, you in?” Hollow waves the deck of cards from across the aisle. “Calle’s not invited.”

I glance at Blair, who’s watching me with a half-smile. The cards don’t interest me, not when Blair is right here, his body a whisper away from mine, the memory of this morning’s kiss still on my lips.

Blair’s eyes darken as they hold mine, and I know he’s remembering too: the water cascading down us, his mouth on my skin, his hands on my cock. We nearly made ourselves late.

“Maybe later.”

Blair’s hand finds mine between our seats, hidden from view. Our fingers tangle together.

“Sometimes I look at you,” he says, his voice low, “and I forget how quiet my life was before.”

I want to tell him how he does the same—he makes the noise in my head fade, and his laugh is the only thing that can pull me back from the edge. I love him so much it’s almost unbearable. It’s sunlight pouring through stained glass, gold and blinding and impossible to hold. “Me, too,” I whisper.

The plane’s engines roar to life. We push back from the gate and begin our slow taxi toward destiny. Acceleration presses me back into my seat?—

—the sudden drop in my gut, falling, falling. For a heartbeat, I’m sinking instead of rising, trapped, darkness above and below, water pouring in, screaming, so much screaming?—

My eyes slam shut as the wheels leave earth. We’re airborne, ascending, not falling, but I can’t tell the difference.

Blair’s palm slides over mine, and his fingers thread between my knuckles, gripping hard enough to break through my panic. I focus on his touch, on the rumble of engines carrying us up, up, not down.

When I open my eyes, blue sky stretches endlessly through the window. We climb toward the Florida sun, banking over the coast, and Tampa shrinks to a speck of green and blue. From up here, the world looks simple.

When we level off, Blair stands, and every eye turns to him. “Listen up.” Two words, and the plane goes church-quiet. Even the engines seem to hush.

He grips the back of the seat in front of him. My gaze hooks on the column of his throat, the way the muscles there shift when he swallows.

“A lot of teams,” Blair says, voice rolling through the cabin like distant thunder, “get here and start believing the universe owes them something. Like the finish line’s already waiting.” His fingers tighten on the seatback. “We know better. The only thing we’re owed is the chance to prove ourselves tomorrow night.”

His words are ghosts on the air. My memory shivers.

“Every man here fought for every inch this season. There were days we could have quit, days when walking away would’ve made more sense than showing up.” His gaze sweeps the cabin, touching each face. “But not one of you took that door.”

My fingers curl into my pants. Every syllable he breathes matches the fragments echoing in my mind.

“This is our time,” Blair continues. His voice carries enough certainty to split atoms. “Every single one of us has bled for this, sweated for it, lost for it. Nobody hands you a playoff berth. You claw your way there, and we’ve spent all year doing exactly that—fighting through doubt, through…” He hesitates, eyes finding mine for a heartbeat before moving on. “Through losses that could’ve buried us. We didn’t let them. We kept fighting.”

I remember this speech. Last time—in my dream? In my concussion? When was the last time?—I was caught in an undertow, desperate to understand. This time, I know the cost of each word he says.

“I keep saying it because it’s true: you can quit any night you want. You can pack it in, make it easy, tell yourself you’ve done enough. Or you can lace up tomorrow and take what’s yours: victory, and the chance to keep going, all the way. Nobody’s going to hand that over. No one offers you greatness. You have to reach down and find it in yourself.”

These men have walked through fire to get here, Blair most of all. He’s stitched together from heartbreak and hard-won trust, and he drags this team’s fate with him. He has kept faith even after faith has cost him everything. He can turn a group of men into a brotherhood with his belief. And all of it, every battle won in the quiet corners of his life, has led him to this moment, to this flight, to these words, and?—

To me.

Hayes’s chin drops to his chest, right on cue. Across the aisle, Hollow’s hands tighten on his armrests.

“And we did exactly fucking that. And that resilience?” Blair’s voice drops. “That’sour edge. That’s what is going to separate us from the teams who watch the playoffs from their couches.”

We earned this, every single inch of it. Him most of all.

He talks about our season, not in generalities, but in moments: a blocked shot by Hayes in overtime, a game-winning goal from Reid, Hollow’s defense, Hawks’s breakouts, Divot and Mikko sacrificing their bodies to block shots.

I know what’s coming; I feel it gathering, a hurricane on the horizon.