Page 253 of The Fall

His eyes tell me I’m the reason for that happiness. He looks at me and sees a man who nudged his friend toward a miracle,but that I’ve seen this happiness shatter and fall. The cycle demands its due, and here I am, letting it happen.

What kind of man does that make me?

“Torey.” Blair pushes off the wall. Each step shrinks the distance between us and expands the pressure inside of me. I’m about to collapse or explode; I can’tdothis anymore. “You okay?”

Am I okay? Hayes is walking toward a future I’ve seen in ruins and Blair believes I’ve done something noble when all I’ve done is fail to find what might save them both. Impossible futures stack up behind my eyes, and I?—

I don’t know what to do.

What if this is all there is?

No. I won’t give up, or give in. I love him for a million tiny reasons, all of them adding up and up to infinitely greater than the sum of each part and piece. I have mapped him with my kisses and my touch, crawled inside his quiet, tender places, and worshipped at the fault lines of his soul. His wounds speak to mine, and mine turn soft in his hands.

“Yeah,” I whisper. “I’m good.”

He steps closer, close enough that his breath warms my face, close enough that I can see the lights reflected in his irises like small stars. “What’s going on in that head of yours?” His voice drops to barely above a whisper, and his hand on mine sends fractures through me, hairline cracks spreading through my soul. “You look like you’re carrying the world.”

I am; I’m carrying his world, Hayes’s world, and our futures that might crumble to dust. But, with his hand cupping my face, those futures feel distant and changeable.I can save you. I will save you.

He is proof that love can build a man, and rebuild him if he falls apart. He taught me the worth of persistence and of hopethat does not wither or rot, and he taught me that love isn’t a word, it’s lived day by day.

I lift my head and meet his eyes. The blue there runs deeper than any ocean I’ve ever imagined, and God, how many times have I fallen into those exact eyes?

Infinite times. A number that stretches out behind me and before me, a constant in a universe of variables. Every version of him I’ve loved has been real. Every kiss, every whispered word in the dark, every morning where he’s reached for me before his eyes even opened. The loop can steal our tomorrows, but it cannot erase what we’ve already been to each other.

His thumb moves along the line of my jaw. How can touch be both question and answer? How can one person hold all your breaking points and all your reasons to stay whole?

“Whatever it is,” he says, voice low and steady, “we’ll handle it together.”

He means playoffs, championships, the thousand small victories that build a life; he doesn’t know he’s promising me something the universe keeps taking back.

I hold on to him and say, “Together.”

Blair’s lips sear a path along my neck. “You ruin me. Every part of you.”

I remember this. I remember this feeling, this specific adoration, this prelude to a fall.

His tongue grazes my lips, coaxing them apart. Then he’s inside, deepening the kiss. I pull him closer, and Blair slots himself between my thighs, hands clamping down on my hips. My legs hook around his waist, tethering him, because no matter how near he is, it’s never enough.

“I need you,” I plead.

His gaze meets mine, dark as a storm-swept sea. Our noses graze, a fleeting softness before he vows, “You will always have me.” His mouth claims mine, stealing my oxygen and feeding me his.

His hands blaze a trail down my sides, calluses catching on every ridge of muscle. His mouth follows, kissing down my chest, his tongue swirling over a nipple until my back bows off the bed. The wet heat of his mouth pulls, teeth grazing just enough to shoot sparks straight to my cock. He doesn’t stop, licking the taut lines of my abs, teasing into the dip of my navel. He maps the inside of my thigh with open-mouthed kisses, his stubble scraping my skin. I’m hard and aching, my cock leaking steadily against my stomach.

He breaks me down in careful pieces, leaves me trembling with my thighs falling open wider as he settles between them.

Then his mouth is on me, wet heat enveloping my cock in one smooth slide. His hands pin my hips to the mattress, fingers digging bruises into the hollows, holding me still as he takes me deeper. His throat contracts around me, swallowing, and stars burst behind my eyelids.

“Fuck—Blair?—”

He pulls off with an obscene pop, lips swollen and spit-slick, only to lick a broad stripe from base to tip before sucking the head between his lips. His tongue works the slit, lapping up precome while his hand wraps around the base, stroking what his mouth doesn’t take.

He throws one of my thighs over his shoulder and palms both sides of my ass. A groan scrapes out of me as I drive up into the heat of his mouth and he takes it, throat opening, his spit stringing when he pops off for air.

A frantic thought seizes me:remember this, remember all of it. The sight of his lips stretched around me, the way his eyeswater when he takes me to the root, the obscene sounds filling the room. I’m flying apart here on these sheets.

A faint click sounds from the nightstand, the snap of a cap. Then his hand returns to me, fingers dripping with lube. He strokes my cock, coating me before slipping lower. His knuckles brush my balls, rolling them gently before his thumb finds my hole and circles the rim.