Page 261 of The Fall

The fall is forever.

There is no air, no light, only the rush of wind and the gut-hollowing certainty of impact. A spray of shattered glass hangs suspended in the black, each shard a tiny, dead star. Metal shrieks. Water closes over my head and?—

My eyes snap open.

For a single, suspended heartbeat, nothing moves. My lungs still haven’t caught up in the dark of our bedroom.

Then the world jolts back, and I know?—

My hand shoots out, desperately searching across the sheets until I find Blair. He shifts beside me, his face pale and serene and mashed into his pillow. The doors to the lanai spill a muted blue across the sheets, a watercolor wash over the history of us. The sleek lines of the dresser emerge from the shadows, the silhouette of a hockey bag against the wall. This is our home.

This is the life I have lived twice.

I know where I am. More than that, I knowwhenthis is; all the versions of my life coalesce. I am here and now, and I was there and then, and I know the sickening certainty of what follows. I understand now; I’m back at the beginning that was really the middle, heading toward an ending I’ve already endured.

On all of my worst nights, I mourned a life I thought never existed, and on all of my best days, I ran toward Blair, sure that we could outrun fate and build a new life together. Those lives are one and the same, a loop I’ve lived, a circle I’ve walked, and Blair moves through all of my lives like a storm system I’ve been tracking forever.

Tires scream, a high-pitched whine that shreds the silence, and I’m back there, trapped in memory as blood and fear flood my mouth. I remember falling, free fall, the world tilting, gravity claiming us, dark water rushing up. My stomach drops even now, safe in this bed, because some part of me is still falling and will always be falling.

Blair sleeps beside me, unaware that I’ve loved him across time, that I’ve lost him already, that I might lose him again. Each breath he takes is a beat in a song I am about to forget.

The shadows in the room deepen, bleeding out from the corners.

Remember.

My brain shuffles recent memory and distant nightmare without bothering to mark the handoff. The way his hand goes slack in mine, the terrible silence after?—

Think, Torey. Remember. Remember how to save him. Remember if you ever could.

My hand cups his face in the darkness. He turns into the touch and mutters something lost to sleep.

A fire burns inside Blair, a love so fierce it could consume the whole world, but I’ve seen that fire extinguished. I felt its last embers grow cold before the fall. I will do anything—rewrite destiny, break the loop, or die trying—to keep him alive.

If this is all I get, then I’ll love him fiercely enough to echo across all of time. I’ll hold him close enough to leave marks on eternity, and when the fall comes, I’ll face it knowing this:

I loved him once without knowing why.

I love him now knowing everything.

I’ll love him always, even when time steals him away again.

Fifty-Four

Everything is exactlyas it was, exactly as I remember it being.

20,000 voices bleed through the concrete walls of our locker room like a muffled tidal roar. I stare at the gear-dappled tile, listen to the click of Hollow’s blade as he flips a puck on the end of his stick the same way he’s done in every city from Calgary to Raleigh.

Stale air coats my throat. My jersey catches on my shoulder pads, tugging a little each time I move. This isn’t nerves; that flood of adrenaline and anticipation has been scraped out and replaced with dread.

Blair speaks with Hawks, his head cocked to listen, those wide shoulders built to weather the next storm. No one else on the roster fills out a jersey like Blair. He draws something out of the team that I could never replicate, not in a hundred seasons.

Hawks laughs, and Hollow finally fires the puck into Hayes’s lap. Cue up the memory: I’ve lived through this before.

I bend to lace up my skates. My fingers fumble the knots. I wish I could forget. I wish I could unknow all of it.

I count my breaths—once, twice. Inhale. Exhale. Face the ice. I lift my gaze from the scuffed tile, my focus sliding to Blair. He’swatching me, and my thoughts become a simple, stark line. He is radiating strength and certainty while I splinter.

I want to grab his jersey and drag him out of here.