Page 262 of The Fall

The noise outside thickens; it leaks through the seams in the walls, rising and falling. Somewhere inside me, a small voice begs for one more chance to change everything. This entire world is dust without him.

Hollow’s shoulder bumps mine. “Ready to punch our ticket?”

“Born ready.” The lie burns on my tongue; my molars grind together. Hollow’s eyes crinkle at the corners. He believes it, believes me, and why wouldn’t he? I’ve worn this same pre-game face a hundred times before.

The room shifts around me as the guys stand. Skate guards clatter against the floor. Someone’s stick taps the doorframe three times for luck. The rubber matting gives under my blades. The fluorescents hum overhead, their buzz mixing with the rumble from the arena.

Minutes now. Only minutes until?—

Blair’s voice rises above the clamor. “Tonight is the night. We were born to do this, boys, and to do it together. Let’s leave it all on the ice. Let’s go, let’s go!”

Hayes wraps an arm around my neck as everyone roars. “Let’s fucking go, Kicks!”

The concrete tunnel embraces us, our footsteps a drumbeat marching toward the inevitable. With each step, the tunnel grows brighter, and the crowd’s roar builds, vibrating through the concrete beneath our skates.

Please, please—I want my love for him to be enough to change everything.

“Hey.” Blair’s shoulder nudges mine. “We got this.” His gloved hand covers mine on my stick. There’s so much love there, so much trust.

My throat closes. He has no idea what’s coming, and I know how this ends. This year is a scar, and our perfect season has become a perfect path to a cruel and shattered end. I fought to return to him, to our love, and I have led him right to the edge of an abyss. Every cell in my body wants to refuse, to break this pattern, to prove I’m not locked into this loop, but?—

We skate out onto the ice.

The brilliance of the arena whites out my vision, leaves afterimages dancing on my retinas, a memory of shattered glass glittering in the air. For a heartbeat I’m nowhere, suspended between what was and what might be.

I skate, trying to outrun the future. Every push is a denial, every glide a lie I tell myself. I move, but I am going nowhere, carving the same circles on a path that is already set. The bright lights fracture everything into shards, and for a second, I see Blair not as he is now but as a ghost I am already chasing.

We drift into position, lining up for the anthem. The air feels ready to snap, and my lips are sealed shut around a scream. When the anthem ends, the roar that follows is bone-shattering. At the bench, Hayes locks his chinstrap beside me, all business now. The ice glows blue and gold under our blades, and I squeeze my stick so hard my gloves creak. Blair tilts his helmet toward mine, one last look before chaos starts. Our eyes meet.

He is the calm at the center of my cataclysm, my only fixed coordinate, my shore in the tides pulling me out to sea.

“You and me, Kicks,” he says.

He is what the universe will take from me.

“You and me, forever.”

He’s making a vow he doesn’t know he’s breaking. Forever is not an open expanse of days; it’s a closed loop with an ending that rips me open every time I reach it. His forever is a promise; mine is a memory I’m doomed to relive.

The referee’s whistle slices through the din. Instinct takes over: crouch at center ice, muscles coiled. Hayes barks something sharp behind me; I nod, barely hearing him over the crowd. I set for the draw, every sense tuned to Blair at my wing—my axis, my reason. He taps his stick once on the ice.

My forever is the handful of seconds right now: the glare of the lights on his visor, the set of his jaw, the certainty in his eyes. I’ve tried to find the variable to rewrite our ending, but what if there isn’t one? What if loving him more fiercely, playing harder, being braver?—

What if none of it matters?

If none of it matters, theneverythingmatters, not for what I do, but why I do it. Every second, every breath, every choice, everything?—

For him.

The game demands its due. We’re tied with a minute left on the clock, and we line up for a draw. My focus narrows onto the puck, the official’s hand, the twitch in the opposing center’s jaw.

What good is focus when every thought leads back to the same end? Each breath counts down another fraction of time I’ll never get back. And what good is breathing when tomorrow he’ll be gone? If the loop resets and I live this all again, I’ll be without him again. I’ll wake up alone and screaming in a hospital bed, and I’ll remember his touch and his voice and the taste of his lips, and I’ll be without him, again. And again and again and again, if I can never save him.

I scratch the world back into focus.Fight for him. Never let him go.

The puck drops. Chaos blooms. Hollow wins the draw and kicks it back. I collect it, see the lanes form and dissolve.

Blair’s shadow crosses the line and I feather the puck through traffic. He touches it—tap, gather, heel-to-toe—and then slings it wing-ward. A clear path to the net opens for Hayes, and he barrels through the high slot and bombs it, a clap that bends the twine and seals our fate. For a shattering instant, the arena is silent, until the cheers and shouts and cannons explode alongside the goal horn.