Page 267 of The Fall

It was always going to end this way, always in dark water, remembering your mouth and the taste of salt on your skin. Iloveyou?—

Time breathes out.

Fifty-Five

Darkness

It swallows sound, smothers light, and extinguishes hope. My eyelids flutter. Every breath is an effort. Torn, ragged gasps claw through my throat.

Is anybody there?

Sound hovers on the edge of this darkness, persistent, insistent. It permeates the blackness, slowly widening the cracks, letting reality in through slivers.Beep. Beep. Beep.It catches deep inside me, pulling me up from the abyss, and with it comes pain. Deep, unrelenting, agonizing pain.

The world filters back in pieces: scratchy sheets beneath my fingertips, light searing my eyes when I force them open.

I blink. Once, twice. A white ceiling swims into focus. Fluorescent lights. Machines crowd around me, along with monitors and IV poles. The beeping sharpens, defining itself. A monitor, keeping time with my heart.

I’m in a hospital.

A single thought sears through my oblivion:Blair.

Did anything change? Did I save them?

Everything is distant, but the blinding lights and the violent screech of metal shredding metal flood back and pulverize me. Laughter, the guys, the locker room. Gatorade showers. The Escalade. Tires screaming. Shattering glass. The fall.

My heart monitor climbs, faster and faster, a staccato of dread, until it whines, high and steady and unending.

I remember this. Oh God, I remember this.

I refuse to open my eyes. If I open them and the room is empty, if the window shows me rain-slicked Vancouver streets instead of a Florida sky, I will not survive. The fall would have been easier, a clean ending. This slow return to a world without him is a cruelty I cannot bear. My breath catches, a sob trapped somewhere between my lungs and my throat.

Please, please.Don’t let it be for nothing. I can’t lose him again I can’t go through this again please please please I can’t I can’t?—

My head feels like it’s being ripped in two. Does this never end? Is there any escape?

Please please please, Blair, please?—

I breathe in, prepare to scream. I can’tdothis again without him?—

“Torey…”

Blair.

His hand covers mine, his grip sure and strong, calluses I know better than my own skin riding the back of my hand. Coconut, Key lime, and the scent of a salt-swept sea envelop me. My breath shudders out of me; my trapped sob finally breaks free as I blink through my tears. He’sright here, his face bruised and cut, a line of stitches above his eyebrow. His ocean eyes are bloodshot and overflowing. He is broken and beautiful andhere.

I didn’t fail.

Relief crashes through me. Blair’s fingers tighten around mine, and I hold on, my anchor to this world. He squeezes back just as hard, our hands a knot of desperation between us.

“You’re here,” I rasp.

A tremor runs through his hand into mine. “Where else would I be?” His voice cracks on the last word, and fresh tears spill down his cheeks. “Jesus, Torey. You were—” He stops, jaw working. His free hand rises to my face, fingertips brushing my cheek as if he’s afraid I’ll dissolve.

I try to speak, but my throat is shredded. “Don’t let go.” The words tear from me, hoarse and desperate. I grip his hand harder, my knuckles white, trembling. “Don’t you dare let go.”

Blair’s face crumples. He brings our joined hands to his lips, covering my bruised knuckles in kisses. “Never. God, Torey, never.”

Tears stream unchecked down his face, dripping onto my cheeks, my lips, my neck. “You fell,” he chokes out. “I saw you hit the water—” His words dissolve into another shuddering gasp. “I couldn’t reach you in time. I couldn’t?—”