Page 268 of The Fall

My whole body heaves with sounds I can’t control. Every breath I drag in burns. “The others?—”

“Everyone is fine.” Blair’s forehead pushes harder against mine. “Everyone’s alive, even the girls in the limo. It was a bachelorette party. You—” His voice fractures. “It was only you who?—”

My hands on the steering wheel. The sickening crunch of metal, the shattering of glass. The weightless terror of falling.

I reach up with my free hand, my fingers brushing the stitches on his brow. He turns into my touch, eyes closing.

“I remember.” My words come out broken. Life doesn’t feel real yet. All I care about, all I feel, all I see, all I know, is Blair. He’s here, he’s here. “But you’re here. That’s all that?—”

“No.” His eyes snap open, blazing through his tears; his ocean eyes are wild. “Youdied, Torey. You—” He stops, chest heaving. “Forty feet, Torey. You fell forty feet into the water.” He screams through gritted teeth, his gaze burning into mine.

I remember the impact, how the world exploded into chaos and cold, the way my lungs burned as water rushed in, Blair’s name on my lips as everything went black?—

“Three minutes,” he pushes out. “You were gone for three minutes before they brought you back.”

Three minutes. The span of a pop song, the time it takes to brew coffee. An eternity when you’re watching the person you love slip away.

He brings my hand to his chest. His heart is racing, faster and more frantic than mine. “This stopped when yours did. And when they pulled you out—” His voice gives out completely.

“Tell me what happened,” I whisper.

“I jumped in after you,” he breathes. “Hayes, too. The car was sinking, but—” A tremor runs through him. “I pulled you out, but you weren’t breathing—” He can’t finish.

I died, or came close enough that it makes no difference, and he’s in pieces. He lowers his head, hiding his face, as sobs seize him.

This is Blair without his armor, without the captain’s mask or the careful distance he keeps between himself and the world. This is him split wide open, every defense torn away until there’s nothing left. Blair stood tall through Cody’s death, and he’s carried the team all the way from obscurity to glory. He never lets anyone see him bend, but now he’s breaking in my arms.

“You saved me,” I say, my voice scraping the quiet. “Blair, you saved me.”

His head lifts, eyes red-rimmed and lost. “Hayes had to pull me off of you. I wouldn’t—” He swallows. “I wouldn’t let go of you.”

My voice a thread of sound I barely recognize. “You’re shaking.”

“Every time I close my eyes, I see you going under.” He struggles with the memory, his face pale, his voice drenched in horror. “Your window shattered. The water came in so fast. Your seatbelt was jammed, and you weren’t breathing, and I couldn’t?—”

“Blair.” I cup his face with both hands, ignoring the pain that snaps through me when I move. “I’m here.”

“I cut you free.” The words pour out of him. “I pulled you out, and you were so still?—”

I tug him to me until our foreheads are together again. “We’re here. We made it.”

“Barely.” His breath hitches. “Barely, Torey, barely.” His thumb follows the line of my jaw, so gently. “I can’t lose you, Torey. Ican’t… I can’tdothis without you. I’ve tried to imagine it, and I can’t.” His fingers thread through my hair, and his voice drops, thin and hollow. “I’ve been sitting here for three days, counting each breath you take.”

Three days.

“The doctors kept saying you were stable, but stable isn’t the same as opening your eyes and looking at me.” His hand slides down to my chest, feeling for my heartbeat. “I memorized every machine in this room, learned what each beep meant.”

The fluorescent hum fills the silence between his words.

“Every hour that passed...” He stops, his jaw working. “I would have followed you,” he confesses, his voice so, so soft. “In the water, or here. If they hadn’t brought you back, I would have followed you.”

My monitor’s rhythm spikes. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“That’s not?—”

“Not what? Not fair? Not right?” His voice fractures mid-sentence; I watch something break behind his eyes. “What’s not right is asking me to live in a world without you in it. What’s not fair is expecting me to go on if you—” His sentence dies in the white-knuckled grip he has on my hand.