Page 269 of The Fall

His eyes squeeze shut, his face twisting as if I’ve driven a knife through him. When he opens them again, they’re darker, drowning.

“I’ve lost too much already, pieces of myself I’ll never get back. I survived, barely, but I did. But you—” His voice cracks. “Losing you would end me. There’d be nothing left worth fighting for. Nothing worth salvaging out of me.”

I can’t speak. I can barely breathe. “You can’t,” I finally force out. “Youcan’t. I saved you, I did that— It was foryou—” I’m gasping, clinging to him, trying to make him understand. “I would have died for you?—”

“No,” he growls. “Don’t ever— Don’t ever, Torey. Promise me— Promise me you’ll never leave me behind. Not like that.”

His words tear something open in both of us; it spills out between us, a tide neither one of us can stem. Blair bows his head, shoulders shaking as his tears start anew. They fall soundlessly on me where his hands are clenched so tight it hurts, but pain is proof: proof that this is real, proof that we’re still here.

How close did he come to breaking? How long did he sit with this gnawing through him, thinking every second might be the last? I guide his hand up until it rests over my heart. “Count them,” I whisper.

He blinks at me through swollen eyes. “One.” His voice is rough gravel against my skin. A pause; another beat pushes against his hand. “Two.”

Faint tremors run along his arm into me as he counts. Three… four… five… My thumb grazes his knuckles with eachnumber he gives away, holding both of us in this slow return from oblivion.

Salt gathers in the corner of my eye when he presses a kiss to my temple at seven and murmurs eight into my hairline. By ten, there’s a steadiness returning to his breathing.

By twenty, our foreheads are pressed together and our noses brush as he counts. There is no prayer or promise more sacred than giving him my heartbeats.

“I’ll always fight back to you.” I have, and I would again, as many times as fate needed me to. I would make the slow, terrifying, beautiful crawl back to him in every life, in every time, with every breath I draw.

He exhales slowly, and relief seeps into him as if each breath remakes him from the inside out. His fingers curl tighter around mine.

“You promise me, too,” I whisper. “That you’ll stay.” There is no future without his hand in mine, and no universe worth waking into if he lets go.

A shaky exhale escapes both of us. Warmth gathers where our hands meet. Salt stings where his tears have fallen; my own threaten to spill over again, but I blink them back.

“I promise,” he says.

No shadow on earth could pry us apart now.

“I love you,” I tell him. They’re too-simple words that can’t possibly contain everything I feel, but they’re what I have.

“I love you, too. More than anything.” The ocean sits in his eyes, his storms spent, the horizon finally steadying. Everything in me goes quiet, the same way the world does after rain.

I study his face, memorizing the tired lines around his eyes, the stubble along his jaw. “Stay with me.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I reach for his hand again, needing the connection, needing proof that we’re both here. My fingertips map the back of his hand, charting rivers I want to follow for the rest of my life.

I lick my dry lips, suddenly aware of how parched I am. Blair notices immediately. “Water?”

I nod. His hands are still unsteady when he reaches for the cup on my bedside table. I swallow slowly through the straw, but still, agony rakes my ribs. I breathe through the burn as he cradles my head. His thumb drifts along my collarbone, and the tremor in him finds the tremor in me.

“You should rest,” he says.

My body aches everywhere, but with him beside me, the pain seems distant. I shift carefully, creating space on the narrow hospital bed. “Come here.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’ll hurt me more if you don’t.”

He climbs in carefully, mindful of my monitors and lines. He settles against my good side, his head resting on my shoulder. He doesn’t move for a long time.

I would hold him like this forever; I would carry his weight for the rest of my life.

“Talk to me,” I say. “About anything.”