Page 27 of The Fall

Thirteen

The hum vibrates through the floor and climbs my legs, working higher, leaking through each seam in me until it settles between my ribs.

Twenty thousand voices chant our names beyond these concrete walls, a sound that could crack the sky open.

The arena breathes with us, ready to unleash everything it’s been holding back.

Chatter ricochets off cement and steel. Hollow juggles a puck with his stick while Hawks leans in, chirping something that makes Hollow’s concentration waver. The puck drops, bounces once, and Hollow snatches it back up without missing a beat.

Blair moves through the chaos, born to steady us all. He grips shoulders, clasps hands, trades nods that carry the entire season. The team orbits around him even when he’s silent, especially when he’s silent, because Blair himself speaks louder than any pregame speech ever could.

I fumble with my skate laces, one time, two times, like I’ve forgotten how this works. I dig my palms into my eyes until color blooms in neon flares—sour blue, chemical gold, green so hard it borders white. When I open my eyes again, the locker room tilts sideways before settling back into place.

Maybe it’s the static. Maybe it’s the boys hollering. Maybe I’m nowhere. Maybe the season has cracked me open, and only noise is pouring out.

Maybe this is what game-seven nerves taste like: ragged copper, no sweetness.

I try to inhale as if it’ll fix what’s inside me.

Stale sweat coats the back of my throat; the sharp edge of fresh tape and stinging menthol rides shotgun with the reek of anticipation.

I suck it in, choke a little, hold steady.

If I hold myself upright enough, maybe everything will line up as it’s supposed to, easy and seamless.

It’s the energy of the night. That’s all. It’s the rough laughter, the slap of sticks, the way Divot bounces on the balls of his feet, vibrating as if he alone could power this arena. It’s this game: do-or-die, right here, tonight. My heart kicks up, wailing.

This year is the dream, the one they’ll write books about. Every piece fell into place, creating this perfect, unstoppable machine. The right guys, the right mix.

Except—

Except the season they’re talking about lives in a blind spot in my memory.

The games, the wins, the journey that brought us here—it’s shadow and smoke, and the harder I chase it, the faster it runs.

I wish I’d seen it, lived every beat of it, every perfect play. Show me, brain. Show me anything real.

I wish I could fucking remember .

Across the room, Blair watches me. Everything else blurs. I blink and his face sharpens; the noise narrows to a hum. My thoughts simplify. He’s all I need to see.

My mind blanks with the ridiculousness of it: that this, the blood-and-bone grind of hockey, is nothing without this one person.

Hawks slams his helmet on and releases a sound that’s half-war-cry, half-primal-scream. He’s our hype man, the one who ignites the fire. The boys rally, slam their sticks, laugh big and loud so nobody believes there’s fear anywhere near us.

“Tonight is the night.” Blair’s voice cuts through the noise. “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!”

The roar that follows shakes the room to the studs. Hayes slings an arm around my neck, pulling me into a bone-crushing hug. “Let’s fucking go, Kicks!”

The tunnel swallows us whole, concrete walls amplifying every sound until our footsteps become thunder. The crowd’s voice funnels in from the other end, unseen hands tugging us forward. My teeth chatter. My heartbeat starts boomeranging off the walls. I want this moment to matter. I want to matter.

Blair’s stride never falters. He carries the entire season, an entire city’s hopes, and he makes it look effortless. The C on his chest might as well be forged in iron for how steady he is for us.

“Hey.” Blair nudges me.

I meet his eyes, so blue they seem to reflect the horizon even in darkness.

“We got this,” he says, his voice rough around the edges. He squeezes my hand over my stick. Then he’s moving again, striding out into the light, and I follow. We scissor out as a unit, Blair leading, me keeping pace.

The crowd is a sea of blue jerseys, a roiling, churning roar, and the lights on the rink gouge color from the world.

The brilliance shorts out something in my brain.

For a second, I’m staring into a memory I can’t quite catch, trying to remember the contour of something that keeps slipping away.

It feels like I’m staring into a sunspot, trying to draw the shape of a shadow.

I blink, trying to clear the smudged edges of the world.

A dull ache builds behind my eyes, spreading down into my jaw. The air shudders; the arena’s hunger threads through me.

Everything coming together, so they say.

Focus. Breathe.

My entire body is a finely-tuned instrument of wrongness.

We line up for the anthem. The music tries to drown out the chaos in my head—and fails. My rhythm’s gone, lost somewhere between the locker room and here. I should feel adrenaline crackling in my veins, but instead, all I feel is that shadowy wrongness seeping through everything.

The anthem ends. The crowd swells and yells together.

The noise hits me, rocks me. I want to go, go, go.

We skate to the bench, and beside me, Hayes locks his chinstrap.

There isn’t a trace left of the playful big brother he usually is.

He is part trickster, part gunner, and part broad-shouldered watchdog prowling the blue line.

Beneath his helmet, he looks all-business—sniper, heartbreaker, everyman and iron man rolled tight.

Blair’s eyes are locked onto mine, and a lifetime folds down into this one sliver between us. He is the calm at the center of my storm.

“You and me, Kicks.” He is a fixed point, the one coordinate I can navigate by. “You and me, forever.”

He doesn’t need to say anything more. He believes in this team, in this moment, but more than that, he believes in me .

For the next sixty minutes, nothing else matters. Not the past, not the future.

Only the game.

Only the ice.

Only him.

Time bleeds away in gasping seconds. The scoreboard is a knot of light, a tied game burning into the final minutes of the third.

This is where our season dies or finds its second life.

My lungs burn; every breath scours me clean. The compressed roars of twenty thousand people thicken the stretched-thin air.

A whistle shrieks; the sound hangs in the air a second too long. I waver, wobble as I glide after the play. No, stay here. Stay in the game. It’s the lights, maybe. They are too bright, leaching the color from the boards. It’s the noise. It’s the arena.

I force a breath, pull the chilled air down deep inside me. Blair taps my shin with his stick. A simple gesture. We’re good. And I am, for a breath. I am.

We line up for a draw. I narrow my focus to the puck, the referee’s hand, the twitch in the opposing center’s jaw.

The puck drops. Chaos blooms. I follow the black disc through a forest of legs and sticks.

Hollow wins the draw, kicks it back. I collect it, head-up, seeing the lanes form and dissolve.

I let the game flow through me. I’m a conduit for it, a vessel.

One perfect play will erase the last flicker of disorientation.

Blair’s a flicker in my vision. His shadow crosses the line, and I feather the puck through traffic, a blink’s worth of hope on a string. He touches it once—tap, gather, heel-to-toe—and then slings it wingward on pure faith.

The world simplifies into a clear path to the net. Hayes barrels through the high slot, eats the pass like fate’s already written it. He bombs it low, a clap that smacks the goalpost and rings through my entire body.

For a shattering instant, the arena is silent, every breath held, every heart stuck between hope and heartbreak. I am heat, I am hollowness. The arena tilts like a ship hitting a swell.

The world explodes in light and noise. A wall of sound from the stands punches through me.

Hayes screams, throws his arms wide, and crushes me in a hug that lifts my skates from the ice.

Blair is there an instant later, wrapping his arms around us both, burying his face in my neck.

His glove cups the back of my head, holding me close.

We did it. We fucking did it. These guys, this team. The season I can’t remember has led to this. I let out a scream from the bottom of my soul. We moved the world. We’re going to the playoffs.

“Told you.” Blair’s voice is thick and buried in my neck. “You and me, Kicks. Always.”

I cling to him. Right now, we’re invincible. Right now, we’re eternal. Fuck the rest; I have this, and I have him.

Remember .

The locker room erupts the moment we step through the door.

Bodies collide, voices rise to a fever pitch, and the bass line of our victory playlist thumps through the floor.

Gatorade arcs through the air in glistening orange streams, splashing against bare, sweating shoulders.

Holloway whips his jersey over his head and lets out a howl.

Hayes dumps melted ice over Axel’s head.

Coach steps in long enough to remind us we’re professionals before a rare smile cracks his face. “Outstanding effort tonight. Every single one of you. Enjoy this.”

My hands shake as I finally strip off my jersey. Something beneath my ribcage tightens, contracts.

“Hey.” Blair’s there suddenly, behind me, his arms wrapping around my waist, still in his base layers. He hooks his chin over my shoulder, his stubble rough against my neck. “We fucking did it.”

I lean back into his warmth and bring my hands up to cover his where they cross my stomach. Everyone can see us. Everyone can see us, and I don’t care, and neither does he.

His lips brush my cheek. I turn into the contact, my brain finally quieting for a blessed moment.

Around us, the celebration continues unabated.

Hollow glances our way and gives us a thumbs up before turning back to Nolan.

Hawks raises an eyebrow and mouths what looks like ‘finally.’ The guys do a piss-poor job of pretending they hadn’t guessed.

Not one face in the room carries a shadow of surprise.

Blair’s arms tighten. “Was that okay?” he asks, so quietly only I can hear.

“More than okay,” I say, turning in his arms. His smile, the one that starts in his eyes, slices right through me. For a brilliant, suspended moment, everything’s perfect. It is everything I ever wanted.

But the thump of the music grinds against my skull. The lights seem to flicker, too bright, buzzing. I lean my head back, rest it on Blair’s shoulder, try to draw his calm into me. It doesn’t work. The wrongness is inside me, a cold space that his warmth can’t reach.

It’s like I’m underwater, senses turned up too high.

The air is oversaturated. My jaw tenses; the room spins faster.

Sound swells and recedes. The roar of the music seems to shear away from its melody.

The overhead fluorescents are knives of light, splintering off the wet concrete and the gleam of sweat on skin.

Inside, everything cracks, the pressure ratcheting up. Fear roars in my chest; my throat goes tight, my vision tunnels. My heart beats off-rhythm, chasing something I can’t catch.

Wrong. Something is wrong. I should be floating. Why does my stomach feel like it’s full of razors? I’m standing in the heart of everything I’ve ever wanted, and I feel a scream build behind my ribs.

“Hey,” Blair says, voice cutting through the noise. “You okay?”

I nod automatically. I’m fine. I’m fine, but I can’t fill my lungs all the way, and the edges of my vision flicker dark and light, dark and light.

The room shimmers, the edges blurring and stretching like waves crashing too hard against the shore. Faces blur, here, then not. Even the Gatorade sprays seem to slow, droplets suspended like stars.

Remember . I feel the word snag on the edges of my fracturing mind.

I stutter a breath, tripping over the inhale. Why here? Why now? This should be bliss, but my fear paints bold strokes over every corner of this triumph; it howls and claws at my insides.

“I need a minute,” I manage.

The celebration rages. Svoboda jumps from the bench onto Novak’s back, nearly sending them both into a wall. Hayes is on his phone, grinning, probably texting Erin.

Why am I so fucking scared? This is winning. This is us . But inside, I’m unraveling.

Blair’s arms tighten around me. I cling to him, squeeze ferociously back.

Remember .

I’m a statue in the heart of this storm; the joy here is a language I can no longer speak. I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, the rock crumbling under my feet, and everyone around me is cheering for the beautiful view.

“Listen up, degenerates!” Hayes is standing on a bench, towel around his waist, phone in hand.

“I just got off the phone with my magnificent wife and she’s got our celebration spot locked down.

It’s time to trade in this Gatorade for margaritas, boys!

The Seawall is waiting for us, and the rooftop deck is all ours! ”

Cheers erupt.

The Seawall. The newest, hottest bar on St. Pete Beach, overlooking the ocean.

“Wives, girlfriends, boyfriends,” Hayes continues, winking at Blair and me. “All welcome. I got us a limo, so let’s fucking go!” His eyes are bright with victory. “We’re celebrating tonight!”