Page 270 of The Fall

His breath warms my neck as his voice rolls through me. My fingers travel up his arm, following the soft cotton of his sleeve. I turn my face into his hair, breathing him in. Coconut and Key lime fill my lungs, that ocean-salt scent that belongs to my home.

Our fingers thread together like they’ve done a thousand times, and like they’ll do it a thousand times more, for the rest of our lives.

Fifty-Six

The door opens.I expect a nurse or the doctor, but my father walks in carrying two coffee cups, and the floor drops away beneath me.

He shouldn’t be here. Singapore is twelve time zones away and there’s an entire ocean between us, but he’s standing in my hospital room with Blair in this bed, tangled together, and?—

“Torey.” My name breaks apart in his throat. His eyes are bloodshot and his suit pants are wrinkled, his shirt untucked and the sleeves rolled up. Gray threads through his hair that I swear weren’t there three months ago.

“Dad?”

He crosses to my bed in three strides.

“I’ll take those.” Blair sits up quickly, taking the coffee cups from my father’s trembling hands.

And my father, who never flinched when I took a puck to the jaw at fourteen, sinks into the chair beside my bed, both of his hands landing on mine and squeezing. “Torey...” His grip is fierce and desperate. “You’re okay.” He says it as if trying to convince himself, and there are tears on his face. “You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re?—”

“Dad.” I can’t get any air around the word.

“I thought I lost you.” His voice cracks completely, and he buries his face in my hair, raining kisses on the top of my head. “When they called—” He stops, jaw working. His hands tighten around mine. “They said that you might not—” He stops, swallows hard. “I caught the first flight. I kept thinking if I could get here fast enough, if I could—” His hand moves to the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair the way he used to when I was small and scared of thunderstorms.

Blair takes my hand, and my father’s eyes finally lift and land on him. I hold my breath?—

“We were terrified,” my dad whispers.

My eyes flick to Blair’s. Have they been— Were they here together? My mouth goes dry, and I brace for the words that will finally sever the last thread between us.

The chasm I expect to open between us, the one filled with disappointment, doesn’t appear. “You never told me you were seeing someone.”

“I…”

“Did you think—” He stops. Instead of anger, there is only a deep sorrow on my father’s face. “Did you think I wouldn’t want to know?”

My entire life, I have been sure of his answer to that unspoken question, but… His grip on my hand is a plea, and the heartbreak on his face isn’t for him; it’s for me, for all the years I spent afraid.

The wall inside me starts to give way, and the fear I’ve carried of this secret that I’ve buried since I was thirteen crumbles. All those years of measuring up, of failing, of never being quite enough. “I thought you’d be disappointed.”

“Torey,never. Never. I love you. You’re my son, and nothing—nothing—changes that.”

His words undo fifteen years of certainty in a single, gut-wrenching moment. A broken sound catches in my throat, and his face blurs through my tears.

“I’m sorry,” I gasp. “I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how?—”

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

A shuddering breath escapes me. I look at him, this man I thought I understood, my father that I have back in a way I never had him before. “Dad—” My relief is so intense it hurts; I can’t find the next word.

His eyes are red-rimmed but patient. I want to tell him everything about hiding who I was, about trying to be perfect on the ice when I felt broken everywhere else, about meeting Blair and finally being whole, but all that comes out is a broken “Thank you.”

He squeezes my shoulder, and that touch bridges years of distance in an instant. A lifetime of waiting for the other shoe to drop evaporates as the corner of his mouth lifts.

“Your dad has been here for two and a half days,” Blair says. “We’ve been waiting for you together.”

The words sink in slowly. Two and a half days. My father, who I was certain would reject me if he knew the truth, has been sitting here with Blair for two and a half days. I try to picture it, the two of them keeping vigil over me. The lines on my father’s face, the exhaustion in the set of Blair’s shoulders; they mirror each other.

“You picked a good man,” Dad says. “He’s never left your side.”