Page 28 of The Fall

Fourteen

“Hey.” Blair’s hip bumps against mine. “You ready?”

The question pulls me back to him, to his wide shoulders and the steadiness in his eyes. “Yeah.”

An arm hooks around my shoulders, folding me into a boisterous side-hug. “Let’s get moving, boys!” Hayes’s voice sweeps through the locker room, pulling the last of the stragglers toward the garage.

The limo waits for us in the garage, sleek, black, unexpectedly extravagant. Everything inside is gleaming leather and polished chrome.

My heart kicks hard against my ribs.

Hayes tumbles in, tugging me with him. Blair slides in next and sits beside me on the long bench seat, his thigh against mine.

The door slams shut.

The light inside is dim and warm, washing us in gold. I’m jammed between Blair and Hayes, their laughter merging into one bright sound that bounces off the leather seats. For a heartbeat, the world settles into focus.

“This is it!” Hayes shouts. A roar goes up, the sound of a team that has clawed its way into the playoffs, defying the odds that were stacked against us.

The guys are alive with the rush of winning, of pushing into the playoffs, of defying expectations.

Hayes pulls me into a bear hug. He grips the back of my neck, his face split into a wide grin. “You are a fucking champion, Kicks!”

“Team effort,” I choke out. I blink and force myself to be in this moment and enjoy what the night’s supposed to be: a crazy celebration after months of grinding it out and sacrifices that took everything from all of us.

Hayes ruffles my hair. Hollow pops a champagne bottle, and everybody cheers. Blair passes me a bottle of Gatorade.

Champagne fizzes as glasses pass from hand to hand. Divot bypasses his glass entirely, drinking straight from a second bottle. Hawks and Nolan have started singing something off-key while Axel’s bass voice rises above them.

“Fuck yeah! Playoffs, here we come!” Hawks whoops.

I down a long drag of Gatorade, too sweet and too cold.

Blair’s hand covers mine. He lifts it, his lips brushing the back of my knuckles. He’s so certain. The guys around us are smiling, nudging each other, elbows in sides. My heartbeat thuds in my ears. Can anyone else hear it? There’s too much noise. Cheers wrap around me like barbed wire.

City lights blur past like streaks of paint, too fast, too dizzying. I twist away and focus on Blair instead. Breathe him in and think of waves crashing in the moonlight somewhere soft and sweet and far away.

“You all right?” Blair asks.

I nod. The lie sits between us, fragile as tissue paper. I’m not all right, but what could I possibly say that wouldn’t shatter this night for everyone? Sometimes, none of this feels real. That would go over well. I don’t know who I am. That isn’t exactly going to improve this celebration.

Maybe I should have been more honest with Dr. Lin.

Remember.

The limo sways, bumping over a rough patch of road. I feel like I’m going to be sick.

What is wrong with me? This creeping dread, though, this sense of it all coming unstitched—it’s like trying to hold water in my hands. Slipping, slipping, slipping away. His hand is a lifeline, but the rope feels like it’s fraying.

The world outside smears. Breathe, Torey.

I’m unraveling, stitch by stitch, inch by inch. Dizziness climbs my spine. I taste salt, hear the ocean’s roar, feel water filling my throat?—

Strange reflections move across my teammates’ faces. Everything is distorted.

The world is tilting, a slow, sickening spin. It’s like being on rough seas when the horizon fades and balance becomes a memory. This is wrong. This, all of this. I don’t fucking know what’s happening.

The bridge over the bay is a ribbon of steel and concrete, rising over black water. Reflections drift below us, bobbing, bouncing, beautiful. My heartbeat syncs with the soft thump-thump of the tires thudding over the expansion joints.

I count bubbles rising in Hayes’s champagne glass. One. Two. Three. Four blurs as the limo hits a bump.

Blair turns his hand in mine, threading our fingers together. His eyes hold a question I cannot answer. I squeeze as hard as I can and hold on to the blue shards of his eyes.

It happens too fast.

The limo lurches. It isn’t a bump in the road—it’s a violent jerk that throws us sideways. Blair’s grip goes white-knuckled in mine as Hayes’s champagne flute flies from his hand. It hangs in the air for one suspended second, a fragile question mark.

Crystal shatters against the window.

Shouts erupt, tangled in confusion. “What the fuck?” Hayes and Axel surge toward the partition separating us from the driver. “Hey! What’s happening up there?”

The driver’s reply is a thick, slow slur. “S’rry, fellas. Only a bump, ‘kay?”

His head slides sideways, cheek dropping to a shoulder that dips—and dips again.

Ice floods my veins.

“Stop the limo!” Axel slams his fist against the glass.

The driver’s hands twitch on the wheel. His head lolls, eyes glazed. He’s not there.

“Stop the fucking car!” Hayes roars. Axel drives his shoulder into the partition, once, twice, knocking it from its track as the limo swerves again, tires screaming.

“He’s passing out.” Axel shoves his arm through the broken opening, grappling for the wheel. “Get his foot off the gas!”

“Look out!”

We veer, swerve, fishtail blindly. Metal grinds. Horns blare. Blair locks his eyes, wide and dark, on mine as the world outside our windows explodes in blinding white light.

We are sideways on the bridge when a truck T-bones us.

The world caves in. Metal screams, glass atomizes, and the panicked shouts of my friends are swallowed by a brutal, deafening impact.

Blair and I are ripped apart; we cling to each other’s hands until the last possible moment.

My head cracks against the window frame, blackness bleeding in from the edges.

The limo rolls. And rolls. I catch a glimpse of Blair—shadow, light, shadow again—as he reaches for me, but the distance between us stretches, tears. I’m thrown against the crushed roof, and Axel’s limp body slams into me, dead weight pinning me down as we screech along the guardrail.

The wreckage groans, buckling around us. The sound of my teammates’ screams hammers one horrible, final note into my skull and then stops.

There is sudden, absolute stillness.

The silence is more terrifying than the chaos. Hissing hoses, the soft tinkling of glass, the drip of fluids.

Gas. Oil.

Blood.

I’m suspended upside down, trapped. A few pained moans drift through the ravaged cabin. Not enough moans. There are bodies sprawled at impossible angles.

Blair. Where is he?

There. His hand, palm-up, limp against blood-slick steel. He is covered in shattered glass, a spray of blood-soaked diamonds. His chest flutters, a bird with a broken wing, but he is still reaching for me. I claw my way across the torn roof.

Our fingers brush for one excruciating second.

There is so much blood.

A new horn blares, and another set of lights paint us. Jesus, we’re still on the bridge, still half in the road, in the dark, and?—

Brakes squeal. Another car strikes us, or what’s left of us. I am slammed back, my head cracking into the doorframe. Agony explodes through me. The wreckage shudders, a death rattle.

Metal buckles, strains, gives way.

The guardrail. Which means?—

Free fall.

Time holds its breath. Blair’s face is millimeters from mine. He’s trying to say something, but the words are lost.

I try to memorize it all, imprint every detail onto my soul, as if by force of will, I can hold onto him. I focus on the black pinpoints of his pupils, on the terror in them mirroring my own. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. We were supposed to have forever.

His eyes are ocean-deep, a blue I could fall into and never surface, but the sun is setting within those eyes. I’m watching the light fall out of him. God, we had small pieces of heaven in our hands, torn down from the sky, together. I remember ?—

The way his lips parted on a gasp after our first kiss, the way his hands cradled my face. Waves, gentle waves, lapping against our toes. His eyes, his eyes, when he looked at me and ? —

Dark waters crash over us and darkness eats everything, dragging me down, down, down?—