Page 283 of The Fall

His eyes close briefly. When they open again, they’re wet. “You’re not broken,” he finally says. “You’re the bravest person I know.”

Fresh tears blur my vision, but through them I see him clearly, this man who held me while I drowned, who shattered on a hospital floor when they wheeled me away, who’s choosing to rebuild himself so we can heal together.

“I’m here,” he whispers. “I’m right here.”

“I was afraid if I told you, you’d think?—”

He shakes his head. “I don’t think you’re crazy.” His breath ghosts across my lips. “I used to think fate was bullshit,” he says softly. “Something people said to make sense of chaos, but the world is stranger than we want to admit.”

His gaze is so intense; I can’t look away. “But how? And why? I don’t understand?—”

“Does it matter?” Blair asks. “The how or why?”

I look at him, studying the face I’ve loved across two lifetimes. Did I carry this love back with me or was it always there? Where is the beginning? I follow the lines around his eyes, the curve of his mouth, searching for a start to our story that makes sense. This is too much, too big?—

He tangles our hands together and draws them between us. “Every day before you, I felt unfinished and never knew why,” he murmurs. “When you walked into my life, it felt like the part I’d been missing finally showed up.”

Every thread of fear dissolves. The truth is between us now, and Blair believes me. All those months of carrying this alone and thinking madness lived behind my eyes, and now Blair knows.

“I’d do it again. A thousand times, or a million. I’d live through all of it to get here.”

He shifts closer and lets out a long exhale. “I’ve got you,” he whispers. “And I’m not letting go.”

Sixty

The canal whispersagainst the seawall, a rhythm I’m learning to trust again. After six weeks, water no longer tastes like blood and drowning. Now it carries salt breezes across the lanai and has become the soundtrack to our careful reconstruction of ourselves.

I sit on the lanai, wrapped in one of Blair’s hoodies despite the warmth of the Tampa afternoon, watching shifts of light on the canal’s surface. I shift, testing the boundaries of what my body allows today.

Surgery was successful; they removed the lesion. My seizures should be completely eliminated in time. My medication has been dropped twice now, and I haven’t had any episodes. It’s a success by medical standards.

But the fatigue lingers. Headaches come without warning. My short-term memory betrays me, the next word in a sentence evaporating, the reason I walked into a room vanishing, Blair’s question hanging unanswered while I struggle to recall what he asked moments ago. I’m weaker, slower, and healing in unpredictable bursts and plateaus.

Blair never minds. He’s rewritten his existence around my recovery, and the magnitude of his sacrifice is a second heartbeat inside me.

The Mutineers were knocked out of the playoffs in the second round. It was hard to watch, and harder still to be there when they came home from the road loss and cleaned out their lockers, but every one of our teammates had nothing but love to give to Blair and me. They promised next year, and said we’d be back, and next time we’d do it together.

“Here,” Blair says, crossing the lanai and setting a glass of water on the table beside me.

“Thanks.”

He sits and takes my hand. “Hayes called,” he says. “Erin’s ultrasound went well. It’s definitely a boy.” His gaze is fixed on the water.

Blair looks whole from this angle, sun-bronzed and solid, but his thumb worries my knuckles and tension rides high in his shoulders. “Cody’s birthday is next week,” he finally says.

I squeeze his hand. Through our recoveries, we’ve built a language of touch.

“I dreamed about him last night.” He shifts toward me. “He was sitting where you are now. We were hanging out the way we used to. Laughing, talking…” Blair’s voice catches.

I reach up, thumb brushing his cheekbone.

Blair leans into my touch. “Dr. Mercer says those kinds of dreams are normal.”

“Do they help?”

“Yeah.” Blair exhales. “They do.” He kisses me, soft and lingering, before resting his forehead against mine. “PT in twenty,” he says, though neither of us moves.

“We could skip it,” I offer, knowing he won’t let me.