Page 286 of The Fall

“Yeah. Let’s do it.”

Outside, the rain has eased to a light drizzle. The pool’s underwater lights cast a blue glow across the lanai, and the moon scatters itself across the water’s surface. We strip naked, and he slides in easily. I go more carefully. Water still sometimes triggers a momentary panic before recognition sets in. This is safe water, chosen water, and it embraces me.

Blair surfaces beside me, hair slicked back and eyes reflecting the light. “How’s the head?”

“Good.” And it is. The water takes the strain from my healing muscles and lets me move without pain. “Really good.”

We float on our backs, our hands linked between us. Blair’s nightmare has been washed away. We’re suspended between worlds, and I focus on his palm against mine and the gentle rise and fall of the water with our breathing. Each breath sends ripples across the surface, connecting us in invisible ways.

“You’re coming back to yourself.”

“A different version.” A wisp of cloud drifts in front of the moon. “I don’t think I can ever be exactly who I was before.”

“I know.” His voice is soft. “I’m not the same either.”

I think about how water remembers, how it holds the impression of everything that touches it, if only for a moment. “How many versions of ourselves do you think there have been?” I ask.

He turns his head, the water barely rippling around him. “I don’t know, but I feel bad for all of them. None of them get to be here now.”

In the distance, an early morning bird tests its voice. I float closer until our shoulders touch, skin warm despite the cool water.

“This version of you,” I whisper as the first hint of dawn illuminates his profile, “is my favorite.”

Blair’s eyes find mine, ocean-blue and endless in the pool’s glow. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

We float, suspended in our private universe as the sky begins its slow transformation from black to deep blue.

“I used to think strength meant never showing cracks,” Blair says after a while. “Never letting anyone see what was happening inside.”

He turns his head toward me, water lapping gently at his jaw.

“Now I know that’s not true. You make me brave enough to be vulnerable.”

“We make each other brave,” I whisper back. I’ve learned new depths of courage as he faces his grief, his nightmares, his truths—all of them leaving him stripped bare and exposed.

A slow warmth unfurls across his face, reaching his eyes and crinkling the corners. His hand trails down my spine, counting vertebrae, and I arch into his touch like a cat.

“I love seeing you come back to yourself,” he says, his voice low. “You’re already doing more than the doctors thought possible. Torey Kendrick doesn’t do anything halfway, not even recovery from near-death.”

I rest my forehead against his. “I have a reason to fight.”

“Me too.”

The water holds us, cradles our confessions, our healing bodies, our quiet revelations. Blair’s eyes reflect the changing light, rippling like the swells of the ocean. I’ve learned to swim in those waters.

The sky continues to lighten, pink and gold threading through blue. The world around us slowly wakes, and we watch as night retreats, neither of us ready to leave this moment, this perfect suspension between what was and what will be.

The drive to Cody’s grave takes forty minutes, and Blair’s hand rests on my thigh the whole way.

“You sure about this?” I ask as we park.

“Yeah.” But he takes a moment before he climbs out of the truck. “I want—I need to introduce you properly.”

The cemetery is peaceful in the morning light, dew still clinging to the grass. Cody’s headstone is simple granite, listing his name and the dates of his birth and death. Blair kneels, arranging the flowers we brought beside a Mutineers bobble head of himself that he told me Cody would have howled over.

I hang back, letting him set the pace.