Page 35 of The Fall

Nineteen

Blair’s jersey hangs off me. The sleeves brush my wrists, his name stitched across my back like a burn.

My eyes wander over the sketchbook in my lap. There are too many sketchbooks now. They litter the floor, the couch, the counter. My apartment is a graveyard of graphite where he exists and I don’t.

My TV flickers in the corner. It’s Tampa versus Philly on repeat. I know every play, every shift, every split-second decision, and I whisper along with the announcers when they call Blair’s name. Blair Callahan at the face-off dot… wins the draw clean.

It’s stupid, watching this game again, but I can’t stop.

Maybe if I hadn’t tried so hard to hold on to the memories, I wouldn’t be here, with ghosts shredding my mind to ribbons of what-could-have-been. I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore. Whoever I was in Tampa—the Torey who could score game-winners, the man Blair loved—I’m not him.

All I know is that I’m not a hockey player anymore.

There are nineteen missed calls on my phone from my dad. I can’t even begin to imagine what I could say to him to explain this. I’ve never been more thankful for the vastness of the Pacific Ocean or the demands of his job. He’s not here, and he doesn’t have to see what’s become of his son.

My thumb brushes over Blair’s eyes, smudging the charcoal as my phone rings. I glance at the screen. Dad?

Not this time. No, it’s the general manager of the Orcas.

They’re making it official.

I think for a second about not answering, about letting this call join the others in a pile of missed connections, but I tap accept.

“Kendrick.” My general manager’s voice is flat and clipped, and he doesn’t waste words. “I have news for you. And before you say anything, you don’t have a choice. Understand me?”

I swallow. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

“You’re gone.”

I knew that already.

“We’re shipping you out. We’ve offloaded you.”

I blink. “What? Like a trade?”

He pauses. “It’s a cap dump. They’re taking you, your contract, everything.”

“Where—where am I going?”

“Tampa.”

It’s not possible. This can’t be possible. Fate’s not this twisted. “Tampa?”

“Yes,” he says. “The Mutineers.”

The sketchbook slides off my thighs. Pages flutter, and there’s Blair’s face again and again and again.

Different angles, different moments, but always him.

I’ve been dismantling myself, piece by piece, learning how to be nothing, and now Blair’s going to see the truth.

He’s going to see what I really am—what I am without him. The failure.

In every sketch, he’s perfect, and here I am, surrounded by the evidence of my obsession.

Tampa. God. Blair in the flesh, not these paper ghosts. Blair’s voice in the locker room. His eyes on me during practice. His disappointment when he sees who I really am.

There’s no way out, and no way to hide what these months have done to me. My game is gone, and now I have to walk back into that world wearing my shame like a second skin.

His jersey bunches under my palms, soft from too many washes, and I hate myself for still wearing it. For needing it.

“Torey…” My general manager’s voice softens. “I don’t know what happened, or why, but this is it: your last chance. Tampa must have heard we were going to terminate your contract, and I don’t know where they’re going with this trade. But…”

There’s a long, still silence.

“This is your last shot. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Tampa’s Hockey Ops will be in touch with the details.”

The phone clicks.

I’ve got my life stuffed into two duffel bags, and I’m on a plane, halfway across the country, halfway back to Blair. The armrest digs into my side, and the plane’s air stings the back of my throat. The window is a scuffed oval of light, the cloud layer smeared and thin.

Tampa keeps coming closer whether I want it or not. I’m heading back toward blue water and the man I love, who doesn’t know me. What do I say when I see him? What can I say?

Blair—

No. Too simple. He’ll look at me—God, he’ll look at me—and I?—

We’ve never been introduced. I know the heat at the base of my spine when his mouth finds it, know the sound he makes when morning is soft and he is softer, know the slant of his grin when he thinks we’re alone, but when I hold out a hand and say Hi, I’m Torey , we’re starting from zero.

Blair, I need to tell you something.

Tell him? Tell him what? The truth would sound like madness. I remember loving you. I remember your mouth against my spine on mornings that never happened. I remember dying with you.

Every rehearsed introduction sounds worse than the last. Hi, I’m your new teammate —too formal for someone whose heartbeat I’ve memorized.

Hi, you don’t know me but —but what? But I know the feel of your breath against the back of my neck in the middle of the night?

Hi, I’ve been dreaming about you for months .

That makes me sound exactly as unhinged as I am.

Nothing I practice changes the simple thing: he doesn’t know me, and with the mess I’ve made of everything, why would he want to?

I burned through any skills I had and ran out of all my chances in a different city.

I don’t have a single reason to offer him for why he should think I’m anything other than a trade and a headache.

But there’s no more running. One way or the other, Tampa is my end. I sold everything to get here. Burned every bridge behind me. There’s nothing left but forward.

I thumb the frayed strap of my backpack until the loose threads bite. Inside are three sketchbooks, the ones packed with my favorite, fractured dreams.

The plane tips, nose angling down. The engines shift pitch and tug us earthward.

Landing gear thunks into place, and the vibration runs up through the seat, buzzing my teeth.

My stomach knots and holds. Outside, Tampa’s skyline rises, glass and water throwing sunlight back at the sky.

I recognize none of it and all of it at once.

Impact jolts through me, the tires kissing the runway softly at first, then heavier as the brakes grab. Through the window, Tampa’s heat shimmers off the runway. Home, I think, then hate myself for thinking it.

The plane taxis toward the gate, and the window fills with service trucks and tarmac stripes and the choreography of arrivals. I’m here. After everything—the accident that wasn’t, the love that didn’t happen, my months of drowning in Vancouver—I’m here.

The seatbelt sign goes dark. Everyone stands. Overhead bins snap open around me, but I can’t move. Somewhere in this city, Blair is completely unaware that I’m about to walk into his life carrying a dream that died before it began.

I shove my shades onto my face and move through the crowded terminal. Is he here? Of course not. Why the fuck would he be here?

“Mr. Kendrick?”

I blink and barely catch the embroidered Mutineers logo on the polo of the man in front of me. I nod.

The guy—Sam—helps me collect my bags and my hockey sticks from baggage claim. He’s efficient, and when I’m loaded up, he says, “Follow me.” I do, out of the airport and into the sunlight.

The car ride to the team hotel is quiet. I’m staying downtown next to the arena, which means I’ll have a short commute to the end of my career.

I check in without saying much. The keycard to my room is cold plastic between my fingers.

You’d think there might be some grand moment waiting at the end of an odyssey like this, some sign that marks your return.

Instead, all I hear is the faint beep of the electronic lock, and then the door creaks open.

The hotel room is a placeholder for someone else’s life. I’m here, but I could be anywhere.

This is where rookies, call-ups, tryouts, and trades stay until they get the go/no-go on a real place, and the hotel is used to housing hockey players. They’ve given me a room with a view, and I drift to the window overlooking the bay. I’ve always been drawn to places I can drown.

I see?—

The bridge, a dark ribbon cutting the water. It bisects everything—sky from sea, safe from gone. The shadows it throws feel wrong, digging into places in me that are still tender, still trying to scab over. My breath catches. Do I know this bridge?

My hands are clumsy with the curtains. I yank hard, rings rasping on the track, and daylight snuffs out.

The room drops to blank. I brace my shoulder to the wall, calves tight, arms buzzing, jaw clenched so hard my molars ache.

I wait for a hit, the rush of water over my head, an ending I can feel but can’t see—but… nothing happens.

Instead, I stand in the dark and breathe. In and out, slowly enough not to wake whatever hunts me, and quietly enough that it passes the door and keeps going.