Page 42 of The Fall

I stop somewhere deep in the rink’s belly, far from Blair and Hayes.

The walls down here are painted industrial-green, a color that makes it seem sickly and underwater.

My hands are shaking. There’s too much adrenaline flooding through me, and my fingers are clumsy as I pull out my phone.

It slips, kisses concrete, skitters. “Shit.” I scoop it up, nearly drop it again.

My thumbs go feral. Google opens.

Cody Blair Callahan.

The search takes seconds, but those seconds stretch like dripping oil.

The first result is an obituary, and it reads like a closed door. Cody Callahan, twenty-two, beloved brother, passed away... There’s only a few lines, a funeral home link, and a list of those left behind.

My legs give out. I slide down the wall until I’m flat on my ass, my phone trembling in my hands.

Blair’s younger brother. Dead at twenty-two.

It was an overdose.

Cody played hockey too. He never reached the NHL, but he bounced around European leagues, and then—nothing.

The pieces are slamming together in my head now. Last October, Blair took that sudden leave of absence. Four months gone, no explanation. October. The same month his brother died.

There’s an image trying to surface in my mind—a photograph on a refrigerator door, a young guy grinning at the camera with Blair’s same jawline, same eyes.

My stomach lurches, and Blair’s ragged words replay: I learned my lesson about trying to save people from themselves.

Oh God. Oh God .

Three nights ago in Columbus, I sat at that bar with a vodka burning in my hand, ready to let everything go, ready to stop fighting the undertow… and he was there.

I was hunched over that drink like it held all the answers, and he stood a few stools down, shoulders braced, eyes finding mine in the mirror and not moving.

How he stood there. How his eyes fixed on my hand, on the glass, on the booze.

That night, a dark history walked into that bar wearing my face.

I was a road marker: mile one. The start-point, the slow slide. A family picture with one face missing. For him, it was October all over again.

Every time Blair looks at me, what does he see? Wasted talent and borrowed time? Someone bent on self-destruction? A young hockey player with more talent than sense, drinking too much, isolated, throwing away every chance?

Cody and me, two kids drowning in the same ocean at different times.

I drop my forehead to my knees, trying to stop the room from tilting. There’s bile climbing up my throat. This is why Blair can barely look at me. Every interaction, every time I fuck up on the ice or show up looking like death warmed over, I’m forcing him to watch his brother die all over again.

He’s already given up on himself , Blair had said.

The phone screen dims, but the image of a smiling boy I’ve never met is burned into my mind. A face from a phantom memory, a name that now feels like a scar. Twenty-two years old, nearly the same age as me.

I think about Blair having to identify his brother’s body?—

I lean forward and breathe. Sweat wicks along my spine.

He thinks I’m another brother story with a different jersey. Another funeral waiting to happen.

I rub my temples with the heels of my palms until stars crowd the dark.

A beat drums there, steady and mean. I want the old cure; I remember the way the ice clicked when I lifted my glass.

I want that numbing slide, the way the margins blur until everything forgives me.

The craving comes quick and clear, and that’s the problem sitting up and waving its little flag.

The vodka, the isolation, the way I show up to practice already defeated; it’s all been one long goodbye. And now I know why Blair watches me like he’s counting down days on a calendar. Every time he looks at me, on the ice, in the room, in that mirror, Cody’s ending is stamped over my choices.

If Cody had half—no, even a quarter of his talent ? —

I push the heels of my hands into my eyes until stars burst. The worst part, the absolute worst part, is that he’s not wrong.

He does see me; that’s the problem. He sees me too clearly. He sees exactly what I’ve been: someone determined to destroy himself. I was ready to let go. I was so tired of fighting the undertow that drowning seemed like mercy.

Cody’s face floats behind my eyelids—young, grinning, gone. I learned my lesson about trying to save people from themselves.

I think about Blair standing in that hallway, fury and grief tangled so tight in his voice that Hayes couldn’t untangle them.

The way his voice cracked on his brother’s name.

The way silence fell after. He watched his brother fight and lose, watched him spiral until there was nothing left to catch.

Every morning I show up hollow-eyed, every time my hands shake, every glass I reach for: it’s October for him.

It doesn’t have to be, but wanting not to be something and actually changing—those are different things entirely.

My knees protest when I push myself up. I am not Cody Callahan. I am not going to be Blair’s second October.

Practice starts in twenty minutes.