Page 44 of The Fall

His laces hang, tongues of his skates yawning open, untouched. The tape for his sticks sits in a neat stack beside him, new and white, and he hasn’t reached for it. He breathes, and that’s the only sign there’s a person inside all that gear.

Noise from the room rolls and breaks and never seems to touch him. He looks like someone took a spoon and scraped everything vital from inside him, leaving a shell sitting there in Mutineers gear.

What day is it? The question comes out of nowhere, a flare in fog. The whiteboard near the door has today’s details scrawled across it. What day?—

It’s the anniversary. Jesus Christ, it’s the anniversary. Today. I didn’t—fuck.

Cody died a year ago today. Today, because it’s October— October, overdose —and today is the day…

Where was I a year ago? Feeling sorry for myself in Vancouver? Moping about how no one my team liked me or how the fans wrote mean things about me?

Blair was identifying his brother’s body.

The room keeps moving around us, but he sits in his bubble of silence, staring at his hands like they belong to someone else. His fingers curl, uncurl.

I should look away, give Blair the privacy of his grief. But I can’t stop watching the careful way he breathes, the rigid line of his shoulders under his jersey. He’s holding himself so still.

One year. Three hundred and sixty-five days of waking up without his brother. Of lacing up skates that Cody will never wear again. Of scoring goals that Cody will never see.

I know what it feels like to lose the center of your world.

If the universe were different, if I had the power to twist time and fate, I’d give Blair a clean slate and a world without wounds.

Blair’s thumb makes small, slow circles on his wrist tape. The motion is hypnotic, like his body needs something to do while his mind is somewhere else entirely.

My unbreakable Blair is shorn into fragments.

Blair’s eyes lift for a second, not to me but through me, through the wall, through everything, then they drop back to his hands. His thumb stops its circling and then starts again. The clock on the wall ticks toward game-time. Fifteen minutes until we need to be in the tunnel.

I won’t fail you today.

My vow burns away every last trace of my own anxieties—the thirty-day clock, the short leash, the pressure to prove I belong. None of it matters.

A minute tremor runs through Blair’s jaw. A muscle clenches, unclenches. It’s the only sign of the war being waged inside him, the superhuman effort to not be swallowed whole. He’s fighting. Even sitting perfectly still, he is fighting harder than anyone else in this room.

The room shifts into motion. Guys stand, stretch, knock gloves together. Blair finally reaches for his skates.

I’d rip this whole arena bolt from bolt if one single screw presented to him could ease his suffering. But the rage inside me is useless, a roaring fire with nowhere to burn. There is nothing I can offer him.

He draws a skate onto his lap and threads the lace through the first eyelet. He is putting himself together, buckling the armor on over the wound. One knot. Then the next. He is building the captain back from the ground up. His shoulders, which were bowed moments ago, straighten by millimeters.

He is coming back. For us. For the game.

It is the quietest, bravest thing I have ever seen.

I will be his shield. I will be his legs. I will anticipate every pass, block every shot, and clear his path so all he has to do is skate. I will pour every ounce of my energy into the space around him.

Tonight, I play for him.

Third period, tie game. My legs pump harder than they have all season. Every pass I make is crisper, every positioning choice sharper. I’m not thinking about myself, about my stats or my ice time. I’m thinking about Blair.

Sweat sears down the back of my neck. Forecheck, backcheck, pressure, always pressure.

The puck’s in the corner and I’m three strides deep in the chase, reading the angles. Their forward pinches, but I’m there first, and I see a lane open up between their tired D-men.

I cradle the puck in my blade, flick it to Hawks, and move hard to the point. His return pass comes in hot, and the impact rides up the shaft of my stick. We have five seconds tops until the D traps us. Four. I push.

Go now, go.

The timing is perfect. The puck is weightless. The ice is humming. My weight shifts to my back foot. My stick flexes, and I let it rip; it’s as simple as breathing.

I breathe, and shoot?—

And the puck soars into the back of the fucking net. The red light blazes as the horn blares. It’s my first goal as a Mutineer.

I’m at the boards before I realize it, arms in the air, dizzy with victory. Hollow slams into me, then Hawks, then Hayes.

“Fuck yeah!” Hayes yells. He grabs my helmet, shakes me like I’m a doll, and probably cracks half my brain cells in half. I let him. I’m smiling like I haven’t in years.

“Atta boy, Kicks! Fucking stick with it!” Hollow shouts.

The crowd is on its feet, the building shaking with noise.

And through all of it, through the pile of teammates and the roar of voices, I find Blair.

Our eyes meet across the ice. He tips his chin to me, his eyes a sharper blue than any ocean I’ve ever tried to sketch.

For a split-second, the world is only him and me, suspended in floodlights and adrenaline.

I let myself breathe it in, the knowledge that I did one thing right tonight for him; It’s the first deep breath after a long skate.

I carried a piece of his burden for one shift, one shot, one heartbeat.

Then Divot crashes into my back, whooping, and the spell breaks. Blair turns away, skating to center ice for the face-off. He taps his stick against the ice as he passes me.

Coach pounds my shoulder as I hop over the boards back to the bench. “That’s what I’m talking about, Kendrick!”

The locker room explodes when we get back after the final buzzer. A 3-2 win, my goal standing as the game-winner.

It’s been a long, long time since I breathed this giddy victory adrenaline.

The ruckus in the room drops out when Blair stands, holding a game puck in his hand. A thin sheen of sweat still glistens on his forehead.

“Hell of a game out there, from the first shift to the last.” Blair pauses, lets his gaze travel around the room. “That’s going to set our pace for the season.”

He holds up the puck from my goal. “Kicks,” he says. “This is your first as a Mutineer.”

The room erupts. Sticks rap against the floor. “First of many!” Hayes shouts.

Heat rises to my face. It’s tradition—your first goal puck, presented by the captain.

He crosses the room and holds out the puck.

When I take it, our fingers brush, and his eyes linger on mine.

I’m lost in his blue oceans; they look like the sun sinking into the horizon at the edge of the ocean.

I can’t breathe. Our hands remain clasped around the puck for one beat, two, three, longer than necessary.

This is for you , I think.

Then he releases my hand and steps back. “Well done, Kicks.”

“Thanks.”

I sink back onto the bench, turning the puck over in my hands, tracing its scratches and scuffs.

Black rubber, white tape where Blair wrote the date, the score, my name.

I’ve scored goals before—hundreds of them—but this one is different.

On a day when October means everything except hockey, he and I have given this game to each other.

My first goal as a Tampa Bay Mutineer. The puck is cold and solid in my hand. Every early-morning practice, every late-night training session, every moment I pushed my body past what I thought it could endure—it’s all compressed into this three-inch circle of vulcanized rubber.

I turn the puck over, and turn him over in me. Could I compress my love for Blair into a puck I can pass to him so he could catch it, cradle it, keep it near? Could I wrap a strip of tape around my love and scribble My first, My only, My you for him?

The puck’s edges bite into my palm as I grip it tighter. The celebration continues around me—towels snapping, music thumping, the chaos of a winning locker room.

This puck weighs nothing and everything. It’s three ounces of rubber that sailed past a goalie’s glove. Three ounces that brought Blair’s eyes to mine across twenty feet of ice. Three ounces that brought his hand to mine, his fingers against my fingers.

I haven’t touched him since…

Hayes drops onto the bench beside me. “Hell of a shot. Top shelf where mama hides the cookies.”

“Thanks.” The word comes out automatically while my mind stays fixed on Blair, on October.

He claps my shoulder and heads for the showers. I should be moving, too, should be showering, but I don’t want to yet. When I leave this moment behind, it becomes memory, and memories have proven unreliable in my life.

I close my hand around the puck. This is a small circle of proof that I could be what he needed. For one shift. For one shot. For tonight.