Page 51 of The Fall

This time when I move, something clicks. The puck obeys, sliding exactly where I want it.

“One more thing.” He reaches out, adjusts the angle of my elbow with two fingers. “Keep that tucked when you release.”

I nod, not trusting what might come out if I open my mouth.

“Run it again,” he says, skating backward to give me room. He claps his stick against the ice, and when I fire off my next shot, it soars into the net’s top corner.

“There you go.” He doesn’t smile, but something is there when our eyes lock. “Again.”

The plane vibrates beneath us, white noise humming through the cabin as we follow the coast north to New York. Most of the guys are asleep or zoned out with their headphones.

Blair sits across the aisle, his face lit up by his tablet. He’s watching game footage, rewinding the same sequence over and over, and I pretend to watch the landscape out my window, but I’m not. I’m watching him.

There’s a steadiness in him again. He’s talking more during drills.

Cracking a dry joke when Hayes blows a rush.

Leaning in at team meetings and in the locker room.

I watch him— really watch him—and it’s like seeing sunlight finally cut through after months of gray.

His finger swipes across the tablet screen, pausing on a defensive breakdown. The captain is emerging from the ruins.

I shift in my seat; it draws his attention. Our eyes meet across the aisle.

He knows I’ve been watching; I know he knows. He holds my stare, and the space separating our seats seems to shrink. A beat passes. Then another. He’s not going to look away. Neither am I.

“Their neutral zone trap is garbage,” he says, turning the tablet toward me. “Look at this gap.”

The old Blair would have kept it to himself, worked through it alone.

“Massive,” I agree, even though the angle of his tablet makes it hard to see.

His mouth curves, not quite a smile but close. “Come here,” he says, voice low enough that only I hear it over the engine drone.

I unbuckle and cross the narrow aisle. He shifts toward the window, making room, and I drop into the seat beside him. Our thighs touch through our team sweats, and the contact sends heat racing up my leg.

“Watch this.” He angles the tablet between us. On screen, New York runs their power play from two nights ago. “See how their weak-side defenseman cheats?”

I lean in for a better view. His breath stirs the hair at my temple.

“Every time,” I say. “He’s telegraphing the cross-ice pass.”

“Exactly.” His finger traces the defenseman’s path on the screen, and I follow the movement, mesmerized by his hands. “If we bait him into committing early...”

“We could reverse it back door.”

“Here,” I tap the screen, my finger hovering where the defense collapses.

“Good eye,” he says.

I’m hyperaware of how close we are, but I force my attention to stay on the tablet. Hockey. Focus on hockey.

Blair nods, and I rise and cross back to my own seat. I sink into the cool leather and fumble with my seatbelt.

My mind is stuck in that shared space, replaying the low timbre of his voice at my temple, the way his finger moved across the screen. Good eye. Two words. It’s nothing. It’s a captain giving feedback to a teammate. It’s what he does.

I risk a glance across the aisle. His head is bent again, his focus complete on the game footage. He’s moved on, already dissecting the next play. The interaction is over for him.

But it’s not over for me.

I turn away, facing the window. My own reflection is faint against the clouds, a ghost staring back at me. And behind that ghost, superimposed over the darkening world, is the faint, reflected glow of Blair. He is a constant, steady light in my periphery.

His reflected form shifts; my own is barely there. He is solid. Even as a mirage on the glass, he’s more real than I am.

“Kicks, over here.”

Blair stands at center ice, stick planted, shoulders squared. He lifts his stick and taps it once on the ice, a summons and a challenge.

I skate toward him and square up in a spray of ice.

“You need to fix your backhand.” His gaze flickers over me as if he’s already decided how to fix me and is pulling the levers.

“Your weight is off,” he says, skating a slow circle around me.

“You’re favoring your right side too much when you transition.

” He stops his slow circle directly in front of me.

He’s right, of course. The imbalance he’s talking about is right there.

He pushes backward, never breaking eye contact. Follow me.

I fall right into his rhythm. I adjust my stick, drop my shoulders, and chase his turns. I’m his shadow, except I don’t know where his light starts and ends anymore. Blair has a way of pulling and pushing you at the same time.

“Stop.” He skates close. “You’re rushing it. Control first, then power.”

He’s right there, a wall of certainty inches away. His attention feels like his hands moving over me.

And then it is. His gloved hand settles on the small of my back. The rink, the lights, the cold; it all dissolves, along with all sound. The hum of the arena lights and the faint whir of ventilation vanishes.

“Don’t lock your hips. The power comes from your core, not your arms.”

I force an exhale. The scent of coconut and salt reaches me. It’s too much; it’s not enough. I fight to stay loose, to do what he says, but my mind is a scramble of crossed wires.

“This,” he says, pushing a little harder, “is where you start the rotation. Feel it?”

I give the smallest of nods.

“Good.” The seconds stretch?—

Then he pulls back. The cold rushes into the space he leaves behind.

He skates backward a few feet, his blue eyes holding mine. “Again.”

Hollow chirps me the next day in the locker room. “You take that shot again, and I will personally make sure it ends up in the next blooper-reel. Bar down? Bro, that puck went bar neighborhood . Like, it left the state.”

I roll my eyes and keep unlacing my skates. My arms burn from this morning’s shooting drills, but the chirping stings more than my muscles. My shot was ugly, yes. The puck sailed so high it probably scraped paint off the ceiling. I’ve been doing better, but?—

Then Blair’s voice cuts in. “Hollow, you shoot about as accurately as you pass. If Kicks’s shot left the state, yours is still looking for a GPS signal.”

The room erupts. Sticks thump against stalls, jeers rise, and tape balls fly at Hollow. Hollow throws his head back like he’s been mortally wounded. “That’s slander, Captain!”

Blair strips off his practice jersey, the fabric pulling up to reveal a flash of tanned skin and the cut of his hip bone. “Truth hurts,” he says, tossing his jersey into the laundry bin.

Hollow clutches his chest. “After everything we’ve been through.”

“Everything being you missing open nets?” Blair’s pulling off his shoulder pads now.

The guys are eating this up. I duck my head, focusing harder on my laces. Hayes bumps into my shoulder. “You and me, protein and grease?” It’s his way of asking if I want to go get lunch after this.

“Yeah.”

The guys are still going at Hollow, who’s now defending his shooting percentage with fake statistics he’s inventing on the spot.

Blair’s at his stall, methodical as always.

Shoulder pads off, hung in their spot. Under Armour peeled away.

I track him without looking directly at him, a skill I’ve perfected over months of practice.

The way he rolls his shoulder, testing for soreness.

How his fingers work through the tape on his wrists, unwinding it in perfect spirals.

“I’ll come,” Blair says. “If that’s cool.”

“Totally cool,” I say. Too fast, too fast. “I mean, yeah, sure. Of course.”

My face burns. I yank my second skate off and shove it in my bag, the blade catching on the zipper, everything about me screaming not cool, definitely not cool .

Hayes saves me. “More the merrier. You’re buying, though, Captain. I fed you last week.”

I risk a glance up. Blair’s watching me. I drop my gaze, fumbling.

Around us, the locker room carries on. Hollow’s moved on to defending his plus-minus. Someone’s speaker pumps out bass-heavy hip-hop. Normal sounds. Normal moments. This shouldn’t feel like standing on the edge of a cliff.

“Twenty minutes?” Hayes asks, already heading for the showers. “I need to rinse the stink off.”

“Works for me.” Blair’s pulling off his compression shorts now, moving toward the showers too.

I wait until they’re back before I shower. The hot water helps, drowning out the noise in my head. I let it beat against my shoulders until my skin turns pink, until I can breathe without feeling like my ribs might crack.

By the time I’m dressed—jeans, team hoodie, backwards cap—I’ve nearly convinced myself I’m fine.

Blair’s waiting against the wall near my stall, checking his phone. His hair is damp and pushed back from his face, and he’s dressed in dark jeans and a plain gray t-shirt that fits him perfectly.

“Where’s Hayes?” I ask.

“Probably fixing his hair for the fourth time.”

A half-choked laugh escapes me. Blair looks up from his phone and that casual crack about Hayes evaporates between us. His gaze holds mine, and the air grows heavy. His undivided attention is hotter than the water from the showers.

Get it together. I try to act normal, like my heart isn’t rabbiting, like this is any other post-practice lunch.

“I’m here!” Hayes bustles between us with his gym bag slung over his shoulder, and the tension snaps. I breathe again.

“We were about to leave without you,” Blair says, pocketing his phone.

“You’d miss my sparkling conversation.” Hayes grins, slapping me on the shoulder as he passes. “Ready to roll?”