Page 53 of The Fall

Twenty-Eight

Hype music bleeds out of Hollow’s phone. Velcro rips. Burps echo. It’s another morning at the rink. I get dressed on autopilot: right shin pad, left shin pad, right skate, left skate. Sixteen crossovers of the laces on each.

I’m halfway through my pads when Coach enters the room. “Changes to the lines today. Kicks, you’re moving up, slotting between Calle and Hawks on the top line.”

What the fuck? I risk a glance at Blair. He’s got his stick across his knees, methodically wrapping tape around the blade. Coach moves on to the second line pairings, the third, and a D-corps shuffle, but I don’t register a word of it.

Blair finally looks at me as he stands and pulls his jersey over his shoulders. His number stretches across his back, the fabric settling into the contours of his body, achingly-familiar territory I no longer have the right to know. He catches my eye and then heads out of the room.

I know that look.

I breathe in through my nose and give him a nod.

A few minutes later, I follow after him to an unused trainer’s room where he’s waiting for me.

We both step inside. The lights flicker on, and Blair tips his head toward two treatment tables facing each other. “Sit.”

I do.

“Ever done visualization work before?”

“A few times,” I say. “Mostly in juniors.”

“I started doing it last year,” he says. “It…” He drags in a breath. “Helped me get back on the ice.”

There’s more in that sentence than the words themselves. Blair never talks about last season. I shouldn’t say anything, but the way his mouth tightens and how his fingers press into the seams of his jersey shreds the air between us.

“After your brother?—”

Blair’s gaze snaps to mine.

Fuck.

“How do you know about that?”

Good question. How do I know anything? “I read about it.” It’s the truth, technically, or a careful slice of it. “I know you took some time after—” I pause. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Blair’s knuckles go white where they grip the edge of the table. The tendons in his neck stand out like cables under strain.

“You read about it.” His voice comes out flat, the same dangerous quiet he uses when refs make bad calls.

“Online,” I add, because apparently I hate myself. “There was an article about?—”

“Don’t.” Blair’s jaw works, a muscle jumping beneath the skin.

I hear the distant echo of practice drills starting up, sticks slapping ice, Coach’s whistle sharp through the walls. We should be out there. We should be running plays, learning each other’s rhythms, maybe again, maybe for the first time.

Blair’s shoulders rise and fall. When he speaks, his voice has lost that dangerous edge, and grief floods the room. “Yeah. After my brother died.”

I nod. There is nothing I can say that won’t wreck the balance we’re holding onto.

Blair pulls himself back together. His spine straightens, then his shoulders square, and finally his face smooths into neutral. The transformation takes maybe three seconds, but I track every micro-movement like I’m memorizing a play.

His fingers uncurl from the table’s edge one by one. The blood returns to his knuckles in slow patches of pink. “So, visualization. I think it’ll help us prepare for being on a line together tonight.”

He hops up on the table facing mine, his palms between his knees, his forearms tense. “We should get used to thinking together.” His eyes lift. “You and me. Let’s walk it through.”

I breathe in through my nose. I give him a nod, smaller than before.

“Close your eyes.”

I do; I’d follow him into a volcano if he whispered to me like that.

“Breathe in.”

I draw air.

“Now, picture the game…”

The room dissolves, and the blackness behind my eyelids becomes the rink, the ice.

Home game. Cold leaking in through fiberglass and steel. Blair flanking on my left, Hollow flying to my right, Hayes tailing behind. We’re in motion.

Blair calls it, his voice feather-soft. The ice to him is different, cleaner, a grid invisible to most, and I rearrange my instincts to match his. “Face-off,” he says. “Neutral zone. You win it clean and drop to me. I cycle back?—”

“And I stretch wide,” I say. “Right-wing breakout. I call for it.”

A hitch in his breath, a tiny puff that is almost a smile. “You cut hard past the defenseman,” he says, “but he plays high, so I switch lanes and shoulder past.”

“You draw the D. I crash the back post.”

“Your stick’s down.” He inhales. “I feed it through to you?—”

“Score.”

The imaginary goal feels real. I can see the red light flashing, Blair’s arms raised, hear the roar building. When I open my eyes, he’s watching me. We sit in the after of it together.

“Cody fucking hated this crap.” He digs his thumb into the center of his palm, bruising half-circles that rotate over and over and over again. “He thought visualization was bullshit. Said real players didn’t need to pretend.”

The past tense hangs between us. Was. Thought. Said.

Blair’s gaze drifts to the wall behind me, to some middle distance where memories live.

“He was such a little shit,” he says. “I got in more fights that year than any other season, before or since.” He drags in a rough breath, fills his lungs like he’s stealing the oxygen from the room. “I wouldn’t trade it, though. I got that year with him, even if it was in Calgary.”

Calgary. “Wait,” I say.

His eyes rise to meet mine.

“Calgary?”

“Yeah. We played together for a year on the Wranglers. I stayed down an extra year so we could be on the same team.”

The words hit me wrong, sideways and sharp. Calgary. The Wranglers. My stomach drops through the floor.

“You okay?” Blair’s studying me now, his head cocked slightly. “You look?—”

“Yeah.” The word comes out strangled. I clear my throat, try again. “Yeah, I’m good.” Yes. No. Fuck.

But I’m not. I’m thinking about his voice in my ear, the ghost of his touch on my skin, an approach over a city through cloudy skies.

Blair studies me, head tilted like he’s caught at the edge of a read, and I force my grip to loosen, force my breathing to steady. My hands are white-knuckling the edge of the table, the pleather top squeaking beneath my cold-sweat palms.

Calgary. The name burns through my chest, spreading outward until every nerve ending screams. My mind races backward, searching for dates, timelines, anything that might tell me if?—

Blair’s still watching me; I’ve been silent too long. I blink, swallow hard. “Sorry. Thinking about the play.”

For a second, I think he’s going to call me on it. His gaze sharpens, searching my face, before he hops off the table. He lets it go.

“We should head back.” He pulls the door open, and the sounds of practice flood in—pucks hitting boards, skates cutting up ice, Coach’s voice. He looks back at me as I slide off the table. “We’re going to blow it up tonight, Kicks. You and me.”

I spend warm-ups chasing my ass. My stick wobbles through puck-handling drills, telegraphing my every move. Each shot I take ricochets wide or dies in the goalie’s chest protector. Other guys flow through their routines, but I’m stuttering. I have no zip, no snap.

The arena fills up around us. Bodies bang on the glass, phones flash, music thumps through the speakers. None of it helps me find my rhythm. When we circle up for our final stretches, Blair catches my eye. His gaze stays steady on mine for three heartbeats, and then he looks away.

Back in the room, I retape my stick. The wrap job’s still garbage, but time’s up. We line up for the walk to the bench; my legs are like concrete.

Before the anthem, Coach leans in on the bench and whispers to me, “So you know, this wasn’t my call. It was his.” He jerks his chin to Blair, where he’s shifting from skate to skate and staring up into the dark rafters. A muscle in his neck fires, fast as a rubber band.

Coach’s mouth quirks. “So don’t fuck it up.”

I fuck up immediately. On my first shift, the puck bounces off my stick like it wants nothing to do with me.

I chip the pass behind Hollow’s heels; it caroms wide. We cycle once, twice, fall out of sync, and the backcheck comes fast. The turnover happens before I register it, only the heels of the defenseman vanishing down the boards, already out of my reach.

When Coach calls for a line change, I return to the bench with nothing accomplished.

“Breathe,” Blair says as we sit.

I pull air into my lungs, hold it, let it out slowly. The bench is hard beneath me, my gear heavy and hot.

“Watch their left D,” he says, eyes tracking the play.

The crowd roars around us. Our third line grinds it out in the corner, bodies crashing into boards. Hayes drops beside me, gasping after his change. “Fuck, they’re fast tonight.”

“They’re sloppy,” Blair corrects. “Fast and sloppy.”

Coach barks something at Divot, and the puck squirts free; then we’re back over the boards.

My skates hit ice and everything shifts. Blair glides beside me, and his breathing syncs with mine—in, out, in. The ice makes sense again.

I beat their winger to the puck, not by much but enough. Blair cuts left without looking back; he knows I’ll find him. Their left D—the one Blair spotted—overcommits. He bites hard on Blair’s fake.

Their center tries to close the gap, but I slip the puck through his feet, a move I’ve made a thousand times in practice but couldn’t find in the first period.

Hayes appears on my right, calling for it, but I hold.

Wait. Blair’s still moving, still pulling defenders with him like he’s got them on strings.

Now.

I fire it cross-ice to Hayes; he one-times it back to me. The goalie’s sliding post-to-post, trying to track our movement, but we’re ahead of him now.

Blair appears at my side. We’re two stars locked in shared orbit.

I know where he’ll be before he moves, and the puck leaps from my stick to his like it’s an extension of us both.

Time snaps back like a rubber band about to break.

It’s the moment of truth, the moment I answer the question echoing in my head: Who the hell am I?