Page 68 of The Fall

Thirty-Four

I pace the length of my living room. Eight steps, turn, eight steps, turn. My walls don’t give me answers. My feet don’t carry me far enough from what happened.

Blair’s face flickers behind my eyes. The way he stared at my sketchbook, how he stilled on the page where I’d drawn him in a bed we’ve never shared. A drawing I never should have sketched, never should have kept, never should have let him see.

You don’t draw someone like that unless you’re drowning in them.

I pull my hood tighter over my head. My apartment stretches around me, too quiet, too empty.

Eight steps. Turn. Eight steps. Turn.

My fingers itch for a pencil, for the comfort of graphite on paper, but I can’t. Not now. God, I drew him smiling at me. I drew him in bed. I drew him in moments that existed only in my head. He saw everything. Every desperate stroke, every careful shadow, every truth I’ve been choking on.

Eight steps. Turn. Eight steps. Turn.

Of course he walked away.

That should be a sentence I can survive. Blair is my captain, my linemate, and that’s all. He asked for a solid hockey player to center his line, and I’m the broken-minded fool who can’t stop drawing his face or seeking his ghost in empty rooms.

What did I expect him to do? Laugh it off? Tell me he was flattered? Kiss me?

No. I knew exactly what would happen if he ever saw my drawings.

He knows the truth now. He saw my desperate, suffocating need laid bare across those pages.

He saw my obsession.

Now what? How do I face him? How do I look him in the eyes on the ice? Is it even possible to be a Mutineer without Blair’s trust?

Maybe he’s already told management. Maybe they’re drafting trade papers right now. Can’t have a player who draws his captain like that. Can’t have someone whose focus splits between the puck and the curve of Blair’s lips when he laughs.

Maybe I should leave, run before Blair has to deal with the awkwardness of me. The team is his family; I’m the intruder now.

I picture packing in the dark, throwing jerseys and sticks into a duffel, sliding sketches into the trash like that could fix anything. I could disappear, spare everyone the trouble. Spare him.

Eight steps. Turn.

God, I can’t unsee the look on his face. Can’t unhear the silence that followed as he stared at that final drawing, the most incriminating one of all.

I’m in love with him. Helplessly, hopelessly in love, and now he knows it in lurid black and white. He’s in my veins, under my skin.

My apartment feels smaller. The walls press closer. My breath comes shorter. Eight steps. Turn. Eight steps. Turn.

I squeeze my eyes shut, but that only makes everything worse. Behind my lids, I see every drawing I’ve ever made of him. The careful shading of his stubble. The exact angle of his smile. The way his hair falls across his forehead when he’s exhausted after practice.

Pathetic. I’m pathetic.

A fist hammers my front door. My panicked pacing turns into a stumble; I catch myself on the arm of the sofa.

My legs carry me forward; I cross the room in a few long strides and wrench the door inward.

It’s Blair. He’s here.

He stands in my doorway, wild-eyed and wind-burned. His ocean-blue eyes zero in on me.

Then he’s inside, his hands on my shoulders and his eyes scouring me like he’s checking for damage.

“I got the medical update,” he says, breath clipped.

“Doc said you collapsed? You were flagged for post-concussion watch. Torey, what the fuck—” His grip keeps readjusting, tight, then tighter, thumbs running over my biceps as if checking for heat or breakage.

“I’m fine,” I manage. “I’m?—”

He palms the side of my head like we’re still in a game, his thumb grazing my temple.

“They’re being careful,” I whisper.

He’s so close I count the flecks of darker blue in his irises. “Why are you here?”

His thumb stills. He swallows. “I got the text about your medical flag and I—” His hands slide up to the sides of my neck. “I came here for you.” He steps closer, eliminating what little space remained between us. His forehead touches mine, and I close my eyes.

His breath ghosts across my lips. The heat of him surrounds me, fills every empty space I’ve been carrying. My fingers dig harder into his forearms, holding him here, keeping him from vanishing like he did last night.

“But you left…”

“I had to.” His voice cracks on the admission. “If I’d stayed—” He pulls back, and his eyes are wrecked, pupils blown wide and dark. “Do you have any idea what those did to me? Seeing myself through your eyes like that?”

The air between us crackles. Every breath I take is his exhale. His eyes search mine, and a part of him breaks. I see it happen, the exact moment his control shatters.

“You are all I think about, Torey. You’re there when I’m taping my goddamned sticks. You’re in my fucking head when I’m running drills. All I think about—” His teeth clench, the words fighting their way out. “—is you.”

His admission rips through me. This can’t be real. Blair doesn’t break apart like this, doesn’t stand in my apartment confessing that I’ve invaded every corner of his mind. But he is. He’s here, and he’s falling apart, and he’s saying everything I never let myself hope for.

His hands tighten on my neck. “Do you know what it’s like? Watching you on the ice, knowing I can’t touch you the way I want to? Knowing that every time you look at me, I’m one second away from ruining everything we’ve built?”

Heat floods through me. My knees threaten to buckle. “You want to touch me?”

A sound tears from him. “Want? Christ, Torey. Want doesn’t even begin to cover it.” His forehead pushes harder against mine, and then he goes still. Completely, utterly still. Even his breathing stops. His eyes drop to my mouth, and he comes undone before me.

He groans and turns from me so fast that the air shifts with it, palms braced flat against the wall, head bowed between his arms. He’s breathing heavily through clenched teeth, shoulders taut.

“I swore—” He chokes on the word. “Fuck. I swore I wouldn’t do this.

I swore .” His voice splinters. He digs his forehead into the wall.

His voice is quaking. “I’ve tried to keep my distance.

I told myself it was better that way. For the team.

For you. For me. It would be so much easier to keep you out, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do. But I can’t .”

“Why?” My voice sounds braver than I feel.

He shoves off the wall and turns back to me. He’s a wreck. His eyes are too bright, his mouth a thin line of agony.

“Because you’re already inside of me.” The words tear from him. “You got past every defense I had before I even knew to guard against you.” His hands shake as he reaches for me again. “You saw me at my worst and you stayed.”

His touch burns through me, sets every nerve ending alight.

“Do you know what it did to me?” His other hand comes up to frame my face. “To see that you looked at me like—like I was worth capturing?”

This is Blair stripped bare, all his walls demolished.

“All I fucking think about—” his teeth grit around the words—”is you.” His voice cuts like it’s hurting him to admit it. “Every time I step on the ice with you, every time you smile or laugh, I am breaking. I’m so far gone for you.”

His hand curls around the back of my head, and he looks at me as if the world is about to end.

His mouth works around words he barely lets out.

“I haven’t felt like me since Cody died.

It’s easier—” His voice bites off. “It’s easier to stay angry, to shut it all down.

To slam the door. But with you—fuck, with you…

I remember the guy I used to be.” His voice is half-there.

“I hear him again when I’m quiet next to you.

And I miss being that guy so fucking much. ”

My fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt. His agony splits me into bright, aching particles. I can’t speak. Any word will shatter me. He tries to pull back again, but I grab him. I cradle his face in my palms, mold my thumbs to the arch of his cheekbones.

“But losing Cody fucking gutted me, and I don’t know how to do this anymore.”

His eyes squeeze shut, and he trembles under my hands.

“I don’t know how to let someone in when everything inside me is broken.

” His voice drops to almost nothing. “I don’t know how to want you this much and not destroy us both.

” He leans into my touch like he’s starving for it, like my hands are the only things keeping him upright.

“I look at you and I want things I haven’t wanted in so long. I want?—”

A shudder runs through him, violent enough that I feel it in my palms where they hold his face.

“What do you want?” The question barely escapes my lips.

His eyes open, and they’re drowning. The blue is so intense it’s painful, swimming with unshed tears and a look of terror mixed with desperate hope. His hands come up to cover mine where they hold his face.

“Everything,” he rasps. “I want everything with you. I want to wake up and not dread the day. I want to remember what it feels like to be whole. I want— I want to stop being so fucking scared all the time. Of losing. Of feeling. Of you.”

“Blair, I’m already?—”

Yours. I’m already yours. I’ve been yours since the first time you looked at me like I mattered. Your love unraveled my soul. My heart is a monument to your name. I’ve dreamed of your touch every night for months.

That agony in his voice is the same one that lives in my marrow.

The words lodge in me, too big, too true. My thumbs brush over his skin, and he leans into the touch, desperate and starving. His hold tightens around my wrists.

“You’re not scared of me,” I whisper. “You’re scared of what happens if you let yourself have this.”

“Same fucking thing, isn’t it?” His eyes search mine, wild and lost. “Because having you means I could lose you. And I—” His voice cracks completely. “I can’t do that again. I can’t survive it.”