Page 7 of The Fall

“Tell me about it.” Hayes collapses onto the bench next to me.

“Coach is really putting us through the wringer this week. Wish I had a maintenance day today. Excuse to be lazy.” He shoots me a wink, still playful, but a little of his good cheer and playfulness fades the longer I stay quiet. “You wanna cancel tonight?”

“Tonight?”

“Dinner? You and Calle and the fam?” He looks concerned. “Lily’s been going crazy without you, but if you’re not feeling it...”

The air turns brittle. Lily?

“Yeah, of course.” My jaw twitches. Keeping this charade going is like trying to hold back a tidal wave with my bare hands, but I don’t have any other option.

Dive in headfirst or lose it all, and I can’t, won’t , lose this.

“Sorry, I had a long night. After the hit…” I trail off, hoping that he understands when I don’t even understand.

Hayes scoots closer to me. His voice drops lower, lost to everyone else in the room.

“Yeah, Calle told me. Sorry, man. Concussions suck so much.” He gestures vaguely toward his own head.

“I was out for two weeks with my last one. Couldn’t do anything.

I sat around until I thought my eyes were going to fall out of my head. ”

Concussions—recurring.

His eyes linger on mine the longer I’m silent, and he worries his lower lip between his teeth. “You sure you’re okay? Calle’s worried sick, man.”

I look back at the broken stick, tracing the jagged edges with my eyes, searching for the memory that belongs. Something—there’s something there—but I can’t find it. Instead, I drop my eyes to the carpet, to a pile of ice shavings melting off Hayes’s skate blades.

Hayes doesn’t say anything. He sniffs, scrubs one hand across his jaw. “Look, if you need anything, I’m here for you, yeah? I’m more than Calle’s wingman.” His hand lands on my shoulder and squeezes.

I wish I remembered his friendship because I think I would love to turn to him and pour everything out.

All of my fears, all of my terrors, the unknowns and the questions and the missing pieces.

I’m lost in this dark, and I wish so much that there was someone I could reach out to, someone I wouldn’t break in half if I admitted the truth.

Someone whose heart wouldn’t shatter if I said, “I don’t remember you at all. ”

But all I’ve got is this. The darkness, my fear, and my sense that something is wrong, that something is very, very wrong.

And now, this broken stick, a splinter in my subconscious. The tape on the blade is frayed, game-worn, smudged with rubber. Game-used. Which game? When?

Remember .

Names, dates, faces. They swirl around me, disconnected images.

The feel of ice beneath my skates, the satisfying thunk of a well-placed shot, the roar of the crowd after I—amazingly—score a goal.

I remember the sting of a blocked shot. Skating so fast it feels like the wind is on my face.

The bone-jarring impact of a check into the boards.

But details, specifics, real memories—they all remain frustratingly out of reach.

“Kicks?”

“I’m good.” I shake myself and turn back to Hayes in time to see Blair finally entering the room.

He fist-bumps our teammates as he passes and barks out a laugh to something Fischer says.

At his locker, he strips out of his shorts and his practice jersey and pads, leaving everything in a sweat-soaked heap at his stall.

Then he searches the room, eyes laser-bright, until he finds me.

The edge he’s holding on to, the tension in his jaw and temples, releases.

I smile, and he smiles back.

Hayes squeezes my shoulder again and turns to his skates. I catch him smothering a grin as he works his laces. He saw that. He saw that, and I think he knows about Blair and me. And… that’s good.

Blair’s gaze is relentless, holding me captive as he crosses the room. He doesn’t have time or space for anyone else anymore. He’s focused on me.

“Come on, Kicks,” Hayes says, his tone teasing when Blair reaches us. “Let’s get you moving. Old man Calle here’s got to stretch those hammies.”

Blair rolls his eyes. Hayes beams up at him. Blair shakes his head and turns to me like he’s saying see this shit I put up with? Like I’m in on the joke and this is what we do.

The best friends a guy could wish for. #BFF

Remember.

Blair leads me down a narrow hallway, shoulder to shoulder, until he pushes open a door that leads to a dark and unused training room.

A solid click seals us in, alone, in a bubble of shadow and stillness. I try to map the space around me in the dim light of the overheads, turned down soft and low.

The room is small. In the center, a thick mat cushions the floor. There are kettlebells and a set of weights in one corner. The lights pool on the center mat but shadow the rest of the room.

Blair is already on the mat. He’s graceful as he drops to his knees. He stretches, his arms over his head, and then folds forward. His spine releases with a series of pops as he breathes deeply. “Come on, babe. Let’s do this. You’ll feel better.”

I follow him, folding down to my knees. I’m going to embarrass myself, surely, because I have never stretched the way Blair is.

This is yoga and Pilates and rehab work all in one, and the most I’ve ever done is the basic kind of “don’t rip your legs off” stretches they teach you in juniors, when you’re still young and elastic and don’t need to haunt the trainer’s room.

Blair seems to expect me to get right to it, to seamlessly follow his form, and is this how everything is going to go up in smoke?

But like during practice, like with Dr. Lin, something inside me takes over. Instinct, subconscious, or my memories fighting to be free? It’s something instinctual; I slide smoothly into the first stretch, matching Blair’s movements.

I straighten my spine. My muscles ache, echoes of lingering hits and bruises all over my body that I don’t remember taking. Shoulders, hips, a burn in my quad. I’ve skated my ass off, clearly. I’m playing a more physical game these days.

I let out a slow exhale as we stretch together. My fingers brush the mat, but my forehead stays inches above it.

Blair shifts, coming out of his pose and kneeling beside me. My mind rabbits. What should I do? Do I follow? Am I supposed to?—

And at the same time, instinct pulls me, dropping me forward. I exhale as Blair smooths his hand down the center of my back, all the way to my hips.

He guides me into the next pose. I push back, my hands flat, my body a perfect, straight line. I inhale, fill my lungs, and slowly exhale through my nose. My body knows this even when my brain does not.

My muscles still scream in protest, but they are malleable, willing to fold and bend and stretch as Blair guides me through each movement.

He moves closer. I close my eyes, dizziness washing over me as he presses gently on my bruised hip.

“Hurt?” His voice vibrates through me.

“No.” The word escapes before I can stop it. I open my eyes, meet his gaze. He’s watching me.

Blair adjusts the angle of my pelvis. My breath catches, and I push back against his touch. This is… He’s touched me like this before. Clearly, in this context, but?—

His hands have been on my hips like this in the darkness, with nothing at all between us.

“Good,” Blair murmurs. “Just like that.”

Inhale. Exhale. Twist. I feel the stretch through my obliques. I hold the pose, close my eyes. My breathing is deep and even, and I lean in without conscious thought.

Blair’s lips brush my temple, sweet and brief.

Everything hitches—my breath, my heart, my pose. My exhale stutters. I snap my eyes open, find his.

Blair’s gaze is steady. He trails his hand down my arm, brushing his thumb over my knuckles and sliding his fingers between my own. He tangles our hands together, cradling my fingers in his.

Shadows paint his jaw, his cheekbones, his lips.

God, his lips. I don’t remember , but there are things that are instinct, known all the way down in my bones.

He hums when he’s happy. He can make me come undone with his slightest hold.

His touch is sweet and soft in places no man has ever been on me.

This body I inhabit but don’t recognize responds like it was made for him.

He’s so close. A burn starts on my lips, as if from a ghost’s kiss.

Blair slips his fingers from mine. I squeeze my eyes shut.

“Breathe.” His voice is a whisper, close to my ear. “Tell me if you need to stop.”

He digs two fingers into the taut tendons at the base of my skull. “You’re doing great. Keep grounding yourself until you feel the release.”

I am grounded.

Except for the way my heart stumbles when his eyes meet mine.

Except for the way his touch melts me.

Except for the truth.

“Torey...” he breathes.

The sound of my name undoes something inside me. There’s a question buried in it, a plea or a promise, all things I can’t decode because the key to understanding Blair lives somewhere in the locked rooms of my mind. How many times has he said my name like this?

“I’m okay,” I tell him.

What else can I say? What would the Torey he knows—the one who remembers their first kiss, their first fight, the first time they decided this was worth the risk—say right now?

His touch is so gentle.

The way my body responds to him, the way my heart recognizes what my mind cannot; this is dangerous. My thoughts slip and tangle, wanting, fearing, needing all at once. Would I have always felt this, or is it only because everything else has been stripped away?

Right now, this second, I want Blair to kiss me. I want to fill my lungs with his breath and to stay in this room with him until eternity whisks us away.

I want . I crave . How can I want something I can’t remember ever having?

I’ve never kissed a man before. I don’t know what lies beyond that. I don’t know what lies within me.

Blair cups my cheek, stroking his thumb along my jawline. “We’re going to get through this.”

And then I can’t look anymore, because, oh God.

If only he knew, and I could collapse in his arms and tell him the truth, but I can’t. If I did, it would break his heart, rip apart all of his love and this tender silence and the warm, cocooning darkness, and all these torn-up, shredded parts of me that yearn for me to hold on and remember .

I’m caught between two versions of myself: the Torey who belongs here with Blair and the Torey who’s lost in the cracked mirror of his own mind, grasping at fragments of a life he no longer recognizes. I can’t tell which one is really me.

Blair’s eyes seek out mine. His lips part, and then there’s a whisper, a brush of his lips against mine. He pulls away, shifts back, but our hands are still linked, our eyes locked. We’re so close, nearly body-to-body. His chest rises and falls against me.

My body burns, a blaze I know could absolutely consume me.

And I would let it.