Page 70 of The Fall

“How do you know—” My question dissolves as his thumb finds another knot of pain. I sway forward, and his arm comes around me, steadying me while his fingers continue their careful work.

“I’ve been through this.” His voice is close to my ear. He works across the tight bands of muscle where my skull and neck meet, easing away the tension and the pain. “That help?”

I’m drifting. “Yeah,” I say dreamily. The pain that’s been my constant companion for weeks dissolves under his touch.

“You’ve been white-knuckling through this, haven’t you?”

I nod.

“So stubborn,” he says. “Let me show you some balance work, too.”

I could stay here forever, letting him take care of me like this, but he’s stepping back, his touch trailing away.

“Come on.” He takes my hand and leads me into the living room. The carpet is soft under my bare feet as he positions me in the center of the room. “You need to retrain your proprioception,” he says, all business now. “Your brain’s been compensating. We need to reteach it.”

His palm settles on the small of my back, warm through my shirt. “First, we establish your baseline. Start with your feet hip-width apart. Bare; you want the surface tension.”

I follow his instruction, swaying slightly as he positions himself behind me.

“Close your eyes,” he says, his voice near my ear. “Arms out to the sides. Now focus on your center. Feel the ground beneath your feet.”

He walks me through diaphragmatic breathing: inhale through my center line, exhale through my heels. I follow.

“Good. Now, notice where your weight has settled. Which foot are you leaning on?”

“Left.”

“We’re going to fix that.”

His palm slides from my shoulder down over my abs.

“Tighten here.”

I do, and my balance steadies instantly.

“Perfect,” he whispers. “I’m going to apply a little pressure. Your job is to stay centered.”

His hand leans on my right shoulder. I wobble but correct myself.

“That’s it,” he says. His pressure increases enough to test me, and my core fires. His other hand hovers near my waist. “Now the other side.” His hand shifts to my left shoulder. This time I’m ready, and I adjust without thought, finding equilibrium.

“You’re a quick study.” He brushes my shoulder blade as he moves behind me. “One more. This time, I’m going to push from behind. Don’t anticipate it. React.”

I wait, eyes closed, every nerve ending aware of him.

“There you go.” Both his hands rest on my shoulders, thumbs working into my muscles. “Feel the difference? Your body knows what to do when you stop overthinking it.”

We work through a series of postures, simple at first, then increasingly complex. He steadies me with a hand at my waist when I waver. “Pause when you need to.”

“I need to be steady.”

“So take your time becoming it.”

My body remembers this, the pressure of his hands on these same spots.

“Breathe through it.” His thumb moves over my hipbone. “Your body wants to compensate by leaning. Don’t let it.”

I focus on standing, existing in this space with him behind me. The carpet beneath my left foot. The way my right calf already burns from holding position. His breathing becomes my metronome.

“Hold here,” he says. “Five more seconds.”

When we finish, my head is clearer than it has been in weeks. My body is lighter, more aligned. The constant pressure behind my eyes has subsided.

“Better?” Blair asks.

“Much.” I open my eyes and turn to face him. “Thank you.”

We’re standing close again, the air between us charged. The ghost of every adjustment he made, every steadying touch of his hands, is messing with my head. My skin buzzes where he touched me.

I want to step back. I need to step forward. My body remembers his in ways my mind can’t reconcile, the muscle memory of us together versus the reality of our lives. This is the first time we’ve ever kissed. These are the first moments he’s touched me.

There’s sweat at my hairline, and he reaches up to brush it away with his thumb. “Hungry?”

My stomach answers for me with a growl. I let out a shaky laugh and step back to break the tension before it pulls me under. “I could eat.”

He pulls out his phone. “Thai okay?”

Blair Callahan is standing in my living room, ordering dinner for us like it’s the most natural thing in the world. I smile. “Thai’s perfect.”

When the food arrives, we eat cross-legged on the floor at my coffee table.

He tells me stories while we eat: about Hayes before he met Erin, about road trip disasters and practical jokes, about his first concussion.

“I got hit hard. Ducked wrong, took a shoulder directly to the ear.

“It took me months to stop living on a carousel. The balance work and stretching helped.”

He tells me about Calgary, about his first years in major junior. A wistful roundness sneaks into his consonants.

Then he tells me about Cody.

They billeted together, sharing a room like when they were kids.

They’d talk between their bunks late into the night, about everything that teenage boys talk about: girls, the meaning of life, hockey plays, fart jokes.

“He asked me if I had a thing for any of the guys on the team.” Blair huffs a quiet laugh. “That’s how he told me he knew.”

They practically lived at the rink. Some mornings, they’d open up the barn and turn on the lights.

He used to quiz Cody on his schoolwork while they worked on passes and backward crossovers and bank shots.

“He was a natural. Beautiful skater. He could feather a pass through five guys without blinking.”

“Why didn’t he get drafted?”

He swallows. “He got hurt. Fucked his knee. He was having his best season. Seventeen goals by Christmas break. Then some guy—” He stops himself, jaw working.

“Doesn’t matter. Knee bent the wrong way.

Career over in three seconds. No scouts were willing to take a gamble on a repaired ACL. He played in Europe for a while, but…”

But.

He lets out a breath. “I’d kill to have those mornings back.”

His face shifts as memory pulls at him. His chopsticks rest forgotten against the edge of his pad thai container. I reach across the coffee table and touch his wrist. He turns his hand over, lacing our fingers together.

After dinner, I perch on the counter beside the sink while Blair rolls up his sleeves and does the dishes. My heel hooks on the back of his knee.

“You don’t have to do this,” I say.

“I know. Want to.”

He wipes down the counters, and I study the flex of his shoulders, the way his shirt pulls across his back. When he’s finished, he dries his hands and steps between my knees.

We settle on the couch, listening to a Colorado versus Minnesota hockey game through the radio app on his phone.

The announcers’ voices fill my living room.

Blair stretches his legs out, ankles crossed on my coffee table, and I tuck myself against his side.

His arm comes around me like it’s always been there.

The game flows around us. We trade observations—a goalie playing too deep in his crease, the way Minnesota’s power play keeps collapsing.

Second period starts. The announcer’s voice rises and falls with the play. Blair’s heartbeat is steady under my cheek, and the last thing I register is his lips brushing my temple.

The next thing I know, the living room is quiet and Blair is trying to climb off the couch without moving me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“S’okay,” I mumble.

“I should head out.” He doesn’t sound happy about it. “Let you get some real sleep.”

My hands curl into his shirt before I’m fully awake enough to stop them. I don’t want to let go. “You don’t have to.”

He’s looking down at me, his face shadowed in the dim light from the kitchen. The game must have ended. His phone sits dark on the coffee table.

I push myself up, my hand still fisted in his shirt. We’re close like this, close enough to see the debate playing out behind his eyes. Stay or go. Push forward or pull back. The same questions that have been circling us all night.

His hand comes up to cover mine, holding it flat against his chest. His heartbeat quickens under my palm. “If I stay?—”

“I know.”

He catches my hand before I can pull away completely, and his voice drops to that ocean-deep register. “This isn’t about not wanting to.”

“I know,” I say again.

The couch cushions shift as he stands, and I follow him to the door. My bare feet are silent on the hardwood while his shoes scuff softly with each step. He pauses with his hand on the doorknob and turns back to face me. “Ice the base of your skull before bed. Twenty minutes.”

“Yes, Captain.”

A smile ghosts across his face. His forehead drops to mine, and we breathe the same air for three heartbeats, four, five. His hand glides into my hair, and he kneads the base of my skull for a long, lingering minute. My eyes float closed.

“Sleep well, Torey.” His words brush across my lips. He pulls back slowly, his fingertips trailing down my neck, across my shoulder, then gone.

I open my eyes as he goes, yearning to pull him back, to beg him to stay.

The click of the door shutting behind him echoes in my apartment. Blair’s scent lingers, coconut and lime, tempting me to chase after him.

Instead, I push off the door and head for the bathroom. I brush my teeth on autopilot, mind replaying every moment. Blair’s hands on me, strong and sure. His voice, low in my ear. His smile, just for me.

I shake two ibuprofen into my palm and down them with a glass of water before padding to the freezer for an ice pack. Captain’s orders.

I close my eyes and focus on the cold seeping into my muscles, numbing the lingering ache. Sleep rises to claim me, and I let it, drifting off to thoughts of ocean eyes and steadying hands, his lips on my temple, his voice in my ear.

In my dreams, he stays.

The rink is quiet when I arrive the next morning. I’m not here to skate, but I’ve got a slow appointment with the treadmill in the gym. Blair’s prescription: low-impact, low-heart-rate, followed by stretching.

I push through the locker room door and freeze.

Blair’s here.

He’s sitting on the bench in front of his stall, already in his base layers, rolling out his calves with a foam roller. His head lifts when the door swings shut behind me.

“Morning.” His voice carries that early-morning roughness, deeper than usual.

“Hey.” I move toward my stall. “Didn’t expect anyone else to be here yet.”

“Couldn’t sleep.” He shifts the roller to his other calf, and I catch the flex of muscle through his compression pants. “And you’re here this early.”

I bite back a smile as I set my bag down. I want to cross the room and kiss him again, to pick up where we left off last night. Instead, I busy myself with my gear.

The sound of his foam roller fills the quiet locker room. I wonder if he’s watching me the way I was watching him.

“Sleep okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say, meeting his gaze. “Really well, actually.”

“How’s your head?” he asks.

“Better. The ice helped.”

“Good.”

I strip off my shirt and reach for my workout gear. Behind me, Blair’s foam roller stops moving. The air shifts, thickens. I pull on my shirt and turn around. He is watching me.

He stands, leaving behind the foam roller. He crosses the space between us in three silent steps. “You sure you’re good?”

I nod. “Especially now.”

He grins at that, a real one, crooked and soft at the corners, and threads our fingers together.

“I made you something,” he says, his voice low, pulling back to reach for a shaker bottle from his stall. The smoothie inside is deep green, nearly black.

“What is it?”

“Spinach, kale, ginger, turmeric. It tastes better than it looks. Drink it before you work out.”

“Thank you.”

“And remember: easy on the treadmill. Keep your heart rate under 120.”

“Yes, Captain.”

I smile, and he tips his head in that barely-there way that means he’s fighting a smile, too.

We stand like that until footsteps echo down the hallway outside: voices rising, laughter spilling closer. Blair’s thumb glides over mine once before he lets go and steps back as the locker room door swings open.

Hayes barrels in first. “Early birds, huh?” He tosses his bag onto the bench. “Didn’t think I’d see you here before sunrise, Kicks.” He drops onto the bench beside Blair and starts unpacking his gear, sticks clattering against the wall.

The locker room fills—Hawks, Simmer, Nolan—shoulders brushing, banter ricocheting. Someone cranks the radio; classic rock spills out.

I let myself drift in the rhythm of it all as I roll my shoulders. Today is ordinary on the surface, but underneath it…

Everything glows. The fluorescent lights overhead seem warmer. Hayes’s terrible singing sounds like music. I dip my head to hide my smile because it won’t stay down.

This is happening. Blair and me. It’s not a question anymore, not a hope suspended in the space between us. Last night wasn’t a dream. This morning wasn’t a fluke.

It’s real.

And it’s only the beginning.