Page 73 of The Fall

I tap his door softly enough that only he could hear it.

My heart hammers. Five seconds pass. Ten. I start to back away, thinking maybe he’s asleep or in the shower, when I hear movement inside. Footsteps approach. A shadow passes through the peephole.

I hold my breath.

What am I doing? The team is literally down this hallway. Hollow’s room is around the corner.

The lock clicks; the sound freezes me in place.

My feet stay rooted to the carpet as the door begins to open. Everything I want is on the other side.

There he is; Blair leans against the doorframe wearing shorts and a faded Mutineers T-shirt. “Torey?”

“Hi,” I whisper. I have no plan here. “I missed you.”

He glances down the empty hallway, then back to me. The corner of his mouth tugs upward as he steps back and holds the door open.

The room smells like him, coconut and whatever lotion he uses on his shoulder, the one he ices after every game. His iPad is rolling through game tape from Montreal’s last three matchups.

“Always working.” I smile.

“I was.” He turns off his iPad and tosses it face-down on the desk. “But not anymore.”

We gravitate toward the bed, sitting side by side. The mattress dips beneath our weight.

“Did you see Hollow’s face when Coach bumped him to first PP?” I ask.

Blair’s laugh vibrates through his shoulder into mine. “I thought his eyes were gonna pop out of his head.”

“He deserved it. That backhand pass to you was filthy.”

“Almost as good as your between-the-legs move.” His knee nudges mine.

In the dim light of his room, his eyes are hues of midnight. He slides his fingers into mine and I hear his breathing change.

Our hands fit together perfectly, hockey-strengthened calluses meeting calluses. I run my thumb across his knuckles, mapping the ridges and valleys.

He turns toward me, his free hand coming up to brush hair from my face.

Our lips meet, and I’m home.

His palm cups my face. I breathe in coconut and game tape and Blair. The mattress shifts as we draw closer, my fingers curling into his T-shirt. He deepens the kiss and I melt into it, into him. My mind goes quiet; no plays to analyze, no pressure, no next game to worry about.

Time stretches soft and warm around us. His thumb strokes my cheek while my hands drift up his arms, mapping the muscles built from years of hockey. The bed creaks as he shifts closer.

“Sorry if this breaks the rules,” I whisper.

He shakes his head, his nose brushing mine. “I’m not. I missed you, too.”

“This is the best part of my day,” I breathe.

“Mine, too.”

When he kisses me again, it’s deeper. I don’t remember moving, but suddenly I’m lying on top of him. Blair’s hands have found their way under my t-shirt. We’re committed to taking this slow, but my body strains toward his like a compass finding north. Heat flares between us.

“Torey,” he moans.

I break the kiss, panting. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide. We’re both trying to regain control.

“We should—” I start.

“I know,” he cuts me off, but he doesn’t stop touching me.

I shift, and Blair inhales. I drop my head to his shoulder, breathing in his scent, trying to anchor myself.

“Tell me to stop,” he whispers.

I shake my head against his shoulder. “Can’t.”

His hands frame my face as he pulls me in for another kiss.

The kiss deepens, and I pour everything into it, all the months of wanting, of watching him across locker rooms and flights and team dinners, of days and nights thinking this could never, would never, happen.

My hands roam his shoulders, his biceps, needing to touch every part of him I’ve only been able to look at until now.

But we keep our promise, and eventually, our kisses grow lazier and less urgent. The fire between us banks to embers. My racing heart steadies as the brush of his fingertips along my spine turns gentle, soothing rather than stoking. My muscles unwind, tension draining away until I melt against him.

I trace the curve of his jaw with my nose, drinking in his closeness. The night wraps around us, hushed and tender. Time stretches out, sweet as honey.

“Stay,” he says.

I should say no; I should slip back to my room before the team wakes.

“Okay,” I say.

Blair’s swimming pool holds the afternoon in fragments, in shards of broken diamonds across the rippling surface. A pair of egrets stalk the opposite bank of the canal. The lanai is quiet, wrapped in a post-practice hush.

I love this time: damp towels over the backs of the chaises, cracked-open Gatorade on the table.

We’ve settled into this pattern quickly: practice and the pool, and a game if it’s on the schedule.

We are together more hours of the day than we are apart.

I’m only at my apartment to sleep, when we’re not on the road.

Practice ended two hours ago, but my muscles still hum. His thumb digs into the spot behind my ankle that’s always sore after a hard skate. I fight back a groan.

“This okay?”

“God, yes. Don’t stop.”

His chuckle is warm and deep. “Demanding.”

I crack one eye open to look at him. With the sun behind him, his profile is limned in gold.

“Good practice today,” Blair says, tilting his face toward the sun. “I like the new breakout we’re building. You’re kicking ass with it.”

“I have a good liney. Makes kicking ass easy.”

“High praise from a second-overall pick.”

I kick at his hand gently. “Shut up.”

He catches my foot, holding it captive. “Make me.”

Three weeks in, and he still makes me dizzy. I sit up and close the distance between us, pressing my lips to his. He tastes like chlorine and the orange Gatorade he’s been nursing. His hand comes up to cup my jaw. I deepen the kiss, savoring the soft sound he makes in the back of his throat.

When we break apart, his eyes stay closed for a beat longer than mine.

“Come here,” I whisper, sliding my hand down his arm until our hands tangle. I stand, tugging him up with me. The heat of the concrete burns through my bare feet as I walk backward toward the pool, never breaking our gaze.

Blair follows me to the edge. The smile spreading across his face makes my heart stutter. Without warning, he wraps an arm around my waist and jumps, taking us both under in a rush of bubbles and tangled limbs.

We sink together, his arm tight around me, our bodies flush.

The world goes muffled and blue. His eyes are open underwater, meeting mine, crinkled at the corners.

Bubbles escape from his nose, from the corners of his grin.

His hair floats around his face in dark tendrils.

His hand spans my lower back, steady and sure.

We break the surface together, gasping and laughing.

“Sneak attack,” I sputter, pushing wet hair from my eyes.

He pulls me closer, our chests touching. “You were taking too long.”

I wrap my legs around his waist, letting him keep us both afloat. His hands move to support my thighs.

“How’s the shoulder?” he asks, hand moving to trace the edge of an old bruise on my upper arm.

“Better. That stretch you showed me helped.” I rotate my shoulder to demonstrate. The injury from last week had been minor, but Blair’s been checking on it daily.

His fingers continue their gentle explorations of my deltoid. “Good. You’re still icing it?”

“Yes, Coach,” I tease.

He dips his head, touching his lips to the fading yellow-green mark. “I don’t want you hurting.”

Before Blair, my injuries were my problem, my burden, but now there’s him.

Water laps against us, the gentle rhythm of the pool marking time as we float together.

“Hayes invited us for dinner tomorrow. Erin’s making enchiladas.” His voice is soft against my skin, his breath cooling the water droplets on my shoulder. “He says Lily misses us. Apparently we’ve been wrapped up in each other.”

Hayes isn’t wrong. The past three weeks have been a blur of hockey, kisses, and nights spent talking until dawn.

“We should bring dessert.”

“Mmm. I could pick up those Key lime tarts she likes.”

“ I like those, too.”

“I know you do.” His mouth quirks up. “That’s why I get them.”

“Softie.” I drop a kiss to his nose.

“Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation to uphold.”

My laugh bubbles up between us, creating small ripples in the pool water. “Your secret’s safe with me.” I run my fingers through his wet hair, combing it back from his face.

The egrets take flight, startling us both. They soar over the canal, white against the deepening blue of the sky.

The afternoon slides toward evening, shadows lengthening across the patio. We drag ourselves out of the pool and onto the lounge chairs. Blair lies on his back, eyes closed, one arm thrown above his head, the other stretched toward me, fingers loosely linked with mine.

“You’re staring,” Blair says, his voice low, without opening his eyes.

“Hard not to.”

Water droplets cling to his skin, catching light as his chest rises and falls with each breath. The quiet between us is worn-in, as if we’ve been doing this for years instead of weeks.

He opens one eye, catches my gaze, and his mouth curves up at the corner. It transforms his face from handsome to devastating.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” he says.

“My dad used to stack my hockey gear by the front door the night before a game. I couldn’t fall asleep unless I heard the zipper on my gear bag. I knew he had everything taken care of. I could skate my little heart out while he took care of the details.”

I stare at the sky, remembering how Dad always double-checked my skate laces before games. Blair turns on his side to face me, his eyes intent on mine.

“Sometimes I miss that version of him. Before I started winning, before the scouts started coming.” I swallow, surprised by how much this hurts to talk about.

“When did it change?” Blair asks, voice low.

“Gradually. Then all at once.” I take a deep breath of chlorine-scented air. “Before I was ten. That’s when he started talking about my ‘career’ instead of my ‘games.’”

“You don’t talk much about your dad.”

“We’re… taking a break. We need to figure some things out.”

He nods. “I get that.”

If I don’t talk about my dad much, Blair talks about his never. “What about your family?”

He stiffens beside me, the steady rhythm of his breathing interrupted. The silence stretches between us for three, four, five seconds.

“Don’t have one,” he says finally, voice flat.

“Everyone has someone,” I say.

“Not me. Not anymore.”

I wait.

His jaw tightens and relaxes, tightens and relaxes. “They don’t want me. I don’t want them.”

“Your turn,” I say. Reset, change topic. “Tell me something that I don’t know.”

I’ve given him an out, and he takes it. The way his eyes soften tells me he knows what I’m doing and he appreciates it.

“I still trace this scar I have on my knee before every game. It’s from my first big fall when I was six. I got three stitches. I run my thumb over it for luck.”

“Let me see.” I’m clambering into his lap before he finishes.

Searching out his scar turns into me kissing his knee, and then nuzzling my way up his legs until I’m leaving hickeys on the soft and sensitive skin of his inner thigh.

I graze my teeth over another patch of skin, marking him where no one else will see. Mine.

His cock hardens against me, and I mouth him through the fabric.

My lips tease, tracing the outline of him.

His hips jerk beneath me. My hands grip his thighs, digging into his muscle and holding him steady while I keep up the torment, sucking lightly and knowing it’s driving him wild.

The groans spilling from him are desperate, and they build a blaze in me.

“Torey,” he gasps.

I look up at him through my lashes, taking in the flush spreading across his chest, the way his eyes have darkened to midnight.

He sinks his hand into my hair, breath catching as I leave his cock and trail a line of kisses up past his belly button, his abs, through the hair on his chest. He’s gasping when I get to his lips, and he wraps me up and holds me tight as I sink into his kiss.

We dissolve into each other, kissing instead of breathing, one of his legs wrapping tight around my hips to hold me in place.

We downshift slowly, slipping from heat to honey-slowness, and we end up on our sides, glued together from toes to noses, kissing slowly. I drink him in. His breath mingles with mine, warm and sweet. “This,” I whisper against his lips. “This is perfect.”

“I have something else to tell you,” he whispers.

My nose brushes his, telling him to keep going.

“I knew from your third practice that you’d get under my skin.” His voice is so soft; it’s a warm breath against my lips more than sound.

“I thought you were sizing me up.”

He laughs. “I was sizing you up, all right. Not in the way you thought.”

His hand settles at the nape of my neck, thumb stroking the sensitive skin behind my ear.

I have something real to tell him, too. “I’m scared I’ll lose everything again. Especially you. I’m afraid I’ll blink and you’ll be gone.”

“Never.” His eyes hold mine, steady and sure. I want to believe him. I want it so badly I can taste it.

He brings our joined hands to his lips. “I’m right here,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The sky shifts from blue to purple to indigo. Inside this bubble of Blair’s backyard, I float untethered from my worries. I don’t want to move. Don’t want to break this spell where everything makes sense and nothing hurts.

“Stay for dinner?” Blair asks, standing and pulling me up with him. “I’ve got steaks in the fridge.”

Inside, the AC hits my damp skin, raising goosebumps. Blair tosses me a fresh towel from the stack by the door. I dry off as he moves around the kitchen, pulling ingredients from the fridge.

The kitchen smells of garlic and butter, and Blair stands so close I catch the scent of his soap mixed with chlorine from the pool.

Blair nudges me out of the way to reach the stove, his hand lingering on my waist. “You’re blocking the burner,” he says, but makes no real effort to move me.

“Am I?” I ask, not moving an inch. His chest is warm against my back; I lean into him.

He drops his head, his breath tickling my ear. “You are,” he breathes, but his other arm comes around my waist. “But I don’t mind working around you.”

I rest my hands over his. The burner clicks as he turns the dial with his free hand, blue flame rising beneath the pan. Oil sizzles.

“Tell me what to do,” I say. I mean in the kitchen. I mean with the steak. I mean?—

Blair’s lips brush my temple. “You’re doing everything right.”

I turn in his arms, and he kisses me. His lips linger on mine, gentle, then deep. My eyes fall closed, memorizing the way he fits around me.

He drops another kiss to my lips, and when I open my eyes, his are waiting for me.

“I like having you here,” he whispers. “All the time.”

“Then I’ll be here,” I tell him, and I seal my promise with another kiss.