Page 90 of The Fall

Forty-Three

Hayes snags the back of my practice jersey as we file out of the room, tugging me aside while the rest of the team heads for the ice. “Need a minute.” His voice drops low, eyes serious in a way I rarely see from him.

The rest of the team filters down the tunnel. Hayes waits until the last skate blade scrapes away before he speaks. “You know we’ve got Washington tomorrow night.”

“Yeah. Big division game.”

“I got a text from a buddy in DC. Zolotarev’s in Washington’s lineup for tomorrow. Bertrand’s out with a separated shoulder.”

Zolotarev.

Last year’s hit comes back in fragments: the crack of my helmet, ice rushing up, the sudden impact, the world tilting, darkness rushing in?—

And then I woke up in Blair’s bed, inside a life where every broken piece of me had been carefully glued together. I woke inside a love that filled every seam I had.

Zolotarev took that from me. He didn’t just put me through the boards. His hit showed me everything I wanted and then ripped it away when I opened my eyes in that Vancouver hospital room.

The doctor kept asking if I knew where I was, what year it was, who was president. I knew all the answers; I didn’t want them to be true.

Cold bleeds through my gear, bringing back the smell of scraped ice, the rubber stink of the bench, the tin taste in my mouth right before everything went dark. My vision narrows to a pinhole. Hayes’s face floats somewhere far away, but all I hear is the roar of my own blood.

The tunnel comes back into focus slowly: scuffed rubber flooring, equipment against the wall, the echo of pucks hitting boards from the ice. Part of me is still on that Vancouver ice, struggling to breathe. Part of me is in that hospital bed, trying to comprehend a future without Blair in it.

Hayes waits.

“Okay,” I finally say.

“Not okay,” Hayes says. “You need to know what you’re walking into.”

“What do you mean?”

“Zolo was a cancer in the room when Blair took that leave after Cody died. He told management Blair was done, that he’d never come back the same player.

He said he was abandoning the team, and that if Blair couldn’t handle being captain, he should give up the C.

” Hayes’s jaw works, chewing over words he doesn’t want to say.

“He campaigned for it, Kicks. While Blair was grieving his brother.”

Zolotarev broke the room while Blair was breaking, a wolf sniffing at a wound, eager for the taste of blood.

He saw Blair on his knees and tried to move in, to take when he was at his lowest. He doesn’t just play dirty on the ice; he hunts for weakness everywhere.

He takes his runs where he thinks nobody’s watching: my blind side in Vancouver, Blair’s heart after Cody died.

“They barely survived the rest of the season without killing each other. Management moved Zolo that summer and nobody shed tears.”

“Does Blair know he’s playing?”

“Not yet. Coach is telling him.” Hayes glances down the corridor, making sure we’re still alone. “Zolo’s a piece of shit, Kicks, but he’s got a special hatred for Blair. And Zolo brings out a side of Blair that’s… dangerous.”

Cold sweat prickles between my shoulder blades. “How bad was it between them?”

“Bad enough that I was afraid Blair would kill him if Zolo pushed hard enough.”

I can taste tomorrow already, and I swallow down the taste of adrenaline. “So tomorrow night, Zolo is going to try to start things.”

Hayes nods. “He’s going to crawl under Blair’s skin through you.

That hit he laid on you last year in Vancouver was dirty hockey, but it was hockey.

Tomorrow, everything is going to be personal.

He’s not going to pass up a chance to fuck with Blair, especially now that he knows you work as leverage.

” Hayes takes another step toward me. “Blair is going to be on the very edge, and Zolotarev knows exactly how to push him over it.”

“You’re telling me I’m bait.”

“I’m telling you to be ready.” Hayes’s eyes are dark. “Zolo’s going to come at you every shift.”

Tomorrow night isn’t just another game; it’s a trap, and I’m the trigger. “What do you need me to do?”

“Keep your head up. Don’t engage.”

“You know he won’t stand by if?—”

“That’s why I’m telling you.” Hayes’s voice drops even lower. “Because someone needs to be thinking clearly tomorrow night, and it won’t be Blair.”

Wrongness crawls across my skin as soon as I take the ice for warm-ups. It’s that same sick-stomach drop from when you’re a kid and you know the bully’s waiting around the corner.

There he is. Number 77. His eyes find me immediately, like he’s been waiting for me.

He’s taller than I remember, broader through the shoulders. 6’4”, 230, fists the size of sledgehammers and a face that’s been rearranged a few times.

I stretch at center ice, trying to keep my breathing steady while Zolotarev circles like a shark scenting blood. Our eyes lock across the rink, and he smirks, tapping his temple with his glove.

I’ve faced dirty players before. I’ve been targeted, checked, and trash-talked, but this is different. He wants to hurt me, yes, but more than that, he wants to use me to hurt Blair.

I focus on my edges, cutting slow arcs into the ice to bleed off the charge building in me. Zolotarev is playing mind games, taking long, lazy loops that bring him too close, forcing me to adjust. Every move I make is being measured for how deep it’ll cut into Blair.

We file into the locker room, and our pre-game energy shifts from anticipation to something heavier. Coach runs through our game plan one last time in the room. The words are background noise; my focus is gone.

Blair sits across from me, taping his stick. Tonight, his jaw is set too hard, eyes seeing something—someone—else. The rest of the room hums around us. I keep my head down, retie my laces for the third time, searching for steadiness. Zolotarev’s shadow is too close.

Blair finishes his tape job and sets his stick against the bench. He reaches over to squeeze my shoulder.

His hand trembles against my shoulder pad through the layers of my gear.

“Blair.”

His eyes snap to mine, and for a second, his rage gives way to what’s underneath: fear. Fear of what he might do, fear of losing control in a way that can’t be taken back.

Hayes catches my eye from across the room.

“Hey.” I cover Blair’s hand with mine. “Look at me.”

He does, and God, he’s barely holding it together. This close, I can see the war he’s fighting with himself, trying to be the captain this team needs while everything in him wants to tear Zolotarev apart.

“We play our game,” I tell him, low enough that only he can hear. “Not his.”

The locker room door bangs open. “Two minutes!”

Blair’s hand slides off my shoulder, but I catch his wrist before he pulls away completely. “Promise you won’t let him bait you into something stupid.”

His eyes go dark. “I can’t.”

“Blair—”

“I can’t promise that. Not when it comes to you.”

The arena is roaring, 20,000 of our fans sensing blood in the water. We take our positions at center ice; my eyes stay locked on the referee. Behind me, Blair’s blade bites deep into the ice.

The puck drops.

Everything explodes into motion.

The first period is elbows and slashes, Zolotarev shadowing me shift after shift. He’s not subtle about it; every time I touch the puck, he’s there with a cross-check to the kidneys, a stick between my skates, his breath hot in my ear.

“Your captain’s got a soft spot for you, doesn’t he?” he hisses during a particularly vicious board battle. “Since he’s picking up Vancouver’s trash.”

My next shift, he’s there again, elbows high in the corners, taking little shots after every whistle.

Blair skates by Zolotarev with a warning at the TV timeout. “Keep it up, see what fucking happens.”

Zolotarev’s mouth quirks.

He’s across from me on my next face-off, hissing, “Everything he touches turns to shit. His team. His brother. You’re next.”

The puck drops, and I lose the draw.

Every time I’m on the ice, he scratches at all my old wounds. Each whisper drives me further from the game and deeper into my red haze of rage. I want to slam my fist into his smirking face, but that’s exactly what he wants, for me to break, for Blair to break.

And Blair is a hurricane held barely in check. Hayes keeps trying to bring him down during line changes, but Blair’s past listening to reason.

The clock ticks down, tighter, tighter. Every pass is loaded, every face-off a test of nerves. Zolotarev’s shadow never leaves me for long, circling, waiting for his moment.

Blair scores five minutes into the third period, putting us up 2-1. The crowd erupts, and Blair skates past the Washington bench, eyeball-fucking Zolotarev.

Then it happens, with eight minutes left in the third. The game hits a fever pitch, bodies colliding, tempers stretched thin. A scramble in our zone sends the puck squirting loose along the boards near our bench, and I go for it.

Blair is ahead of me on the ice. Hayes yells a warning behind us—my name? Blair’s?—but it’s lost in the thunder of the crowd and the sharp crash of sticks.

Zolotarev closes in fast, shoulder low, eyes locked, and?—

Impact.

A freight train hits me, my vision whiting out as 200 pounds of violence smashes me against the glass.

The crack of my skull against the boards echoes through my teeth, and for one terrible second I’m back in Vancouver with that same explosion of white-hot agony and the taste of copper flooding my mouth.

My legs buckle. The crowd’s roar warps into underwater sound as my knees hit ice. Everything tilts sideways as I crumple.

I know this feeling, know what comes next. The slow slide into nothing, the way the world gets smaller and darker until there’s only the cold kiss of ice against my cheek. The darkness is opening, and I’m falling, crashing, losing everything I’ve built.

No, not again, not again?—