Page 136 of The Fall
My skates hit the ice with a soft crunch.
His eyes meet mine across the distance, red-rimmed but clear. “You’re here early.”
“Always am.” These hours are usually mine.
His gaze maps my face, then drops to the ice. “I didn’t sleep at all. I watched the whole thing. Twice.”
“Blair…” I breathe. I imagine him alone in the dark, replaying the footage over and over. Two a.m., three a.m., four a.m., the blue glow of a screen illuminating his tears.You gave him back his brother.
Another puck sits at his blade, but he only bats it back and forth. “I haven’t seen him since— Haven’t...”
The empty arena swallows his words. I skate closer, slow enough that he could wave me off if he wanted. He doesn’t.
“He looked good out there,” I say. “That pass in the first?—”
“He had the best hands.” Blair’s mouth curves slightly. “He could thread a puck through traffic like he had it on a string.” He finally shoots the puck, but gentler this time. It slides into the net with a whisper.
The admission hangs between us. Blair grabs another puck from the pile. “C’mon,” he says, skating backward. “We’re running a new breakout today. I want to go through it with you first, work out the rough edges.” He taps his stick on the ice. “You coming?”
Thirty
Blair powersthrough defenders like water breaking stone, and I trail in his slipstream the way we’ve done a thousand times. The puck flows between us, from his tape to mine, mine back to his. I read the shift in his shoulders, how his weight loads onto his left edge. I know that tilt of his hips as if I caress them every night. That subtle drop on his right tells me everything: he’s cutting center ice, driving hard for the slot. My skates bite ice as I wheel toward open space, ready for the give-and-go we’ve perfected, and?—
The hit comes from his blind side.
The defenseman catches him square in the numbers, where you never,neverdrive a man into glass. Blair’s body folds wrong, neck whipping forward as momentum carries him face-first into unforgiving boards. The sound splits through the arena, that sick crack of helmet meeting plexiglass, body meeting barrier.
My skates are already eating up ice before Blair falls, before his body slides down the boards in slow motion, his jersey riding up to expose the curve of his lower back. Before his stick clatters away, forgotten.
Players from both benches are standing. The ref’s whistle screams.
Blair’s arm drags beneath him, fingers splayed as he tries to push himself up. His knees slide, searching for purchase that won’t come. His body fights to remember how to work—God, I’ve never seen him like this.
Hollow drops beside him, one gloved hand steady between Blair’s shoulder blades, but Blair shakes his head, stubborn even now. He gets his skates under him for half a second before his legs betray him. He folds forward, forehead meeting ice, and stays there.
This is Blair who played three periods with separated ribs. Blair who took seven stitches between the second and third and came back to score. Blair who treats pain like background noise, who wears bruises like medals. He plays broken and breathless and gets back up like he’s Lazarus with duct tape.
But he’s not getting up now.
The bastard—number thirteen—who laid him out is coasting backward toward his bench.
All that exists is the space between me and number thirteen, that coward already skating away like what he did was clean.
I’ve spent too fucking long swallowing every wrong thing.
My gloves hit the ice before I even decide to drop them. The sound of them landing—two soft thuds that mean everything’s about to change—cuts through the arena noise. Number thirteen turns as I reach him, his eyes widening behind his visor.
Good.
I’ve played clean my whole career. Never answered a dirty hit, never let the rage win. Coach’s voice lives in my head:Stay disciplined, Kendrick. Let the scoreboard do the talking.But Blair’s still not up, and all those rules I’ve lived by dissolve.
My shoulder drives into his chest first, knocking him back. His hands come up but I’m already swinging, my bare fist connecting with the side of his jaw hard enough to split skin.
There’s no grace to this. I’ve been in hockey since I was six and I’ve never thrown a punch, but I throw them now, and I throw them like I mean it, coming up from my skates and swinging from my heels. I go at him like I want him to remember me for the rest of his life.
He gets a punch of his own in, but I’m not feeling anything except the adrenaline. Hayes is calling my name, the linesmen are shouting, but I’m not stopping until someone pulls me off.
We hit the ice; my forearm digs into his neck. My gloves are gone, my knuckles are red, and the crowd has flipped to frenzy.
