Page 170 of The Fall
I groan. “I’ve lost count. I have permanent war wounds now.”
“She got you good last time.” His laugh is quiet and close, and it settles me deeper against his side as the sky fades around us. “She adores you.”
For a second, all the noise in my head hushes. The world feels simple here, tucked up with him.
“The team is different this year,” Blair says, after a moment, his eyes on the water. He turns to me. “Because of you.”
“Me? No way.”
“You brought the hunger we were missing.”
Heat crawls up my neck. I want to deflect, to crack a joke, but his gaze pins me in place. “Blair?—”
“No, listen. Before you came, I was going through the motions. Then you walked into that locker room, and…”
I have to close my eyes for a second to steady myself.
“You make me want to be better,” he continues. “On the ice. Off it. You always have.”
A new need crests inside me, to know the boy from Ontario who became this man beside me. I open my eyes and meet his gaze. He’s watching me, waiting.
“Tell me about home,” I say. It’s a risk, bringing up his past, but I want to know everything, and I want to know it from him. I want to knowhim, not the Blair who lived in my head.
He chuckles. “You know Canada: winters that freeze your nose hairs and the most beautiful mountains you’ve ever seen. What more is there to say?”
“It’s a big country. You’re from Ontario. I’m from BC.”
“Where all hikers and tree huggers and surfers come from.” He winks.
“It’s the difference between Timmies and craft coffee shops.”
He chuckles, and I grin. Then, his voice turns wistful. “When Cody and I were little, he and I used to sneak out to the park. We were always on the rink there. Skating in winter, ball hockey in summer. We’d be out there so late.” He laughs to himself. “We wore the paint off on the siding beneath our window from shimmying up and down so many times. We tried to play dumb when our dad caught us, but…” He shakes his head.
“You taught him to play?”
Blair nods. “He was a natural, though. Better than me.”
The canal behind us throws gold into the air. Our conversation slips into quieter gears, childhood stories, half-baked dreams. I tell him about learning to skate holding on to my dad’s hands, me with blue lips and freezing ankles. I tell him about the first time I chipped a tooth, three years old and trying to race the older kids around the ice.
He snorts. “You get your edge work naturally, then.”
“Hollow compliments me on my backwards crossovers.”
“Kid’s got good taste. Yours are tighter than his.”
I tell him about my early days on the rink, when I fell over and over until my knees went raw but refused to leave. “That’s you all over,” Blair whispers. “Refusing to quit.”
We’re both smiling too much. We can’t get through a story without being ridiculous. He watches my lips when I talk. I trace the veins on the inside of his forearms with my fingers. He looks at me sideways, boyish, trying to smother his smile.
There’s something so tender about him now, stripped of the professional mask he wears at the rink. This Blair is softer, with crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he grins. His arm shifts under my touch, goosebumps rising in the wake of my fingertips.
He catches my hand and brings it up to his mouth.
“What are you thinking?” I whisper.
He lowers my hand but doesn’t let go. “That I should have done this months ago.”
I lean forward until our foreheads touch, suspended in this perfect moment. His thumb skates the edge of my jaw. I drop my lips to his collarbone, tasting him, tracing kisses up his throat.
