Page 281 of The Fall
Dad smiles at me over Blair’s shoulder. “Welcome back, son.”
I want to tell them both that I’m okay, that I’m here, that we made it through. But my throat is lined with sandpaper, and all I manage is a weak squeeze of Blair’s hand.
It’s enough. His shoulders slump in a wave of relief that washes over me, too.
A deep, soul-settling weariness overtakes me, a surrender to the drug-softened darkness waiting for me. Just seeing them, knowing they’re here, is all that matters. We’re on the other side.
My eyelids drift shut again.
Fifty-Nine
Night poolsaround us in the hospital room. Dad left for his hotel hours ago, dropping a kiss to my forehead before he went, but Blair hasn’t shifted from where he’s folded himself into this narrow bed with me. The Mutineers chase the puck across the muted television screen while Blair’s fingertips whisper up and down my arm. “You should watch.”
“No.”
Hayes wins a face-off on screen. The team looks solid, but they’re missing their captain, and that extra fire Blair brings.
He settles more fully against my side, his focus absolute. The game on the screen, the entire world outside this bed, doesn’t exist for him.
“I’m taking another leave from the team.”
Everything inside me stills.
“What?”
His eyes hold mine in the television’s blue flicker. “I’m entering the Player Assistance Program. I need help, Torey. Real help. I watched you die. You went under and you didn’t come back up, and when I dragged you out you weren’t—” He swallows. “Every time I close my eyes, you’re in my arms again, and you’re not breathing. And you never breathe again.”
I have no memory of the water filling my lungs or of the darkness taking over. He is the one who remembers, and he has been living inside that horror while I was fighting to come back to him.
“I know you survived,” he whispers. “But I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and you’ll be gone.
“Blair...”
“And it’s Cody, and my family, and hockey, and it’s all the shit I never dealt with. I can’t do it anymore. I won’t pretend I’m okay when I’m not.” On the television, Tampa scores and our bench erupts, but Blair doesn’t look.
The television light washes his face in shifting blues and whites. His breathing has gone shallow, waiting for my reaction, for permission he doesn’t need but desperately wants.
My own recovery feels small next to the mountain he’s choosing to climb. He’s choosing to shatter himself to become whole.
The terrifying courage of admitting you need someone else to help carry what you’ve been dragging alone—God. Blair has carried his grief like armor, worn it so close to his skin that removing it means exposing every tender place beneath. And he’s choosing to do it.
“I should have done this a long time ago,” he says. “But I thought if I kept moving, kept playing, kept being what everyone needed...” His eyes close. A tear escapes, tracking silver down his cheek. When he opens them again, the blue is darker, deeper, endless.
On screen, the camera pans across our bench, settling on the empty space where Blair should be.
“We heal together,” he says. “However long that takes, however messy it gets. And when we’re ready to go back—because we will be ready, Torey—we do it together.” His fingersthread through mine. “I’ve been on that ice without you, and I won’t do that again. I’m done pretending I can do this alone.”
He’s tethering his future to mine because that’s the only future he wants, and he’s offering me every broken part of himself and trusting me to hold it. How can I not offer him the same? The truth I’ve guarded, the secret that defines my entire existence, is a wall between us. It has to come down.
My heart thunders, drowning out even the crowd on TV as I search Blair’s face. I angle closer until our foreheads touch and I see the steadiness I fell in love with before I knew it by name.
“What I’m about to tell you is going to sound crazy,” I say. “But I need you to hear me out.” The words I’ve swallowed for months rise up. “The concussion.” My voice is quaking. “The one that started everything… when Zolotarev hit me in Vancouver…”
“Yeah?”
“I need to tell you what happened after. Something I’ve never told anyone.”
“Hey.” His hand cups my jaw. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
