Page 32 of The Fall
Was it like this the first time I fell for him? This all-consuming, this obliterating, this redefining?
“Hey, what about your sick moves when we were in Calgary?” Hayes reaches across Blair and smacks my arm. “Kicks, you were on fire. Gonna bring that this time, too?”
Calgary? What the fuck did I do in Calgary? I have no fucking clue what he’s talking about, but I pretend I do, tell him I’m absolutely going to wreck Philly like I did to Calgary, and Hayes and Blair seem happy about that.
Shit, every second is a tightrope walk between belonging and exposure. I’ve got to keep it together. I can’t let them see the cracks.
I’ll piece together the fragments of this past year and I’ll grind and fight for every moment, every smile, every touch. Losing Blair, losing hockey, losing everything I’ve apparently fought so hard to gain is unthinkable.
I candothis, one shift at a time, one play at a time.
Can’t I?
The door swings open and a flight attendant enters. “Gentlemen,” she says, “we’re ready to begin boarding.”
The usual boarding chaos flows around me, shouted jokes and bleeding music and duffel bags slammed into overhead compartments. It’s the rhythm of travel, the backbeat to the life I’m trying to inhabit. I wade through it, searching for my seat, which is pointless; my attention snaps back to Blair like he’s got me tethered.
Which, let’s be honest, he does.
Blair moves through the plane like he owns it. Sunlight pours through the open jet door, streaking over Blair’s sharp jawline and tousled hair. For a moment, he’s gilded as sunbeams run over him from head to toe. I want to follow those sunbeams with my fingers, my lips.
Our eyes meet.
He gets this look whenever he sees me. He keeps his gaze locked on mine longer than he should, like he can’t tear himself away. Heat washes over me in waves. I’m a neon sign, glowing for him.
And that smile. God, that smile. It hits me like a perfect tape-to-tape pass every time.
Blair reaches my row. He stows his bag, strips out of his suit jacket, rolls up the sleeves of his dress shirt. The muscles beneath the starched white fabric shift, rippling across his wide shoulders and down the thick cords of his forearms.
I want to trace the veins on those forearms with my tongue, taste his strength beneath.
I force myself to breathe.
He settles beside me, and the air compresses, charged with his closeness. It’s nothing. It’s everything. I want to lean into him, to close that millimeter of space between us. Having him this close is a gift and a curse.
His arm against mine is a solid line of heat. I don’t dare move. There is a whole world contained in that simple point of contact.
Hollow leans over the aisle seat, already shuffling a deck of cards. “Kicks, you in?”
“Maybe later.” My voice is steady, but my heart races.
He finds my hand with his between our seats, hidden from view. I turn my palm up to meet his, and we lock our hands together in the shadowed space between our seats.
“Sometimes I look at you,” he says, his voice low, “and I forget how quiet my life was before.”
I cannot form a response, cannot find the version of me who would know how to. He speaks of a shared history as if it’s solid ground while I am trying not to fall through the cracks in my memory. How do you become the reason a man like this feels settled?
What did I do to become the person who could fill a silence in Blair Callahan’s life?
I search his face for the man he thinks he’s seeing. His blue eyes hold a piece of the ocean.
“Me, too,” I whisper.
The engines whine. The plane trembles, and the long, slow pivot away from the gate begins, followed by the steady taxi. Then the runway opens up before us, and the plane surges forward.
For a second, the frantic acceleration is all wrong, metal screaming, glass shattering, the world tilting on an axis it was never meant to have. My nightmare surges.
Blair’s thumb moves over my knuckles.
