Page 4 of The Fall
Get up.
But I can’t move. The cold seeps into my cheek from the ice. The blade-scraped surface fills my vision, thousands of tiny cuts etched across the white expanse.
Something is wrong, very wrong. My head, my lungs, the throb of my heart, all of it is wrong. I can’t push myself up, can’t even get to my knees. Blood drips from my face, crimson blooming against the white. The arena has gone silent.
I still can’t breathe. Terror grips me, real, primal fear that starts in my gut and spreads outward. There’s a tremor inside me, a quaking that’s started at the bottom of my soul and is shivering its way out.
I wanted to be worth something. I wanted to be more than a regret. And I want to be alive; I’m not ready to die. I realize that now, of course.
Bodies swarm. The trainers, the medical staff, even the team doctor are on the ice. Shit, this is serious. Someone’s hand is on my head, keeping me still. “Stay with us, Torey!”
The world tumbles sideways. Stars explode behind my eyes, and everything tunnels to a pinpoint. My brain, my brain is on fire, burning from the inside. I scream, but the sound is lost. The world is collapsing; I’m collapsing. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t?—
The last thing I see is Blair Callahan skating the blue line, watching me across the ice.
Then there’s nothing, nothing at all.
Two
First:the dark. The world is hidden, layered in black on black.
Memories shimmer and fracture. The ice, a splintering crash, silence roaring too loud. Gravity quit me, dropped me. Was I falling through the ice, or was the ice falling away from me? Everything tips, bone on ice, my lungs locked, horizon gone lopsided. I claw for breath as my chest caves in. My mouth is open, but nothing comes. Not enough air, not enough. Blood staining pavement. A man’s scream slashing across the night. I am struggling, I am drowning.
My next breath rips me raw. I sit bolt upright, grasping my chest. Oxygen floods in on one great heave, and I’m dizzy from it, from the rush of life. I’m caught between slick sweat and a stiffness at the base of my skull that gathers there after a hard fall. My breaths are coming too fast, too shallow.
I’m in bed?—
But not my bed. The sheets are heavy and lush. They stick and tangle at my thighs, trapping me. My arms and legs are lead, the deadweight that haunts you after bag skate drills. A hammer pounds inside my skull.
This room is dim, night-dark except for silvery moonlight seeping through a wall of sliding glass doors. I strain to focus, and my eyes sting.
I’m in a bedroom. I think. There’s a bed, at least, and I’m in it. The walls are deep blue, the furniture bright white. On the far side of the room, two duffels slump shoulder-to-shoulder, half-unzipped, gear tumbling from open mouths. Hockey sticks crowd a corner, at least five, most battered, one taped blue around the handle.
And—
I’m not alone.
A man lies beside me. He’s broad-backed, sprawled on his stomach, one long arm slung over a pillow and the sheet dangerously close to sliding off his waist. His skin drinks in the moonlight that leaks through the glass, outlining the whole ease of his body. A dark scruff grazes his cheek, jawline bristling with tomorrow’s beard. His back is sculpted with muscle that looks as if it were carved from granite. I count each vertebra in the valley between his lats, follow the curve down to the swell of his ass vanishing beneath the sheet.
He shifts, turning his face toward me. His hair is dark brown and sleep-tousled. His lashes fan out against his cheeks, his eyes closed. He has mile-wide shoulders and biceps I could only dream of. He’s not model-cut, but he’s solid. Break-you-in-half solid.
He’s beautiful.
“Torey?” His voice is rough, still gritted by sleep. “What’s wrong?”
The world buckles. I freeze.
What. The. Fuck.
Whothe fuck—Wherethe fuck?—
I can’t catch my breath; my lungs seem to trip over each other, skipping inhales. Questions smash through my skull. Where the fuck am I? How did I get here?
And who thefuckis beside me and why is he in bed with me?
Whose bed amIin?
He nuzzles his face into the pillow, murmurs my name again. He reaches for me, his palm open and fingers extended.
