Page 22 of The Fall
I tip my chin up, a clear invitation. For a moment, Blair looks at me, something unbearably soft in his eyes. He leans in, and my breath hitches. I’m ready. I think.
His lips land on my forehead and stay.
I exhale and hold him tighter to me. I can do this. I can be the Torey that Blair loves, the Torey I want so desperately to remember being.
Too soon, he pulls back. “We should go,” he whispers. “Or we probably won’t get out of here.”
I huff a laugh, but I’m trembling. It’s tempting, so tempting to hide away here, in this bubble of me and Blair, but I can’t hide forever. I can’t avoid the world or my life. “Promises, promises.”
“Later,” he says with a wink.
The drive to Hayes’s house is a blur of palm-tree-lined streets. The sky pulls thin ribbons of coral and indigo across what’s left of the evening. Streetlights blink alive overhead, casting the world in that low Florida blue. Snatches of memory flit through the sun-dappled palms. The particular shade of yellow on that house. The fountain burbling in that yard. The view of the waterway as we cross over a causeway. It’s déjà vu in reverse—I know these streets, these turns, but I can’t place how or why.
Blair’s profile is limned in light. He’s humming along to the radio, thumbs tapping the steering wheel, at ease in his own life. Happy.
I reach across and tangle our fingers together. He brings my hand to his lips and kisses them. “Hey,” he says softly. “You good?”
I take a breath, let it out slowly.
“Yeah,” I say, and for the first time since I woke up, I believe it. “I’m good.”
Maybe in this life, in this version of me, being good is as easy as breathing.
Five
Hayes’s houseis on a quiet cul-de-sac in a posh part of Punta Gorda. My flip-flops slap against the sidewalk as we walk up to the front door. There’s a moment before the door swings open when I catch my reflection in the window. Not my face, only the outline of me, distorted and stretched by the soft light.
Warm light spills onto the porch as Hayes opens the door, and a wave of scent and sound hits me. Barbecue and the sea, charcoal and brown sugar and hickory. My stomach growls.
“Hungry?” Blair asks. His smile is so close I feel the warmth of it against my cheek.
I grin back, sheepish. “Starving.”
“Kicks and his bottomless pit,” Hayes calls from the front door. “Never change, man.”
There’s something easy in Hayes’s casual way of moving through his life. He’s barefoot, and his hair is damp. He’s wearing a threadbare T-shirt and shorts, and he looks the very opposite of burdened. His smile is wide and welcoming as he steps back to let us in.
We follow Hayes into the kitchen. A woman is there in the middle of slicing tomatoes. She looks about Hayes’s age, withbrunette hair pulled back in a braid, wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals. Erin. Her name is Erin. Hayes’s wife.
She beams when she sees us. “Make yourselves at home. Dinner’s almost ready to go.”
“Where’s the munchkin?” Blair asks.
“In her natural habitat.” Hayes tilts his head toward the backyard. “Terrorizing the pool toys. She’s been dying all afternoon. Wouldn’t stop asking when you’d get here.”
Blair chuckles. “Sounds like Lily.”
A child’s squeal rings out, high and clear. “Torey!”
A blur of pink and blonde races in through the patio doors and launches herself at me and Blair. The sight of her and her gap-toothed grin hits me as if she’d checked me full speed into the boards. Before I can think, I open my arms, and she’s coming at me.
Lily. Her name moves through me like a whispered secret.
She rushes me, giggles and sticky fingers. She holds a well-loved pink teddy bear dressed in a baby Mutineers jersey in one hand, and she wraps her arms around my knees, her face tipped up and beaming.
“Easy there, Tiger,” Hayes says. “Last time you tackled him, Torey ended up in the pool.”
It’s instinct that makes me swoop her up into my arms, and she latches on, her tiny arms tight around my neck.
