Page 47 of The Fall
I explode, a wound-tight spring finally released, and I win the face-off against a guy who’s bigger than me, shoving him back with my shoulder and sending the puck to Blair. He’s on it, streaking down the right wing. He passes back to me, and I don’t hesitate. A quick wrister catches Boston’s goalie off-guard. The puck sails past him and into the net.
We’re on fire tonight. We’re burning down Boston’s barn, and they’re pissed-off.
The game moves fast, breakaways, power plays, penalties called and uncalled. I feel Blair beside me at all times. When I skate into the corner to dig out a puck, he’s right where I need him to be when I shoot the pass out blindly.
I’m ready for anything—puck-drop, forecheck, breakout. I’m locked in, all instinct. There is only the chase, the drive to put rubber behind their goalie. Shouts from coaches, teammates, and fans blur in my periphery. I am an arrow loosed from its bow, focused on a single point.
Faster. Harder. More.
The first period ends with us leading 2–0. The guys are blazing. It’s nothing but high-octane fuel during the break, raw energy pumped straight into our veins.
We go back out for the second period and keep rolling with breakaways, power plays, and goals. The game is a brutal, beautiful blur.
Each time we score, each time Blair and I connect, another piece of me slides back into place.
The third period starts with us leading 4–0 and ends with us winning 6–0.
It’s a shutout for Axel, two goals for Hollow, and a hat trick for me that feels like redemption.
We get to the locker room, and it’s chaos. The guys are whooping and hollering, spraying each other with water bottles, blasting music. I’m swept up in the euphoria. But we’re wheels-up out of Boston in a few hours, so we shift from chaos into the hectic crush of postgame routines. Bikes, cooldowns, stretches, showers.
I finally catch a breath sitting in front of my locker. The adrenaline rush is fading, replaced by the settling ache in my wrists, my thighs, my calves. It’s a beautiful soreness, a pain I relish and have missed.
I replay every moment of tonight’s game over and over. What changed this past year? How did I become this person?
What will change next?
The plane’s cabin is a hollow of deep night. A steady thrumming from the engines runs through the floor, and a good ache hums in me along with it.
Most of the guys are out, sprawled in their seats and surrendered to sleep, but Hayes is in a class all his own, sleep mask on, one socked foot dangling in the aisle.
We are alone in our row, and Blair’s shoulder is solid against mine.
“You were incredible tonight.” His voice is low and only for me.
I smile into the soft fabric of his hoodie. “You weren’t so bad yourself.” My voice is shredded from hours of adrenaline and shouting.
“That save you made? Unreal.”
He brushes his fingers against my knuckles, the ghost of a touch in this sleeping cabin.
Again, I’m rocked by the question, the same question, always: How did we get here? Why does he look at me like I’m everything he’s ever needed or dreamed of having in his life?
How can any of this be real? Through the window, stars scatter against an impossible black. It’s the same sky that hung over that Vancouver beach, but the world beneath it is another planet entirely.
What did I do to deserve this?
And what if?—
“What if what?” Blair asks, his voice soft as a secret.
Shit. I can’t speak; my throat closes. I shake my head, try to act exhausted or brain-dead, too wiped out to make any sense. My thoughts race. What if wecouldtell the whole world? But what if this ends? Or what if this lasts? What if the ground beneath my feet is a dream I’m about to wake from?
What if it’s not?
He leans closer. His breath is gentle against my lips. “What if we make this work?”
The question hangs there, more real than the plane, than the sky. He cradles my palm, his thumb tracing the tendons of my wrist. I wince as he kneads the sore spots, working out the pain from the game.
