Page 56 of The Fall
“You know,” he says, his voice steady while the pulse in his wrist bounds against my fingers, “I’ve been thinking about what comes after hockey.”
“What do you see?”
“Coaching, maybe. A way to stay close to the game.” The words are casual, but his eyes are searching mine.
“You’d be incredible at that,” I say, and I mean it. “A perfect fit.”
“What about you?”
Hayes had asked me the same thing. Nobody else has ever asked, not really, what my future looks like. I sense the horizon shifting, every possibility reshaped around the chance to build something with him. I brush my thumb over his knuckles. How do I explain that my future is a person, not a picture? “Honestly? I want to be wherever you are.”
A long, slow swallow moves in his throat. When he speaks, his voice is low and stripped bare. “I want it all, Torey. You. This. Us. For the rest of our lives.”
He lifts my hand to his mouth, his lips soft when they kiss my knuckles. “I’m ready,” he continues. “To tell the team, the league, whoever wants to know. I’m ready for all of it.”
A fragile, beautiful possibility hangs in the air between us. The fear of it breaking is a sharp ache in me.
“I am, too,” I breathe.
He holds out his hand, and I stand, letting him pull me from my chair. He draws me into the circle of candlelight near the edge of the pool, wrapping his arms around me until my forehead rests against his collarbone. We sway to the music, to the rhythm of the water. His body is a solid, warm wall against mine. One shared breath, then another. This night feels wild and beautiful.
“I can see us growing old together,” he says, his breath warm against my ear. “Still chirping each other when we’re grey and wrinkled.” His voice shifts as he tests out a chirp. “You know, for a guy who spends all his time on ice, you’re pretty hot.”
I groan into his shoulder. “That was atrocious. I might have to take it all back.”
His laughter is rich and full. He guides me in a slow spin before pulling me back, his palm cupping my cheek, his nose brushing mine. He holds my hand between our chests, his thumb stroking my palm before he traces the line of my ring finger with one fingertip.
“I’ve also been thinking,” he whispers. “About how this finger looks a little bare.”
Everything stops. The music, the breeze, the light—it all freezes. Is this real? Is this impossible night about to become something more?
“Are you … Is this you asking me to marry you?”
The shield he wears for the world is gone, leaving the deep blue of his eyes stripped bare, raw, intensely gentle. “Not yet,” he says, and the certainty in his voice is absolute. “When I do, you’ll know. Trust me.” A small smile touches his lips.
Then his voice drops, and it holds all the vulnerability in the world. “Torey ... Do you want to be asked?”
His eyes are burning with every shade of blue he carries. Whatever he’s dropped for me, he leaves himself bare. He is impossible to look away from. Here he is, offering himself: captain, builder, believer, lover. The man who leads us, who absorbs every hit and asks for more, has stripped away all his armor and is simply standing here, waiting. He is giving me his world without condition, asking only if I want to step inside, share his horizon.
The old ghosts of my failure and fears recede, leaving only this one brilliant reality: him, and the life he wants to build, and the startling calm of knowing I want to build it, too.
There is a deep and final shift in my soul when it recognizes its other half and knows it is finally home. My future has a name, and that name is Blair, and this night defines our forever.
All my fears about my career, my name, my life—they fracture and dissolve, replaced by the singular terror of a world without him in it. This is the life I almost lost, the one I never knew I was missing.
The air holds his hope and mine, no longer separate. I draw him to me, and I pour every answer I have into my kiss. His lips tremble against mine. I press closer and feel his breath catch. His hands tighten at my waist. My heart is untamed and wild; there’s nowhere to hide, and no need for it now.
I break the kiss, my forehead still pressed to his.
“Ask me,” I whisper.
He guides me from the hallway and into the bedroom, where the air has gone thick and gold. A dozen small flames flicker from the surfaces of the dresser and nightstands, their light catchingon the walls in soft, shifting strokes. He must have lit them before dinner, for us.
He backs me against the wall as gentle as a turning tide, and the heat of him seeps into my skin and my soul as his breath whispers across my cheek. His hands lift and frame me, palms flat to the wall. A muscle twitches high in his cheek. He’s watching me breathe.
I dig my fingers into the dense muscle above his hips, bunch the worn denim of his jeans, and pull him closer. We are never close enough.
He tugs my T-shirt up, pulls it over my head and throws it aside. He trails his touch down my arms, and a slow burn ignites everywhere he touches me. My hands fumble with his shirt. I should be suave, confident, but Blair strips me down to my rawest parts, peels back the bravado and the bullshit until all that’s left is my yearning.
