He Fell

He Fell

I could not stop hearing my brother’s words in my head. The letter, the one I had read again in the quiet of my room, seemed to stitch itself into the air around me. Do not waste your fire hiding it. Use it before it burns you alive.

But I was not ready.

I had been avoiding George, ducking down hallways at school, lingering too long in the pizza shop with Mom just so I could say I was busy. It was easier to tell myself that staying away was safer. That if I let him in, I would only end up shattered like before.

So when the rumors started swirling through the team that George had been sneaking onto the rink late at night to skate alone, I did not want to believe it. Yet the proof was there in the hollow looks on his teammates’ faces, the way even the loudest ones grew quiet when his name came up.

“He’s out there every night,” one of the guys muttered near his locker. “Like he’s trying to punish himself.”

I froze where I stood, pretending to tie my shoelaces tighter just to keep listening.

“He plays like he doesn’t care if he gets hurt,” another said, softer. “Like he’s waiting for someone to stop him.”

My stomach tightened. Because who would stop him now? Not me.

That night the air felt restless, pulling at me in a way I could not explain. I closed the pizza shop with Mom, wiped down the counter for the tenth time, and still could not shake the buzzing unease beneath my skin. When she disappeared into the back to check the register, I slipped my phone from my pocket. My thumb hovered over George’s name in my messages. I did not type. I did not call.

Instead, I walked home, climbed the steps to my room, and sat staring out the window at the blur of streetlights. I told myself he was fine. That he always landed on his feet.

But then my phone buzzed. A text from one of the team guys, short and jagged like it had been typed in a panic.

“Cass, you need to come. George went down.”

The floor seemed to tilt beneath me. For a heartbeat I could not move. My brother’s letter was still folded on my desk, the words about fire burning too bright pressing into my mind until I had to shove them away just to breathe.

My legs carried me before my thoughts could catch up. Out the door. Down the street. Toward the rink where the glow of the lights looked too sharp against the night.

When I pushed through the doors, the cold smacked me in the face. Voices echoed against the boards, frantic and overlapping. And there, sprawled across the ice, was George.

He was not moving.

For a moment all I saw was the broad stretch of his shoulders against the white, his stick clattering away, the way his helmet sat skewed like he had tried to shake off the pain and failed. My chest closed.

The guys hovered near him, some kneeling, some pacing. “Don’t move him yet,” one said. “Someone call…”

“I’ll call,” another muttered, already fumbling with his phone.

My feet crunched across the ice before I even realized I was moving. Someone reached to stop me but I slipped past them, kneeling at George’s side. His eyes were shut, his jaw tight like he was clamping down against something sharp inside him.

“George,” I whispered, my voice splintering. “Come on, open your eyes.”

They fluttered open, sluggish and heavy, and for a moment I saw nothing but glassy confusion staring back at me. Then his gaze locked on mine.

“Cass,” he croaked, the word like gravel in his throat.

Tears threatened, but I shoved them down. “Why would you do this? Why would you push yourself like this alone?”

His lips curved in something that was not a smile but more like regret. “Because I thought maybe if I played hard enough, I could stop thinking about you.”

The words sliced through me. I wanted to tell him to save his strength, to stay quiet until help came, but the truth was spilling out of him like he had been holding it in for too long.

One of the teammates pressed a towel against his arm where blood seeped through his jersey, and my stomach lurched at the sight of it.

“You’re going to be fine,” I said quickly, though my voice shook. “The ambulance is coming. Just hold on.”

His eyes flickered shut, then open again, like the weight was too much. “Don’t… leave me,” he murmured.

I gripped his gloved hand tight enough that the cold of the ice seeped into my bones. “I’m not leaving,” I whispered. And for the first time in weeks, I meant it.

The paramedics arrived, their voices brisk and commanding, moving George onto a stretcher with careful hands. I stumbled back, out of their way, but my eyes never left him. He was pale beneath the harsh rink lights, his breath shallow, his body trembling faintly as they strapped him in.

“Family?” one of them asked quickly, scanning the crowd.

The guys shifted uncomfortably, glancing at each other. Before I could think, I stepped forward. “Me,” I said. “I’ll go.”

And no one questioned it.

I followed them into the night, the wail of the sirens splitting the air as they lifted him into the ambulance. My heart hammered in time with the flashing lights. I climbed in beside him, my knees brushing the edge of the stretcher, and held his hand again even as the paramedic worked around me.

George’s eyes cracked open once more. “Thought you hated me,” he whispered.

“I don’t,” I said, the truth trembling out of me like it had been waiting all along. “I never did.”

His hand tightened faintly in mine, and that was the only answer before the sirens swallowed everything else.