Page 14 of The Lies We Play

I lie there and watch my mother’s hand cover the broken rhythm of mine.

Three months of my life . . . gone.

Halston in a care facility in Connecticut. Creed nowhere around. The scary part is the Saint Claires asking for privacy, and everyone listening.

None of this feels like an accident anymore.

Maybe the crash was.

Maybe it wasn’t.

But the three months afterward?

No.

There are pieces I only understand in flashes. A private clinic. A nurse who stops talking when I turn my head. Words like confidentiality. Family request. High-profile patient. Privacy.

Always privacy.

The Saint Claires don’t have to chain me to a bed to keep me hidden. They only have to keep paying the right people to lower their voices, close the blinds, and call it care.

Someone took the fact that I could not wake up and built a wall around me with money, medicine, distance, and fake concern.

Someone put Halston where I couldn’t reach him.

Maybe someone made sure Creed couldn’t reach me.

Someone decided the three of us were easier to dismantle if no one admitted we were three at all.

I close my eyes so my mother won’t see what is in them. So she doesn’t decide that I need to be sedated again for days because I can’t be trusted while awake.

I keep them closed for a long time.

When I open them again, I am still in a clinic outside Zurich. My body is still broken in ways I don't understand. My mother is still holding the wrong hand because it has become the right one. Halston is an ocean away in a room I can’t picture without wanting to scream. Creed is somewhere beyond the clean little lies everyone keeps handing me.

And I have no phone.

No proof.

No access.

No idea who decided love could be erased by paperwork and distance.

Only this:

I am awake now, and I won’t let them silence me again.

Chapter Three

Creed

Then . . .

After my rookie year with the Night Hawks, I bought an apartment.

I need something to call mine.

It isn’t glamorous.