Page 159 of The Lies We Play

“Creed?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m scared.”

I close my eyes.

There is the truest thing either of us has said.

I turn my face into her neck and hold her closer.

“Me too.”

She exhales, and the tension leaves her by degrees, not gone, just shared.

That is when I know.

Not because of the sex. Not because of the words. Not even because she loves me.

Because she told me she was afraid and didn’t apologize for it.

I kiss her shoulder, calm now in a way I don't deserve.

This is where I begin.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Halston

Now . . .

By morning, I’m still sitting at the desk in my bedroom with the curtains still drawn, a lamp on, and the apartment holding its breath around me.

Outside, Manhattan has begun its daily performance of ambition and exhaustion. Horns, tires over wet pavement, the metallic groan of a truck taking a corner too wide. The city believes in the morning more than I do.

I have not slept.

That seems like an important fact.

I write it down.

Did not sleep. The body wouldn’t let me. Recognition is louder than fatigue.

Then, beneath it:

Creed knew my breath before my voice.

I stare at the sentence until the words blur.

There are truths a man can survive in theory and not in ink.

I close the notebook.

Then open it again because I don't trust closed things anymore.

The desk is covered with the contents of the drawer. Cornelius’s photograph too. He looks young. The sun in his eyes. One hand lifted as if he was trying to stop the person behind the camera from taking the picture and enjoying the failure. On the back, the phone number I dialed last night.

Creed’s.