Page 167 of The Lies We Play

I don't remember enough.

That is the wound.

I remember too much.

That is the terror.

I pick up the phone.

My thumb hovers over the letters.

From the other side of the door, someone knocks again. This time, my stepmother.

“Halston?” she calls. “We need to leave soon. I’ll be in the car waiting.”

I look at the burner phone in my hand.

Then at the estate phone on the table, bright and useless, and watched.

For once, I know exactly which device belongs to which life.

I type one word.

Here.

I press send.

I look at my regular phone for a long second. The thing has been an extension of my body for years. It has reminded me to take medication. It rang when my stepmother wanted to know whether I was eating. It has told me when to be at galas. It has returned my life back to me in tidy color-coded reminders, and I have lived inside those reminders the way an animal lives inside a fence it has stopped noticing.

I press the side button.

I hold it down.

The screen goes dark.

The first openly defiant act of my recovery is silent. It costs me nothing physically. It might cost me everything in this apartment by the end of the day.

I don't care.

I put the burner in my interior jacket pocket, against my ribs, where it can feel my heart while it waits for someone to call. Someone to tell me who I am. Someone to tell me who I was before everyone else got there first.

If the truth is buried under lies, then fine.

I will learn the shape of every lie until the people I love come back to me.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Creed

Then . . .

I wake up at noon in Halston’s bed in Chelsea on a Sunday in June, with my whole body reminding me I'm not immortal.

For about three seconds, I don’t know where I am.

Then the light hits me.

White June light through expensive curtains. My mouth tastes like champagne and sweat and something sweeter I don’t let myself name while Halston is still asleep beside me.