Page 174 of The Lies We Play

Chapter Twenty-Four

Creed

Then . . .

“How are you?” Hal suddenly asks.

“Fine.”

“Lafontaine.”

“What?”

“That was a fast answer.”

“I’m well-trained.”

His thumb moves once against my chest.

“Try again,” he says.

I look at him.

The room is too bright for this. My body hurts in layers. Shoulder. Hip. Ribs. Thigh. Places I remember getting hit. Places I don’t. Places Halston touched afterward with a focus that made me feel more seen than the cameras did last night.

Halston has, in almost two years, taught me that when he asks, “how are you,” he is asking the actual question. The social answer, with him, is a small disrespect.

So I take a breath.

“I’m tired in a way I don’t know how to describe. I’m happy in a way that scares me. I miss Livia, and I’m in your bed in Chelsea, and my body hurts everywhere.”

His face changes.

Most people would miss it. With Halston, a whole confession can live in a blink. His hand glides up over my collarbone, along the side of my neck, to the back of my jaw. His thumb traces along my cheekbone once, and I close my eyes before I can stop myself.

That’s the danger with him.

He doesn’t pry me open. He finds the place I already cracked and puts his hand there like he has a right.

“Look at me,” he says.

I do.

His hair is a disaster. His mouth is still a little swollen. There’s a mark low on his neck from me, a bruise I left there because sometime after three in the morning, I stopped pretending I had any class. He looks tired too, but awake in the way he gets when something matters and he refuses to look away first.

“You won the Cup,” he says again.

“You said.”

“I want to do something for you.”

“You did several things for me last night.”

“I want to do something else for you.”

Something in me shifts, slow and quiet.

With Halston, I am never entirely sure what he is offering until he offers it. He opens doors half an inch at a time. He lets me decide whether to walk in. Some doors I’ve walked through. Some I’ve left for him. Some Liv has walked through first and held open from the other side, muttering about emotional inefficiency and poor communication practices, while being braver than both of us.