Page 190 of The Lies We Play
I close the door before she can turn my name into a leash.
Then I walk away. Manhattan in the morning has no respect for private collapse. It honks. It steams. It curses at delivery trucks. Three doors down, a woman in sunglasses the size of dinner plates is arguing with a courier about a box he refuses to leave on the sidewalk. A dog lifts its leg against a hydrant with the solemn dignity of a man signing legislation.
For one stupid second, I envy the dog.
I walk south.
Not toward breakfast.
Davis waits at the curb in the black Mercedes, hands folded, posture neutral, expression trained into blank respect. He was hired two years ago. He’s polite enough to vanish. Efficient enough to make him dangerous. He knows everything.
The rich never call it a cage when the bars are upholstered.
He sees me and straightens.
I lift two fingers.
Just air.
He nods because Davis has been told that contradicting me when I am calm is worse than letting me walk a few blocks alone. He will sit there for the better part of an hour before Everett texts him, and then take the car to the hotel and wait for the version of me who is supposed to appear.
Two blocks down, I pull the phone from my coat pocket. The screen wakes.
One missed call.
One text from an unknown number. Pick up when you can—Creed.
The name moves through me before I can stop it.
Creed.
It’s a need with its mouth shut. Want held behind the teeth. The sudden, brutal awareness that there are two people in the world I should not want this badly, yet my body has been keeping their names alive without my permission.
I stop at a corner I don't recognize.
There is a coffee cart beside the curb. A man in a navy coat is arguing with the vendor about milk temperature with the passion of someone who has never experienced an actual emergency. A pigeon circles a dropped croissant like it is weighing sin against opportunity.
I step into the alcove of a brownstone that is not mine, behind a narrow iron gate, tucked just far enough out of view to feel ridiculous and criminal.
Then I press the call button.
He answers before the first ring finishes.
“Hal?”
I close my eyes.
His voice is rougher than it was last night. He has not slept either. The texture of it is the texture of a man who has been awake for thirty-six hours holding the line on the off-chance that the line would ring.
“Hey.”
“You’re outside.”
“How did you—”
“Cars. I can hear cars.”
A small thing in me—small yet very specific—settles. He notices the cars. He has spent the night listening for me, precisely enough to hear that I am outside.
