Page 212 of The Lies We Play

Probably my gear by the door.

Halston learning to live in rooms where no one needed his last name.

The picture arrives so clearly it hurts.

Not because it is impossible.

Because I would have wanted it.

I would have wanted the narrow hallway and the bad water pressure. Liv arguing with a window that sticks. Halston pretending not to care that the kitchen cabinets don’t close correctly, then fixing them at midnight with a toolkit he definitely ordered after researching hinges for forty-five minutes. My skates drying by the door. Her books on the couch. His briefs on the table. Three toothbrushes in a cup too small for all of us.

A life.

Not the dramatic part. Not the ‘always’ we say when we are half-asleep and touching. Not the ‘forever’ that comes out when Liv is leaving for Paris or Halston is too quiet after a family dinner, or I’m heading into a road trip and pretending I don’t hate the door closing behind me.

This is different.

This is the after.

After law school. After Columbia. After games. After the secret gets too small to live inside. After we stop speaking in temporary arrangements and start admitting we have been building permanence with borrowed sweaters, shared keys, and wine that’s too expensive to waste it in nonsense.

I would have gone.

The thought comes so fast it almost scares me.

I would have gone anywhere with them.

Still would.

And that is the part that knocks the air out of me—not that Halston had imagined leaving his life, but that he had imagined taking us with him. That somewhere in that controlled, careful mind, there had been a room where Liv and I already existed in his future.

As home.

Money doesn't scare me. Losing his money doesn't scare me—I don’t need it. I have my contract, properties, and investments that Halston himself has made for me, so my money is working and not just sitting there like a stupid rich man's monument to bad planning. By the time I retire, I could support all three of us for the rest of our lives if that was what it took.

He could leave everything on the table.

I would build another table for us.

So why is he saying was?

The question moves through me cold and fast.

Is he grieving a plan he lost?

Or warning me that he’s already chosen a different one?

I make myself ask.

“And?”

His hand turns under mine.

“And then my grandfather started changing.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Creed