Page 214 of The Lies We Play

Enough to tell him I am here while he says it.

“While Cornelius lives, I am going to take whatever position he needs me to take,” Halston says. “I am going to take the seat on the board. I am going to learn the foundation, the family holdings, the structure of the trusts. I am going to be inside that family for as long as he needs me, until he finds what his legacy can be. So when he dies, Constance and everyone else in my family don't tear everything apart.”

His voice doesn't break.

It would be easier if it broke.

A crack would give me somewhere to put my hands. A flinch would let me pull him close. Instead, he says it like a man reading terms he has already accepted and hates.

He looks at me.

“I probably will have to ask you and Liv,” he says, “to marry into that.”

The room changes.

“Because that is what marrying me would mean,” he continues. “They are going to see you. They are going to notice you. Then I am going to have to fight for my grandfather’s legacy, my own legacy, and protect you two from the Saint Claires.”

“Hal—”

“If I don't,” he says, and there is the edge. Not loud. Worse. “They are going to do to you what they have done to everyone, my family has decided was an obstacle to whatever they wanted. They are going to do it patiently. Over years. With money, lawyers, and small social arrangements that look like favors. They will be polite. They will be generous. They will make you grateful for the knife they carve you with.”

My hand tightens around his.

His gaze drops to our joined hands, then comes back to my face.

“I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to make sure they don't get away with it,” he says. “I am going to fail sometimes. I need you to know that. I need you to know what you would be marrying. I need you to know I have not asked yet, but I am going to ask, and I am asking you to know what the question really is before I ask it.”

He takes a breath.

It is the first breath that sounds like it costs him.

“I am also,” he says, “asking you to know that I would understand if the day I ask, the answer is no.”

My body goes cold.

Then he keeps going.

“But when you go, you need to take Liv with you.”

There it is.

The worst part.

Halston has built an exit for us inside his own proposal.

He has loved us enough to imagine losing us safely.

I don’t answer right away.

I don’t answer because if I answer too fast, he won’t believe me. Halston, after two and a half hours of telling me the worst things he has ever told anyone, needs the answer to arrive slowly enough that he can trust it.

So I let the silence do its work.

I stay with him inside it.

I keep his hand in mine.

Then I say, “Hal.”