Page 218 of The Lies We Play

Maybe, finally, believed.

“The Saint Claires will not make this easy,” he says.

“No.”

“They will try to make you regret me.”

“They can try.”

“They will try to make Liv feel small.”

I smile then, not because it is funny.

Because it is Liv.

“Good luck to them.”

That gets a real laugh out of him.

Small.

Broken at the edges.

Mine.

I hold his face between my hands.

“They don’t get to decide what we can survive,” I say.

He looks at me for a long time.

Then he nods once.

A verdict.

A vow without the word.

A beginning of the harder life he thinks he has to warn us away from, and the only life I want if he and Liv are in it.

“Okay,” he says.

I kiss him again.

And this time, when he leans into me, he doesn't apologize for needing somewhere to land.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Creed

Then . . .

Liv answers on the first ring.

Her beautiful, sleepy face fills the screen, hair loose around her cheeks, one eye half-closed like she answered before her body fully agreed to consciousness. For one second, she glares at me.

Then she frowns.

“Are you okay?”