Page 233 of The Lies We Play

The same knot.

The same wrist.

For a long moment, we hold them up to each other like proof.

This is something older and far less polite.

Ink beneath skin.

Choice beneath fear.

Love beneath all the years people tried to bury it.

Creed stares at my wrist, and his face changes in increments so small another person might miss them. I don't. His mouth parts. His eyes go bright. His jaw tightens, then releases, as if he has been bracing against this exact sight for ten years and still was not ready.

Neither am I.

Which is rude, honestly. I would have appreciated a calendar invite from my nervous system. Saturday: emotional annihilation, dress comfortably.

“We did that two days before the wedding,” he says. His voice is low, almost absent of air. “That afternoon at the place in the East Village.”

“Yes.”

“You went first because Hal was nervous. He wanted to see you do it before he sat down.”

I laugh.

It comes out wet and broken, but it is still a laugh.

“He was so dramatic about it,” I recall.

“He said pain didn’t bother him.”

“He lied.”

Creed’s mouth curves.

“He didn’t like that the guy kept looking at you,” Creed says.

Of course. Halston Saint Claire, allegedly terrified of needles, still capable of detecting a man admiring me from three feet away while pretending to be above primitive human emotion.

“He told me he was assessing the room,” I say.

“He was jealous.”

“He was always jealous.”

“So were you.” He says.

“I was reasonable.”

Creed gives me a look through the screen.

Fine.

I was not reasonable. I once rearranged an entire dinner seating chart because a woman from Hal’s charity board kept touching his arm, and I did it with a smile, a pencil, and the moral certainty of a dictator with excellent penmanship.

I hushed hockey fans away from Creed with the authority of a bodyguard.