Page 239 of The Lies We Play

He opens his arms.

I walk into them.

He lifts me.

Not high. Not dramatic. Just enough that my feet leave the floor and my face presses into the warm side of his neck. His coat smells like winter, expensive wool, and Halston underneath it. Clean skin. Cedar. I close my eyes and hold on too hard.

His arms tighten around me.

One second.

Two.

Long enough for him to tell me without words that the space didn't close.

Long enough for me to believe him.

“Hi, baby,” he says into my hair.

My breath leaves me in something that is almost a laugh and almost not.

“Hi.”

He sets me down, but he doesn't step away. His eyes do the careful pass over my face that he does after travel, after long days, after foundation meetings, after any stretch of time when he has had to trust the world to return me to him intact.

“How are you?” he asks.

“Tired. Glad I’m back, but don’t ask me anything else until I am clean.”

His mouth curves. “Define clean.”

“Bathed. Out of these clothes. Plane smells gone. On our comfortable couch.”

“Done.”

He takes the suitcase handle from me.

“Halston.”

“Liv.”

“I can carry my own suitcase.”

“I know.”

He keeps walking with it anyway.

I let him because I am tired, and because he needs to carry something, and because there are forms of care I have learned not to slap out of his hand just because I am afraid I might start needing them.

Aren, the driver, is waiting at the curb.

He opens the door without comment, and I slide into the back of the car. Halston follows, hands Arden the bag, then gets in beside me. The partition is already up. The radio is off. The city outside is a blur of headlights, wet pavement, and people who have no idea I am currently one emotion away from becoming a public incident.

For three seconds, neither of us speaks.

Then Halston reaches for my seat belt.

“I can⁠—”