Page 296 of The Lies We Play

“You came,” he says into my hair.

“I did.”

His breath moves once, uneven.

Then he lets me go, but only enough to see my face.

“Sit down.” He motions to the bench. “You look like a man who has been awake for three days.”

“That is the diagnosis, yes.”

It is not the full truth. It has been years since I could sleep as if sleep were a place where nothing could find me. The difference between then and now is that now I am anxious about the future. Back then, I had no idea who the fuck I was or whether there was any future to be anxious about.

Creed’s mouth moves.

The laugh almost gives me a memory, too.

It doesn’t.

I sit on the edge of the couch because my legs don't trust themselves yet. Creed stays near the bench, close enough to reach, far enough to let me choose.

“How long do we have?” I ask, folding my hands together because if I don’t, they will give too much away.

“Fifteen minutes,” he says. He glances toward the door. “Coach knows you’re here. He gave me the room.”

“That was kind of him.”

Creed looks down at the tape around his hand and pulls at the end with his teeth before smoothing it down. “He knows how much everything fucked me up.” He pauses, jaw shifting once. “He’s one of the few who knows any of it.”

“Was it bad for you?”

The question leaves me before I can make it safer.

He scoffs, but there is no humor in it. “I lost the two people I love most in the world.”

His lips press together, and the sadness on them makes guilt move through me so fast I almost speak just to stop feeling it. Something in me insists I could have stopped it.

Creed sees it.

“It’s nothing you did.”

“My family⁠—”

“They’re dangerous, and we underestimated them,” he says, cutting in. “If I knew then what we know now⁠—”

He stops.

The unfinished sentence sits between us.

I don’t make him finish it.

“After everything I’ve learned, I don’t understand why they haven’t killed me,” I say honestly.

Creed looks at me.

I hear what I have said after I say it. The bluntness. The lack of drama. The awful logic of it.

After everything I have learned from the lawyer, it’s not unreasonable. There is surveillance on me. The moment they petition to revoke my conservatorship because I have a wife, things could get ugly. I am leaving the apartment tomorrow for a safe location. They don’t know yet if Creed or Livia will join me. Those details will be discussed later, which is another way of saying everyone is trying to keep the people I love alive while pretending logistics can calm terror.