Page 304 of The Lies We Play

“I’m exactly the same height.”

“You were taller in my head.”

“In your head, I was a foot taller and made of bronze.”

“Titanium and diamonds and anything indestructible,” he corrects me.

His mouth almost smiles.

Mine does the same.

Then he takes one hand out of his pocket.

He doesn’t reach for me. He only lets the hand exist between us at his side, palm half-open, the trinity knot on the inside of his wrist exposed where the coat sleeve has ridden up.

The sight of it hits harder than I expect.

Ten years, and it is still there.

Ink under skin.

Proof I didn’t dream every promise we were too young to survive.

I touch it.

Just the tattoo. Just the inside of his wrist, two fingers where the line of the knot meets the softer skin under his palm.

Creed goes very still.

“It’s still there,” I say.

His voice changes. “It’s been there the whole time.”

He turns his hand so mine rests inside it.

Not a grip.

Not quite a hold.

His palm beneath mine. The tattoo under my fingertips. His thumb finds the inside of my wrist, where my own knot lives, and presses there once.

He doesn’t look down.

He doesn’t have to.

He has had this knot memorized since he was twenty-five.

Bella doesn’t tremble.

Bella, who trembled across the Atlantic, who trembles when I have to speak Italian to the institute switchboard, who trembles when Sofia tells me a tomato sauce has not been cooking long enough, goes completely still under his thumb.

Creed’s eyes lift.

“There you are,” he says, opening his arms.

I have not heard those words in his voice in ten years.

I step into him.