Page 307 of The Lies We Play
I place my hand on his knee.
He looks down at it.
Then at me.
“I’m sorry for disrupting your life,” he says. “He just—”
“They disrupted our lives ten years ago,” I remind him. “This is coming back to you.”
His jaw works once.
“But what about Florence?” he asks. “Was there anyone . . .”
There it is.
The question neither of us wants to ask because the answer can hurt, no matter what it is.
“There was someone I tried to love,” I confessed.
Creed goes still.
I keep my hand on his knee.
“I couldn’t. Because my heart was already occupied by two men I wasn’t supposed to be waiting for.”
Creed looks away, fast.
Not to hide from me. Probably to survive the sentence.
“How about you?” I ask.
He raises his wrist and shows me the tattoo.
The trinity knot catches the low light inside the car.
Then he smiles, but it hurts more than it helps. “My soul was branded by yours and Hal’s so long ago, I didn’t have the will to even try.”
“Creed.”
“I’m not saying that to make you feel guilty.”
“I do feel guilty.”
“I know.” His voice softens. “But I’m not asking you to carry it.”
“I wish—”
“No, Liv.” He turns back to me. “We move forward, okay?”
Foreword.
Such a cruel, simple word.
As if forward doesn't contain ten years of missing rooms.
As if forward doesn't ask me to sit beside the man I loved and lost and love still, while the other man I loved and lost is somewhere I can’t reach yet.
As if forward is not the hardest direction in the world.
