Page 322 of The Lies We Play

I close my eyes because closing my eyes is the only thing my body has not turned traitor over, and beneath my eyelids, something begins to move.

Quietly.

Carefully.

Her hand has been here before.

Her hand has been here many times before.

In the dark. In the morning. In a kitchen. In the back of a car. On the floor of an apartment. Her hand has been here, and her hand belongs here, and some part of me has been waiting for this pressure to return.

I open my eyes.

I am crying.

I don’t realize it until I see her face blur.

Livia is crying too, and her hand has not moved from my chest.

Behind her, in the doorway, Creed has not moved either.

I look at him over the top of her head.

His face is wet.

I lift my chin.

I do not say anything.

Creed crosses the kitchen in three steps and stops a foot behind Livia. His hand comes over her shoulder and settles on the back of my neck, under my hair, with the exact pressure he used in the locker room when he kissed me like he was trying to return me to myself one breath at a time.

My body remembers that too.

Creed’s hand on my neck.

Livia’s palm on my chest.

Being held this way by both of them in places I can’t name.

We stand like that.

I do not know for how long.

Livia looks up at me, her hand still over my heart. “You’re an amazing man.”

I flinch.

Not because she hurts me.

Because I do not know how to receive that sentence while standing inside the wreckage of what my family made me believe.

She sees it.

Of course, she sees it.

“You are my Hal,” she says, more firmly now. “You might have changed. They might have taken pieces of your memory and taught you to doubt the rest. But I still see you.”

Her voice shakes.