Page 334 of The Lies We Play

Then the slope of the embankment where the trees have been waiting the whole time, patient, indifferent, exactly where the road map said they would be.

Then the sound of metal crunching.

Then—

A bar with a number nineteen jersey on a woman who has decided to be suspicious of me.

Creed’s mouth on mine in a hotel on New Year’s.

A courthouse in February, and a clerk named Gloria and a vow about never leaving the room.

Liv’s hand on our wedding certificate, her voice saying, ‘He is not decorative.’

Three trinity knots, all of them new, lined up on a kitchen counter at three in the morning.

I am the man.

I was running.

I was running because I didn’t want the money.

I was running because Cornelius’s legacy was the price they were going to make us pay.

I was running because the only thing in the world I couldn’t afford to lose was sitting in the passenger seat with her hand on my thigh and a man on the speaker saying my name.

I was running toward Creed.

I was running toward a plane.

I was running toward a country where the three of us could be the three of us.

I was running.

I was running.

I was . . .

I fucked it up.

Chapter Forty-Six

Livia

Now . . .

Halston hasn’t let go of my hand since we got in the car at the courthouse.

It has been an hour and forty minutes.

I’ve been counting because counting is the only thing my brain knows how to do right now.

I can’t make tea. I can’t make any hot drink, actually, which feels criminally useless because my entire personality was built on solving emotional emergencies with warm beverages and a labeled plan. I can’t make conversation. I can’t make decisions about whether Hal needs a blanket, a glass of water, or to be left completely alone, because Halston Wolfe Saint Claire has had his entire life given back to him at a speed the human nervous system was never meant to absorb.

So I sit beside him.

I let him hold my hand.

That’s what I have.