Page 60 of The Lies We Play

Chapter Ten

Livia

Now . . .

The dream leaves me with Creed’s voice in my ear and my left hand shaking like it knows something I don’t.

Which is rude.

If my body is going to keep secrets from me, the least it could do is provide subtitles. Maybe a tasteful lower-third graphic. Previously on Livia Sabine Crane’s Nervous System: two men ruined her life, one tremor moved in, and no one has explained why her heart still answers to names she refuses to say out loud.

I lie beneath the linen sheet in my apartment in Florence, rigid as a corpse with excellent skincare, staring at the ceiling while dawn nudges pale blue light through the shutters. Outside, a scooter coughs itself awake. A delivery truck grumbles over stones old enough to have witnessed worse decisions than mine, though probably not with this much narrative commitment. Somewhere nearby, a church bell rings once, then again, as if God also keeps office hours and would like me to begin my emotional unraveling promptly.

My left hand trembles against my stomach.

Not dramatically. Bella doesn't believe in drama before coffee. She prefers persistence. A small, judgmental shiver through my fingers and wrist, as if some invisible woman in sensible shoes has arrived with a list of concerns about my neurological compliance.

“Good morning to you too,” I whisper.

My hand keeps going.

“Lovely. We’re doing this today.”

Technically, Bella is not my left hand. Technically, Bella is the tremor that started after the accident and moved in like a tenant with no references and excellent legal protection.

Technically, naming a neurological symptom is not a coping mechanism recommended by any medical professional I have personally paid. However, one therapist did once say, If humor helps you create distance from trauma, that can be useful, which I immediately interpreted as permission to turn my damaged nerves into a woman named Isabella. Bella, for short. A woman who disapproves of my posture, my sleep habits, and every man I almost loved.

Especially the ones who still have rooms inside me.

I close my eyes, which is a mistake. The dark behind them is not empty. It has a voice in it.

Yeah?

One word. Barely that. More breath than language. Rough. Low. Impatient in the way only a man can be when he thinks longing is a thing he can order to sit down and behave.

It was not Moises.

It was not Italian.

It was not a stranger.

It was Creed.

My left hand curls into the sheet, obedient and quiet and frankly smug about it. That hand has always been better at pretending. After the accident, it became the one everyone watched. The visible damage. The measurable problem. Doctors could track it, test it, nod over it with grave little faces while my parents sat beside my bed, acting as if their daughter was not becoming someone else in front of them. Someone slower. Someone breakable. Someone inconveniently alive.

Bella came later.

Bella came after the flowers died and the hospital room emptied. After everyone stopped using words like “miracle” and started saying practical things like “long-term management.” After I realized survival didn’t come with a map, a refund, or a guarantee that the people you loved would still know where to put their hands when they reached for you.

Today, apparently, she has opinions about dreams.

“Noted,” I tell her, then push myself upright before my mind can do something reckless like remember.

Remembering is not a door. It is a trap.

One second, I am in Florence, in my too-small apartment with its old plaster walls and unreliable hot water and a coffee machine I bought because it was red and cheerful and I was trying to become a person who bought cheerful things. Next, I am nineteen again, or twenty-one, or whatever age I was when I still believed love could be survived intact if everyone wanted it badly enough.

Creed’s voice.