Page 64 of The Lies We Play

Florence in the morning is indecently beautiful. It doesn't ease you into itself. It simply exists, golden and impossible, until you either surrender or become bitter enough to move to Milan. The streets are narrow, the light is theatrical, and every corner looks as if a painter once stood there and decided reality needed better lighting.

I weave through traffic with my scarf tucked under my coat, the air cool against my cheeks, my mind trying very hard not to circle back to the dream.

It does anyway.

Yeah?

Creed’s voice moves through me again. Rough with sleep. Familiar in a way that feels indecent after all this time. As if I had called him and some part of him had been waiting. As if he would answer me from across the years with something close to, Where are you?

Which is absurd.

I know better.

I have built an entire life on knowing better.

Creed didn’t come when the accident happened. He didn’t call. He didn’t send some polished Lafontaine solution with lawyers, doctors, first-class flight tickets, and an apology disguised as logistics. Maybe he only ever cared because Halston cared. Maybe I was a complication, or an indulgence, or entertainment for a bored hockey player with too much money and an appetite for impossible things.

Maybe I am overthinking this.

Which would be shocking and entirely off-brand for me.

I should forget about him.

Them.

My fingers tighten around the handlebars.

For years, I have waited for divorce papers to arrive with my morning mail. Some elegant envelope. Some expensive stationery. A note from an attorney saying, with perfect professionalism, that Halston Wolfe Saint Claire no longer requires the inconvenience of a wife he has not touched, spoken to, or chosen in a decade.

Sorry, Livia. He survived. He moved on. Please sign here.

It would be almost merciful.

Humiliating, yes. Devastating, obviously. But clean.

Instead, there is nothing. Just the knowledge that Halston is alive. That he found his way back into the Saint Claire businesses. That he returned to the world without returning to me.

I saw the article years ago. Accidentally, which is what cowards call it when they search a name and then act surprised by the consequences. There he was in a dark suit, face leaner, eyes colder, body held like restraint had become a religion.

He looked powerful.

Untouchable.

Perfectly restored to a life that had apparently made room for everything except his wife.

I should be grateful.

Isn’t that what love is supposed to be at its most selfless? Wishing someone alive even if they don't come back for you?

Bruno wobbles.

“Not helpful, Bruno.”

A taxi honks.

I mutter something in English that would disappoint several ancestors and continue toward the institute.

Moises is waiting outside the café two blocks from Bianchi Conservation, leaning against the stone wall with two coffees in hand, dark hair pushed back, camel coat open over a gray sweater. He looks like a man women in travel essays meet by accident and then describe as quietly devastating for fourteen pages.