Page 82 of The Lies We Play

I press my hand over my eyes.

“Creed.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know who to trust.”

“Then start with me.”

The answer leaves my mouth before strategy can improve it.

I should say, lawyer. I should say write everything down. I should say: don't call me from a traceable line; don't go back to sleep; don't speak to Everett, Margaret, your stepmother, anyone with the Saint Claire name; or a key to your medication cabinet. I should say a thousand useful things.

He breathes.

In.

Out.

Then, “But they said I was drunk.”

My hand closes around the quarter so hard the ridges bite into my palm.

“No.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you.”

“I don’t know me.”

The sentence comes apart at the end.

For a moment, I am back in that apartment. Legal pads on the table. Livia in my sweatshirt. Halston looked at me with the kind of tenderness that—no. No. Halston looked at me with a tenderness that made me want to run and stay until death. I remember his hand on my neck. I remember the way he said ‘never.’ I remember trusting that word like an idiot because some part of me thought love, once named, became indestructible.

I swallow.

“You weren’t drunk, Hal.”

“How do you⁠—”

“Because I would know, babe. I would’ve known, and I would’ve helped you,” I assure him. “I knew the man I love better than I knew myself.”

There is a beat. He is doing math on the other end. Working out what I would know means. He has not quite arrived at it because we lived together, because you would have told me. After all we were three people in a kitchen with legal pads and tab colors and you don't drive drunk past the people who love you. He is not there yet.

But his body knows. His body has been knowing.

“You’re going to write this down,” I say. “Everything you remember. Everything they told you. Everything that feels wrong.”

“I have been.”

Of course, he has.

A laugh almost breaks through the pain.

Of course, Halston built himself an archive while trapped inside his own life.

“Good,” I say. “Keep it hidden.”