Page 102 of The Lies We Play

Liv: What is the whole truth?

Halston: I sleep better when I know where you are. Both of you.

Creed: Fuck.

Liv: That was unfair.

Creed: January, then. We talk about it after the holidays.

Liv: We talk.

Halston: We talk.

Liv: For the record, I still think “move into my place temporarily” is a wild thing to drop into a group chat.

Creed: It was very Saint Claire.

Halston: It was practical.

Liv: It was a love confession wearing a floor plan.

Creed: That’s exactly what it was.

Halston: I’m leaving this conversation.

Liv: No, you’re not.

Creed: He’s not.

Halston: I'm not.

Chapter Fourteen

Livia

Now . . .

In the end, I didn't make the call.

After hours, the institute forgets how to pretend.

During the day, Bianchi Conservation is discipline and murmurs, linen gloves and angled lamps, the careful choreography of people entrusted with beautiful things that have already survived worse than us. We speak softly around cracked varnish and exposed canvas. We move as if a single gesture might injure the past. We make jokes about donors and customs forms and the ancient elevator that groans like it has been personally offended by every century it has endured.

At night, the building becomes honest—maybe even haunted.

The old windows let in a thin draft that smells like rain, stone, and the restaurants close by frying garlic for people with normal appetites and functioning emotional boundaries. The lights hum. Somewhere deep in the archive, a printer clicks itself awake and then gives up, which is the most relatable thing anyone has done all day.

I am alone in my studio with Halston Wolfe Saint Claire’s signature.

There are things a woman should not have to face after hours, especially when she has had too much coffee, too little sleep, and exactly no emotional preparation for the dead—or almost dead, or formerly dead, or whatever category Halston now occupies—to start signing paperwork in the present tense.

The folder sits open beneath my lamp. The paper is still too expensive. The letterhead still looks like a threat in formal wear. The amended access protocol lies on top, its eight signatures aligned at the bottom like a jury that voted before hearing evidence.

I'm not looking at it because I miss him.

Obviously.

I am looking because something about it bothers me. Professionally. Academically. In the detached, scholarly manner of a woman whose pulse is behaving like it has just seen a ghost in a tailored suit.