Page 130 of The Lies We Play

Liv sees it.

Of course, she sees it.

Her gaze drops to that small contact, then returns to our faces. A microsecond. A quiet intake. The first understanding is that the night has not only changed because of her absence, but because something between us has moved while she was not in the room.

Her mouth trembles once, then steadies into something brave. Not a smile. Not quite.

“Did you kiss him?” she asks.

The question is soft, but not frightened.

Halston’s body goes very quiet beside mine.

I look at him.

He looks at me.

There are ways to answer that. There are ways to make it less than it was. There are ways to pretend this is too new to say out loud, that naming it might put pressure on something still learning how to breathe.

None of those ways belong to us.

“Yes,” I say.

“Oh,” she says, and the word comes out with a smile tucked inside it. “Good.”

Halston leans toward the phone, voice low. “Not instead of you.”

“I know,” she whispers. “Actually, I’m glad that finally happened. I was beginning to think that it may not be at all, which worried me.”

I lift our joined hands and press my mouth to his knuckles, where Liv can see. “We were waiting for the right time.”

“You always do,” she states.

Halston’s thumb moves once against mine. “Not everyone is impulsive, baby.”

“I seize the day,” she argues.

“You interrogate the day,” I say. “Then you reorganize it.”

“That is not the point.”

“It is frequently the point,” Halston says.

Liv narrows her eyes at both of us through the screen. “I am being emotionally supportive, and you are both attacking my process.”

“You asked whether we kissed,” I remind her.

“Because I support kissing,” she says, then lifts her chin. “I am very progressive.”

Halston’s mouth curves. “A visionary.”

“Exactly.”

The laughter that moves through me is quiet, but it loosens something I didn’t know I was holding.

Liv looks at our hands again, at Halston’s fingers against mine, at my mouth still close to his knuckles.

Her smile softens.