Page 205 of The Lies We Play

“She said, ‘Halston, your grandfather will die soon, and the foundation is going to need leadership it can rely on, and your mother would have wanted you to be the leader.’ In front of at least two trustees who knew my mother personally. She said it with that small, concerned face she has practiced for years.”

“Your grandfather is seventy-five.” I shake my head. “He won’t die any time soon.”

He shrugs because Hal believes that the men in his family don’t live long. His father died seven years ago. His uncle died young too. It’s a thing in the Saint Claire family. Back luck, bad health, bad . . . something.

“The point is that they’re pressuring me.”

I go very still.

Not because I don’t know what to say.

Because I know what I want to say, and it would involve Constance Saint Claire hearing my opinion at a volume the boardroom acoustics were not designed to handle. She’s a cruel woman who gets a kick out of abusing everyone around her, including Hal.

Halston watches my face.

A part of him, even now, is braced to manage my reaction.

That makes me angrier.

“She said ‘your mother,’” he says, disgust riding under each word. “She almost never acknowledges that there was a woman before her who gave birth to me. Today, she said ‘your mother’ twice. She said it like a woman invoking scripture. She said it like she had a fucking right.”

“Hal.”

He looks at me.

The name does something to him. It always does when I say it softly. Not because it fixes anything. It reminds him, I think, that he doesn't have to stand at attention in this apartment.

“Would you like to talk about your mom?” I ask.

He lets out a breath that almost becomes a laugh and fails.

“I haven’t told you about my mother.”

“I know.”

“Liv has asked me twice,” he says. “I have given her the version that is a paragraph long. You have not asked me.”

“I was waiting.”

“For?”

“For you to be ready to tell me.”

He looks at me for a long beat.

This is where Halston usually steps sideways. A joke with a blade in it. A legal distinction. A kiss meant to end the conversation without insulting it. He is very good at escaping with elegance.

Tonight, he doesn't escape.

“I’m ready,” he says.

We move to the couch. I bring the bottle. I bring my own glass of water. I try not to drink during the season.

He sits first.

I sit beside him, close enough that our knees touch.

The fireplace is off tonight, but the city lights make a low glow along the windowpane. Rain threads down the pane in thin silver lines. The apartment feels warmer than it did five minutes ago, not because the air has changed, but because Halston has taken off the boardroom face and let the room see what is under it.