Page 328 of The Lies We Play

Everett doesn’t sit down.

“They want your money, Halston. They want what’s yours. They have come back into your life ten years after you almost died because they want what your grandfather built and what your father held and what is sitting in trusts in your name. She’s not your wife, and that man with her is using her to get to your name and money. They are not your family. They are people who saw an opportunity in a man with a broken memory and took advantage of it.”

Halston is very still.

I can see the back of his neck from where I’m sitting.

All the color has drained from it.

The room feels airless, like every person in it is waiting for the wrong thing to break.

Judge Reyes says, “I am giving you both one warning.”

Constance ignores her.

“Halston. Your grandfather’s legacy is yours. It has always been yours. Every member of this family has spent the last ten years making sure you woke up to a life you could still live. We have carried you. And these two people have come to take that away and call themselves your spouses while they do it. Look at me. Look at your mother.”

The word mother hits wrong.

It doesn’t belong to her.

It never did.

Liv’s head turns a quarter inch toward Halston.

Halston still hasn’t looked up.

But his hands are flat on the table now, palms down, and his shoulders have changed.

I have seen this set of shoulders one time in my life.

I don’t let myself name where.

Not yet.

Constance keeps going. She’s past the legal proceedings now. Past the judge. She has spent ten years rehearsing this in her head, and she won’t be stopped because she hasn’t understood yet that nobody in this room is going to save her from herself.

“Halston. You are a Saint Claire. You are the heir. You are the man your grandfather chose. These people want to take everything Cornelius built and hand it to a woman who left you for a decade and a man your contracts won’t even let you be photographed with. They want to exploit you. They want to⁠—”

Halston says, “Stop.”

Chapter Forty-Five

Halston

Then . . .

Liv has been watching the side mirror.

I check mine.

Two sets of headlights, four cars back, holding the same distance they’ve been holding since we hit the parkway.

“Hal.”

“I see them.”

“They’ve been⁠—”