Page 339 of The Lies We Play

Halston looks at me, then at Creed.

“But I never forgot how much I loved you.” His voice is quieter now, almost too quiet. “No matter what they took, no matter what they told me, no matter how much of my own life they made me doubt, I always remembered that part of us. I didn’t have the names. I didn’t have the faces. I didn’t have the timeline. But I knew there was a place in me that belonged to someone. To two someones. I knew I was missing the only thing that had ever been mine.”

My knees almost give.

Creed reaches for me before I fall, and Halston reaches too, and for one second their hands meet at my waist.

That is what undoes me.

Their hands, both of them reaching for me at once.

Halston says, “I remember why we married.”

I can’t answer.

I can’t do anything except hold his hand and look at the face I’ve been carrying in a closed room inside myself since the accident.

“We married because we wanted to,” he says. “Not just for legal cover. We married because we had been three for two years, and we wanted to start a life while I helped my grandfather. We married because we were happy.”

My tears start again.

I don’t try to stop them.

There’s no point.

“Liv.”

“Yes.”

“We were happy.”

I nod. “We were happy.”

“And we’re going to be happy again.”

“Hal.”

“We are.” His voice gets firmer. Not false. Not bright. Just decided. “It’s going to take a long time. It’s going to take longer than I want it to. There will be lawyers and doctors and nightmares and days when one of us says the wrong thing and all three of us bleed from it. But we’re going to be happy again. The three of us. Do you hear me?”

I nod.

Creed doesn’t.

He looks like he wants to believe it and is afraid belief will punish him for showing up.

Halston sees that too.

Of course he does.

He turns to Creed.

“Would you give me a chance again?” he asks. His voice is raw now, stripped down to the part of him none of us gets often. “This time, I won’t fuck it up.”

Creed’s face breaks.

Not fully.

Enough.