Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Creed
Then . . .
I wake up at noon in Halston’s bed in Chelsea on a Sunday in June, with my whole body reminding me I'm not immortal.
For about three seconds, I don’t know where I am.
Then the light hits me.
White June light through expensive curtains. My mouth tastes like champagne and sweat and something sweeter I don’t let myself name while Halston is still asleep beside me.
Liv isn’t here. She’s in Europe with her mother. The trip was a promise her parents made if she kept her grades up during her first year of college, and Liv kept them up because Liv keeps promises like they’re load-bearing walls.
She is independent in every way that matters until it comes to them. Only child. Miracle baby. Born to parents who had her at forty-five and still look at her as if the world might ask for a refund if she stops being perfect for one second too long.
So she follows the rules.
Most of them.
College first. Family first. No dating.
Definitely, no dating a professional hockey player and his boyfriend, who just finished his second year of law school and has the emotional effect of a locked evidence room.
We don’t fight her about it.
That is the official position.
The unofficial position is that Halston once said, very calmly, while pouring coffee into a travel mug at six in the morning, that if her parents disowned her for having one boyfriend—or two—he would pay for every remaining credit, every apartment, every book, every meal, every damn thing until she never had to ask them for a cent again.
He said it like he was discussing a filing deadline.
Liv threw a bagel at him.
I fell a little more in love with both of them, which was inconvenient, since I had practice in two hours and no emotional bandwidth for revelations before eight a.m.
Today, though, Halston is asleep beside me.
He is on his stomach with one arm tucked under the pillow and the other thrown across my chest, where it has been since we got into bed at four am after the after-party at the team owner’s house in Tribeca.
His fingers are loose against my ribs. His face is turned toward me, half-hidden by the pillow, dark hair fallen forward, mouth soft in a way he never lets it be when he is awake.
I don’t move.
There are men who sleep like they trust the room.
Halston doesn't.
Even like this, bare shoulder out from under the sheet, his body has a readiness to it. Watchful in rest. Built for consequence. He stalks through life more than walks, as if every hallway might require an exit strategy and every person might become a liability.
I stare at the ceiling and remember.
We won the Cup.
Game six. Madison Square Garden.
The words are too big to fit inside the room.
I had two assists in the third period and one goal. I was on the ice when the horn went off. I was on the ice when the captain raised the trophy. I had my picture taken with the Cup over my head while my parents stood in the front row.
I don’t remember the last hour and a half of last night.
I remember enough.
I remember the locker room, champagne spraying cold down my neck, guys screaming until their voices broke, gloves and tape and towels on the floor.
I remember someone putting the Cup in my hands, and for a second, I had no idea what to do with it.
I’d spent my whole life chasing it. Then it was there, dented and silver and real, and all I could think was: I wish Liv could touch it.
I wish Halston would stop standing three feet away like wanting something made him guilty.
I remember the owner’s house in Tribeca. Too much glass. Too many people. Music vibrating through my bones. Men I’d never met were clapping my shoulder hard enough to find the bruises from the third period.
Proud.
He never looks proud loudly. With Halston, pride is in the details.
His eyes tracking me when someone mentions the goal.
His thumb brushes the mouth of his beer bottle when I laugh too hard.
The slight shift of his body when a drunk sponsor gets too close to my injured side.
Protective without performance. Possessive without asking for credit.
Liv was on my phone for part of it, her face pixelated from some hotel room in Rome or Florence or somewhere with old stone and bad Wi-Fi. She had wet hair and a hotel robe and kept saying, “I’m not crying, the connection is just deeply unsupportive of my dignity.”
I told her I loved her.
I think I told her three times.
I hope I did.
Then later, the memory changes texture. Halston’s apartment.
The elevator closing behind us. His hand at the back of my neck.
Neither of us speaking because words would have made the night too fragile.
My jersey on him. My suit jacket is somewhere near the door.
My body sore in that specific exhausted-celebratory way of a body that has been hit twice in the third period, drenched in champagne, photographed, hugged, shaken, praised, and then touched by the one man who knows exactly where not to press.
I remember him in bed, above me, with his shirt off.
That small, concentrated face he gets when he is doing something for me that requires his full attention. Halston can make tenderness look like a legal strategy. All focus. No wasted motion. As if pleasure is a problem he plans to solve either correctly or not at all.
I remember his mouth on my shoulder.
The sound he made there.
I remember his mouth moving lower.
The heat of it. The focus. The way Halston went quiet when he wanted to take me apart, as if making me lose control required the same attention he gave a closing argument.
I remember my hand in his hair and the brutal, embarrassing speed of my own surrender.
I remember not lasting as long as I usually do, which would bother me if he hadn’t looked at me afterward like I had given him something rare and dangerous.
Like my body giving out from want wasn’t failure.
Like it was proof.
My face gets hot now, along with the memory and the noon light and his arm across me.
That’s ridiculous.
I won the Cup last night.
I should be thinking about the parade. My parents. The team. The ring. The image of the captain lifting silver over his head while twenty thousand people lost their minds.
Instead, I am thinking about Halston’s mouth.
About Liv’s voice through a screen.
About the fact that everything I wanted most last night was split between two people who weren’t both in the room.
I turn my head carefully, just enough to look at him.
Halston’s lashes rest against his cheek. There is a faint mark low on his neck where I put my mouth and forgot to be careful. He’ll be annoyed when he sees it. He’ll say something dry about evidentiary negligence. He’ll button his shirt too high for two days. He’ll let me see it anyway.
My hand lifts before I decide to move.
I stop an inch from his hair.
This is always where it gets me. The pause before touching.
The small permission that no one else sees.
Halston gives me his body with more trust than he gives me his thoughts.
Liv gives me her thoughts so fast and furious that I sometimes have to catch them with both hands, then guard the soft places beneath them until she’s shaking from the effort.
I love them differently.
I love them the same amount.
That should scare me.
It fucking does.
Halston’s fingers flex once against my chest.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he mutters into the pillow.
My breath catches, then I laugh under it. “You’re asleep.”
“No.”
“You were.”
“I was monitoring.”
“You were drooling.”
His eyes open.
Not fully. Just enough to let me know he heard, judged, and filed that statement for later retaliation.
“I don’t drool,” he says.
“You absolutely do.”
“I object.”
“Sustained, because I’m feeling generous.”
His mouth moves against the pillow. Almost a smile. With Halston, almost is an event.
Then his gaze clears enough to find mine.
The room goes quiet again, but this silence is different. Less empty. More alive. His gaze drops to my mouth, then comes back up. The air between us warms by degrees. Not sudden. Not dramatic. Just enough for my body to remember his, and his to remember mine.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
Both of us look.
Once.
Neither of us moves.
It buzzes again.
Halston’s mouth curves slightly. “If that’s Liv and we ignore her, she’ll assume we died.”
“She’ll assume you killed me.”
“She’d ask why I did it before calling emergency services.”
“She’d ask for documentation.”
“She’d correct my grammar in the confession.”
I laugh, and this time it feels less like avoidance. More like the three of us in the room at once, even with an ocean between us.
I reach for the phone.
Liv’s name fills the screen.
A video call.
Of course.
My chest does something stupid and painful.
Halston watches me, his face unreadable except for the softness he never quite manages to hide when it comes to her.
I answer.
Liv appears sideways at first, all dark hair and one irritated eye, then the image rights itself. She is in a hotel bed in what looks like a T-shirt stolen from me, though I have no idea when she took it.
“Hi,” she whispers. “I have exactly ten minutes before my mother returns from a pastry-based reconnaissance mission and asks why I look emotionally compromised.”
Halston says, “You always look emotionally compromised.”
“I’m an empath with a need-to-fix-things addiction. It’s a medical diagnosis.”
I smile before I can stop myself.
Her eyes move over my face, then Halston’s bare shoulder, then the sheet, then back to me. The humor softens. For a second, she is quiet.
“I wish you were here,” I say.
The words come out rawer than I intend.
Her lips part.
Halston’s hand settles against my stomach under the sheet. Present. Warm. Not asking me to pull it back.
Liv looks between us, and the entire morning shifts.
There is her realization. There is mine. There is Halston’s choice not to disappear from the frame.
“I know,” she says quietly.
“I watched the whole game. You were great,” she adds. “Hal held the phone like a lunatic. Very committed. Mildly terrifying. Ten out of ten for camera stability.”
“He was nervous,” I say.
Halston’s eyes cut to me. “I was not.”
Liv tilts her head. “You sent me a text that said, and I quote, ‘If he gets hit again, I’m going through the glass.’”
“That was a legal hypothetical,” Halston says.
“You’re not licensed yet.”
“Then it was a personal statement.”
The laugh that comes out of me hurts.
Liv smiles, but it fades too fast.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” she says.
I hate that she apologizes.
I hate it so much I almost sit up.
“Don’t.”
“No, I know. I just—” She stops, and I see her glance toward the door of her hotel room. Her voice drops. “I wanted to be. That’s all.”
The ache opens again, but this time it doesn’t feel lonely. It has Halston’s hand on me and Liv’s face on the screen. It has all three of us looking at the same truth from different rooms.
“We know,” Halston says.
She looks at him.
Something passes between them, quiet and private and so full of feeling I have to breathe through it.
Then Liv’s mouth twists.
“You’re both shirtless, aren’t you?”
Halston doesn't blink. “That’s an invasive question.”
“That’s a yes.”
“It’s an unsupported conclusion.”
“I am pre-law adjacent by emotional osmosis. I know things.” She says.
“You know nothing,” he says.
“I know Creed has that post-sex face.”
I choke.
Halston closes his eyes.
Liv looks pleased with herself for exactly one second before her own face goes pink.
There she is. Brilliant, exhausted, brave, hiding behind ridiculousness because wanting us both from a hotel room in Europe is too much to say without making it a joke first.
I bring the phone closer.
Her gaze finds mine.
“Liv.”
Her smile falters.
I want to say it again. ‘I love you. I wish you were here. I want you in this bed with us, between us, over us, bossing us around while pretending you aren’t shaking. I want to walk into a room with both of you and not have to calculate who sees which part of my face first.’
Instead, I say, “Four minutes isn’t enough.”
Her eyes go soft.
“No,” she says. “It’s not.”
Halston’s hand moves on me again, and his shoulder brushes mine as he shifts closer into the frame. Not much. Enough.
Liv sees it.
Her breath catches.
I watch her understand what it costs him.
She swallows, then smiles in that trembly, stubborn way that always makes me want to buy her a plane ticket and start a fight with every rule she’s still obeying.
“My mom is coming back,” she whispers.
“Okay,” I say.
“I love you,” she says, fast, like she has to send it before the connection drops or courage fails. “Both of you. I love you both. I’m very irritated about it, actually, because it’s logistically inconvenient and I have a museum tour in twenty-five minutes.”
Halston’s fingers press into my skin.
I answer first because if I wait, I might not be able to speak. “I love you too.”
Halston looks at the screen.
His face gives nothing away, except to us.
“Love you, baby,” he says. “I miss you, and if you allow it, we can catch up with you. Say the word, and we’ll be there tomorrow morning.”
Liv’s eyes fill, and she shakes her head. “You’re always too good to me.”
Then she is gone.
The call ends, and the room returns with a cruel little click.
For a while, neither of us speaks.
The phone lies warm in my hand. Halston’s arm is still across me. The sheets smell like us. The day outside is bright enough to hurt.
I should feel split open.
Instead, for one strange second, I feel calm.
Halston lowers his forehead to my shoulder.
I turn into him.
We lie there in the aftermath of everything—Cup, confession, absence, wanting—with no one watching and nothing fixed.
Still, his hand stays on me.
Still, my phone holds her last words.
Still, the bed feels less empty than the world wants it to be.
I won the Cup last night.
This morning is the part I’ll remember.