Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Halston
Now . . .
The first thing I notice is the lipstick.
Not my stepmother’s face. Not the car idling at the curb like a verdict in leather seats. Not the driver pretending he is not here to report every breath I take back to people who call it concern when they mean surveillance.
The lipstick.
Red. Precise. Reapplied.
The shade she wears when she is about to step into a room full of donors and become the tragic, elegant mother figure of a recovering man. The woman who never raised her voice, never failed in public, never let anyone see the places where our family rotted beneath marble and money.
She turns when I open the door, her earrings glinting beneath the soft sweep of her hair. New earrings. Pearls this time. Understated, expensive, Saint Claire-adjacent. Perfect for breakfast with people who enjoy writing checks after hearing about resilience over poached eggs and hollandaise.
“There you are,” she says, with the small smile she has practiced for years in mirrors I avoid now.
Mirrors are a problem.
Not because I hate my face. I’ve done worse things than hate myself.
Hating yourself is amateur hour. I am a professional.
I can look at my reflection and conduct a full forensic examination for relapse, weakness, damage, tremor, want, and every other crime my body has committed against the family name.
“I was starting to—”
“I’ll meet you at breakfast.”
Her smile pauses.
It doesn't fall. She is too good for that. It simply waits, suspended between concern and correction.
“You’re going?”
“I said I would rest.” My hand stays on the doorframe. One more second, and she will notice I am holding myself too carefully. One more second and she will turn concern into custody. “I rested. I changed my mind.”
I clear my throat.
Fuck, that sounds weak.
I try again. “I’ll take my own car.”
She lifts one manicured hand, a flutter of diamonds and maternal theater. “Don’t be silly. We can share a ride.”
She studies me.
That is the part I hate most. Not the questions. Not the soft voice. The studying. The way she looks at me as if I were still a report she has not finished reading. As if my body belongs to the family archive, filed somewhere between scandal and recovery.
I have spent ten years learning how to disappear while standing directly in front of people.
The trick is not to give them nothing. Nothing makes them curious. Nothing makes them dig.
You give them something familiar.
Tired, then.
I let my face become tired.
It is not difficult. I have been tired for so long that it should have its own room in the apartment. Tired is the one version of me everyone believes without evidence. Her eyes soften by half a degree when she finds it.
There he is, her face says.
There is the broken boy we know how to manage.
“I’d prefer if you came in the car,” she says.
“I want the air.”
“Halston.”
“Six blocks. The car is overkill.”
Her gaze moves to the window, then back to me.
I can almost hear the calculations. Distance. Optics. Risk. The possibility that I will embarrass her by existing off-script before ten in the morning.
“Six blocks,” I repeat. “I’ll see you there.”
I don't wait for permission.
I close the door before she can turn my name into a leash.
Then I walk away. Manhattan in the morning has no respect for private collapse.
It honks. It steams. It curses at delivery trucks.
Three doors down, a woman in sunglasses the size of dinner plates is arguing with a courier about a box he refuses to leave on the sidewalk.
A dog lifts its leg against a hydrant with the solemn dignity of a man signing legislation.
For one stupid second, I envy the dog.
I walk south.
Not toward breakfast.
Davis waits at the curb in the black Mercedes, hands folded, posture neutral, expression trained into blank respect. He was hired two years ago. He’s polite enough to vanish. Efficient enough to make him dangerous. He knows everything.
The rich never call it a cage when the bars are upholstered.
He sees me and straightens.
I lift two fingers.
Just air.
He nods because Davis has been told that contradicting me when I am calm is worse than letting me walk a few blocks alone. He will sit there for the better part of an hour before Everett texts him, and then take the car to the hotel and wait for the version of me who is supposed to appear.
Two blocks down, I pull the phone from my coat pocket. The screen wakes.
One missed call.
One text from an unknown number. Pick up when you can—Creed.
The name moves through me before I can stop it.
Creed.
It’s a need with its mouth shut. Want held behind the teeth. The sudden, brutal awareness that there are two people in the world I should not want this badly, yet my body has been keeping their names alive without my permission.
I stop at a corner I don't recognize.
There is a coffee cart beside the curb. A man in a navy coat is arguing with the vendor about milk temperature with the passion of someone who has never experienced an actual emergency. A pigeon circles a dropped croissant like it is weighing sin against opportunity.
I step into the alcove of a brownstone that is not mine, behind a narrow iron gate, tucked just far enough out of view to feel ridiculous and criminal.
Then I press the call button.
He answers before the first ring finishes.
“Hal?”
I close my eyes.
His voice is rougher than it was last night. He has not slept either. The texture of it is the texture of a man who has been awake for thirty-six hours holding the line on the off-chance that the line would ring.
“Hey.”
“You’re outside.”
“How did you—”
“Cars. I can hear cars.”
A small thing in me—small yet very specific—settles. He notices the cars. He has spent the night listening for me, precisely enough to hear that I am outside.
“I had to leave the apartment,” I say. “I’m supposed to be at breakfast with my stepmother.”
“Be careful.” His reaction is immediate and the sound of his voice is concerned. “She hates you.”
I tip my head back against the iron. The cold goes through my coat and bites into my spine. “I’ve been wondering how fake the love and devotion she pretends to have are.”
“Don’t wonder too hard,” he says. “Look deep inside yourself. You must know she’s faking love in exchange for the money she couldn’t get after your father died.”
And somehow, I do. I know he’s right.
“Are you somewhere safe?” Creed asks.
“I’m in a doorway. Two blocks from where I live. Everyone thinks I’m walking off insomnia and heading toward some fundraising breakfast.”
“How long do we have?”
“Probably twenty minutes before someone notices I’m not where I said I would be. Less if Everett checks his phone.”
“Then talk fast.”
“Yes, sir.”
He makes a sound—part annoyed, part amused.
“So, the phone, the asset—” I pause —“Whoever brought the phone. They were inside the apartment. Past everyone.”
“Yeah.”
“You knew that was going to happen?”
“I knew Fitz would handle it. I didn’t know how. He doesn’t like me to know how.” Creed’s voice turns dry. “Plausible deniability for the man with the public face.”
“He sent a note,” I say. “An asset is watching me now.”
“Yes.” The word scrapes out of Creed. “I—” He takes a breath. “I wish I could be in two places at once,” he says, and now the control fractures. “But I can’t be with you or Liv. Not until it’s safe.”
Liv.
Her name cuts through me so cleanly I almost miss the pain until it is already spreading.
There it is. The third point of the triangle. The woman whom neither of us can reach. The woman who changes the air between us, even when I don’t know where to find her. The woman, I don’t believe I’ve earned the right to miss this much, and yet I do.
“Is she safe?” I ask.
“There’s an asset with her, too,” he says. “In Florence.”
I frown. “Florence?”
“Yes. Apparently, she lives there and works for The Bianchi Conservation Institute—”
“The foundation works with them,” I cut in. “Have I spoken to her?”
“No.”
Something in me sinks and resents the sinking.
“I doubt you have,” Creed adds. “And please don’t try to reach out to her. Not yet.”
“Have you spoken to her?”
The words come too fast.
“No. Not yet.”
The pain in his voice undoes me.
The hurt in those words undoes me. I want to reach him, find him. Console him because I can’t stand knowing what this is doing to him.
“I have to wait.” He sounds like waiting is violence.
I close my eyes again. The city keeps moving around me. Coffee orders. Brakes. A horn. The world is conducting business while the three of us hang suspended in a story none of us agreed to enter.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“For what?”
“For her. For you.” My mouth twists. “For . . . I feel like I’m causing all this pain, and I’m useless.”
“You’re not useless.”
“Creed, I am hiding from my stepmother behind a decorative gate, holding a burner phone like a divorced accountant in a crime drama. Let’s not romanticize my contribution.”
A breath leaves him, it’s almost a laugh. It warms me in places I don't know how to name.
“There he is,” Creed murmurs. “My guy.”
The tenderness is too much.
I look away, as if he can see my face through the phone. As if he can see the exact moment I become softer than I trust myself to be.
“Don’t,” I say.
“Don’t what?”
“Sound like that.”
“Like what?” He asks.
“Like you’re relieved I still resemble the old me.”
Another silence.
Then Creed says, quieter, “I am.”
“What do you need from me?” I ask.
Creed’s answer comes fast. “Stay visible.”
“That seems counterintuitive.”
“To the asset, not your family. Do not go anywhere isolated. Do not confront anyone—” He pauses, then adds, “Listen, the old Halston would try to make their life miserable—don’t.”
I scoff. “Sounds like I was fun.”
“You were,” he chuckles. “It doesn’t matter who you are now, though. I know your essence is still there, and I’m here for whatever you need.”
“It sounds ominous—or like a goodbye from old Hal,” I suggest, there’s something in his words that sounds clinical, almost distant.
He chuckles. “Nah, apparently I need to deal with the fact that I might not get the old Hal.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, alarmed.
“Fitz has sent me to therapy,” he states. “Something about my loved ones’ trauma and adjusting to a new thing and finally grieving my loss.”
“Sounds ominous, and like a pain.”
I look toward the street. Morning has brightened against the glass buildings, turning everything expensive and cruel. I need to move. I need to become Halston Saint Claire again. Hair in place. Smile calibrated. Pulse hidden. Recovery narrative ready for consumption.
A miracle with great shoulders and a tragic backstory. Very marketable.
“I have to go,” I say.
“I know.”
“If you hear anything about Livia—”
“You’ll know.”
“If anything changes—”
“You’ll know.”
“If you decide to do something stupid—”
“You’ll probably already be doing something stupider.”
Despite myself, I smile. “That was hurtful and probably accurate.”
“Hal.”
“Yes?”
“Stay alive.” He sighs. “We’re getting you out and safe, but be patient, babe.”
“I’ll try my best.”
“Don’t try, fucking do it. You waited ten years, wait a few more days—or months.”