Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Creed
Then . . .
Liv answers on the first ring.
Her beautiful, sleepy face fills the screen, hair loose around her cheeks, one eye half-closed like she answered before her body fully agreed to consciousness. For one second, she glares at me.
Then she frowns.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.”
Her eyes narrow, waking up fast now. “Where’s Hal?”
“Bathroom. He’s washing his face.”
She is quiet for one beat.
Only one.
Then she says, “Something happened between the two of you.”
I close my eyes. “Liv.”
“Are we okay?” she asks, and there it is—not panic, not doubt, but the quick reach of someone who loves the structure of us and needs to know if any beam cracked while she was asleep in another country.
“We’re okay,” I say.
Her mouth relaxes a little. “Then what happened?”
“He told me about Annaline.”
“Oh.”
Her voice doesn't change pitch.
It doesn't need to.
The whole screen seems to go softer. Her face, her eyes, the light behind her, the pillow pressed against her shoulder. She looks less sleepy now and more tender, which is worse because I know what it costs her not to be there.
“I guess that’s good,” she says. “I have been waiting for him to tell one of us. I am—in a way I can’t explain—glad it was you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” She sits up a little, the sheet slipping down to her waist. “You hold things differently than I do. I want to fix them. You just . . . stay.”
I breathe, taking the words in.
“Tell him I love him,” she says. “Tell him I am coming home in nine days. Tell him I am going to ask him a question when I get home, and he has to be ready for the question.”
I open my eyes fully.
“Liv.”
“Yes.”
“He wants to marry us.”
Her smile appears slowly.
It’s soft, like she has been standing beside this truth for months and I am the one who only just walked into the room.
“We decided to get married before he said we’re moving in ‘temporarily,’ Lafontaine.”
“It was temporary,” I insist.
She gives me a look that belongs in a courtroom. “It was never temporary.”
“Temporary,” I repeat, not sure why.
“We have three toothbrushes, a chef who knows I hate fennel, and Halston pretending not to notice when I stole the good side of the bed.” She pauses. “That is not temporary. That is infrastructure.”
Despite everything, I laugh.
She smiles back, but her eyes are too bright.
“I think this, us, was decided a long time ago,” she says. “Not in a magical way. Don’t make that face. I'm not saying fate with a harp in the background—or some diapered god throwing arrows at us.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
She shakes her head. “Your eyebrows did.”
“My eyebrows are neutral.”
“They’re never neutral.” She pulls the blanket higher, then holds the phone closer.
“I mean when we found each other, something in the room finally had a name. That place in me I kept trying to fill with school and books and being impressive enough that no one noticed I was lonely? You and Hal walked right into it like you had the keys.”
I swallow.
She keeps going, softer now.
“We’ve been saying ‘forever’ in pieces. ‘Roof at eleven. Text me when you land. Did you eat? Come home. Wear my sweatshirt. Let me take care of this.’ We’ve been saying it all along. We just hadn’t put the word on it.”
“Forever and always,” I say.
“Exactly.” Her smile turns a little sad. “Why does this surprise you?”
I shrug, though she can barely see it. “He’s going to propose.”
“We’ll say yes,” she states. “Then we’ll figure out what that looks like.”
“Did we just decide to say we’re getting married?”
She is quiet for one beat.
Then she says, very calm, very Liv, “No. We just decided to formally recognize it.”
I sit down on the edge of the bed.
The room feels too still around me. The bathroom water stops. Somewhere beyond the windows, the city keeps making its late-night sounds, but they feel far off now, like the whole apartment has paused to listen.
“Are you okay with it?” I have to ask.
She nods. “Are you?”
I open my mouth.
She doesn’t let me answer.
“How is he?”
I shake my head. “He’s dealing.”
Liv’s face changes again, and I can see her mind start working. Not coldly. Never coldly. But fast. Practical because love makes her practical. Tender because fear makes her tender.
“We need a therapist,” she says.
“What?”
“A therapist. Maybe more than one. I don’t know. Someone good. Not someone who tells us to journal for six months and breathe through family trauma while the Saint Claires are sharpening silverware in the next room.”
“Liv.”
“Losing his mom and growing up with those snakes has to bring a lot with it. And you have the league, and your body, and whatever terrifying Midwestern-nice things your family pretends are non-issues because there’s bread on the table.
And I have my parents and a long list of neuroses I have alphabetized for convenience. ”
I blink. “Dad’s from Canada and Mom’s from Portland,” I correct her. “There’s no Midwestern-nice.”
She wiggles her fingers. “You’re interrupting my rant with facts. I don’t need that Creed.” She groans exasperated. “The point is that your parents are nice, but with baggage too.”
She keeps going.
“We have to do the work, Creed. Before we marry. Before we build a life. Before we start having babies someday and then realize, oh, fun, we imported every family wound into a nursery.”
Fuck.
“What’s happening?” I whisper.
“Not now, Creed,” she says instantly, pointing at me through the screen like she can pin my spiral to the wall from Paris. “I don’t need you to freak out and think I’m already choosing names and decor for the nursery. Breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“You are breathing like a man who just heard the word babies and saw a minivan.”
“I play in the NHL. I can afford a better car than a fucking minivan.”
“Excellent. You’re back.” Her expression softens. “It’ll happen when and if we’re ready. I’m just saying we have to become adults who can love without making our worst fear into someone else’s inheritance.”
I look toward the bathroom door again.
“He thinks he has to protect us from everything.”
“I know,” Liv says. “And you think if you can be strong enough, no one will have to worry about you. And I think if I can organize everything, nothing will hurt me without an appointment. We are all ridiculous.”
“That’s your clinical assessment?”
“Yes. Highly technical.” She leans closer. “But we can do better. For each other. For whatever comes later. Marriage. Family. Public life. Private life. A baby someday who should not have to learn our fear in three different languages.”
My throat feels tight, and I hate that because it is not one of her banned phrases, and yet it is exactly what is happening.
“I can do that,” I say. “Get ready.”
Her smile is small. Proud. A little wrecked.
“I know you can.”
The bathroom door opens.
Halston comes out in a T-shirt that is mine, which he doesn't usually wear because he prefers the dignity of his own pajama tops. Tonight, he is in my shirt. His face is clean. His eyes are red. His hair is damp at the temples.
He gets into bed, then glances at the phone.
“Hey, baby,” he greets Liv.
Her face opens.
“I wish you had waited for me,” she says, simple and honest. “But I understand why you didn’t.”
Halston goes very still.
But he immediately realizes she is not hurt because he told me first. She is only sad she couldn’t hold him through it.
“I wanted to,” he says.
“I know.”
“I couldn’t wait nine days.”
“I know that too.”
His jaw shifts.
Liv’s voice softens. “Any chance you can take the next nine days off and come to me?”
I hold my breath.
This is not something Liv offers lightly. Paris is one thing. Greenwich is another. Her parents could surprise her. Her life could split open in a hallway before she has a plan, and Liv likes plans the way some people like religion.
Halston hears it too.
He looks at the screen for a long moment.
“Maybe,” he says. “Can I sleep on it?”
Liv nods immediately. “Of course. I’ll be there soon if you can’t.”
He exhales through his nose, and I know him well enough to know that is almost a breakdown.
“We’re going to sleep,” I say, “but call if you need us.”
Liv looks at me, then at him. “Take care of him, okay?”
“I’ve got him.”
“Good.” She tries to smile, and this time it almost works. “Love you both. Miss you more than yesterday, but I’ll see you soon.”
Halston’s hand finds mine under the blanket.
“Love you,” I say.
“Love you,” Halston says, rougher than usual.
Liv kisses two fingers and touches them to the camera. “Good night, my beautiful, emotionally complicated men.”
I laugh softly.
Halston almost smiles.
“Good night, baby,” I tell her.
“Good night, Liv,” Halston says.
She looks at us for one more second, like she is memorizing the room she can't stand inside yet.
Then the call ends.
The screen goes dark.
For a moment, neither of us moves.
The room feels bigger without her voice and emptier because of it.
I set the phone on the nightstand.
Halston shifts closer without saying anything. I open my arm, and he comes to me like he has been waiting for permission all night. His head settles on my chest. One hand rests against my stomach, fingers curled into my shirt.
I put my hand in his hair.
He exhales.
That one breath tells me more than anything he said.
“You okay?” I ask.
“No.”
“Good answer.”
His mouth moves against my shirt. Not quite a smile.
“I’m tired,” he says.
“I know.”
“I don’t know what happens now.”
“Sleep happens now.”
“After that.”
“After that, Liv comes home. Or you go to Paris. Or both. Then we find someone you can talk to who isn’t me, isn’t Liv, and can survive you being difficult in a chair.”
“I am excellent in chairs.”
“You’re terrifying in chairs.”
“Liv will make a list.”
“I bet my next Olympic medal that Liv already has a list.”
That gets the smallest laugh out of him. “The Olympics aren’t happening for another couple of years.”
I shrug.
I keep my hand in his hair, slow, careful, the way I know he likes and pretends not to need. His breathing changes after a few minutes. His body loosens against mine by degrees, like sleep has to negotiate with him before he lets it in.
He falls asleep on my chest in nine minutes.
Outside the window, the city makes the small sounds it makes in late November. Cabs on Twenty-Second Street. Someone on the corner is laughing into a phone. Cold air pressing against the glass, waiting for December to give it permission to become mean.
I don’t know how, but soon we’re going to get married.
The thought should scare me more than it does.
Maybe it will be in the morning.
Tonight, it doesn’t feel like a question.
Tonight, Halston is asleep on my chest wearing my shirt, and Liv is in Paris counting down nine days.
We are going to get married because Halston Saint Claire stayed.
I close my eyes and listen to him breathe.