Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Creed
Then . . .
Halston comes home from his grandfather’s house at almost midnight.
I am at the kitchen island, heating up food. Liv is on the couch with a blanket and a legal pad, sitting in the specific posture she has when she has been thinking too long about something she has not yet been allowed to say out loud.
The apartment has been quiet since Halston left at noon.
He went alone. He said he needed to walk through the house one more time before anyone decided to change the locks.
I didn't like that sentence.
I liked it less when he said it as if changing the locks on a dead man’s house was normal family behavior, just another Tuesday in a bloodline where grief arrives with lawyers and inventory lists.
He drops his keys in the bowl by the door.
He stands there for a long beat with his coat still on, hands in his pockets, mouth tight.
To love this man is to know him in layers.
This is one of the bad ones.
The layer where his hands are colder than the room, his words get more precise, and every inch of him looks polite enough to survive a murder trial.
“Come sit down,” he says.
Liv glances at me, then at the couch.
Her face says, Is he paying attention to the fact that he sounds like a man calling a board vote in our living room? Should we be concerned? When is the intervention?
“You want us in the living room or at the island?” I ask, because he is obviously calibrating something that has nothing to do with us and everything to do with Cornelius Saint Claire being dead.
Losing Cornelius to a sudden heart attack has been harder on Halston than he expected. He is not completely sure it was just heart failure that no one caught. In Halston’s mind, nobody in that family dies naturally.
Nobody.
“Island,” he answers, taking off his coat.
Liv is already moving. She puts the legal pad on the arm of the couch and comes to the island in her socks and the sweater of mine she stole after Christmas break. She sits on the stool to my left.
Halston stands on the other side of the island.
He doesn't sit.
That tells me enough.
“Everyone is fighting for the inheritance,” he says. “They are claiming Cornelius lacked testamentary capacity when he executed the will.”
Liv blinks once. “In English.”
“They’re saying he wasn’t mentally competent when he signed it.”
“When did he sign it?” Liv asks.
“Four years ago,” Halston says. “He was competent. He knew exactly what he was doing. And as we know, he left me everything.”
He clears his throat.
“Everything.”
“Somehow, I think that’s a problem,” I say carefully.
Halston scoffs. “Did you miss the part where I said they’re fighting it?”
“Hey,” I say. “I’m not your enemy.”
His hand goes through his hair.
One pass.
Hard.
“Sorry,” he says. “I’m frustrated.”
This is where I could bring up that he doesn't need his grandfather’s fucking money.
That I signed a new contract and my sponsorships alone could support the three of us.
That he has managed my investments well enough that we have buildings, assets, accounts, and a future that is not dependent on Cornelius Saint Claire leaving him a dime.
It would be useless.
This is not about money.
Not to Hal.
He has been trying to help his grandfather do something decent with all of it. Create jobs. Protect employees. Turn a family built on taking into a structure that gives something back.
Now it has become a mission.
And Halston Saint Claire, on a mission is not a man you can talk out of caring.
“So we hire lawyers and fight the assholes,” I tell him. “I’m all in. Team Hal creates a better legacy for the Saint Claires.”
Liv looks at me. “That sounded like a campaign slogan.”
“I’m still workshopping.”
Halston doesn't smile.
“But,” he says, “my grandfather wrote a codicil.”
“A codicil?” I ask, because, as much as I am trying to be a good partner to my almost-lawyer boyfriend, I am better at stats, hockey, and knowing when a forward is going to fake left and cut right.
“A codicil is an amendment to a will,” Halston says. “A legal add-on. It can change part of the will without rewriting the entire document.”
“Okay.”
“He told me about it around Thanksgiving,” Halston says, “when I told him I was not going to the dinner and would be going to Toronto.”
I grin before I can stop myself, because he went to Toronto with me.
Then the timing catches up. “You didn’t tell us.”
He looks at me.
“It didn’t seem important back then.”
Liv’s head tilts. “Back then?”
“Back then, he was healthy,” Halston says. “And died two weeks later. And there’s a second piece to the codicil that isn’t done.”
Liv doesn't speak.
I don't speak.
Halston’s hands stay flat on the marble. He looks at them like the answer might be there, embedded somewhere under the stone.
“The codicil amends the succession structure of the family trusts,” he says. “The default structure—the one my grandfather inherited from his father, who inherited it from his father—says I assume direct management of the trusts when I turn thirty.”
Liv says, “So not now.”
“What happens until then?” I ask.
“Until then, the trusts are managed by a trustee panel. My stepmother. Whit Whelan. Margaret Ellery. Two others.” His mouth tightens around the names.
“They have full fiduciary authority. They can buy, sell, allocate, divest, restructure, donate, and reorganize anything inside the corpus as long as they have consent and my signature. If I don’t sign, they get nothing. ”
“Okay,” I say slowly. “So we don’t have to worry?”
Halston’s eyes lift to mine.
“The codicil amends the trigger. I assume direct management of the trusts when I turn thirty, or if I am married.”
I don't move.
Liv doesn't move.
He says, “Once I am married, the trustees lose fiduciary authority. Everything comes to me.”
The apartment seems to pull in around that sentence.
The island between us is suddenly not enough space and too much space at the same time.
He puts his hands together on the marble and looks down.
“I am grateful,” he says. “I am furious. I am sad. And I have to make a decision.”
I say, “That tracks.”
Liv says, “Walk me through this. How do we solve the situation without killing anyone?”
That is Liv.
Exactly Liv.
In the four minutes since Halston put the codicil on the table, she has moved to architecture. I have seen her do it before. It is what she does when someone she loves is in danger. She stops shaking inside and starts building a bridge.
Halston nods.
“We have to get married,” he says. “Which is not the way I wanted to propose—”
“Who are we proposing to in this scenario?” I ask.
My voice comes out too calm.
I hear it.
He hears it.
Liv hears it.
Because we seem to be going from one day I’ll propose to you two, and we’ll figure out what this looks like to—
What the fuck are we doing here?
Halston’s nostrils flare. “We need to make sure it looks real. We need receipts. Something they can’t deem fraudulent.”
“If we marry,” Liv says, “Whelan will not be able to prove fraud.”
Halston nods. “We file the marriage certificate before he files anything. We deliver the codicil to the probate court the same week. We make the trigger a fait accompli. Then his contests are after-the-fact challenges to a transfer that has already happened. They become much harder to win and much more expensive to pursue.”
Liv says, “Speed is the defense.”
He nods and almost smiles knowing that she gets it. “Exactly. Speed is the defense.”
I watch them discuss the best way to prove their marriage.
Their marriage.
Receipts. Affidavits. Timing. Filing. Probate. Public record. Challenge strategy.
The words move around me, clean and intelligent and necessary.
I'm not quiet because I don't understand.
I understand.
I am quiet because, in the last twenty minutes, I have been demoted to an observer in my own life.
Halston turns his body slightly toward me on the stool.
“Yeah?” he asks, as if he knows I have questions.
Yeah.
That is what he gives me.
A single syllable with all that lawyer patience wrapped around it.
I shrug because I don't know how to word any of this without making it about me. And yes, all this fucking shit matters. Lives depend on what Halston does next. Employees. Assets. The foundation. Cornelius’s attempt at one decent final act.
But all at once, I feel outside.
He stares at me, waiting.
Liv is waiting too.
So I say it.
“Where am I in this?”
The apartment goes quiet.
Halston turns fully to face me. He doesn't answer right away.
He moves closer to me, then puts one hand on the marble and one hand on my knee. His palm is cold through my sweats.
He looks at me the way he looks when he is about to say a thing he has prepared in his head for longer than the conversation has been happening.
He is trying to soften the blow.
Of course he is, but I won’t let him.
“You already decided you two are getting married,” I say. “As in no longer a triad. Goodbye to the throuple.”
Liv’s face changes.
Halston’s hand tightens on my knee.
I lift my left wrist and show him the tattoo we got back in December.
“This is forever,” I say. “Unless you need an appointment with the dermatologist to laser it away and do some infinity shit that says just two of us now. No longer three.”
“Creed.”
“No,” I say. “I’m not being dramatic. I just need to know where I’m sitting here. You need me to pack?”
“No,” Liv says, almost offended.
“Never,” Halston says.
The word comes fast.
Too fast for the man who measures everything.
Then he leans forward and presses his forehead gently against mine.
“Never,” he says again, lower this time. “You’re mine. Ours. We’re yours. This is stupid logistics.”
“It’s the government deciding there can only be one signature,” Liv says. Her voice is careful now, but not fragile. “If I’m offering to sign, it’s because I know how important hockey is to you. Your career. The league isn’t ready for a famous player coming out as queer. You’ve said that before.”
“This is us marrying,” Halston says. “The three of us. Even when only two signatures can be on the license.”
“But then I wouldn’t be next of kin,” I say.