Chapter 38 #2
The words come before I can stop them.
The fear underneath them arrives worse.
If something happened.
If there was a hospital.
If a door closes.
If someone asked who I was, and the answer had no box.
I stop myself because the thought is ridiculous until it is not.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m just afraid they wouldn’t let me near either one of you because I’m not family. Because I don’t have a relationship that matters on paper.”
“Fuck, Creed,” Halston says.
His voice is loud.
Strangled.
Furious in a way, I understand too late is not at me.
“Our relationship matters. You matter to me. I love you so fucking much.”
Liv takes my hand, and for half a second, I want to pull away.
Not because I don’t want her.
Because I do.
Because I'm not fragile, except right now I feel like there is a place inside me I didn’t know existed, and someone has pressed a thumb into it. It fucking hurts too much.
“On the document, you are nowhere,” Halston says.
“Liv and I sign the marriage license. Two witnesses sign—you’ll be one of them.
The license is filed with the city. The codicil triggers.
The trustees become advisory. The trusts come to me.
Whelan sees a wife. Whelan sees a household with a wife.
The rest—us—is none of their fucking business until you are ready. ”
I glance at Livia. “Are you ready to let your parents know you’re married?”
She nods.
No hesitation.
“For either one of you, I’d do anything.”
“They might—”
“They will,” she interrupts. “It’ll take time for them to forgive me, if they ever do. But you and Hal matter more than anything. I hate that you’ll be invisible for a while.”
I look down at our joined hands.
The tattoo on my wrist.
The one on hers.
The one on Halston’s.
Three lines. One shape. No beginning without the other two.
“I could quit hockey,” I offer, because if we are making sacrifices, I should too.
Halston shakes his head immediately. “No.”
“Hal—”
“No,” he says again. “We go with the version that passes cleanly through the trustees and lawyers. The version visible from outside is the one that protects all three of us, because the version that protects all three of us is the one Whelan can’t challenge.”
I exhale. “I understand.”
“I know you understand.” Halston’s hand moves from my knee to the side of my neck. “I’m not telling you the part you understand. I’m telling you the part underneath.”
I wait.
He says, “What I have been able to do for you on my own, without lawyers, without anyone helping me, is small. You co-own every account I could change without filing anything. Bank accounts. The retirement account. A life insurance policy I opened after you two moved in with me. Two more I took out the month I came back from telling you about my mother. If something happens to me before this marriage, you two are not protected the way I want you protected. But you are not nothing.”
“What I have not been able to do,” he says, “because I didn't have the authority to do it, is build the rest. The trusts. The structure. The properties. The thing you and Liv should be inside on paper. I could not build it because the assets were not mine to put behind it.”
He pauses.
“After the wedding, they will be mine. After the wedding, I am going to spend whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to build around you and Liv the structure I have wanted to build for the past three years and could not.”
His thumb moves once at my neck.
“You will both be in it. Equally. No version of it has only one of you in it.”
I want to tell him that we don’t need shit, but I know this is his love language. How they taught him to protect those he loves. “Hal—”
“I am marrying Liv because I love her. We’re signing the fucking paper because we need it. That doesn't prove I love her more than you,” he interrupts me. “I’m not marrying Liv instead of you. I’m not marrying Liv and forgetting you are here. I’m not making you less.”
His hand tightens on my neck.
Liv squeezes my hand.
“I love you,” she says.
Her voice is soft. Small, even.
“You know that, right?” she asks. “I would never choose. I couldn’t. You both own my heart. It’s the three of us, forever.”
“It just feels like I’m going to be left behind,” I confess.
The thing I have been afraid of since I learned how to say ‘I love you’ without controlling the exit.
Liv moves first.
She reaches across me and touches Halston’s wrist, so both their hands are on me now.
“Never,” she says.
“Never,” Halston confirms.
I want to believe them.
The problem is that Mom has a belief about the word never.
‘You never say never,’ she used to tell us, ‘because life hears it and takes it as a challenge.’
I don’t tell them I am afraid the word is too beautiful to survive.
I don’t tell them that once something is said with enough certainty, some part of me begins counting down to the universe proving us wrong.
Liv’s temple rests against my shoulder.
I close my eyes.
I still hate it.
I still understand it.
And maybe that is love, too.
Not agreeing because it doesn’t hurt.
Staying while it does.
But even though the marriage license will have two names. The vow will have three.
That is the only way I’ll survive signing as a witness.