Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
Livia
Now . . .
Halston hasn’t let go of my hand since we got in the car at the courthouse.
It has been an hour and forty minutes.
I’ve been counting because counting is the only thing my brain knows how to do right now.
I can’t make tea. I can’t make any hot drink, actually, which feels criminally useless because my entire personality was built on solving emotional emergencies with warm beverages and a labeled plan.
I can’t make conversation. I can’t make decisions about whether Hal needs a blanket, a glass of water, or to be left completely alone, because Halston Wolfe Saint Claire has had his entire life given back to him at a speed the human nervous system was never meant to absorb.
So I sit beside him.
I let him hold my hand.
That’s what I have.
My hand. His hand. The place where our wedding tattoos touch every time his thumb moves.
Creed has been pacing around the apartment since we got back, phone in hand, jaw locked, searching for therapists, neurologists, trauma specialists, and doctors who can see Hal without being within breathing distance of Saint Claire money.
At some point, he stopped in the middle of the living room and said, “Fuck it. Let’s move to another city or country. ”
Neither of us answered because neither of us knew if he was joking.
I’m still not sure.
Suddenly, Creed says, “Fitz is calling.”
“Did something happen?” I ask.
Halston lets out a sound that is almost a laugh and not close to one. “Other than my family tried to kill you?”
His hand tightens around mine. Then he scrubs his face with his free hand, his palm dragging over his mouth like he’s trying to remove the memory of the courtroom from his skin.
“I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Hal, it wasn’t—”
“I knew it could happen,” he interrupts me. His voice is low, but it has that dangerous edge now. The one that means he’s turning the blade inward. “I knew what they were capable of, and I still asked you to—”
“Forward, Hal,” Creed cuts in.
Halston looks at him.
Creed’s face is controlled, but his eyes aren’t. “We can’t dwell on the what-ifs from then. Not today. I’m going to answer, and then we can discuss the therapists and doctors I’ve found so far.”
He taps the screen.
“Fitz.”
“Are you with Hal and Livia?”
“Yes,” Creed says from the kitchen.
“I’ve got news,” Fitz says. His voice sounds tired and wired at the same time, the voice of a man who’s been running on coffee, rage, and subpoenas.
“Constance, Whelan, and Everett were apprehended. Taken into federal custody from the courthouse. They won’t be released today.
We’re calling favors and paying people so they may not be released for a long time. ”
Halston’s hand tightens again.
Not a flinch.
A reaction from deeper than that.
“The trustees of the Saint Claire holdings—six individuals—are being taken into custody as we speak,” Fitz continues.
“All of them?” I ask.
“All of them,” Fitz says. “Plus the second attorney at Whelan’s firm, the medical director at the Connecticut facility who signed off on Halston’s holding, and the executor of Cornelius Saint Claire’s trust, who was supposed to be acting in Halston’s interest and was instead acting in Constance’s.”
The apartment goes so quiet I can hear the faint hum of the refrigerator.
Then Fitz says, “We have identified one of the men who tried to kill you. We’re hoping everyone arrested will start cooperating, so we can get the rest.”
Creed stops pacing.
Halston stares at nothing.
I keep holding his hand because letting go now feels like dropping a rope when someone is still climbing.
Fitz’s voice softens. “Halston, what happened today in that courthouse should have happened ten years ago. I’m sorry it took this long.”
Halston doesn’t answer.
His face is doing something my hand can feel through his.
The tremor isn’t visible.
It’s there anyway.
I say, “We’ll call you tomorrow, Fitz.”
“Call me whenever. I’ve cleared my week.”
The call ends.
For a moment, nobody speaks.
Then Halston says, “I should have—”
“There was nothing you could have done differently,” Creed says, crossing the room with his phone still in his hand.
“I should have stopped.”
“They would have caught us on the road,” I argue.
“We shouldn’t have gotten in the car.”
“They would have come for us,” I say. “The moment they figured out we got married, we were in danger.”
“We should—”
“Hal, babe.” Creed moves toward him, slow enough not to crowd him, certain enough to make him stop. “I need you to take a breath.”
Halston looks at him.
Creed kneels in front of him.
For all the pacing, all the calls, all the controlled fury, this is where Creed becomes quiet. This is the man underneath the athlete, the public face, the armor. This is the man who knows Halston can survive almost anything except being left alone with his own guilt.
“You can’t blame yourself for being born into the Saint Claires,” Creed says.
Halston’s mouth twists.
He looks down at Creed, and for one second, I see the man from the courthouse again. The man who remembered rain. The man who turned to Constance and finally understood what she had done to him.
“She almost died.” His voice cracks on the word died, and he hates it.
I know he does. “They threatened you and your family.” He swallows hard.
“We lost ten years of our lives, and those assholes made my life a living hell. I bet they enjoyed it. I bet they got a kick out of treating me like I needed them instead of the other way around.”
He pulls his hand from mine and stands.
The loss of contact is immediate.
Cold.
He starts pacing.
“This is my fault.”
“No,” the word comes out louder than I intended.
Angry.
Not at him.
Never at him.
At the lie, still trying to survive in his mouth.
He stops.
I stand too.
“You didn’t crash that car,” I say. “They crashed that car. They crashed it with brake lines they had cut, and you got us inside it because the alternative they built was worse. There was no version of that night where we walked away clean. You took the version where we survived.”
“We didn’t survive.”
“We did.”
“Liv.” His eyes flash. “I woke up not knowing you. Not knowing Creed. Not knowing myself.”
“You survived.”
Creed rises slowly beside him. “You saved her—and yourself.”
Halston turns toward him.
Creed’s voice goes rough, but he doesn’t look away. “I’ve lived inside that call for ten years, Hal. Every night. Every road trip. Every time it rained and I was alone in a hotel room, I heard you trying to save her. That is what I have. That is what I’ve had. That is what you gave me.”
Halston’s mouth opens.
“Creed.”
“You did not fuck it up, Hal.”
Halston’s face changes.
Not relief.
Not yet.
Recognition hurts first.
“I thought I did.”
“I know.” Creed steps closer and puts one hand on the side of Halston’s neck, right under his jaw. “I know they made you think that.”
“They told me—”
“I know, babe.” Creed’s thumb moves once, a small touch, just enough to keep him here. “I know what they told you.”
“I fucking believed them.” Halston’s voice breaks apart on the last word. He turns his face away, but Creed’s hand follows him, gentle and unyielding. “How do I—”
“You don’t,” I say.
Both men look at me.
“Not today. Not tomorrow.” I move closer until I’m standing on Halston’s other side. “We have time.”
Halston lets out a bitter breath. “I don’t deserve—”
“Yes, you do.” I take his hand again before he can hide it from me. “You deserve time. You deserve answers. You deserve a life that isn’t managed by the people who hurt you.”
“Hal,” Creed says, voice low. “Yes, you do.”
Halston looks between us.
His eyes are red.
His face is wrecked in a way he would have hated anyone else witnessing.
Good.
Let us witness.
Let us be the place where he doesn’t have to survive alone.
He says, “Liv.”
“Yes?”
“I remember the bar.”
Everything in me stops.
“You remember—”
“The book. The jersey. The way you looked at me like I was a problem you were trying to decide if you wanted to solve.”
I laugh.
It comes out half sob and half a sound I haven’t made in ten years. It's something young and broken open; something that belongs to the girl at that bar and the woman standing here, both of us hearing him come back piece by piece.
Halston’s mouth does something I haven’t seen since the morning we signed the certificate.
He almost smiles.
“I remember you telling me about Creed,” he says. His eyes move to Creed. “And how much I’d love him when I met him.”
Creed’s hand drops from Halston’s neck.
Not because he wants to let go.
Because the sentence hits him so hard, he needs both feet on the floor to stay upright.
Halston breathes in once, and his face changes again.
Serious.
Frightened, maybe.
But certain.
“I remember everything.”
The apartment seems to shrink around the sentence.
My hand covers my mouth.
Creed doesn’t move.
Halston looks at me, then at Creed.
“But I never forgot how much I loved you.” His voice is quieter now, almost too quiet.
“No matter what they took, no matter what they told me, no matter how much of my own life they made me doubt, I always remembered that part of us. I didn’t have the names.
I didn’t have the faces. I didn’t have the timeline.
But I knew there was a place in me that belonged to someone.
To two someones. I knew I was missing the only thing that had ever been mine. ”
My knees almost give.
Creed reaches for me before I fall, and Halston reaches too, and for one second their hands meet at my waist.
That is what undoes me.
Their hands, both of them reaching for me at once.
Halston says, “I remember why we married.”
I can’t answer.
I can’t do anything except hold his hand and look at the face I’ve been carrying in a closed room inside myself since the accident.
“We married because we wanted to,” he says. “Not just for legal cover. We married because we had been three for two years, and we wanted to start a life while I helped my grandfather. We married because we were happy.”
My tears start again.
I don’t try to stop them.
There’s no point.
“Liv.”
“Yes.”
“We were happy.”
I nod. “We were happy.”
“And we’re going to be happy again.”
“Hal.”
“We are.” His voice gets firmer. Not false.
Not bright. Just decided. “It’s going to take a long time.
It’s going to take longer than I want it to.
There will be lawyers and doctors and nightmares and days when one of us says the wrong thing and all three of us bleed from it.
But we’re going to be happy again. The three of us. Do you hear me?”
I nod.
Creed doesn’t.
He looks like he wants to believe it and is afraid belief will punish him for showing up.
Halston sees that too.
Of course he does.
He turns to Creed.
“Would you give me a chance again?” he asks. His voice is raw now, stripped down to the part of him none of us gets often. “This time, I won’t fuck it up.”
Creed’s face breaks.
Not fully.
Enough.
“You didn’t fuck it up then either.” Creed steps into Halston and presses his forehead to his. “We’ll give each other a chance at this life. Not you proving yourself to us. Not us forgiving you for something you didn’t do. All of us. Again.”
Halston closes his eyes.
Creed keeps going.
“It’s going to take time to believe it wasn’t our fault. Individual therapy. Group therapy. Medical care. All of it. We’ll do the work.” His hand goes to Halston’s chest, flat over his heart. “But I know us. I know we’ll be fine.”
“We’ll be fine,” I agree.
For a moment, the room is only breath and tears and the sound of the city outside, continuing without knowing it has been asked to make room for a family that almost didn’t survive being loved by the wrong people.
I know it the way I know my own pulse.
The world has begun, very quietly, to make room for us again.