I lifted the taped edges to reveal a pair of brown mittens. The palms had pink leather pads knit to look like cat paws. “These are for me?”
“Well, they’re not my taste. I know they don’t go with your outfit, but you can take them off when we’re inside.” He took the wrapping from me, balling it up. “I didn’t want you to be cold.”
I tried one on, wiggling my fingers. “Manning.”
“Don’t worry, they’re handmade,” he added. “Didn’t cost much.”
I wasn’t sure what he saw in my eyes, but I wasn’t upset. It was just that I loved them. “Thank you.”
He held open the door, ushering me through. “Don’t mention it.”
Downstairs, Manning stood on the curb to hail us a car.
“We should take the subway,” I said as two cabs passed us by. “It’s cheaper and faster.”
“I’m not taking you underground looking like that,” he said with a quick head-to-toe glance.
“The subway is perfectly fine, but if you insist, then this is how you do it.” I stepped into oncoming traffic with my hand raised.
Manning grabbed my bicep to pull me back. “Careful—”
A taxi screeched to a stop in front of me. I looked back at Manning and laughed. “See?”
“You’re going to give me a goddamn heart attack,” he said, opening the car door. Still holding my arm, he urged me inside. “I’m an older man than I was when you knew me, Lake.”
“You were always an older man to me,” I said as I ducked into the backseat. Was Manning still sensitive about our age difference? As we pulled away from the curb, I checked his expression. Instead of the shame I’d sometimes see, he raised an eyebrow.
I leaned between the seats toward the driver. “Fifty-third and Broadway,” I said. “Can you turn on the meter, please?”
“Broken,” he said.
“Then pull over and we’ll get out,” I said.
“It’s no problem.” He waved me off. “I make you a good flat rate.”
“I’ve got the fare covered,” Manning said.
“No, he’s going to rip us off,” I said. We stopped at a red light, and I opened the door to get out.
“Okay, okay,” the cabbie said, pressing the on button. “It’s good.”
I slammed the door and relaxed back into the seat. Manning watched me for so many blocks, I finally asked, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“I told you you’d hate it here.”
“That’s not what I was thinking.” He slid his hand across the leather seat toward mine, then froze, as if remembering my hand wasn’t his to hold. I wanted to ask about his wedding ring, but how? And what would I do if he said he and Tiffany were ending their marriage? Did that have anything to do with why he was here?
Before I could decide how to ask, he beat me to it, nodding at my hand. “Is that from Corbin?”
I inspected my ring, a thin silver band I’d bought for a dollar at a flea market. “No.”
“Someone else?” he asked.
“No . . .”
“Did you end up telling him you’d be with me tonight?”
I paused for emphasis before answering, “Corbin knows everything about me.”
Even in the dark, I saw a shadow cross Manning’s face. “Everything? How about you and me?”
I crossed my legs toward the door. Corbin didn’t know about that. Or if he did, he’d turned a blind eye to it for too long for it to ever come up. I let Manning think what he wanted, though. “If you’re worried what he thinks of you, you should be satisfied that there’s nothing to tell where you and I are concerned. Just like you wanted.” The driver honked and swore at the car in front of us. “What would I say?” I continued. “That we kept our hands to ourselves those two years?”
“Do you still wish I hadn’t?” Manning asked. “Kept my hands to myself?”
My heart skipped with his unexpected question. Had he really said that, or was this bizarre day messing with my mind? Traffic forced the cab to slow, and I watched people walk along Third Avenue with shopping bags and warm drinks and scarves up to their eyes. I didn’t reply to Manning’s question. Surely he knew the answer.
“You were young and infatuated,” he said. “You would’ve given me anything I’d asked for. Do you think it would’ve been right for me to take it?”
“I was young.” I kept looking out the window. Maybe I was an idiot to be here like Val had said. “But I wasn’t just infatuated.”
As we drove in silence, I snuck glances at him. He wasn’t as reserved as I would’ve thought. I couldn’t decide if I was glad for it, to have access to him in a way I’d never had, or if it was cruel of him to finally treat me like an adult when it was too late to do anything about it. Wasn’t it?
Once in the theater, Manning removed my coat in the crowded lobby, lingering at my back. “I was hoping you’d wear your hair down,” he said, his breath near the top of my head. “I like it that way.”
“I know you do. That’s why I didn’t.”
He grunted. “Am I bringing out your feisty side tonight? Or is this the new you?”
“I’m not feisty,” I said. “I’m hurt. By you.” I wanted to ignore all of Val’s earlier warnings, even if only for tonight—I deserved this time with Manning that’d been taken from me—but how could I let myself forget? I slipped out of the coat completely, leaving it in his hands. “I’m not going to wear my hair down for you, because you aren’t my husband or boyfriend. You aren’t even my friend.”
“If you’re feisty, if you’re hurt, if you’re a New Yorker now, fine,” he said, his voice as firm as mine. “That doesn’t mean I don’t know you, Lake. I’ve always known who you were on the inside, where it counts.”
“I’m sure that’s one of the lies you’ve told yourself over the years.” I pulled my mittens off by the fingers. “You know best. You know me. You know everything. Well, you don’t.” Theatergoers milled around us, sipping wine from plastic cups during animated conversations. I hardly noticed them with the way Manning glowered at me. “There are people who know me better than you now,” I said.
“Because he orders you hash browns when you’re fucking hungover? That doesn’t mean shit.”
Admittedly, his jealousy over that tiny tidbit of information made my skin tingle with pleasure. Because of the backless dress, I hadn’t put on a bra, and my nipples hardened from the cold and Manning’s relentless gaze. “You’re making more of what you and I were, Manning. We never even kissed.” I barely managed to keep my voice steady. If we’d gone this long without being intimate, maybe what we had wasn’t as strong as either of us had thought. What two people could be this enamored and stay away from each other as long as we had? It was pathetic, really.
I went to find our seats in the orchestra section. The tickets had undoubtedly cost my mom some money and a good deal of planning. For those reasons, I was glad I’d come tonight. My relationship with my mom had suffered because of my dad, and this must’ve been important to her. But I couldn’t ignore the weight on my shoulders. Manning had shown up on my doorstep that morning, and now we were playing nice. It wasn’t fair that he should get what he wanted, always. I’d skip dinner, I decided, and that would be it. I didn’t owe him any of this, and he could still tell my mom we’d been to the show. There wasn’t much left of my dignity, or my determination, but some could still be salvaged.
Manning sat heavily beside me, way too much man for the creaky seats. “I don’t like when you walk away from me,” he said.
“What you’re not understanding is that it doesn’t matter what you like, Manning. You have no say over what I do.”
He stared forward, gripping the armrest. Eventually the curtain lifted, but I couldn’t concentrate on the performance. I felt like a fool for agreeing to this. If I was honest with myself, it was only partly because of my mom. I’d really wanted an excuse to be here with Manning, but what had I expected to get out of tonight? Nothing, and yet I’
d still given in to him. Just to be close to him again, to feel the warmth of his attention after years of winter’s indifference. It was as Val had said—Manning could undo me in less than one night, destabilizing a life I’d worked hard to build without him.
I turned to him. “Why aren’t you wearing your ring?”
“What?” he whispered.
“Your wedding ring. Are you and Tiffany separated?”
“I don’t . . .” He frowned. “I’ve never really worn one since I work with my hands a lot. But—”
“So you’re still with her.” Disappointment seared though me. What an idiot I’d been, secretly wondering if there might be more to this night than what it was. “You still love her.”
Manning looked from me to the stage. “You really want to talk about this here?”
I didn’t let him off the hook. “Do you love her?”
He ran his hand down his face, sighing. “Don’t make me answer that, Lake.”
I got up, and he reached for my hand. I pulled back just in time, squeezing through the row to get out. I hurried through the lobby to the coat check, but Manning had our claim tickets. Pushing out of the lobby into the chilly night, I tried to simultaneously calm my breathing and warm my shoulders. A line of cabs sat out front, but I waited, knowing Manning would come.
Moments later, my coat fell over my shoulders, and I grabbed the lapels, pulling it close. “You shouldn’t be here, in New York,” I said.
“Neither should you.”
Where would I be now, if not for this city? Maybe things weren’t perfect, and maybe I’d done a decent job of convincing myself this was where I had to be, but I couldn’t imagine I’d be okay anywhere in the world without Manning. I faced him. “I thought I could do this, but I can’t. Even just seeing a show together feels wrong.”
“That’s because it’s not just a show,” he said, coming closer. I got the sense by the way he flexed and clenched his hand that he wanted to touch me. He rubbed his temples instead. “Would you have given me anything I’d asked for?”
I wrinkled my nose, trying vainly to close the gap in our conversation. “What?”
“Earlier in the taxi, when I said you were young and infatuated and I put distance between us because you would’ve given me anything I’d asked for—was I right?”
I looked at him. It was out of character for him to push like this when he’d withheld, and forced me to withhold, for so long. “Yes,” I said, hoping to shock him back.
“What about now?”
“No.”
“Good.” When he exhaled, the air between us fogged. “Then I won’t feel bad asking.”
I breathed a little harder, not sure I understood. Not sure I wanted to understand. “Asking for what?”
“Fuck.” He shoved a hand through his black hair, pulling it so it stuck up a little. “Do you know why we’ve never kissed?”
Was he serious? We’d been over and over it. “Because I was too young.”
“Try again.”
I nearly scoffed at him. He was going to make me say it out loud? I took a step back, thinking of leaving, but he took two steps forward. “What are you trying to prove?” I asked.
“What’s the reason? Why haven’t we kissed?”
“You were with my sister,” I forced out.
He shook his head. “Those are the reasons we couldn’t be together. They were why nobody could know what we had. But you know as well as I do, there were more than a few times I could’ve had my way with you.”
My jaw dropped, his uncharacteristic vulgarity catching me off guard. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Why do you want to make this harder?”
“Because you need to hear this. Maybe back then you thought—so what, a kiss is just a kiss. Why not? But it wasn’t, not to me. You think it was easy for me, turning down your ripe fucking strawberry lips?”
My face heated. I wanted to melt into a puddle, half with embarrassment over his words, half because my knees were weakening with need the more his control slipped. “What’s your point?” I asked. “What good is it to rehash this?”
“You think I wasn’t sure, or I didn’t want to, or that she was more important to me than you but none of that is true. Here’s the truth.”
At that inopportune moment, a passing ambulance forced him to go quiet. With its shrill wail, red and blue lights flashing over Manning’s face, his words hanging in the air, my heart rate kicked up. What was Manning trying to tell me? What could he possibly say?
Once the street had stilled again, he said, “I knew the second I put my lips on yours, I’d be in-fucking-capable of letting you go. That was why I could never do it before. Those nights we had . . . in the truck, on the lake, and the kitchen counter . . . once I crossed the line, there was no turning back for me. I could never just wake up the next morning and not have you as mine.”
My heart pounded so loudly now, I was sure the entire city could hear it. These were words I’d begged for, cried for, betrayed my sister for, and he was finally giving them to me. Of course he was right that one kiss would change everything, but back then, I’d wanted that at any cost—to be his through and through.
He stared me down, challenging me to back off or run or make my own confessions. I’d done enough talking, though. It was his turn to stand there, wait for a response, and be humiliated.
Slowly, he shook his head. “I thought you deserved a better future than I could give you. I never kissed you because I wasn’t allowed to have you, and I would’ve had no choice but to take you anyway.”
It didn’t excuse anything he’d done, and it didn’t lessen the pain of those moments, but I knew exactly what he meant. Manning was mine, I knew it in my gut. I always had. “So she got it all instead,” I said.
“If it hadn’t been her, it would’ve been someone else. I would’ve worked my way through a line of women trying to forget you. I married her because I thought I was doing the right thing for all of us. And I thought she was who I deserved.”
“And now?” I asked breathlessly.
He came closer, until he stood over me, blocking out the moon, the passersby, the skyscrapers that boxed us in. “I worked so hard to keep you innocent,” he said quietly. “You’re no longer a kid, though. I always struggled to resist you, but I can’t anymore. I don’t want to.”
Panic rose up my chest. I’d known Manning could get under my skin in a matter of seconds, but I didn’t think he’d ever try. He’d always been so careful, but tonight, it was as if something inside him had flipped. “You can’t say those things to me,” I accused. “Back then, I would’ve given anything to hear them. Back then, I thought I was invincible. Now I know better. I’ve seen the damage you can do.”
“I don’t want to do damage. You should know it’s been impossibly hard for me, too.”
“For you?” I blinked rapidly. “Are you kidding?”
“Just because I put us in this situation doesn’t mean I don’t suffer. You don’t see how I’ve struggled each day.”
“Were you the one who had to watch the love of your life marry someone else?”
“No, and it would’ve killed me, Lake.” He moved in on me, and I retreated to the curb until my back hit the side of a taxi. “Seeing you and Corbin together, knowing he’s had all your firsts when I . . . when I could’ve been the one . . .” His voice wavered with emotion. “I get it.”
“You don’t get it,” I said through my teeth. “Not even close. She got everything I’ll never have. Not only the firsts, but she’ll get the lasts, too, and everything in between. Everything else, she gets.”
Tears built at the base of my throat. I tried to duck away so he wouldn’t see how he affected me, but he put his hands on the roof of the cab, caging me in. “I can’t change that. It’s done. It’s in the past.” He dropped his eyes to my lips and my panic grew bigger. I was losing control of this situation. “This morning,” he said, “if you had let me, I would’ve kissed you.”
“
But you didn’t. You never do.”
“Because like I just said, if I kiss you, you’re mine. If I do it, it changes everything. So I know what my question is now,” he said, pausing. “Do you want to change everything?”
He had come for me. He was defying fate. I’d convinced myself the past few years that none of this was possible, so I couldn’t seem to puzzle it together, and I definitely couldn’t believe it. I stared at him. “What are you asking?”
“Things are fine for me at home, Lake. They’re not great, and it’s not what I thought it would be, but my marriage is good enough. I was prepared to live with that, because I made the decision, and I didn’t think there was anything else out there for me.” When he swallowed, I saw every vein and ripple of his strong throat. “But when my parole ended, I had to find a way to get here. Once I booked the trip, seeing you was all I thought about. So many things came into focus.”
I clung to his every word, expecting him to take all this away again, even as he said what I’d been aching to hear. “What things?”
“No matter what’s going on at home, I can’t pretend my feelings for you don’t exist. It’s not fair to any of us anymore, especially Tiffany. If anything, the agony of being kept from you has strengthened how I feel.” He worked his jaw back and forth, dropping his eyes to my mouth. “I had to . . . I needed to come and hear you say you’ve moved on. You’re better off. You’re as happy as you could possibly be.”
He’d just made this real. He had said her name and along with it, all the things I’d wished to hear for years—except one. And then, he did. He gave me the words that’d been at the crux of all my tortured fantasies.
“I made a mistake.”
I’d wanted him to admit it even before he’d married her—Tiffany was a mistake. I was the one he really wanted. I inhaled back a wave of anxious tears and looked up at the sky. I’d never seen the Summer Triangle here. In this city, I barely saw constellations at all.
He took my chin and pulled my eyes back to his. “The stars can’t help you on this one, Lake.”
My eyes watered. “So you made a mistake. Are you going to do something about it? Because I know you, Manning. You’ve let me down so many times—”
Something in the Way: A Forbidden Love Saga: The Complete Collection Page 58