Something in the Way: A Forbidden Love Saga: The Complete Collection

by Hawkins, Jessica

  “How . . . how is that possible?” Not only was Tiffany on birth control, but since I’d found out I was coming to New York, we’d hardly been intimate. I lowered my voice as I searched the tangled sheets for my underwear. I couldn’t have this conversation naked. “You can’t be pregnant.”

  “I can and I am,” she said, her mood dimming. “Birth control’s not a hundred percent effective. You know that.”

  “The fuck it isn’t,” I said. “We’ve been together over four years and suddenly it isn’t effective?”

  She went from joyful to distraught in the flip of a switch. Any other time I would’ve rolled my eyes, but I could decipher Tiffany’s fake crying from the real deal, and this was the latter. “You asshole.”

  “I’m sorry.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, squeezed my eyes shut, and tried to wrap my head around this. All night I’d talked about wanting to have a kid. I didn’t want one just because it was around the right time in my marriage for that kind of thing. It’d been ingrained in me to take care of others from the time Maddy was born. She’d been six years younger than me, and I’d grown up protecting her—not just in a general sense, but sometimes literally, keeping my dad away from her. Or so I’d thought.

  I couldn’t find my underwear, so I pulled on my jeans instead and got my cigarettes from the pocket. “I didn’t mean to curse at you,” I said into the phone. “I’m just . . . shocked.”

  “That’s not why I’m crying. You’re whispering,” she accused. “Why? Is someone there?”

  Shit. Fuck. I took the phone as far as the cord would allow and leaned back against the windowsill, facing the closed bathroom door. All I could think was fuck fuck fuck. Tiffany wanted to know if there was someone in my hotel room? Damn right there was. Lake, my beautiful, delicate bird, whose hopes and dreams were pinned on me. The love of my life, who I’d probably never deserved, and whom I definitely didn’t now. I was going to be a father. I thought I’d gotten to a place where I could really do that designation justice—but how could I deserve one and not the other? I put the phone between my shoulder and ear and lit my cigarette with an unsteady hand. “Tiff, stop crying.”

  “I can’t. I tell you I’m pregnant and you yell at me.”

  The more she said pregnant, the more real it felt. The less control I had over the situation. “Have you been to a doctor?”

  “Yes. With my mom. Do you think I’d call if I wasn’t sure?”

  “Yeah, I do. Six fucking months ago, you were convinced you had skin cancer and let me think that until you admitted you hadn’t been to a dermatologist yet. Tell me, Tiffany—did you have cancer?”

  “No, but—”

  “You told me last year you were getting fired just so I’d come home early from a work trip.”

  “We’ve been over this a hundred times,” she said. “I honestly thought I was getting fired! But this time, Manning, it’s true, and I’m sorry you’re so mad—” Her breath hitched. “I’m sorry you find it so awful.”

  “I don’t find it awful.” My stomach churned, and I pulled the cig out of my mouth. Might’ve been the first time in history one made me want to puke. That was a sign. Stop smoking. I’d have to with a baby on the way. I watched it burn down. “Of course I’m not mad. I just don’t understand how it happened. We had a plan, and the timing is all off, so tell me—how did this happen?”

  “I . . .” She stuttered, her voice breaking again. “I stopped taking birth control. You said we could start trying—”

  “I didn’t say we could start—what I specifically said was that—” I took a drag of my cigarette. Even if it was making me ill, smoking was the thing that calmed me quickest, and I needed to get my fucking head right before Lake came out here. “I said after the remodel, next year, spring at the very absolute earliest.” I cursed. “I said we could once we were able to pad our nest egg.”

  “But then there’d be some other expense or reason not to do it. We’re ready now. You know we are. And once it settles in, you’ll thank me, Manning. Who cares if it was a year or so early? Five, ten years down the line, you won’t care.”

  It wasn’t one or five or ten years from now. There was only this moment, and it had come too early. For Lake, I had come too late. I’d never been able to get the timing right with her. If there was one thing about Lake and me that persisted, it was that—bad timing. It was this. Finding out I was going to be a father—and realizing Lake would never forgive me for it.

  I got up and paced, beyond giving a fuck that it was a non-smoking room. Despite the cold coming in from the window, my hairline sweat. I thought about leaning outside and vomiting. The faucet ran in the bathroom. I needed to reverse my life to ten minutes ago, to Lake sleeping on my chest, trusting me. To when my life had finally been about to start. With that thought came a crushing guilt no man should bear. I was having a kid. How I could have just fucking wished that away? I grabbed my hair in a fist. “You should’ve told me you were stopping the birth control,” I said. “When was this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes you do. Spit it out.”

  “A few months ago. September maybe.”

  “September what?” I pushed. “When in September?”

  She knew what I was getting at. With a contrite sigh, she said, “The beginning of the month.”

  Of course. That was exactly when I’d submitted a formal request with Ainsley-Bushner to come to New York. Tiffany knew, deep down, what Lake meant to me. She’d done this on purpose. “Christ, Tiffany.”

  “Are you pissed?” she asked.

  The tremor in her voice stopped me from accusing her of going behind my back. She knew what she’d done. It was just like Tiffany to feel trapped and lash out however she could, not caring about who got hurt, as long as it wasn’t her. Regardless, she was carrying my baby. “I’m a lot of things,” I said. “But pissed isn’t the right word.”

  The door opened and Lake poked her head out, quizzing me with her eyebrows as she leaned on the doorjamb. I forgot to breathe, noting how she’d washed her face pink and fresh, how her eyes were no longer puffy from crying last night.

  “Get dressed,” I quietly choked out. This conversation would strip us both in lots of ways, and I needed her to be covered up. She came out to pick through her clothing, which was all over the place.

  “I have to go,” I told Tiffany. “I’m getting in tonight, so I’ll just get a car. We can . . . I don’t know. We’ll talk when I get home.”

  “I really was excited to tell you earlier in the week. I just got so worried when you didn’t pick up.” Her voice lightened. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you happy?”

  I couldn’t speak. I wanted to be a father, just not this way. Saying I wasn’t happy about it wouldn’t be right, but I couldn’t think of anything worse in that moment than breaking the news to Lake. “Yeah.”

  “Then say it, Manning. I thought you’d be so excited to get this call, I was so certain you wanted this, and now I don’t know what to think. I’d feel so much better hearing you say we’re having a baby, honey.”

  I shook my head, looking at the floor, wanting to die on the spot. “I can’t.”

  “Please. I need this. You don’t know how stressed I’ve been trying to reach you.” She sniffled. “Once you say it aloud, it’ll sink in, and you won’t be mad anymore—I just know it.”

  Bullshit. Tiffany knew exactly what she was doing. Lake was still naked from the waist up, twisted to inspect the seat of her jeans before she buttoned them up. Well, what the fuck. I had to tell Lake somehow, and Tiffany wouldn’t stop until she got what she wanted. That was a lesson I thought I’d learned long ago, but it was never truer than in this moment.

  I took a deep drag on my cigarette and put it out on the ledge, bracing myself to break Lake’s heart again. “We’re having a baby.”

  19

  Lake

  The back of my jeans was still a bit dam
p from the snow, but I figured Manning and I were headed to my place anyway. He had to check out from the hotel and his flight wasn’t for a few more hours. I wondered if he had any meetings today, but if so, maybe it didn’t much matter if he skipped them considering he’d be done with the job as soon as he told Tiffany the truth.

  That was what I was thinking as I buttoned up my jeans and heard Manning say, “We’re having a baby.”

  I glanced up to find him staring at me. The darkness in his eyes struck me first, then how he looked physically pained, sick even, when he swallowed.

  A baby? I wondered. Whose baby? What was happening?

  Ash from his cigarette had fallen onto his thigh. He hadn’t put it out completely, and a thin trail of smoke disappeared out the window.

  He dropped the phone to his side. Slowly, the truth started to pierce the bubble I’d been subconsciously protecting the past few seconds. He’d been on the phone with Tiffany. She’d been trying to reach him for days. He wheezed as if he’d just been sucker punched. The silence made everything surreal, the air so thick that I put my hand around my throat, as if I were choking. I stood still so long that I got dizzy.

  It was Tiffany. It was their baby.

  The phone started to honk and he hung it up, breaking the stillness in the room. “Lake, listen—”

  “Don’t.” The sharpness in my voice surprised even me. “Don’t say it.”

  “I have to. Come here, Lake.”

  My head pounded. Heat burned up my chest into my cheeks. I’d never been able to think straight around him. Never. Had no control around him. Not even a little. I held the heels of my palms to my temples. “I can’t.”

  “That was your sister.” His pants were still undone, and his stomach flexed as he stood from the windowsill. “She’s pregnant.”

  I died a little inside. That statement killed off any part of me that was hoping I’d misunderstood. I put a hand up. “Don’t come over here.” I realized that I, too, was topless. I covered my breasts and stepped back, nearly tripping over my duffel bag. My things were strewn on the ground from when I’d dumped them out last night like an impulsive, stupid child. That was what I was. Reckless. Childish. So incredibly naïve to think this could ever work. I put on the t-shirt closest to me, and of course it was Manning’s and it smelled like him, which choked me up.

  I got to my knees, grabbing my stupid pink pajamas to shove them in my bag, even though I’d just as soon leave them behind.

  “What are you doing?” Manning asked.

  Leave. I wanted him to leave. I wanted to leave. I couldn’t even form the word, just kept packing whatever was nearest.

  “Lake,” he said, as if saying my name over and over and over would change anything. He came and tried to get the duffel from me. “Stop it.”

  “You stop it.” I stood and shoved him away, but didn’t move. “Don’t touch me or my things.”

  “I’m as shocked as you are.”

  I’d lost him. Again. I’d thought I’d had everything—I’d told him I loved him, not hours ago. I’d never really had him, though, and deep down, I’d known that. Whose fault was it that I’d let him convince me otherwise? “You made me say it,” I said, unable to stop the sobs from breaking through. “You made me tell you I love you.” I threw my weight into my next attempt to budge him, but he stayed put, even as I pushed and pushed. “I got fired for you. I introduced you to my friends. I ignored Corbin to make you happy. And Val, she warned me—she knew this would happen.”

  He grabbed my wrists finally, wrestling me against a wall. Locking my forearms over my chest with one hand, he covered my mouth with the other. “Calm down or they’ll think I’m hurting you.”

  He loomed over me, larger than life, blocking out everything but him. I couldn’t look at him while he did this to me again. I twisted my head side to side, bucking my entire body to get him off me. “You are hurting me,” I snapped. “You’re always hurting me.”

  “I didn’t know,” he said, his voice raised. “She stopped birth control without telling me. I didn’t know, Lake, I swear.”

  My eyes landed on the hotel desk phone, remembering the winking red light. It took me back to last night, when I’d seen, with my own eyes, that Tiffany had been trying to reach her husband—and I’d held him tight anyway. Manning hadn’t known about the baby. He hadn’t done this. And I’d known things could fall apart, but I’d pushed forward anyway.

  When I stopped squirming, Manning said, “She did it on purpose.”

  I blinked at him, panting into his palm. The pain in his eyes, the truth, was enough to clear my haze of anger. This had Tiffany written all over it. All the messages she’d left, the calls from her Manning had missed—maybe she’d even wanted me to know, otherwise why wouldn’t she wait to tell Manning tonight, in person?

  It clicked. This wasn’t Manning’s fault. I sagged against the wall and batted my lashes, clearing my vision. The past few days had passed quickly, and yet, they’d thoroughly changed me. Manning and I had felt permanent, but Tiffany had one-upped me in the most ultimate way. There was nothing more permanent than a baby.

  Manning lowered his hand. “I swear to you, Lake, if I’d thought there was even the slightest chance this could happen, I wouldn’t keep that from you. You know I wouldn’t.”

  I wanted to keep being angry, to scream at Manning and make him feel as hurt as I did. And in the same instant, I was angry for him. Protective. Tiffany hadn’t just taken this from me, but from him, too. “She tricked you.”

  “Like I told you last night, we were talking about having a family down the line,” he said, loosening his grip on my wrists. “She thought in her own twisted way, it would be okay to start now.”

  “No she didn’t. It didn’t just occur to her out of the blue,” I said, straightening up against the wall. I thought about how I’d feel if I were in Tiffany’s shoes. If it’d been my husband coming to see the woman he truly loved. If I’d been faced with losing him to my sister. I had been through that, but not publicly. Nobody but Val had known about Manning and me when he’d married Tiffany, and that had been bad enough. She wouldn’t be able to hide the reasons for her divorce forever. “You said she did this on purpose.”

  He frowned. “We’ve always had shit timing, you and me,” he said, dropping his hands. “But Tiffany . . .”

  “Her timing is impeccable,” I said, “and never a mistake.”

  “I put in a request to come here in September. It didn’t occur to me that after four years of me hardly breathing a word about you, she’d go to this kind of extreme.”

  Three months was enough time to stop birth control, get pregnant, and announce it. I closed my eyes, shedding a few silent tears. “Are you sure it’s yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “She has issues around infidelity.”

  “Tiffany?” I made a face. “Has she brainwashed you into believing she wouldn’t cheat if the opportunity presented itself?”

  He hesitated. “This is a conversation for another time, but I have no reason to believe it’s not mine.”

  “What if it’s a false alarm . . . a faulty pregnancy test?” A chill ran down my spine, and I shuddered. “Something she made up for attention?”

  “She’s been to the doctor, and if she’s lying about that, I’d never forgive it.” He grabbed his hair, holding it in a fist. “That’d be grounds for me to leave her, and she knows it.”

  Everything in me was tight, like I might snap in half. I loosened my fists and dropped my eyes to our bare feet. A sense of relief came over me, as if I’d been anticipating bad news for days. Maybe I deserved this after what I’d done to Tiffany. Manning was right all those years ago when he said he could hurt me just by loving me, but I’d been so sure it was no longer true, even up until ten minutes ago. “You said this was it for us.” My chin trembled. “You said you wanted a family with me.”

  “I do,” he said thickly. He brought me to his chest, huggi
ng me with a strength that took my breath away. “I meant everything I said, and I still do.”

  I couldn’t move. I just stood there, limp, staring out the window behind him. The mirrored skyscrapers no longer reflected the morning sun like diamonds catching the light. They just looked cold. Dead. Cabs honked ruthlessly downstairs, and there was nothing magical about the December chill freezing my tears. Was this still my New York? It didn’t feel like it.

  “You promised.” I shook as the words came out, broken and sharp, shards of the future we’d planned. “You promised no matter what.”

  “I still do. I still promise.”

  What was he saying? I wasn’t sure he even knew. He was in as much shock as I was, I could tell by the lifeless, stilted sound of his voice. I pulled back. “Manning . . .”

  “I’m not walking away from you again,” he said, and his warmth returned. He wasn’t in shock. He wasn’t lifeless. His eyes were melted brown sugar, begging me, loving me, wanting me, still, after all this.

  It should’ve changed everything, but in fact, all it did was make things clearer.

  We’d been through this before—he’d chosen this. “You could’ve had me so many times, Manning, but you picked her.”

  “I settled—I didn’t pick her. Now I choose. I choose you, and I will never make that mistake again.” His hand found my face, and he thumbed the hollow of my cheek. “You told me once love was enough. I didn’t think so, but you made me believe it is.”

  “But it isn’t, Manning.” I put my hands on his chest to move him back a safe distance, enough that I wouldn’t cave and give him whatever he was trying to ask for—but instead I curled my hands against his bare chest. “I couldn’t think past the moment back then. I know better now—life isn’t fair.”