I pinched my cigar with all fingers. It wasn’t a shocking realization, really, but I hadn’t had the guts to put it to myself that bluntly. Though Lake had been physically far away for a while, I’d kept her close during all of this. There was insurmountable evidence, though. It was an ugly but unsurprising truth—I’d spent my days building my bird a nest without knowing if she’d ever give me a chance to show it to her. And it wasn’t just for Lake—it was for us.
“Guess I don’t have to ask if you still love her as much now as you did back then,” Henry said.
“More.” I had to laugh at how sad it was. “So much more.”
“So why hasn’t she seen it?”
“It’s not that simple,” I said. “There’s a history there. No way to explain it, really.”
“Try.” When I just looked at him, he said, “Go on, kid. Explain it to me.”
“Where do I start? I’ve hurt her. More than once.” I opened my hands. “The last time was four years ago. She and I decided to give it a shot the same week Tiffany found out she was pregnant. Then after the miscarriage and divorce, I needed time to feel like a man again. When I go back to her, it has to be as the best possible version of myself, ready to give her the best possible life.”
Henry squinted in the direction of the dying campfire, then around the property. “So what’s left?”
He was asking what else needed to be done before I offered Lake everything we both deserved? Would it ever be enough? I scratched my jaw, my beard growing in. I’d been so busy lately, I’d hardly had time to shave. “You’ve got eyes,” I said. “Part of the house is still under construction. The attic needs to be completely reorganized, not to mention I haven’t really furnished the smaller rooms the way I want to. Plus, I want to build that stable in the backyard—”
“What for? You don’t ride.”
“That’s because I don’t have anywhere to put horses,” I said, which was a ridiculous lie. Really, I just wanted an excuse to have Lake between my legs again—if that was what Lake wanted, too—and there was plenty of space here for horseback riding. I had enough acreage for all kinds of animals, and wasn’t that part of what had drawn me to Big Bear? The openness, nature, the opposite of an eight-by-six cell? The ease with which I could read the constellations each night like a good book?
Only one person could grasp why those things were important. The one who hadn’t been able to see the stars at all in New York, and who might need them to light her way sometimes. The woman who deserved all the bells and whistles of a fancy kitchen just to make killer sandwiches. So, for fuck’s sake, yeah, maybe all this was for Lake, and that was all the more reason it had to be perfect before I brought her here.
“It’ll get there,” I said to Henry. “As a man, as a builder, I will get everything as it should be. These pieces take time because they’re meant to survive a lifetime.”
“Son, I know that. Who do you think you’re talking to? But a good amount of time’s passed since the divorce.” He chuckled a little. “Probably not enough. I doubt there’s an appropriate amount of time to wait to move in on your ex-wife’s sister. But what happens if you wait too long?”
Henry was most likely referring to someone else swooping in, but that wasn’t where my mind went first. I thought back to the morning of the terrorist attacks in New York, waking up to see the Twin Towers on fire—and the gut-bursting feeling that Lake was thousands of miles away from me. Logically, I knew she had no reason to be anywhere near the Financial District, but having just moved to wide-open Big Bear, I’d felt helpless. I was dialing Lake’s number before I’d even gotten a grasp on the morning news. I’d been too panicked to worry about the fact that someone else had picked up her phone, but it had set in quickly. Lake and I had spent five beautiful days in her New York, and now, at nine in the morning, another man was waking her up to hand her the phone. As soon as I’d heard she was safe, I’d hung up.
“I hear you,” I said. I wasn’t sure how I’d bring myself to go to Lake after all I’d put her through, but there wasn’t any other way. I couldn’t build her a home and never tell her. I couldn’t not love her. “The day the house is finished, I’ll go to her,” I said. “That day, I’ll bring her home.”
“Huh.” Henry nodded to himself. “I was wondering about that career choice of hers, thought maybe it didn’t seem right, but guess I was wrong. Maybe she needs all that extravagance to be happy, just like her sister.”
“She doesn’t,” I said quickly. Lake only needed me, the way I needed her, too.
“Then quit wasting fucking time, Manning. I’m willing to bet Lake would rather be here now, helping you turn this into a home, instead of losing another few years until you finally decide it’s good enough. Isn’t it good enough for her now?”
I shuffled my feet on the porch. Lake had never made me feel like what I could offer her wasn’t enough. All that had come from inside me, I knew that. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I don’t know if it’s enough.”
“You’re afraid. I get it. Love my wife, and I get scared sometimes, too. Something might happen to her, or she’ll wake up one day and realize she can do better.” He shrugged. “Hasn’t happened yet, though, and we’ve had a pretty good life together.”
Was I afraid? There was no question. I’d better have a damn good reason to ask Lake for another chance after her trust in me had splintered over the years. If I showed her all this, and she didn’t want it, I needed to know I’d done everything I could. This was my last shot. Fucking it up wasn’t an option. “I’ve run out of chances,” I said. “Our timing is shit. I can’t try to get her back and fail again—everything has to be right. I need to get this right.”
“You run out of chances when you’re in the ground, understand? There some reason you wouldn’t fight for her until the end?”
I looked over the top of the railing at the fire pit, where embers glowed orange. No reason I could think of. I’d tried to make it work with someone I hadn’t loved, with someone who hadn’t inspired in me the kind of passion that scared me, and I’d failed miserably. It was Lake or nobody. “No.”
“You’re a grown man, son. Fear’s not a good enough excuse anymore.”
Was the house enough as it was? Was I? Henry thought so. Lake thought so. I could give Lake what she’d been asking for since the beginning—us. Not knowing if she still wanted that made everything in my body hurt, but I couldn’t let that stop me if she did want it. “Yeah,” was all I said.
“Yeah,” Henry agreed.
When we’d smoked down our cigars and gone back inside, I started to turn out the lights in the kitchen.
Henry stopped and turned around in the doorway. “You never really had a fair shot at the family thing,” he said. “Everything that happened with Madison and your parents messing you over, it’s tragic, Manning. Really unfortunate. And then the miscarriage. It really breaks my heart.”
My throat got dry enough to make me cough into my fist. Henry had lived all that with me. He didn’t need to acknowledge it, but hearing it from him struck something deep in me. I could comprehend now, as an older man, that a lot of that stuff had happened to me—not because I’d done something wrong. If I’d lost a son years ago when I’d constantly blamed myself for things out of my control, I wasn’t sure I’d have recovered. “I know.”
“You deserve a family, and you shouldn’t have to wait anymore.”
I couldn’t answer him for the lump in my throat. My last contact with my dad had been the letters I’d received in jail a decade earlier. Henry was the only person looking out for me. I didn’t have to tell him he was my family, so I just nodded.
“I want to see you as a husband and a father as much as I want my own kid’s happiness. Stop punishing yourself, and stop punishing Lake. You go be the man she needs, you hear?”
Between Lake’s age and my marriage and prison and losing a son and Corbin—there’d been a lot in our way, but Henry was right; it’d stolen the spotli
ght for too long. Our timing had never been right, so why not now? I looked up at the roof I’d built to put over Lake’s head, at the dining chairs I’d constructed out of reclaimed wood from this very forest where I’d fallen in love with her, and at the countertop I’d sanded and smoothed until it was just the perfect height for Lake to sit and have me stand between her legs. And I finally made the decision.
I wouldn’t wait any longer to find Lake and bring her home.
25
Lake
My agent did her best to chase me down the studio lot. June McPherson was a powerhouse, barely five-foot-four in her highest heels, but she couldn’t compete with my trusty old Converse. I slowed to let her catch up.
“You’re making a mistake,” she panted, doubled over to catch her breath. “Just like running in these shoes was.”
I looked down at her. “I told you my plan before we entered the meeting.”
“And I told you the producers would throw more money at you. I thought once we got in there, you’d cave, not turn it down.” She squinted up at me, hand on her side, then rose to her full height. “The salary wasn’t life changing, I admit, but you can still do lots with it. And the real money comes later.” She dug around in her purse and pulled out her compact as she added, “You’d be able to find homes for all those scrappy dogs and cats you’re always talking about.”
Thinking I could raise awareness was partly how I’d gotten into this mess. I’d been able to work the animal shelter into my “storyline” on the reality show, and get photographed there by the press, but that wasn’t enough of a reason to stay beyond my contractual obligation. “I’ll find other ways to help,” I said.
“You’re sure?” She checked that no strands had come loose from her sleek ponytail, then snapped the mirror shut. “You’re really going to let something like job satisfaction get in the way of fame?”
She was teasing, but I knew this wasn’t easy for her to joke about. I was becoming one of her most sought-after clients, and I was about to flush it down the toilet. Or I already had. “I’m sorry, June. I’m just not cut out for reality TV.”
She nodded a little. “Then I’ll find you something else. Something better. You’ve got a special quality, Lake. You deserve a movie deal, today’s hottest director, top billing . . .”
I stopped listening, because I’d heard all this from her before, and it still didn’t excite me. Being on stage back in New York was the closest I’d come to feeling like a true actress. From auditioning to improv classes to mounds of rejection, I’d been forced to come out of my shell, grow up, and start making decisions for myself. And my decision was that I needed more than the network had to offer—and maybe even Hollywood in general. I hadn’t felt as if I’d done anything meaningful since I’d left New York. Even in high school, I’d belonged to clubs and extracurricular activities that’d given me a sense of purpose. I wasn’t sure if I was done with acting forever, but as far as Hollywood was concerned, once my contract with the show was up, I’d be grounding a career that hadn’t even launched.
I started for the parking lot again. “I’m going to take a step back from all of it,” I told June. “Not just the show.”
Her Jimmy Choos clacked along the faux cobblestones of a movie set modeled after New York. “Good. Go up to Napa Valley for a few weeks—take some time for yourself. I don’t want you to get overwhelmed. You saw what happened with Sean. Thank God you’re no longer associated with him.”
Sean and I had broken up months ago, right before he’d gotten caught wasted on camera leaving a club on his motorcycle. The American public had not taken kindly to his drinking and riding, and he’d been shipped off to Arizona for rehab.
Celebrity gossip had become an industry unto itself. Paparazzi was expected at movie premieres and outside of the clubs we frequented, but extravagant cameras had been popping up during my morning run or while doing mundane things like getting coffee. I didn’t understand the fascination but some magazines, and even a few websites, were solely dedicated to celebrity culture.
As June and I neared the edge of New York and headed toward what looked like a set for a Louisiana swamp, I looked across the lot and just like that, there he was—Manning unloading furniture from the back of a truck. He was so familiar yet so out of place that I stumbled and June had to steady me.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, stopping as I did.
Manning lifted what looked like a blanketed loveseat from the bed, carried it onto a soundstage, and returned with two other men, who helped him with a long wooden table.
“Lake?” June asked, craning her neck to see what I was looking at.
The morning sun shone through the buildings, creating hard lines of shade and light, a relatively cool day for mid-August. Frozen to the spot, I was unsure of what to do. Did he want to see me? Did I want to see him? My reflex was to answer yes, but the question was wrong. I needed to be asking if I should see him.
Five years after New York, eleven since I’d met him on an entirely different lot, and here we were all over again. After my conversation with Corbin on Val’s patio almost a year earlier, I’d been forced to accept that Manning and I wouldn’t happen. Since then, it’d become clear that having hope all these years had hurt rather than helped me. I’d considered him in decisions I should’ve made only for myself. He’d been on my mind as I’d boarded an airplane out of New York for good, when I’d debuted on TV, and even when I’d turned down my contract just now. He’d sat in on all my first dates, and the last ones, too, and I was exhausted. Manning was always in the way, no matter where I was or what I was doing.
I’d finally given up on destiny, on the stubborn stars, and on the idea of us, but by the way my heart raced, it was clear I still hadn’t been able to let go of Manning—not completely. Back then, I would’ve seen this random meeting as fate bringing us together. Now, all I could wonder was . . .
Did I walk toward him or away?
Manning took a bandana from his back pocket. As he wiped his temples, he paused, turned, and looked right at me. Of course he’d felt me staring, and he stared right back. June continued to try and get my attention, the men moved dining chairs around Manning, and an American flag flapped overhead, but we just stood there, neither of us making a move. Was this it, what it’d all come down to? Passing each other by, keeping a safe distance, so nobody would get hurt again?
Apparently, Manning had the same hesitation about me that I had about him. Maybe he was also trying to get his life back on track. Or had he moved on long ago? Maybe those were selfish questions considering he’d been through a miscarriage and a divorce since I’d last seen him. They were the reasons I’d never reached out, but why hadn’t he? It was possible I was nothing more to him now than a painful reminder of the past.
But then he shoved the bandana in his back pocket and without another moment of hesitation, he started in my direction. I was sixteen, eighteen, twenty-two again, unable to move or think or do anything but watch him come toward me.
My palms sweat. He commanded eyes as he crossed the lot, but his stayed trained on me and mine on him. He was older, darker, and determined. I was different. I’d lived on another planet the past year and a half, where people expected great things from me that I hadn’t been sure I could deliver. I wasn’t his immaculate, bright-eyed girl anymore. And to me, he was no longer my Manning, just the man I’d loved and lost.
By the time he reached me, I still hadn’t thought of a coherent thing to say. “Lake,” he said.
My name from his mouth calmed me. This was my Manning—in some ways, he always would be. With him, I didn’t have to be anyone other than myself. “What are you doing?” I asked. Unable to imagine any scenario in which Manning would be at a Hollywood studio, I dumbly added, “Are you here for me?”
He laughed. “No. Well, not yet. I didn’t plan on seeing you, I mean.”
My agent shoved her way between us. “June McPherson.”
He wiped his palm on his
jeans and took her outstretched hand. “Manning . . . Sutter.”
“I’m not familiar,” she said. “Who are you with?”
“With?” he asked.
“He’s not an actor,” I said, smiling at Manning’s obvious discomfort. “Can you give us a minute, June?”
“Sure, but just one. We’ve got a photo shoot across town at noon.” She took out a business card and forced it into Manning’s palm. “You have something. A special quality. Call me if you’re looking for representation.”
I frowned at her. Of course, I thought Manning had a special something, but she’d told me the same thing not ten minutes ago. How many people had that supposedly elusive quality?
As Manning watched June walk away, I had a moment to take him in. He hadn’t shaven recently, and his hair was a tad longer than he normally wore it—at least, when I’d known him. Conversely, my hair was a little shorter. The producers wouldn’t let me wear it any other way than long and blonde, but I’d chopped a couple inches and added a few rebellious lowlights.
With a light breeze, his hair rustled, and a few of my strands blew into my face. He looked back at me as I pulled them from my lip gloss. “I’m delivering furniture,” he said to my mouth. He reached in his shirt pocket, but rubbed his chest instead, returning his eyes to mine. “What about you?”
“I’m on a TV show,” I said.
A smile spread over his face. “I know that, Lake. I meant why are you here, at the studio? This isn’t reality TV.”
“Oh.” My face heated. I wasn’t sure if I was glad or embarrassed that he’d been following my career. This wasn’t the life I’d described to Manning way back when. To everyone else, the center of a Hollywood tornado was a coveted spot, but he’d probably already figured out the truth—the attention stifled me. “I had a meeting with the producers about my contract.”
“Yeah?” He leaned in. “What about it?”
I didn’t want to talk about it. My life had been splashed across the small screen the last year, and it made me uncomfortable that Manning might’ve been watching. He’d have seen all the fabricated drama between Corbin, Sean, and me. My audition for a commercial for which I’d been passed over. My genuine tears one night when I’d hugged Birdy, missing Manning more than usual, lying to Bree that I was upset over Sean’s latest antics. “It’s nothing. Did you build the furniture you’re delivering?” I asked hopefully.
Something in the Way: A Forbidden Love Saga: The Complete Collection Page 82