Once I’d started on the dishes, I felt Manning enter the room. “You don’t need to do that,” he said.
“I don’t mind.”
“Lake.” He came up behind me, put his arms around mine, and sunk his hands in the water, lacing our fingers together. “I used to think about doing this when we had Sunday dinners,” he said softly into my ear. “Holding your hand underwater for a few seconds, where no one could see.”
My breathing shallowed as I stared at the fizzing suds. “Why didn’t you?”
“I might’ve, if I’d thought either of us could handle it.”
I inhaled, my back against his chest, our hands hidden by the foam. He massaged my palms, knuckles, wrists. “What are you doing?” I asked, suddenly aware of his breath on the back of my hair.
“You promised me you wouldn’t bolt after dinner.”
“What good would it do to stay? This . . . it’s too hard, Manning. Being around you will always be too hard.”
“I know it is, Birdy. I wanted to ease us into this. I thought you could come here for a nice, simple dinner and tell me all about your life. But it really never was easy with us, was it?”
Nobody could say we hadn’t tried. We’d been pushed, and we’d pushed back. We’d wanted love to be enough, but it wasn’t. I shook my head and whispered, “No.”
“Nevertheless, I keep coming back to you. I can’t give you up.”
As good as it felt to hear that, I knew the truth—it wasn’t that simple. If it had been, we’d have figured this out long ago. I took my hands from the water and turned to face him. “What about closure?”
“Don’t want it,” he said, stepping back. “Don’t need it. Not even sure what it is.”
Water dripped from our hands to our feet. I frowned. “But you said . . .”
“I had to get you here, Lake.” He passed me a dishtowel. “I don’t know what that bullshit was earlier about being over me, but I’m not over you. No fucking way—not now, not ever.”
My throat closed. I couldn’t breathe. He’d given me no warning, and now I was either going to choke or keel over, and all this would’ve been a waste. “It wasn’t bullshit,” I said, drying my hands. “I’ve been stuck in this place for over ten years. I’ve tried to be happy, to find myself, but I can’t while you’re in my way.”
“Me?” His eyebrows wrinkled. “What are you talking about?”
The backs of my eyes burned with hot tears. “I know you didn’t want this for me. All this pain. You wanted me to soar, and I can’t—because of you. I have to let go. I have to let you go.”
“And what did I tell you all those years ago? I won’t be let go, Lake.”
“It’s too hard, Manning. I thought we were meant to be, but maybe we’ve been fighting against fate, not alongside it.”
“I never believed in fate,” he said. “You did. I want to fight, I’m ready, so let me do the fighting. I’ve made all of this for us.”
I inhaled back a sob. “It’s time for us to face the truth.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “What truth?”
“That maybe you and I . . . we were never meant to be. There’s no twisted destiny or fate or inevitable . . .” The next wave of tears was so painful to keep inside, I had to stop talking. I could hardly get the words out, but it had to be said if I had any shot at a satisfying life without him. “It’s written up there in the sky,” I said. “Our stars are permanently separated. There’re no birds to carry us across the Milky Way to each other. I’m sorry you ever told me that story.”
“So am I. It’s a fantasy, but we’re a reality. Don’t you have any faith in me, Birdy? I don’t need anyone to carry you to me. You must’ve always known, when I was ready, I would come for you.”
“Then why haven’t you?” I asked.
“I’m here now, Lake. I’m here for you because I still love you. Always.”
“It’s too late,” I said. “I couldn’t see a way to ever be happy without you, so I made the decision to move on.”
“I don’t believe you.” He made two fists as he crossed his arms. “You may love him, I get that, it’s my own fault, but he will never be what I am to you. You know that.”
This was the Manning I remembered from New York. I didn’t correct him. What was the point? If it wasn’t Corbin, it would be someone else. “You can fall in love with someone else if you’re willing to try,” I told him. It was the same thing Corbin had said to me on the patio. “We both can.”
“Nah, I can’t,” he said simply. “You’re it for me.”
My face warmed with all the hurt of the past few years. Was he not even going to try to let me go? Did he think this was easy for me? That I hadn’t suffered enough? “You’re it for me, too,” I said angrily, “but I don’t want to hurt anymore. I can’t handle the possibility of losing you again.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Lake. Do you really think I can ever move on from you? That if you give me your love, I won’t fight every day to keep it?”
“What about the last four years? I asked. “You didn’t fight for me then.”
“Look around you. Look at what I’ve built. Who do you think this is for?”
My eyes went to the wine cooler, the state-of-the-art range, the painstakingly customized cabinetry. And back to Manning, where they stayed. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve spent the last few years away from you to become everything you needed me to be. I wasn’t going to fuck this up again. You wanted me to follow my passion, so I did. To show you I had faith in us. To create a life that makes me happy, to provide not just for you, but for others.”
My heart beat in my stomach as I continued to fight my tears. He had faith? Since when? “But I always had hope in us,” I said. “I may have lost it, but you never had it.”
“Look at this house and tell me I never had hope. I knew you might never see this—might not ever give me another chance—but I built it anyway.” He pushed his hair back and released it, imploring me with his eyes. “I know you can learn to love someone else, but I’ve tried that, and I can tell you it’ll never be what we’ve got. So I’m asking you to choose me. This, what you see around you, is our home. All I’ve done, and all I am is for this—for you.”
Manning had built this for me? A house—a home? What scared me most about that was how much I wanted it to be true. I stood in the middle of a life I didn’t want to leave behind, and he was telling me I didn’t have to. I stood before the only man I’d ever loved and left and tried to forget as he offered me everything I’d ever wanted.
I wanted to take it, and I could see how things were different now, but how could I not be afraid? I couldn’t fight my urge to cry anymore. I let the pain and fear and heartache of the past leak onto my cheeks.
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” Manning said quietly. “I don’t want to scare you off, but I can’t let you leave without knowing how I feel. Give me one thing tonight. Believe in me long enough to see the house I built on faith, for a family I might never have.”
I covered my mouth and sobbed into my hand. Manning might’ve broken my heart and made mistakes, but he was too good of a man not to be a father and husband. “Don’t say that.”
“I might not get those things, Lake.” He backed away from me. “There’s only one person I’m meant to have a family with. If I can’t, I won’t.”
He deserved a family more than anyone I knew, so I let that tether between us pull me along with him. As he left the kitchen, I followed—past empty bedrooms, through the darkened house, until we were at the end of a hallway.
He opened a door for me, and I looked up at him as I walked into a room with walls painted midnight blue—or maybe it was the color of the ocean floor, or a starless New York night. By the enormous, honeyed-wood bedframe with matching nightstands, I could tell Manning had put thought into the master bedroom, just as he had the kitchen.
I walked closer to the footboard, which had been carved with a large bear on al
l fours in a forest, looking over his shoulder at the trees. My great bear. I didn’t see much more than that because my vision blurred with more tears. If I could go back to that night where he’d shown me the constellations and then told me no when I’d tried to kiss him, would I change any of it? Would I have left it at that? I wasn’t sure. There’d been so much heartbreak and only just enough love to keep me going. Could I do it all again? Was he asking me to?
I turned back to him. “It’s been so long,” I said, and I wasn’t sure if I meant his absence or the time that’d passed since this had all started. “Things are different for each of us. Do we even know each other anymore?”
He came to me and wrapped an arm around my middle. My body locked up as he pulled me against him, but as I looked into his familiar, warm brown eyes, I thawed. It was like snapping together with my matching puzzle piece.
“Do we?” he asked as he cupped my jaw. “Does this part feel different?”
Ever since I’d left Manning’s hotel room in New York, nothing had been quite right. I’d accomplished a great deal since then, and there was more on my horizon, but still, Manning’s absence persisted in me. Even being here with him tonight had been so confusing—until now. I was no longer out of place. I was no longer just me. I was Manning’s. His arms around me brought everything into focus. This was still, after all these years, all that mattered. I wondered if he’d known that since he’d seen me on the studio lot, and that was why he seemed so calm tonight.
“It’s the same, isn’t it?” he asked, running his hand up my back.
“Yes, but is that a good thing?”
“This was never the problem. It was that we had to grow up. You were right. I’m not the same person I was, and neither are you. I’m a better man. And you . . .” He dropped his forehead against mine, inhaling deeply. “I can make you happy. It kills me to hear that you think letting me go is the only way, but it isn’t. I promise you. I can be the support you need to soar.” He squeezed me closer. “Trust in this. I know you, I always have. That part remains the same—how much I love you. How you deserve that love. How I deserve you. How I’m . . .” He paused, sounding strangled. “Good enough to accept it. At least, I will fight to be, every day.”
I reached up and traced my fingertip over the scar on his lip. So much hurt, so many wounds and bandages. In his own way, Manning had been looking out for me through all of it. “You’ve always been good in my eyes. I’ve waited so long for you to see it, too.”
“I see it. My love for you is strong enough to make me good enough.” As he said it, his lips got closer and closer, as if he couldn’t help himself. It wasn’t like Manning to be so vulnerable. He moved my hand over his heart. “I told you I can’t go on without this. Since the day you left, I’ve been nothing but lonely.”
“You’re lonely?” I whispered.
“Every hour of every day. I miss the girl who meticulously makes monster sandwiches and who’s afraid of Ferris wheels and horses but not of moving across the country by herself. I miss not being able to touch and kiss you as I please, the way I did for five . . . fucking . . . days of my life. It was the best time I ever had, and if I die tomorrow, at least I had that time with you.” Manning moved his thumb over my quivering chin. “Don’t cry, Birdy.”
I put my arms around his neck to meet his mouth and kiss him. I’d been lonely, too. I’d had the world within reach, but strangely, in the middle of nowhere, in a town that held some of my worst and most cherished memories, I was finally home.
27
Lake
Night fell around us. I didn’t want to leave Big Bear. I was a little tipsy from the wine, heady from Manning, and after years of meaningless human contact, I just wanted to be held. “Was it always your plan to end the tour in the bedroom?” I teased.
“It’s not over yet.” He smiled down at me. “You didn’t say anything about the bed. Did you see?”
“My great bear.”
He turned me back to the footboard, then switched on the overhead light. “Look closer.”
Because the carvings were subtle in the warm wood, it took me a moment of squinting to notice the tiny bird perched on the bear’s back. He wasn’t looking over his shoulder at a tree. He was always watching, always protective of his . . . “Birdy.”
“And where’s she looking?” he asked.
“Up,” I said. “At the stars.”
I tilted my head back, half-expecting to see the universe right there on his ceiling the color of blueberries, but there was nothing.
“It’s on the headboard,” he said.
I wrinkled my nose at him, then went around the bed and moved one pillow. And then another and another. What I saw took my breath away—the night sky carved into his headboard. The constellations, the Summer Triangle, and both Ursas, Major and Minor—the great and little bears.
I’d been wrong earlier. The house wasn’t Manning in every way. It was us.
I put my face in my hands and released a torrent of tears.
“Lake.”
I shook my head. It was too much. “I can’t.”
“Is it too much?” he asked, reading my thoughts. “You know how I feel about you, don’t you?” I continued shaking my head. “If you don’t like Big Bear,” he said, “we can go somewhere else. We can go back to New York. You said you wanted to travel—we can do that, too.”
No, no, no. I wanted to be here. Right here. Home. For good. I couldn’t say it, though. It was too good to be true.
“Lake?”
When Manning got no response, he sighed and picked me up, lifting me into his arms like a new bride. “What would I do with top-of-the-line appliances?” he asked, carrying me through the house. At least I assumed that’s what we were doing—I couldn’t see for all my crying. “I thought for sure you’d figure it out as soon as you walked in the kitchen,” he added. “Did you see that cabinet in the corner? It’s for your special guest dishes. We can leave it there or put it in the dining area. That’s just one thing we can decorate and fill together.”
I’d never felt so overwhelmed, not even when I’d received my acceptance packet to USC, and even then, part of my tears were the doubts I couldn’t express with words. Tonight, I had no more doubts. Everything felt huge, but with Manning by my side again, and a career change in order, things also seemed as they should be.
I peeked through my fingers and wet lashes. Outside now, we headed for the small warehouse I’d noticed earlier. My cowboy boots swung as he carried me, and his heart beat near my cheek as I rested on his chest. There wasn’t much to the backyard, just a clearing before the forest, the pine trees making dark triangles in the moonlight. “What . . . what goes back here?” I asked.
“You tell me, Dr. Dolittle,” he said.
Finally, a smile broke through. “Animals?”
“If that’s what you call those rescue mutts.” He winked before he set me down to open the shed’s sliding barn door. “Here’s where I kept my sanity all these years.”
Manning’s workshop could’ve housed a small army. I stepped onto an unfinished concrete floor, sawdust under my boots. From sanders to circular saws to vises, the equipment alone intimidated me. Between the work benches, lumber, and planks and slabs piled in corners and against walls, it smelled woodsier inside than the forest behind it. “Where’s all the furniture?” I asked.
“I sold it.” He pointed to a few half-finished pieces, clustered in the center. “These are my current commissions, due next month.”
I turned in a circle. These were his things. His tool belt and goggles and red bandana, knotted and hung on a nail. His sketches on the walls, his sweat in the air.
“I know it doesn’t look like much,” he said, grouping pencils on a work table, dusting off the surface with his palm. “But it’s what I have. In here, I create things I hope my clients will love. It’s my escape from everything else.”
“Like what?” I asked, facing him again.
“My family, my
past. My time in solitary.” He picked up a hardhat to hang it on the wall. “But not you. Try as I did, I couldn’t help that you were on my mind enough that I had to make pieces for you, too.”
“Why?” I asked. I looked around, but there was so much, I couldn’t even see it all. The love and sweat and tears and hope he’d given and lost, fought against and for. “Why’d you do all this?”
“I haven’t always been good with words. This was one way to show my love for you, and my commitment to our future.”
I’d carried hope for us in my heart so long. I thought I’d lost it, but he’d picked it up and put it on his shoulders until the finish line. The evidence was all around me. I walked through Manning’s escape, awed by the beauty of his work. The care and love that obviously went into what he’d created. He’d made his bed in here, under the warm lights, out in the middle of nowhere. Our bed.
Manning came and took my hand, sliding it over the uneven surface of an armoire. “I haven’t sanded it yet,” he said. “Feel that?”
I had a moment of déjà vu, some time when he’d asked me that before and it’d been more than a simple question. Did I feel it, the coarseness on my palm, the electricity of his skin on mine? Did I feel him?
“I feel it.”
He led me out behind the shed to an area hidden from the house. A motion sensor light flickered on above the door, revealing a small but sturdy-looking dinghy. “You’re building a boat?” I asked.
“I’m trying. It’s my first attempt.” He walked around the perimeter. It was the first time since dinner he took his eyes off me for more than a few seconds. “One of my favorite projects yet. I only get to work on it on the weekends.”
“Does it work?” I asked.
“Work?” He climbed in to sit on the bench closest to the stern, running his hands along the inside edges. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” I blushed a little, and he grinned ear to ear. Even though he was sitting, we were almost eyelevel. I hadn’t seen a smile like that from him in so long. Maybe ever. He lit up the night, while I just tried to focus on a coherent thought. “Does it, like, float, I guess?”
Something in the Way: A Forbidden Love Saga: The Complete Collection Page 85