He stepped back as if I’d struck him. I hoped I had if it meant pulling him out of this nightmare. “You can’t say that,” he said. “You don’t even know him. You don’t know what he did.”
“He hurt your sister, your mother, and you. You have never hurt anyone, Manning.”
“No? I put my hands on you when you were sixteen. I fantasized about stripping you of your innocence when you were seventeen.” His already-dark eyes blackened like the sky. “I’m not sure I would’ve stopped that night in the truck if it weren’t for the cop.”
“But you did, even though I begged you not to.”
“Maybe next time, I won’t be able to. Do you see how worked up I get around you?” He pulled on the front of his t-shirt with a fist. “Do you see my anger, Lake? You’re going to tell me I’m not dangerous?”
“You aren’t dangerous,” I said, trying to keep any trembling from my voice. Like that night in his kitchen, his admissions kicked up my heart rate, but any fear I felt just made my toes curl. If this was a dangerous man, I more than accepted that about him. I wanted it.
“I would’ve killed that guard if I hadn’t been pulled off,” he continued. “I went to that same place my dad did. I snapped—and I could snap again.”
Something pulled deep in my belly. Manning didn’t just believe he was bad. He lived it. I could see it right there in his face, hear it in his words. He and I together would be explosive, and that was why he put distance between us. “Not with me, Manning. You don’t scare me, no matter how hard you try to.”
“I’m not trying to scare you—I’m trying to show you.” He began to pace. “I want to be a good man, Lake. I want to help people, not hurt them. I can’t do that for you, but I can for Tiffany. Getting lost in you could mean losing my control, too. I could do to you what my dad did to my mom and to—” He stopped and sucked in a breath, unable to say Maddy’s name. He didn’t need to. She was here between us, her presence strong like it’d been in the truck. “Always, in the back of mind, are all the ways I could hurt you just by loving you,” he said to me. “Not only because I come from a violent background, but because I’d be holding you back.”
In the distance, my friends hollered and laughed, probably taking beer bongs or fighting over the stereo. “That’s not true.”
“What can I offer you right now?” he asked.
“Love,” I said weakly, but I knew what he’d say.
It wasn’t enough.
His eyes darted over my face. “Do you want to keep up the same euphoric highs and crash-and-burn lows we’ve already put ourselves through the past two years? Because they’d only get more extreme, and that scares me. My greatest fear is becoming my dad. I can’t be the one who steals your future . . . or your innocence.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Okay. Maybe I can.” He squinted out toward the black horizon. “But would you let me?”
I opened my mouth to say, not only would I let him, but I’d beg if he wanted. Take me as I am, and we’ll figure out the rest. But the truth was, I didn’t know the rest. I couldn’t say with absolute certainty that we’d be okay. In my mind, the two of us were tangled sheets and big love and hours of tracing every part of the bodies we’d fantasized about. Where did school and money and work factor into all that? I realized that whatever guilt I felt when my family turned me out, Manning would blame himself. Whatever problems arose in our relationship, Manning would shoulder them, even though he’d warned me against them. And if we had those blow-out fights, and Manning did anything to say or hurt me, even by accident, he’d convince himself he’d become his dad. Ironically, in the end, it was me who could turn Manning into his father, and Tiffany who’d helped Manning believe he was a good man.
I didn’t know what to say but the only thing that made any sense to me. “You’re what I want.”
“But I can’t be what you need. Still, after everything I just said, knowing all the ways it could go wrong, knowing the man it would turn me into to love you and to ruin you . . .” He ran his hand over his face, as if forcing the words out. “If you ask me to choose you, I will—even if it could ultimately destroy me.”
I remembered the night we’d almost gotten caught in the truck, how childish I’d felt for how I’d acted. He’d asked me not to do it, but I had. He’d been led away in handcuffs, he’d stunted his future, because I’d wanted something and hadn’t considered the consequences.
“You don’t care how hard it’s been for me.”
Of course I cared. The only thing I wanted more than my happiness was his. A lump formed in my throat as everything I’d known to be true shifted. These past two years, I thought I’d been brave. Strong. Loved. I’d only been selfish to think Manning wanted me to fight for him, when instead, pushing him only hurt him.
I turned my head and tried in vain to hide the endless stream of tears streaking down my cheeks. My sister stood by the fire, arms curled around her waist, watching us. Tonight, he’d be walking back to her. I covered my face, my world crumbling.
Manning let me stand there and cry into my palms. He didn’t comfort me, and I finally understood how it would be unfair of me to ask him to. Through my fingers and the blur of my tears, I noticed my missing anklet. The bracelet I’d made for Manning had fallen off, probably with the licks of the ocean. It was done. We were done. Only my pain persisted.
Manning had once told me you couldn’t move the stars. I’d thought that meant our love was predestined, written in the night sky, sure as death. Behind my lids, I pictured the two stars and realized for the first time the permanent distance between them. And I accepted that there was, and always had been, a third star.
You can’t move the stars.
I had tried, and I had failed.
24
Lake
Gripping a bouquet of peach and cream garden roses, I peeked around the hotel’s archway. Friends and family quietly filtered onto a perfectly manicured lawn, murmuring as they took their seats for the ceremony.
The sun began to set over the Pacific Ocean, fiery orange dipping into cool blue. This morning’s cloud cover had given way to an unblemished sky. With everything happening around us, it should’ve been easy to avoid looking at Manning, but that always had been, and always would be, impossible for me. My gaze lifted above the crowd and down the petal-scattered aisle. Manning stood under the sheer curtains of a gazebo on the edge of a cliff, his back to me as he spoke to the best man. The first time I saw Manning on that construction site, he’d been larger than life. Today, he was so much more. He commanded attention without trying. His shoulders stretched a bespoke suit, and his hands sat loosely in his pockets as if it were any other day.
He turned his head, giving me the pleasure of his profile. Strong jaw, full mouth, thick, black, recently trimmed hair. Even with the scar on his lip and the new, slight curve of his nose, he looked refined, the sum of all my dreams come to life.
Henry spoke to Manning with the air of a father figure, his hand on Manning’s shoulder. Manning just listened and rubbed his sinfully smooth jaw as he stared at the ground. Henry paused, as if waiting for an answer or acknowledgement, and his smile faded. He looked to the back of the decorated lawn, through the arches hiding the bridal party. He looked at me. Maybe Manning wasn’t as calm as I thought. Maybe he was having second thoughts.
I, on the other hand, had only one thought.
Mine.
The air buzzed, charged with murmured excitement, even in the vastness surrounding us. Water and sky swallowed the horizon. If I’d ever imagined this moment, Tiffany about to walk down the aisle, I would’ve thought it’d be pure chaos. Knowing how she thought the world revolved around her, and this being the biggest event of her life to date, it would seem inevitable.
That was why her calmness unnerved me. Sarah fixed the train of Tiffany’s strapless dress on the grass while Mom hugged her tightly, rubbing her bare shoulders. Surely, as the Maid of Honor, there was something I should’ve been doi
ng, too, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. Nobody was yelling or crying or putting out fires. All I heard was blood rushing through my ears.
In a few minutes, it would all be over. Everything. The last couple years of my life erased with a simple “I do.” There were bows tied to aisle chairs and petals on the ground. Somebody had spent the time to do that—peel flowers just so Tiffany could walk on them.
Gary shook Manning’s hand, and Manning smiled so widely, it knocked the wind out of me. It wasn’t just breathtaking—it was genuine.
The violinists began to play, and the bridal party took their places. My dad kissed Tiffany on the cheek before whispering in her ear. Her eyes lit up as he pulled her into a hug. Mom held a tissue to one corner of her eye and then the other. They were happy. I wasn’t. I could still change that . . . if I decided their happiness was worth my own.
I didn’t know the right answer. All I knew was my love for Manning. He watched my mom, then Gary head down the aisle, followed by the bridesmaids. I just watched him at the head of it all, hoping for a spared glance in my direction. And suddenly, it was my turn to go, to walk down the aisle to him, but not the way I’d dreamed about.
“Lake,” Dad said from behind me after too long had passed. “Go.”
I looked back at him and at Tiffany, their arms looped together, and remembered the night months ago on the beach when I’d told Manning I could walk away from them for him. He’d said something about my dad in the heat of the moment that hadn’t registered for me until weeks later.
“Why the hell do you think he’s happy about this wedding?”
I’d turned it over and over in my brain until the pieces finally came together. Dad had hurried this wedding along because he knew that wherever Manning went, I’d follow. Even if it meant leaving my family behind. Even if it meant dropping out of USC. The one way, the only way, I’d never be allowed to love Manning was as Tiffany’s husband. The betrayal cut deep, but I’d kept the hurt inside and a smile on my face to make it through all of this.
I took a step, and my heel sank into the grass. I wiggled it out and brought my foot back. “I can’t do it,” I whispered.
“That’s what the stones are for.” Tiffany gently pushed me forward. “Use the path. Go ahead.”
As if it was easy. As if I wasn’t walking toward the most horrific thing I could imagine. I couldn’t do it. Tears flooded my eyes as the spikes of my heels dug into soft ground. The guests, turned in their seats, started to murmur. All eyes except Manning’s were on me, and the music played on, beautiful, haunting. Despite my protests, my hair had been swept off my bare shoulders, putting my heartbreak on display for everyone to watch like a movie.
I started down the aisle. At rehearsal, I’d been reminded over and over to keep the pace of the music. Time slowed with me, an eerie tranquility coming over me the way I imagined it felt giving in to drowning. Corbin smiled at me, his arm over the back of his mom’s chair. Val sat by him, stoic, and I knew her heart beat as hard as mine.
I looked forward again, silently urging Manning to raise his head and look at me. We’d communicated so much that way, glances here and there, our own language. Walking toward him like a bride made my hands sweat around my bouquet. I scraped my thumbnail down a stem, wishing for the prick of a thorn to distract from the pain in my chest. Manning must’ve been sweating, too, because he wiped his brow, then his hairline, but even as I approached the front and took my spot, he still hadn’t looked. Maybe because he knew what he’d see if he did . . . my delicate birdy heart, ripped right down the middle by a great bear.
Through all this, I’d never doubted that he belonged to me. Never wondered if he loved me. He didn’t have to say it for me to know it was true. For over two months, I’d done as I was told, smiling through the pain, making plans to start USC next week. But in that moment, overwhelmed by Manning’s beauty, by the pain I knew he felt, too, I couldn’t remember why I’d stepped back.
Because I was staring at Manning, I didn’t even hear the Bridal March begin, didn’t see Tiffany come out, but suddenly she was there, passing me her bouquet, moving in front of Manning, her back to me.
“Friends and family,” the priest said, “we’re gathered here today to witness the union of Tiffany and Manning, and to celebrate their love by joining them in marriage.”
My heartbeat thundered in my ears. The priest smiled and said things I couldn’t register, things Manning and Tiffany repeated. People laughed. Not Manning. He just stared at Tiffany.
If he’d only glance over, I knew what I’d see in his eyes, because I’d seen it before, in the few raw but powerful moments we’d had the last couple years. I’d see the depth of love that kept him away, the heat that kept him close.
Henry passed Manning the rings. Things were moving too fast. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, put that ring on her finger without sparing me even a glance, I knew it in my gut. On the inside, I screamed for him, convinced he would hear me. He focused on Tiffany so hard as he slid on her ring, he didn’t even blink.
Maybe he didn’t think love was enough, but it was. I knew it was. If he wasn’t going to stop this, I would. For him. I loved him enough to do this on my own. Maybe he’d be mad for a while. Maybe he’d even try to stay away. But eventually, when things had settled, he’d understand why I couldn’t let him make this mistake.
I knew what I had to do, and it had to be now.
“Marriage changes you,” the priest said. “It betters you. It heals you. It will define you as a couple, and deepen your love for one another.”
Now. Now. Now.
Everyone on the lawn watched, rapt. Mom, Dad, grandparents, toddlers, cousins. Corbin winked at me. Val chewed her thumbnail. Gary and Henry, maybe the only two men who’d ever given Manning a fair chance, stood tall and looked on proudly. I would hurt them, too. Everyone.
“Should anyone in attendance know of any reason why this couple should not be lawfully married, speak now . . . or forever hold your peace.”
Two years ago, I dove into a lake at midnight hoping Manning would follow. The world had gone instantly black, deafeningly still, until I’d heard the woozy echo of Manning calling me back. I’d stayed submerged a little too long, punishing him for denying me, wanting him to worry. The silence of this moment was the same. Dizzying. Disorienting. Sluggish but calm. Everything shrunk down to the man in front of me.
Tiffany’s veil lifted with a breeze. Beads of sweat had formed on Manning’s hairline. He squeezed his eyes shut briefly. Could I do it for him? Ruin a wedding, a marriage before it began, a life? My own sister?
He’d asked me not to. He’d asked me to let this go.
Sarah, behind me, rubbed my back, and I realized it was because I shook with silent sobs. Scalding tears flooded my eyes, warming my cheeks.
Manning finally looked at me, his face pale, his ever-dark brows drawn so tightly that his forehead wrinkled. In his honeyed brown eyes, I saw all the agony the last two years had caused him. Our hot, construction-site afternoons, our cool, starry nights, and all the days he’d lost because of me. He swallowed, maybe holding back his own tears.
My love for him spanned the ocean, the sky over our heads, an infinite universe of stars. I could do this to Tiffany, but I couldn’t do it to him. I sealed my words inside along with a great love that somehow fit inside me.
Maybe one day, Manning and I would challenge fate, defy gravity, and move the stars ourselves.
But today was not that day.
Coming October 2017: Move the Stars, the highly anticipated conclusion to the Something in the Way series. Preorder now.
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If you’re up for something similar to what you’ve just read, try my completed trilogy, The Cityscape Series (keep swiping to read chapter 1). To get a little sexier, go with Slip of the Tongue.
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Somebody Else’s Sky: Something in the Way, 2 Page 25