“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—”
He stepped into me, silencing me just with his nearness. “I saw you stumble out of the cab this morning, I saw your shitty apartment, saw you in a relationship that makes me murderous.” He lowered his head and spoke above a whisper. “For so long, you’ve been perfect to me. Untouchable. Unblemished. Now I want to touch you, Lake. I want to blemish you. I don’t want you perfect anymore. I just want you.”
My entire body shook with the force of my heartbeats. “Why now?” I asked.
“Because I’m done trying to protect you. If we do this, peo
ple are going to get hurt, including us, and you have to be okay with that.”
I tried to force myself to push him out of the way. Manning—this—was the one thing I desired most in the world, but I knew, even through my haze, how terribly it could go wrong. “How can I be okay with that?”
“If you can’t, tell me you’re happier without me in your life,” he said, almost pleading. “It’s the only way I’ll be able to walk away from you again. Otherwise, I’m going to take what I wanted from the start. And I’m going to erase him. For good. For-fucking-ever.”
“Corbin?” I asked, shocked that he was even on Manning’s mind at a time like this.
“You know what it does to me when you say his name like that?” he asked.
I knew, because he’d said her name to me, too. “I hope it hurts.”
“It does.”
I looked at the ground, guilt creeping in. Not because of Corbin, but because Manning’s perception of Corbin and me was wrong. I hadn’t corrected it so I could use it to hurt him, but I hadn’t realized how he’d latch onto that information, dragging Corbin into this. “You have no right to talk about him after what you’ve done,” I said quietly. “He’s been there for me in a way you never were. He’s my best friend.”
“And that kills me,” he said. “Give me a chance to erase both of them for us.”
My throat thickened. If only. “You can’t.”
He waited until I looked up to respond. “I will,” he said without a hint of doubt. He moved his mouth over mine, inches away. He was finally going to kiss me—but then what? Were his threats real? Would he really be willing to change everything with just one kiss?
“I can’t trust you,” I said weakly. I wasn’t even sure it was true. With all the ways he’d hurt me, nothing should’ve raged stronger in me than anger and skepticism—but in that moment, I couldn’t find any of that. On some level, I recognized all the things he’d done, he truly believed he’d done them to protect me. And I knew—I was in too deep with a man who’d ruined my life without ever touching me. If this went any further, I might not survive it. “How is it possible that I could trust you?”
I asked more out of awe that it was true than anything, but he had an answer for me anyway. “Because back then, I couldn’t give you this choice. You wouldn’t have considered the consequences.” Manning leaned in and my breath caught, my heart leaping into my throat. But he didn’t kiss me. Instead, he opened the door of the cab. “I was looking out for you, and I still am. Always. Go home, Lake.”
Disappointment hit me first, and then it filtered into embarrassment. Shame. Anger. He’d made me want it yet again, and again, he was taking it away. “I knew it. I knew you didn’t have the guts to do this.”
He slammed the door shut. “I have the guts. I’m prepared to destroy everything in our way, but you’re going to lose your sister forever and your best friend, too. And once you put this in motion, I’m never going anywhere you aren’t. I’m not walking away from you again. So you better know for goddamn sure you want this.” The night had gotten quiet around us, but he grew louder. We grew louder. “This isn’t like that night on the beach, when you begged me to love you knowing I wasn’t allowed. I’m allowing myself now, and you know what’ll happen if we do this. Not only will people get hurt, but everything you know about me is only going to get worse.” He set his jaw. “I’ve always thought of you as mine, but now you will be for real. If you thought I was overprotective or possessive before, you have no idea how bad it can get. Are you ready for that?”
Every nerve in my body buzzed. Manning made me dizzy, he inspired an ache between my legs, he was the force behind the hammering heart in my chest. I’d spent every day of my adult life wanting him, loving him, willing to give up anything for him. That hadn’t changed—I’d only been made to ignore it. I didn’t want to get in the car, but I knew I was supposed to. I was supposed to hate him for what he did to me, and that only made everything more confusing. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”
He opened the door. “Then get in the fucking cab—go home. If you have the smallest doubt about me, go and think and don’t come back to me until you know for sure what we’re getting into. Or stay away and be satisfied.”
Did I have doubts? There was no question I did. My instinct to love him was as strong as my instinct to cower from him. To cover my chest, anticipating the next blow. He’d beaten my heart black and blue, so what right did he have to try and take it back?
I moved to get in the taxi, but to my surprise, he stepped down from the curb and cupped my face in his palm. With dreamlike slowness, he lowered his mouth to my cheek for a chaste, gentle kiss. Between the open door and him, I was caged into a corner, completely blocked from the rest of the world—consumed by his scent, the warmth of his hand, his smooth lips on my skin. “This doesn’t mean I don’t want to fight for you,” he said. “That I don’t want you more than anything, even knowing the damage it can do. It just means I need you to be sure this is what you want.”
It’s what I want, I nearly screamed, but regardless of the fact that Tiffany and I had been as far apart as possible without actually being estranged, she was still my sister. And he was still her husband, still the man who’d hurt me all those years ago. Who’d nearly destroyed me. I couldn’t be expected to forget that in a day.
“Fuck,” he muttered, wetting his lips.
“What?”
“I was wrong. I said kissing you would change everything, but everything has already changed.” He closed his eyes for the briefest moment. “It’s too late for me. So in case this is the last chance I get …”
And then, tucked against a cab, in the middle of a busy city street, under our starless night sky, Manning bent his head and opened my mouth with his. Our tongues met, our lips pressed together, his hand curled into my jaw—and we kissed. I couldn’t believe, just like that, it was happening. We felt each other for the first time but fell into the kiss like old lovers. His thumb grazed my cheekbone as I slid my arms around his neck. When my knees buckled, he caught my waist, pulling me against his solid body, his need pressing my stomach—undeniable, hard, begging. The kiss didn’t last long, but it was so right, so heady that I had to pull back because I’d forgotten to breathe and was seeing stars. Worried I might pass out, I steadied myself with a hand on his chest.
He held me there a moment, searching my eyes, and then he took my elbow and pushed me into the cab. Without another word, he closed the door behind me and paid the driver through the passenger side window. “Avenue B and Houston,” he said and hit the roof.
My heart ached for him. My insides clenched for him. I was ready to be consumed, to sign over my life to him, to hurt anyone who came between us—and I understood then why he’d shoved me in the cab. Why he’d held back all these years, denied me, hurt me, pushed me away. Once we jumped off this cliff, there was no coming back for either of us. We might fly, we might hit the ground, but once it was done, things could never go back to what they were for anyone involved. I fought every urge, every instinct to call for him, to ask him to come with me.
He’d said it was too late for him—I feared it was too late for me, too.
6
Lake
Alone in my apartment, my Calvin Klein gown draped over the back of my desk chair, heels discarded at the door and makeup washed away, I tossed and turned in the dark. I wanted Manning there, caging me against the mattress the way he had the cab. I needed him to make up for all the years we hadn’t been kissing the way we had hours ago.
I kicked off the bedspread and stared at the ceiling, restless, aching, lost. He’d sliced open a wound long bandaged, scarred though not healed, and now it wouldn’t stop bleeding.
Midnight became two in the morning, then four. I drifted in and out of sleep. I could have Manning, but he’d come at a price. Was I willing to pay? Corbin wouldn’t understand, and maybe Val wouldn’t either. My parents would never forgive me. Tiffany would be devastated. But after
years of drifting apart from all of them, would severing those relationships hurt more than saying goodbye to Manning?
I forced myself to remember my sister, the good, the bad, and everything in between. The time, after she’d hit puberty, she’d pushed me out of her room while her friends were over, and I’d almost fallen down the stairs. The summer we were nine and twelve, and she’d carried me half a mile on her back because I’d sprained my ankle during handball. All the nights I’d sat across from her at the dinner table and shared an inside joke or called her annoying or let her use me as a scapegoat for whatever trouble she’d gotten into that week. The nights I’d lounged in her bed and watched in the mirror as she’d attempted bigger lips with the aid of liner or modeled clothing out of shopping bags, tags springing off her as she walked a makeshift runway.
I tortured myself with the memories but the instant that afternoon she’d sauntered up to Manning at the construction site came to mind, I lost my heart to my stomach. She’d swiped him right out from under me, and he’d let her. She’d already gotten more of him than she deserved. I could acknowledge the terrible thing I was doing to her, and how painfully I loved him, but I couldn’t think of them together so I didn’t.
A garbage truck growled and beeped down my street, stirring the peaceful night into a new day.
Regardless of the fact that I’d seen and wanted and loved him first, he legally belonged to her. She’d kissed and touched and made love to him first, but he actually belonged to me.
I didn’t choose her, he’d told me. He hadn’t chosen me, though. Could I get over that?
Give me a chance to erase both of them for us. Would he ever be able to?
I wasn’t sure, but what also echoed in my mind was what he’d said right before he’d finally put his lips on mine. In case this is the last chance I get …
The last chance. The end of us. Did I say goodbye to him for good? Or had my fate always been to get everything I wanted, just not the way I’d planned?
The excruciating idea that I might send him back to Tiffany, that I’d give her more of the time and love that belonged to me, was too much to handle. Unequivocally, without question or condition, I loved Manning and he was mine, and I didn’t want to wait any longer.
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