I began to sweat for real. “I need to get up,” I said.
He looked up. “Lake, listen.”
“Can you move?”
“Freaking out isn’t going to change the situation.”
“I need to get up.”
“And I need a goddamn minute to lie here with you, Lake. Do you have any idea what this meant to me? I’ve never had this—”
“You’re crushing me,” I cried, avoiding his eyes. He was a married man, and he was unbearably heavy, pinning me, his mistress, to the mattress. And he wasn’t just someone else’s husband. He was Tiffany’s. “Get off. I can’t breathe.”
He rose onto his arms, and I ducked out from underneath him. I pulled the top sheet off the bed, crossing the room as I wrapped myself in it. Maybe it was subconscious guilt, but on my way to the door, my eyes landed on the tiny wooden box on my dresser. The gift Tiffany had given me as her maid of honor. Val had stood in this same spot last night and reminded me of the truth.
He chose your sister, Lake. He married her.
Val would be so disappointed by what I’d done. Once again, I’d ignored the consequences like Manning had said I would. I hadn’t even cared enough about my own sister, my own future, to protect myself. Manning knew I couldn’t say no to him.
Look what you’ve done, Lake.
Tiffany’s accusation the day Manning was arrested was never far from my mind, and this time, there was no doubt it was true. I’d done something awful, and like Val had said, I had nobody to blame but myself. I was an adult now, and using a condom was as much my responsibility as Manning’s.
“Lake, come back here.” I turned to Manning, who sat on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees. “I see your mind spinning.”
“We barely even talked about her,” I said. “We didn’t even … we just …”
“I know what we did.” He stood and turned away to search the floor. The sight of his naked, tight behind nearly made my heart give out. He was as fit as he’d been that day on the construction site, every muscle visible just beneath the surface. And there, staring back at me, was his subtle, almost invisible tattoo. The thin, black, uneven triangle on the back of his shoulder both warmed and taunted me. I’d always be there, inked onto his skin, but so was that third point. Was it her?
He bent to pick up his boxer-briefs, then pulled them on. “Let’s make something to eat, and then we can figure this out.”
I couldn’t believe I was standing here thinking about his ass after what I’d done. What kind of a person—what kind of a sister—did that make me? Tiffany was no angel, but this was another level of betrayal. “Eat?” I asked. “We just had sex. How can you think about food now?”
“Well …” He turned, a corner of his mouth cocked. “I know it was your first time, but typically—”
“I’m serious, Manning,” I said, closing the sheet more tightly around myself. He had a life with her. I knew nothing about it, except I could picture them holding hands, kissing, sleeping in the same bed, because it’d all played out in front of me. Every time they’d come up in conversation with my mom, I’d gotten off the phone. I couldn’t handle it then, and I certainly couldn’t now, naked with Manning’s cum dripping down the inside of my thigh. “We shouldn’t have done this,” I said.
“No?” he asked, wiping the crooked smile off his face. “You look me in the eye and say that, because I’m thinking the exact opposite. That I’ve been a fucking fool for letting so much time pass without you underneath me.”
“You don’t even care that you’ve hurt her,” I accused.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he asked. “Just because I’m not hysterical doesn’t mean I don’t care. I was trying to shield you from some of the pain, but if you want to have a chat about Tiffany, let’s talk.” He cracked his knuckles. “You want me to say I feel like shit for hurting the woman who’s stood by my side the past four years, then—”
“Stop,” I said, covering my ears as I dropped into a squat. “Please stop.”
He got down in front of me, taking my elbow. “Lake, calm down. Come sit and we’ll talk through this.”
“We didn’t use protection,” I choked out. My stomach churned, and for a moment I worried I’d vomit. I wrenched my arm out of his hand. “What were we thinking? You should’ve said something. You should’ve insisted.”
“Don’t pull away,” he said. “I’ve spent a lifetime trying to stay away from you while you did nothing but make it hard for me. Do not pull away now that I can touch you.”
“But it only makes things worse.”
He ran his tongue over his bottom teeth, raising two angry eyebrows. “Worse?”
I hadn’t meant it that way, but the truth was, I’d never been able to think straight or make the right decisions while Manning was around. I was blind around him and always had been. Consequences never mattered until it was too late. I stood and dropped a hand to my side, clutching the sheet closed with the other. “Maybe it’s best we take some time to think. Separately.”
“Too late for that,” he said, taking a firm step toward me. “You can be pissed, or ashamed, or whatever’s happening with you, but you’re going to do it with me here.” He reached for me. “You had your chance to tell me to go, and—”
I stepped back.
“Lake,” he warned. “What did I just tell you? I need to be able to touch you right now.”
Seeing his frustration, how unraveled he was after we’d only had sex once, excited me. I continued to back away and then spun to bolt from the room. The apartment was so goddamn small, the only private place was the bathroom. I went for it, but Manning was faster, blocking the doorway. I retreated around the living room, my back to the wall as he advanced on me. I dragged a kitchen chair between us and he tossed it aside. The front door was my only exit. I knew I’d never leave the building in a sheet, that I was being irrational, and that he’d catch me before I even got to the door—but I ran anyway, to make him chase me, to make him angry.
He caught up with me in the entryway, picked me up by my waist, and threw me over his shoulder. My stomach dropped with excitement and shame. “We can’t do this again,” I said, struggling against him.
“We’ll be doing it for a lifetime, so you’d better get the fuck over it. I’m not going to chase you down every time.”
I had the sensation of falling before my ass hit the kitchen counter. I sucked in a breath, surprised as the sheet fell open, baring me to him. “Manning, I’m serious.”
“So am I, goddamn it,” he said, yanking me to the edge until he was pressed right between my legs. “I’m dead fucking serious. What’d I tell you outside the theater? Once you’re mine, you’re mine, and I’m not going to let you run off.” He took himself in his hand, gliding his head along my slit. I looked down, fascinated. I hadn’t seen us come together before. His tip came back glistening. Was it any surprise that our struggle had left me wet and him hard as granite? Our whole relationship had been push and pull, one long struggle. “You want to know the truth?” he asked. “I’ve dreamed about it more times than I want to admit—coming inside you and claiming your cunt in the most irreversible fucking way.”
My chest tightened, breath sucked right from my lungs with his words. I’d never had the guts to even fantasize about hearing him say something so wrong. So dirty. Knowing how hard Manning had worked over the years to keep me pure, his desperation to ruin me only made me hotter. “Do it again,” I said. “I want it.”
He was poised to enter me, but he didn’t. “I want it, too,” he said, glancing between us, his knuckles whitening as he gripped himself. “But fuck, Lake. I wasn’t thinking straight before. We can’t take the risk.”
Doubt tugged at me—was he not committed, did he not want to stay in New York?—but I knew deep down it wasn’t any of that. Manning had promised he was looking out for me. Getting pregnant was the absolute last thing we needed in our situation.
“Put your arms around me,”
he said. “I miss your warmth already.”
I melted a little, pulling myself against his chest. “We’ve done a terrible thing,” I whispered into his neck.
“I know, but you can’t punish me by running. I want nothing more than to make everything up to you. Tell me how to make it right.” He scraped his cheek against mine. “You want me to end things with her before we do this again?” he murmured. “I’ll go straight to the airport, Lake.”
He stayed where he was, almost inside me, and I wanted him. Ashamed as I was, I didn’t think I could send him home to her now. “I don’t want you to go. I’ve waited so long.”
“Then I’ll stay right here with you.”
“For how long?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I can’t end my marriage over the phone. My flight home is scheduled for Friday.”
Four days. That was all I’d get for now. “I hate her,” I said, trying to picture anything but Tiffany’s face. “I hate her for what she’s done to me, for so many reasons. But I love her, too.”
“I know you do.”
“And so do you.” The cold counter bit my skin through the sheet. “You’ve done all this with her.”
He pulled back to look me in the face. “My need for you is more than anything else. It’s all-consuming.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you’ve been with her, and that you love her.”
He took my face in his hands. The warm eyes I’d come to read so well dimmed in a way I’d also, unfortunately, come to understand better than most. My words hurt him. Maybe it wasn’t fair to blame him for loving his own wife, but I hated that I hadn’t been his first love as he’d been mine. That she would always be between us. “Lake.” He had a thick but beautiful neck that conveyed his emotions just like his eyes. The veins were pronounced but elegant, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “You asked me last night if I love her, and I didn’t answer because … I’m ashamed that I don’t.”
I shrank from him. It wasn’t the answer I’d expected, and I could see that it pained him to say it. “What?”
“I love her as a friend, and as a person, too—I’ve come to know her well enough to anticipate and even appreciate her tenacity to be who she is without apology. She and I have been through a lot together. But how can I be in love with anyone when you exist?” He put his forehead to mine. “I’m so in love with you, I have been for so long, that there’s no room for anyone else, not even my wife. And it makes me feel like the biggest piece of shit to admit that.”
My chest ached. Were the years of disappointment and sadness worth this moment? I couldn’t help thinking they were. There was no clear answer. I didn’t want to hurt my sister, but I wasn’t going to let Manning go now that I had him. “Promise me,” I said.
As if he felt my surrender, he pressed a hand to my back and my body arched, my breasts into his chest. I wanted him inside me, whatever the cost. “Anything,” he said.
“Promise me you’ll leave her.”
All I’d done for years was analyze and resist and dream. Now, everything I wanted was right in front of me. Tiffany hadn’t hesitated to take it from me.
So I would take it back.
8
Manning
Sitting on the kitchen counter, Lake clung to me as if I might disappear into thin air. I couldn’t really blame her. Even as I stood right between her legs, I could hardly believe where I was.
She’d begun to shake again. I wanted to gorge on her, lose myself in her, forget anything outside this apartment existed, but I worried that if Lake didn’t understand the life I was leaving behind, the worse it’d be when she was forced to face it. Tiffany wouldn’t lose just a husband, but a home, stability—and a future.
“When I got on the plane here, Lake, I knew what I was getting into,” I said. “If I arrived and saw that this was where I needed to be, I knew what I’d be leaving behind. But you don’t. You know nothing about my life there.”
“Why do I need to? Will it change anything?”
I hesitated. “For me, no. I already know what’s at stake.” Asking me to end my marriage was fine for Lake, because she hadn’t been around for any of it. I was the one who’d surprised Tiffany with a trip to the car dealership after her promotion to assistant buyer. It was me who’d fought with her endlessly over her dirty dishes and the dust I created working in the backyard and each of us forgetting to close the garage door. We were over halfway through a remodel on a home we’d bought together and for which we’d painstakingly chosen granites and paint colors and goddamn cabinet handles and God knew what else—it was always something with the fucking house. If it wasn’t the expense and energy of remodeling, it was the guilt I harbored for wearing a suit every day while other men built my home. Tiffany didn’t hear me when I told her I hated that not even a drop of my own sweat had gone into putting a roof over our heads. She even bought brand new furniture because what I made didn’t come from a store.
None of that occurred to Lake, though, because she lived in fucking la-la land where love was the only thing that mattered. And I loved her for it. I wanted her to stay there, but more than that, I didn’t want Lake to wake up one day and resent me or herself for the life she’d pulled out from under her sister. In the past twenty-four hours, I’d seen that Lake could handle herself here in New York, and if she could do that, then she could face the truths I would’ve kept from her years ago. “I hope it wouldn’t change anything for you, either,” I said, “but you should still know.”
“There’s nothing that can make me feel better or worse. Even if it’s a bad marriage.” She curled a hand against my back. “Is it?”
“In some ways, it’s the kind of marriage I thought it would be. We get along most of the time. We have fun. When she pulls shit with me, I call her on it, but I get tired of that.” Tiffany hated when I traveled and would go out of her way to make me feel guilty about it. And when I was home, she tried to manipulate me into doing things I didn’t care about, like shop, or go to rooftop bars with her friends, or sit on my ass at the beach when we had a perfectly good pool at home. I started to pull away from Lake. If we were going to talk about Tiffany, I figured I should get dressed. “I want a partner,” I said, “not someone I have to babysit or watch myself around.”
“Don’t go,” Lake said, climbing back onto me. “Don’t leave this spot. Don’t talk about her.” She nuzzled my cheek, then drew back to look me in the face. In a breathy voice, she said, “I just want you to promise me this is it for us.”
There were times at home I couldn’t picture Lake clearly, she’d been away so long. But I’d never, not one day, forgotten the unusual blue of her eyes. Anything I’d come across in that color had been like a blow to the chest, but not anymore. Now, I wanted to live in that color. “I promise you, Lake, it’s you and me now,” I said. “I wouldn’t be here now if there were another way.”
“I need more.” She moaned when I pulled her a little too far onto the head of my dick. “You owe me more.”
Her hair was tangled from my hands, her cheeks flushed from my cock partway inside her. What I needed was to either separate from her or fuck her, to feel the friction of her airtight pussy. In that moment I’d give her whatever she wanted. “I thought the passion my parents had could only turn me bad,” I said to her, “but it’s going without it that’s put me too close to the edge. I need to be able to feel you whenever I want. What do you need?”
She breathed through her mouth, looking about as frustrated as I felt not being inside her. “Leave Orange County and come live here,” she said.
Southern California was the only home I’d ever known. I’d fought my way to a living. I had a house, a wife, and a career that was making me richer than I’d ever dreamed I’d be. I knew what Lake would say to that, though, because she’d said it before—those were just details. This, her and me, was what mattered. Back then, I’d told her it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t going to do that to her again. “Of course I’l
l come,” I said. “I had more than enough time to think it over as I sat outside your door all night. What I’m more worried about is work and supporting us.”
“You cannot work for my dad anymore. I want nothing to do with them. That’s the only way we’ll work.”
I took a few measured breaths, scanning her face. I couldn’t picture myself in a city, but I already knew I wasn’t going to be anywhere Lake wasn’t. What she was asking for, it was an easy promise to make, because it was exactly what I wanted. “I’ll do anything to get you, Lake. If you want me to quit and move, consider it done.”
She gripped my shoulders. Her strength, the urgency in her voice, surprised me. “Promise me.”
“This’ll break your relationship with Tiffany,” I warned. “I can’t protect you from that.”
“It’s already broken. I can handle it. Just promise me.”
“I promise. The move, the job, the divorce, I promise, now tell me what else you want.”
“I want …” She avoided my eyes, struggling to get it out, and that had me hanging on her every word. Was there anything I couldn’t give her? “I want—I want you inside me.”
With that, I lost any sense of what we were talking about. I pulled her nearly off the counter and onto my dick. The sheet fell in a heap at our feet. She slid on easier this time, but it was still the tightest fit I’d ever experienced. To know I was the first man to make her feel this good, to love not just her mind and her heart, but now her body, too, it did things to me. Things that terrified and exhilarated me. I’d kept her at arm’s length for a long time because the passion between us, even when it’d been strangled, scared me.
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