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The horse slowed. I opened my eyes but didn’t lift my head. We were at the lake now. A couple cabins were canoeing. Because she was as familiar to me as my own reflection, but also because she was yelling across the water at some of her girls, my gaze went straight to Tiffany.
Her canoe rocked, and for a second, I thought she might fall in. She grabbed the edges, steadied herself, and sat. Her campers pointed at the parade of horses, waving to us. Tiffany shielded her eyes.
I turned my head away, resting my other cheek against Manning’s back as I tightened my hold on him. Tiffany didn’t know what she had, what she could have.
As much as it frustrated me, I was thankful for that.
16
Manning
Lake carried a bucket of water that looked half her size. She put it down in front of Betsy and with a tentative hand, stroked her nose. We were only halfway through the ride, and she was already overcoming her fear. It was what I wanted, except that when Betsy whinnied and Lake jumped back and looked at me, a part of me liked that. I craved that feeling of being needed again, of being held onto when she was scared. A hint of fear was good. It would keep her alert.
The air up here was crisp. I could practically feel it move through my lungs. I wished my fears were as easily overcome, but I was fucked any way I turned. Lake was important to me in a way she shouldn’t be. Her naiveté about some things made me overprotective. Then, once in a while her girlish mannerisms or expressions reminded me of things Maddy did I’d forgotten about, like how she blinked a lot when processing something new. It drew me in. On a primal level, I wanted to keep bad things from happening to her. Was it more than that? I didn’t want to know the answer. In some ways, she was still sweet and open. In others, Lake was more mature than people my own age. She wanted to understand things rather than accept them as they were. She took an interest in me nobody else had in a long time, grilling me about the smoking, asking why I wanted to be a cop. Trusting me when she had no reason to.
Lake returned to my side. She’d barely spent any time with Hannah or her girls since we’d left the stables. She was here to experience camp, not me. But I was greedy. When she looked up at me with her huge eyes, waiting for my direction, I knew peripherally that I was in too deep. I needed to pull back. But that look reminded me someone might depend on me again one day, and if things were different, Lake could’ve been that someone.
She was still standing there. Even if I pushed my heels into my eye sockets and forced her image away, she’d still be here. Looking up at me. Waiting.
“Why don’t you go check on the girls?” I asked.
“I did. The boys, too. After I gave the horse water.”
Time passed in a funny way around her. Maybe she had talked to the campers. Maybe she’d spent time with Hannah. I’d been the one standing in the same spot, watching her. Time could be slow like that with her, and then sometimes it went by in flashes. Sometimes I just wanted it to stop and others, I wished it’d go by faster.
“We should head back,” she said. “There’s a group after us.”
I wasn’t sure if it was the altitude or what. My head wasn’t clear. All I could think was that I’d spent twenty-four hours on a lake, underneath clear, endless skies, and yet I’d still never seen a blue the shade of her eyes. I was sure the image of her looking up at me this way would be burned into my brain for as long as I walked this Earth.
“Manning?”
“Yeah.” I tore my gaze away. “Get on.”
“I want to drive.”
Half an hour ago, she could barely bring herself to get near the horse. Maybe she didn’t need me after all. “By yourself?”
“No, with you.”
I nodded. “You get on first.”
“Will you help?”
“You can do it,” I said.
“I know. I want your help.”
I ran a hand through my hair. The other instructors were helping campers on the horses. How was this different? I had no reason to feel weird. Lake was Tiffany’s little sister.
She stuck her foot in the stirrup and looked back at me, waiting.
As I took Lake by the waist and put her in the saddle, I tried not to notice how her shirt rode up. “All set?” I asked one of the handlers.
“Got the back?” he replied.
“Yeah.”
One by one, the group lined up to head back for the campsite. I grabbed the knob at the front of the saddle, right between Lake’s legs, and pulled myself up behind her. She slid back into the “V” my thighs made, the two of us fitting together like puzzle pieces. I took the reins and waited until everyone had gone ahead of us. I could’ve rested my chin on Lake’s head, or closed my arms around her and engulfed her completely. Her hair smelled like sweet summer strawberries, as if she washed it in the produce section of a fucking supermarket.
