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“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.
