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“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, people 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?
