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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.”
