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“Oh, right,” I said wryly, stepping back and nearly stumbling over Val’s rollerblades. I kicked them away with the heel of my boot. “Safe, cared for, happy. You wanted me to stay the sixteen-year-old girl you knew. You wanted me to go on living the life you thought was right—to stay close to my family. To be the prodigal child and live a sunny life in sunny California, and huh, that worked out well for you, didn’t it?”
He stared hard at me. “This isn’t what was supposed to happen.” He ran his hand over his face. “I didn’t . . . the choices I made . . . I never thought you’d end up worse off, that you’d leave home—”
“That isn’t my home. It hasn’t been for a long time. You made sure of that. You chose her, and you took that life away from me.”
“I didn’t choose her.”
“Then you chose yourself,” I said, my voice rising. “Either way, you didn’t choose me. You’ve lost any right to care or have an opinion. So don’t come in here and judge my life and say I’m worse off. How dare you talk about wants and needs when you went to someone else to satisfy them.”
He set the tool on my windowsill, his movements measured, his response slow, as if he were picking his words carefully. “My wants and needs were taken care of but never satisfied.”
“And what about mine?” I shot back. “I needed you, Manning. I felt like nothing and nobody without you.”
The radiator groaned, shuddering to life suddenly before it shut down. Manning also seemed to kick on, his face reddening as the muscles in his jaw ticked. “Does it make me happy to see you living like this? No.” He looked around the room for what must’ve been the tenth time, as if committing all the details to memory. Only now his brown eyes were full of something I couldn’t quite place. Pain? Regret? “I worried all the time, and apparently, I was right to.”
“It could’ve all been different. I would’ve done anything you’d asked.” I swallowed the lump in my throat in the silence that followed. “I would’ve stayed at USC and waited for you and loved you. It might’ve cost me my family, but look around. I lost them anyway. They don’t feel like home anymore. I don’t have a home. All I have is what you see here. Why did you do it?” I asked. “Why didn’t you stop it?”
“You know why,” he said.
“No I don’t. You kept telling me it was for the best. That it was to protect me from you. But when you married her, you shattered my world.” I gestured around at my things. The textbooks I’d worked overtime to afford, which sat on the bottom shelf of an IKEA bookcase I’d built myself. In the sink were wineglasses that’d seen many parties with friends I’d made when I’d just wanted to live under the covers and give up on people altogether. “These are the pieces, and they might not look like much to you, but they’re all I have. I’ve found a way to be happy. You can’t come back into my life and tell me it’s a mess when you’re the one who created it.”
“I knew it would hurt you,” he said, his posture sagging, “but I thought you’d pick up and move on and experience everything I would’ve held you back from.”
“I did. This is everything,” I said, shrugging with as much nonchalance as I could muster. “Look around. This is what you wanted for me.”
He pursed his lips. “You have to know I never thought you’d leave. That everything I do is because I . . . because—”
“Because what?” I got in his face. “If you still can’t say it after all these years, then get the fuck out of my life. You treated me like glass, but I’m made of more, Manning. You missed out.” My downstairs neighbor’s dogs barked, as if cheering me on. “You really missed out.”
“I know that.” He took a step and ducked to avoid hitting the ceiling lamp, the wood floor creaking under his massive frame. “Why do you think I’m here?”
I hesitated, caught off guard by the question and his nearness. “For work.”
“Wrong.” He towered over me. The intensity in his eyes bordered on heat, the kind I’d seen before, the kind I’d tried—and failed—to convince myself I’d imagined. “Work was an excuse to get to New York.”
No part of me thought Manning would come to New York and not check on me—but was he saying he’d come just for me?
I struggled for a deep breath I couldn’t seem to get. I’d pushed Manning many times over the years, but only that night on the beach had he ever let his emotions get the best of him. If I asked, would he really tell me what I’d wanted to hear back then? I’d figured out what I was made of over the years, but my heart hadn’t turned to stone. Could I even handle it? “You have a wife,” I said. “Go home to her, and don’t ever come back.”
