Move the Stars (Something in the Way 3)

He put his arms around me, hovering his lips above mine. “Just what, Lake?”

Take it off. Kiss me. Love me. Choose me.

I couldn’t do this. I’d asked him for all of this before, and he’d denied me. It would destroy me to have him and lose him again. My heart raced as much out of fear as desire. “Stop.”

He tightened his hold on me, but then, he did as I asked. Manning let me go. “You’re right.”

My nipples, hardly sheathed by my little dress, hardened with the loss of his heat. I hugged myself. Knowing I was right didn’t ease the hurt. “It’s better this way,” I said quietly.

Without looking at me, he shook his head. “It isn’t. I know that now. But I can’t expect you to let me in just like that.”

“Let you in?” If Manning was here to do more than check on me, he had to know what that meant. He and I could never just be alone in a room. We could never touch and kiss and then walk away unscathed. “You need to go before I make a huge mistake.”

“My being here is not a mistake, Lake. I came to see, and I saw, and now I know.”

There was only one thing to say to that, to a truth I couldn’t accept, despite how desperately I wanted to. “You came too late. You wasted your time.”

“Time is never wasted on you,” he said. “You told me that once, the day I—”

“Got out of jail,” I finished. “Did you think I could forget? You barely looked me in the eye after all that time apart. Why was that, Manning?” I asked, even though I knew.

He blew out a long breath. “Because I wanted you,” he admitted. “And I was ashamed.”

“You didn’t need to be.” I picked up his coat and handed it to him. “But you were, and you made decisions you can’t take back. So go. Go home to her.”

He withdrew as if I’d slapped him. “You think I can return to that life after this?”

I crossed my arms, not to make a point, but because my hands shook. My stomach churned like I was going to be ill. I wanted nothing more than for him to break down all the walls between us, but what I needed was for him to be sorry he’d ever stepped foot on a plane. To feel the unrelenting sting I had when the one person I didn’t think I could live without had rejected me. “After what?” I asked. “What could seeing me have possibly changed for you? You’ve been here less than an hour.”

“I’ve been here years,” he said. “Sick over losing you. Tortured that Corbin might make you happy. Wondering if you might still want me. I’ve been stuck in this place, unable to move on. It’s not my feelings that’ve changed, but—”

We jumped apart at a knock on the door, as if we’d been caught doing something wrong—because we had.

“Lake?” I heard from the hallway. “Is everything okay?”

Corbin.

Manning set his jaw. “What’s he doing here?”

“I’m coming in,” Corbin said.

Manning looked from me to the door. “Lake, tell him to go.”

I yanked my sweatshirt back over my head. “He has a key.”

Corbin breezed into the apartment the way he had hundreds of times before. This was as much his domain as it was Val’s. Considering Val spent so much time either with Julian or at work, Corbin was here nearly as often as she was.

He stopped in the hallway as his eyes landed on us. “What’s this?” he asked me.

I cleared the grit from my throat. “Manning’s in town.”

“I see that.” Corbin looked between us. “We were supposed meet for brunch half an hour ago, Lake. I called, but . . .”

The tension in the room thickened. It might as well have been Tiffany who’d walked in, because if Corbin suspected anything, he wouldn’t let Manning get away with it.

Tiffany. I’d gone this long not thinking of her as a real part of all this. Not letting the reality of her, my sister, into the room. But I couldn’t ignore the facts any longer—Corbin made everything real. I had almost kissed my sister’s husband.

I wiped the heel of my palm over my warm hairline. “Corbin and I have plans,” I said.

Manning shrugged into his suit jacket. “I could eat.”

“Didn’t you just have breakfast?” I asked.

“I’m hungry again.” He glanced at me from under his lashes. “Starved, even.”

Starved. Food had been, over the years, one of the only ways I could show Manning I loved him, and he knew that.

I should’ve told him no, but I knew Manning would find a way. I didn’t want to make a scene in front of Corbin anyway. Even though he and I hadn’t talked about Manning in years, I was almost certain Corbin had suspected my feelings for Manning before, during, and after the wedding. He had to have known, deep down, that all my suffering when I’d moved here wasn’t simply because of the fights I’d had with my dad leading up to my departure.