Move the Stars (Something in the Way 3)

“No.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Christ, Lake. No, it isn’t that. It’s sex. When I said you should know about my life, I meant the important things. You know your sister’s, well, when she lets her guard down, she’s sensitive and kind. She’s really great like that, but it never lasts long with her. She lets unimportant things take over her life. She can be materialistic that way. And she’s petty—she lets other people get to her, like you or your dad.”

“Me?”

“Now that you’re out of the picture, she gets to be the golden child. Your dad is more patient with her than he used to be, but it’s clear she’ll never be what you are to him. And that’s hard on her. Even though you’re gone, your presence at the house is strong.”

Tiffany and Dad were getting along. These were the things I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. It only highlighted how much I’d missed. I’d now spent over a fifth of my life without them. “It’s better for her that I’m gone. She gets Dad, and she got you.”

“She misses you. I know you don’t believe it, but she does.”

“Will you miss her?”

He looked down at me. “In some ways, sure. How you might miss a close friend or a roommate you’ve come to rely on.”

I tried not to look hurt. He was choosing me in the end, and that was what mattered. “But do you have any doubts about leaving her? Will you miss her so much that you’ll think of her when you’re with me?”

He rolled his lips together, then stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and took my left hand. He held it up between us and ran his thumbs up the center of my palm. “Imagine if you had to have surgery to remove this hand.” He kissed the pads of my fingers. “This beautiful hand that I’ll do everything I can to protect, I should add. You’d miss it, wouldn’t you? It would be hard. Something important would be gone. It would take time to get used to.”

I sighed. To remove a hand was no small thing. Tiffany was Manning’s other half and had been for much longer than I’d even spent with him on my own. “It would be really hard,” I agreed. “Too hard.”

He smiled a little, then pressed my palm against my own chest, right over my heart. “Now imagine the surgery was to remove this. You can live without one, but not the other. Which would you choose?”

My throat got so thick, I had to wait a few seconds to respond, and in that time, my last six heartless years flashed before me. “But you lived just fine without me.”

“Just fine, yeah. When I thought I could never have you. Now that you’re mine, there’s no other way. I’d be a fool to cut out my heart to save my hand.”

I curled my fingers into a fist. “I feel the same.”

“Do you? Let me hear you say it.”

“I . . . I love your hands. I know how hard you worked to keep them to yourself when you didn’t want to.”

“And your hands made me feel so good last night, Lake. What about my heart?”

I swallowed that pesky lump, trying to rid it so I wouldn’t cry. “I love it, too.”

“You always believed it was good. That I was good. Even when I tried to convince you otherwise.”

I’m no good, he’d said last night. The fact that he was here with me was progress, but I would have to make sure, going forward, he knew what a good man he was. And examining the past probably wasn’t the way to go about that. “You know what?” I asked.

“Tell me.”

“You’ll make a great father one day. The best.”

He frowned. “You think about that?”

“I don’t need to. I just know. Do you see that in our future?”

“Yes, Birdy. I see it. I see it so clearly. I want—I want to be everything my dad wasn’t, everything your dad wasn’t.” He brought my palm to his mouth for a series of kisses that ended at my elbow. Reinserting me in his coat, against his side, we continued walking. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make you proud, but I worry,” he admitted. “Of course I do. I didn’t have the best example.”

“You honestly still think you’ll become your dad?” I asked.

“Do you worry I will?”

“Not for a second.”

“I have concerns. Like my temper when it comes to things I care about. So—you. And when we have a baby—our baby.”

My jaw could not drop far enough. How was Manning speaking so freely about things he’d held against his chest for years? He steered us through the crowd. I flattened my hand on his hard stomach. Thumb to pinky, I only took up about a third of the expanse of his torso. “You have a temper where I’m concerned,” I agreed, “but why? What are you afraid of?”