Move the Stars (Something in the Way 3)

I turned in a circle. These were his things. His tool belt and goggles and red bandana, knotted and hung on a nail. His sketches on the walls, his sweat in the air.

“I know it doesn’t look like much,” he said, grouping pencils on a work table, dusting off the surface with his palm. “But it’s what I have. In here, I create things I hope my clients will love. It’s my escape from everything else.”

“Like what?” I asked, facing him again.

“My family, my past. My time in solitary.” He picked up a hardhat to hang it on the wall. “But not you. Try as I did, I couldn’t help that you were on my mind enough that I had to make pieces for you, too.”

“Why?” I asked. I looked around, but there was so much, I couldn’t even see it all. The love and sweat and tears and hope he’d given and lost, fought against and for. “Why’d you do all this?”

“I haven’t always been good with words. This was one way to show my love for you, and my commitment to our future.”

I’d carried hope for us in my heart so long. I thought I’d lost it, but he’d picked it up and put it on his shoulders until the finish line. The evidence was all around me. I walked through Manning’s escape, awed by the beauty of his work. The care and love that obviously went into what he’d created. He’d made his bed in here, under the warm lights, out in the middle of nowhere. Our bed.

Manning came and took my hand, sliding it over the uneven surface of an armoire. “I haven’t sanded it yet,” he said. “Feel that?”

I had a moment of déjà vu, some time when he’d asked me that before and it’d been more than a simple question. Did I feel it, the coarseness on my palm, the electricity of his skin on mine? Did I feel him?

“I feel it.”

He led me out behind the shed to an area hidden from the house. A motion sensor light flickered on above the door, revealing a small but sturdy-looking dinghy. “You’re building a boat?” I asked.

“I’m trying. It’s my first attempt.” He walked around the perimeter. It was the first time since dinner he took his eyes off me for more than a few seconds. “One of my favorite projects yet. I only get to work on it on the weekends.”

“Does it work?” I asked.

“Work?” He climbed in to sit on the bench closest to the stern, running his hands along the inside edges. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” I blushed a little, and he grinned ear to ear. Even though he was sitting, we were almost eyelevel. I hadn’t seen a smile like that from him in so long. Maybe ever. He lit up the night, while I just tried to focus on a coherent thought. “Does it, like, float, I guess?”

He laughed. “I sure hope it will when I’m done. Not looking for a repeat of our night on the lake. It nearly killed me.”

“I remember it differently.”

“Yeah?” His expression sobered. “How do you remember it?”

Since he’d asked, I took a breath and told him the truth for all the times I’d had to keep it to myself. “I remember stripping down for you in the moonlight. Feeling turned on by every last thing, from the water against my skin to knowing your eyes were on me to the mud between my toes when I curled them. I wanted nothing more in the world than for you to touch me. I wanted you so bad, Manning. I would’ve given anything.”

He took my forearm, tugging me closer to the side of the boat. “You asked why I did all this, Lake? I did it for you. I made this boat to take you on the water.”

My heart was in my throat. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to Manning admitting he wanted me, and it was clear to me why he never could before. Once he’d let himself love me, he did it with a ferocity that would’ve changed me as a girl. That would’ve worried my family and friends, and changed the course of my future. At some point, Manning had decided I was the only one for him, so he’d built an empire for a queen he didn’t have. “You’re going to make me cry again,” I whispered.

“Don’t. I can’t stand it. Come in here so I can kiss all those tears off your cheeks for good.”

That night in the truck was still clear as day to me. How I’d ached for him and his sister, how scared I’d been when the policeman had pulled us over, how I’d desired Manning enough to tempt him from the moral ground where he’d dug in his heels. “Will you kiss me other places?” I asked.