Manning didn’t look at me as I exited the hotel lobby and approached the BMW. Leaning against the passenger’s side door, he flicked his cigarette away, but continued staring inside—at Corbin. “Get in the car,” he said.

He didn’t need to tell me twice. I was eager for time with him, something I hadn’t had much of since the night at the lake. Manning didn’t follow right away. It made sense if he had reservations about being alone in a car with me, but he’d picked me up anyway.

When he finally slid behind the wheel, I asked, “Can I come over? I don’t want to go home.”

He started the car and pulled away from the curb. “What happened?”

“Nothing. I just didn’t want to stay.”

“Did he pressure you?” He looked over with a fire I hadn’t gotten from him in the months since I’d nearly fallen at his feet in the foyer. “Did he, Lake?”

“No.”

“Because he’s got it bad for you.”

I gaped at him. “You knew?”

“Of course I know. I’ve got eyeballs.”

The irritation in his voice irritated me. What right did he have to get upset about someone having a crush on me? I crossed my arms tightly over my chest. “He got us a room.”

“And?” he pushed when I didn’t continue.

I stared out the windshield. Everything I’d been holding since the last time we were truly alone flooded over me. He’d given me close to nothing since he’d gotten out, while I hadn’t thought about much other than him. I loved him, and it hurt. Because of that, I let him fill in the blanks. It would be just a taste of what’d been running through my head these last couple years.

“Lake, if he hurt you—”

“He didn’t.”

“If he tried to get you to do anything you didn’t want—”

“Maybe I wanted it.”

He white-knuckled the steering wheel, breathing audibly. Manning’s frustration was better than nothing, but at the same time, our time together was limited. I didn’t want to sit in silence, fire-breathing or otherwise.

“Nothing happened,” I said. I was fairly certain in adult terms, nothing had happened. If I told Manning I’d held Corbin’s penis the way I’d shake his hand, he probably would’ve laughed. “Corbin’s a gentleman.”

“Then why are you here?”

I shifted in my seat, the “V” of my dress gaping. I tucked the fabric back into place. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

He sighed. “You didn’t. I was up.”

“Why?” I smiled a little. “Were you worried about me?”

After a few seconds, he blew out a breath. “So much can go wrong.”

He had been worried. Manning always seemed to be running the worst-case scenario in his mind. Who could blame him? He’d lived it once already with his sister. Then again when he’d gotten picked up for a crime he hadn’t committed. “I’m sorry if you worried,” I said. “It’s hard to tell if you even care.”

He stayed focused on the road.

“You can tell me if you do, Manning.”

“What happened that night in the truck was wrong. I’m not looking for a repeat.”

“Neither am I,” I said quickly, and it was the truth. I didn’t need to make the same mistakes, to deepen my already profound guilt. “I learned my lesson, but . . . what happens next month?”

He set his lips in a line. He understood what I was asking. “Nothing,” he said.

“I turn eighteen.”

“I know.”

“And then I’ll go to college. I’ll be away from all of them.”

He wiped his upper lip with his sleeve and turned on the air conditioning. I tried not to shiver. “I’m sorry you think I don’t care about you,” he said, “but it couldn’t be further from the truth. I care too much.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just leave it, Lake. It is what it is.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way. If you care about me at all, you’d break up with her before—”

He slammed his palm against the steering wheel. “This isn’t about her, it’s not even about me. It’s about you going off and accomplishing everything you’re supposed to. Do you want to end up like your sister? No education, in a job she hates, living with a felon who can’t even take care of her?”

I mashed my teeth together. Tiffany might not have much in everyone else’s eyes, but she had Manning, so she had everything. I’d take that life in a heartbeat just to be with him.

“Forget about me. Go to ’SC. Do something meaningful with your life and I promise you, one day . . .”

I waited, hopeful, as he turned on his blinker and took a left into the apartment complex. “One day?”

“You’ll find the man who’s right for you. Who’s good for you. Who brings out the best in you. Like I do for your sister. You deserve someone who can take care of you.”

“I don’t want to be taken care of. I want to be loved the way you love me.”

He looked away, out the driver’s side window. His throat rippled as he swallowed. “You don’t want me to love you, Lake.”

The words were too absurd to even hurt me. “I know why you’re acting like you don’t, and I know that you do.”

He didn’t argue. “If you believe that,” he said, “then you know I only want what’s best for you—and it isn’t me.”

He was already parking the car, our time together over before it had begun. A fiery rage burned up my chest. This went beyond being overprotective. Manning refused to see what was right in front of him. Everything he wanted. Everything I wanted. It made no sense to keep pretending it wasn’t there. “Take me back to the hotel.”

“What?”

“Take me back to Corbin. If you honestly feel nothing for me, nothing at all, then I want him.”

He stayed where he was, the car idling.

“I mean it,” I said. “I’m going to do it. I’m going to let him take my virginity since you don’t want it.”

Manning winced. “Stop.”

“You don’t want me, but nobody else can have me? Fine. If you feel nothing, turn on the car and drive me back—”

He tore his gaze from the windshield to look at me. “I feel it,” he said through gritted teeth. “Of course I fucking feel it.”

The night expanded around us, the world, the universe.

“That doesn’t mean anything. You’re a kid, and don’t tell me you’re not, because if you weren’t, you’d understand—people don’t just end up together for love.”

That hurt. Him pretending he didn’t love me was a lie, but this, he really believed. That it might not last. That it wasn’t enough. That I wasn’t enough. “Yes, they do—”

“They don’t,” he yelled, his voice too big for the small car. “Damn it, Lake. This is exactly what I’m talking about. You get under my skin like nobody else does. I have a temper. I get so fucking frustrated with you sometimes. You don’t listen, you keep pushing me, you act like an adult when you’re . . .”

“You’re frustrated with me for acting like an adult?” I asked. “I’ll be eighteen next month.”

“It’s not about your age.” He shook his head. “It’s not.”

If that was true, then I didn’t know how to fight him. I wasn’t equipped for this. If there was some fundamental reason he didn’t want to be with me, how could I change it without knowing what it was?

“Your sister loves me, Lake.” He shut off the car. “I’m sorry if it hurts you, but it’s the truth. The sooner you accept it, the better.”

“But do you love her?”

We sat in silence for a few moments. When he didn’t answer, I grabbed my bag, got out of the car, and slammed the door. My entire body shook. Rum and orange juice burned its way up my throat. I was going to puke. The door to Tiffany’s apartment was unlocked, so I ran into the bathroom and dry-heaved until I was certain nothing was going to come up. I slid down against the bathroom wall to the floor and put my head between my knees.

Why? Why couldn’t he just admit he loved me so we could start our life together? I’d waited long enough, spent almost two years keeping my distance. We were so close to the finish line, or so I’d thought. What did everything else matter once I turned eighteen? What was more important than this fiery, all-consuming love I felt for him?

The answer was nothing. Not even my sister, whom I loved, but whom I’d been willing to hurt to get what I wanted.

I tried to get up, but the room spun. It could’ve been the alcohol or just Manning’s effect on me, but either way, I rested my head on my forearms and stayed put. I drifted to sleep, and by the time I opened my eyes, the dizziness had worn off.

I stripped out of my prom dress and changed into the cotton pajama set I’d bought for tonight’s sleepover. It seemed childish and stupid now, a pink, gingham strappy cami and matching boy-shorts. When I came out of the bathroom, the night sky looked less like a sinkhole and more of a deep ocean blue. The faucet ran in the kitchen. I followed the noise, crossing the living room. The green glow of the oven’s digital clock read 4:07 AM.

Manning stood at the sink in nothing but boxer-briefs, his back to me, an empty glass next to him. He splashed water on his face and leaned his hands on the lip of the counter. His torso expanded as if he was trying to catch his breath.

The moon was just bright enough to light some markings on his back. At first it looked like someone had drawn on him, but as I got closer, black ink made a triangle with three starred points. The muscles of his wide back worked as my eyes drifted over the simple tattoo, then his damp hairline, the sheen of sweat on the back of his neck.

Manning just stared at the running water until he finally flipped off the faucet. The drain gurgled and burped. Mesmerized, I reached up to touch the tattoo. He turned his head a fraction and spun. Within a second, my wrist was in a vice-like grip, my neck in his other hand as he pinned my back against the counter with his hips.

“What are you doing?” he whispered, voice hard, eyes black.

I forgot to breathe. His anger coursed through me like adrenaline, making my heart race and my nipples harden. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

His grip remained strong, even as his fingers loosened. He pressed one thumb into my wrist and the other at the top of my throat. “You snuck up on me.”

“Are you okay?”

The darkness hadn’t left his eyes. He kept me caged against the counter like he’d caught me breaking in. He shifted his thumb up my neck, under my chin, as if checking for a heartbeat. “You know what I’d do to a man inside who tried to come at me while my back was turned?”

I swallowed against his hand. For all the times I’d tortured myself wondering what it was like in there, I said, “Tell me.”

“It’d give you nightmares.”

For some reason, that made my stomach tighten, my insides clench. It turned me on, even as realization dawned on me—Manning was the one with the nightmares.

When something twitched against my stomach, his eyes dropped. From this angle, he could see down my camisole, and he did. He looked right at my breasts. “Did you dress like this while I was away?” he asked, his whisper angry.

I sobered. “Like what?”

He put his hands at my waist, bunching up the cotton and exposing my midriff. “Why do you do this to me?” he asked. “Why can’t you just . . . stop?”

My heart pounded. I knew what he meant without asking. Being around each other was as hard for him as it was for me. I hated that it took fear and nightmares to get anywhere with him, but at least he was here now. “I’m sorry,” I said, because I didn’t want to torture him, but I didn’t know any other way.

He lifted me onto the counter and slid me back until my head touched a cabinet, like he was hiding a doll on the back of a shelf. He didn’t let me go. His breathing labored, even though I knew lifting me was no effort for him. Something else made it hard to breathe. I put my hand on his bare chest, and it rose with his inhale. I ached to explore every inch of him. When he didn’t pull me off, I traced the dip his collarbone created. He had the expansive torso of a man, unlike the boys I’d been around, and his stomach flexed into a six-pack. I was in awe. Breathless from the world opening up to me. As I went to touch, though, he stopped my hand and put it on his face. I scraped my palm along his stubble. I was touching him without asking. He’d touched me, too. I wanted to rejoice in that, but I couldn’t ignore the anguish in his face. “What are your nightmares about?” I asked.

He kept his eyes down but pushed his thumbs into the soft space in the middle of my ribcage. As if he’d pressed a button, my insides melted like butter, warming my lower half.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

“I do worry. I can’t help it. I think the worst.”

“What’s the worst?”

“I worry that they hurt you. I worry they changed you. I worry you hate me.”

“Hate you,” he repeated, not a question. “There are some things I hate about you.”

I was too wrapped up in him to be hurt. He could say anything to me when we were like this, and I’d take it. I shuddered. “Like what?”

“That you’re not the girl you were when I went away. That you still are. That I could,” he squeezed my middle, “ruin you in one stroke. That I could give you nightmares.” He got closer, as if he were going to tell me a secret. “Cuts and bruises, broken bones, they heal, Lake. They’re nothing.”

“What doesn’t heal?”

“Everything else.”

My chest ached with the weight of my regret for what I couldn’t change or take back. No matter how much time passed, no matter how life turned out, it would never be right what I’d done. “My mistakes hurt you. They did this. They’re why you hate me.”

He didn’t say anything, but the way he avoided my eyes was answer enough. He put one large hand on my chest, spreading his fingers and wrinkling his brow as if trying to see if he could reach both my shoulders. “That’s not what I’m talking about,” he said finally. “There are things I can’t share with you.”

“You can,” I whispered, locking my hands around the back of his neck. He was pushing me away by my chest, but I held on. “You can tell me. I’m stronger than you think.”

“I was alone,” he said. “For over two months. In a cell. That’s what I dream about.” He paused. “You’re there sometimes.”

“In the cell?”

Slowly, he raised his eyes to mine. “No. Just outside of it. Outside my reach. Everyone else can touch you, and I can’t.”

My limbs quivered, fatigued. This felt like a breakthrough and my entire body reacted to it. “Why does that scare you?”

I thought I knew the answer, and it could be summed up in one word—helpless. It described his role in Madison’s death, his situation with the courts, and his relationship to me. It was maybe the only thing that could incapacitate a man as big and protective as Manning—knowing he could help, and being unable to.

“It scares me because things go wrong. Life isn’t fair. Some people are bad. I don’t want you to experience any of that.”

“You don’t have nightmares because you think I’ll get hurt. You have them because you can’t stop bad things from happening.”

“I couldn’t for Madison.”

“You were helpless.” I ducked my head to look him in the eye. “There was nothing you could’ve done for Madison, and you know you won’t always be able to protect me.”

“Helpless,” he repeated.

“Why did you beat up that guard?” I asked. His gaze darkened. As close as his face was to mine, I couldn’t deny feeling intimidated, but I held his stare. He didn’t scare me. “What would make you that angry?”

He shook his head. “I can’t explain it.”

“Try. You’re not protecting me by not telling me. When you don’t, I fill in the blanks, Manning. I think these awful things, like that they took away your food or stole from you or—”

“I snapped, Lake. That’s it. I snapped.” His palm went clammy against my chest. “Just like him.”

Snapped. It took me back to that night in the truck when he’d opened up about Maddy. Not only had Manning watched his dad’s anger burst in an instant, but as a teenager, Manning had also been accused of, and nearly arrested for, snapping. “You’re not like him,” I said. I put my hand over his on my chest. “You are a better man. The best.”

He looked toward the sink. “They wanted to get under my skin, and I let them. I went somewhere I shouldn’t.”

“Then what?” I asked. He wouldn’t look at me. I grabbed his face and forced him to. “Then what?”

“I had to face the punishment. Solitary confinement for over two months, and I almost caught more charges, but for once, luck was on my side.”

“How is that luck?” I asked, curling my fingers into his cheeks. “Two months alone, without anything or anyone. It’s not right.” Now, I was the one breathing hard, my frustration getting the better of me. I hated the idea of it, of them beating him and locking him up alone. Had he had enough to eat, been warm enough, had friends to confide in? “What did you think about in there?”

“Everything.”

I moved my index finger down the crooked bridge of his nose, then touched the raised scar, the break in stubble on his upper lip. “Did they do this to you?”

It was no wonder he hated me.

His mouth parted, and as if by instinct, I dropped my finger to his bottom lip. Hardness nudged the soft inside of my thigh, but I was too afraid to look down. I used his solid body as leverage to slide forward on the tile and bring him between my knees. I couldn’t believe I was just touching him. Just like that.

“Was I there? In your nightmare?” I asked. I ran my fingertip along his mouth. My other hand played with the soft ends of his hair.

He nodded.

“I’m still here.”

He fisted my top in one hand, and spanned his big hand along the back of my head. The tips of his middle finger and thumb grazed each of my earlobes. He pulled me toward him, gripping my camisole so tightly that one of the thin straps snapped. My heart hammered in my chest. Manning and I were going to kiss. He had an erection, I was pretty sure. We’d have sex. On prom night. Just like I’d dreamed about. It was larger and more life-changing than anything I’d done up until then—and terrifying enough that I almost stopped him. I almost couldn’t bear the weight of it.

“Manning?” I heard from a distance.

He stopped short.

It took me a moment to remember where I was, and that we weren’t alone. That I had a sister who’d probably sat in this same spot. I looked over Manning’s shoulder. Until then, I hadn’t noticed the open bedroom door. Tiffany’s bare legs were tangled in the sheets on the right side of the bed. For some reason, that shocked me. Like she should be in the middle the way she’d slept at home. It was the first evidence I’d seen of Manning and my sister sleeping in the same bed.

He let go of my top, and it uncrinkled like a piece of paper. He fixed it quickly, then stepped back over to the sink. “In the kitchen,” he called. “Your sister’s here.” To me, he said, “Get down.”

I slid off the counter just before Tiffany shuffled out in panties and nothing else, rubbing her eyes. “Lake?”

“Tiff.” Manning jutted his chin behind her. “You’re naked.”

She rolled her eyes. “Lake’s seen my boobs a hundred times.”

It was true, I had, but never like this. Never in front of Manning. Not with the knowledge that Tiffany had come straight out here from bed, which meant she slept next to Manning every night like that. Naked. When I’d called earlier, he’d been in bed with her. When he left me now, that was where he’d go. To her bed.

“Why are you here?” Tiffany asked me.

I cupped my right shoulder, trying to hide that my strap had broken. “I . . .”

“Never mind,” she said. “Tell me in the morning. Manning, come to bed. I need you for something.”

Something? I looked between the two of them, my vision going fuzzy. Had it been this dark and hazy a minute ago? Had the clock glared this hard, green lasers cutting through my euphoria?

Tiffany plodded back into the bedroom. Manning picked up his glass, filling it under the faucet as he stared out the window over the sink.

“Manning?”

He shut off the water and turned away.

“Where are you going?” I asked, following him with my eyes.

“Bed.”

“You can’t.” It came out softly, but I wanted to shout at him. Shake him. You can’t go in there. You can’t! He and Tiffany were going to have sex. They’d already had sex. Of course I knew it, but I’d never actually known it. Not until this moment.

He checked over his shoulder, then came back to stand in front of me. “You asked what I thought about in there,” he said quietly. “A lot. Everything. You, and Tiffany, too. But mostly, I thought about my dad. All the awful things he did. The coward he was. And how I would never become him. Not even for you.”

He returned to the bedroom. I had no idea what he’d meant, or why he thought I could possibly turn him, the man I loved, into his dad, the man he hated. I was the one who was helpless in all this. I got that same panicky feeling I had when I’d opened my college acceptance packet. My future had been set, but which, if any, of these choices had I made?