I came up from the subway half expecting Manning not to be there. Before he’d left my apartment in the morning to go back to his hotel and change for a sales call, I’d drawn him a map designating where to meet me later. Then I’d called in sick to work because today was important—I was going to show Manning my New York. And there he was, outside of the Duane Reade, right under the blue pharmacy sign like we’d planned. He had his hands in his coat pockets and a cigarette between his lips.

Outside the comfort of my apartment, he was real, and he was waiting for me. I couldn’t quite shake the feeling of being sixteen and having no say in when I got to see him. That he’d appear and disappear based on forces I couldn’t control.

As our eyes met, he made no sign of recognition except for the familiar stare I’d come to expect from him over the years—until I stepped off the curb, and he looked both ways for me.

I walked up to him and took the cigarette from his lips. He looked at it, almost daring me to take a drag. I dropped it in the snow. “I can’t believe she hasn’t made you quit.”

“Nobody makes me do anything, Lake.”

“You almost quit once. For me.”

“That was a different time.” He nodded at me. “Put your coat on.”

It hurt that Manning wouldn’t stop smoking for me, if not for himself. It wasn’t an unreasonable request to want him around as long as possible. “What if I won’t kiss you after?” I asked.

“You said you didn’t mind the taste.”

I hesitated. I liked the taste, actually, because it reminded me of him. That wasn’t enough of a reason to risk his health. I didn’t want to start a fight, though. I wanted to be in his arms. We weren’t at the point where I felt I could reach out and touch him whenever the urge struck me, so I just stepped close enough to break the barrier of politeness.

“What’s wrong?” I asked when he stayed where he was.

“You wasted a good cigarette.”

I pursed my lips. “Really.”

“I’ve fought a man for the same thing.”

“So fight me.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “It’s not because of the cigarette.”

The cold day started to hit me. I’d taken my coat off on the stuffy subway, but now I was more interested in being warmed by him. “So what’s it about?”

“We’re in public.”

It took me a moment to register his meaning. I was the other woman. Except that I wasn’t. I was his, always, from the beginning. Tiffany was the one who’d stolen him away. She was the one who should be kept at arm’s length on the street. “You’re going to hide me away?” I accused.

“It’ll take some time for me to acclimate.”

“Why?”

“I’m used to checking over my shoulder with you.” He removed one hand from his pocket and took the ends of my hair in a loose fist. I thought I could stand up to him, but with that one touch, I wanted to melt. I fought to keep my eyes open. “You never had to be the one to worry about all that,” he continued. “I did. I was older than you. Even now, I feel like people are looking.”

“Nobody is, Manning. I’m twenty-two.”

“I couldn’t let my guard down for a second, even after you turned eighteen. Couldn’t get caught staring at you.”

“I loved when you did. Even though most times I looked at you, you looked away.”

“I had to. You didn’t think about things like that, because nobody cares if a sixteen-year-old stares at someone older. Not true the other way around, though.”

Hadn’t I worried I’d be found out? Maybe some part of me had wanted to get caught. I didn’t think about consequences much in those days. Now? I supposed there was the slightest chance someone might recognize us, considering there were people from Orange County who’d moved here. Corbin, for one. Val would never tell, even if she was angry with me. I tried not to show my disappointment, but I needed him to know I was more mature now and could play by his rules. I shivered. “It’s okay. I can wait.”

He opened his coat and pulled me into it. “I can’t. I’ll just have to get over it.”

“What if someone sees us?”

“They won’t.” He rubbed my shoulder, bringing me closer and closer.

I parted my lips, expecting his, but he only stared. “What’s wrong now?” I asked.

“I’m remembering your mouth on me last night on the fire escape.”

Despite the fact that I could see my breath, I warmed at the memory. After all the ways Manning had fought me over the years, I couldn’t believe he’d finally given in. “We can go home and do all that stuff again right now.”

“No, don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Tempt me, when all I want is to spend a normal day with you. Even being allowed to fantasize about you is a whole new world to me.”

I quirked an eyebrow at him. “But you did, right? Even if you weren’t allowed?”

His expression sobered as he squinted over my head a moment, then took my coat. “Do you have a plan for us?” he asked, opening it for me.

I wasn’t sure why he couldn’t answer that. After all the things we’d said and done the day before, I didn’t believe for a moment he’d never thought about fucking me. Maybe he wouldn’t admit it to others, but to me, it was welcome. I turned to put one arm in my coat and then the other. “Not a plan so much as some places to hit,” I said.

He turned me around, buttoning up the coat. “Where are we headed?”

“It’s no fun if I tell you. Let it be a surprise.”

When he’d finished, my collar nearly choked me. He fixed the lapels, his eyebrows wrinkled. “I don’t like surprises.”

“I’ll remember that for the future.” I tilted my head up. We were face to face and still hadn’t kissed.

“Lead the way,” he said.

“Okay.” I didn’t move.

“Was there something else?”

I rolled my lips together. I had, in my mind, made it very clear what I wanted. To ask for it was a completely different thing than hinting at it. It wasn’t some easy thing to just kiss him, considering he towered almost a foot over me. I would have to rise onto the tips of my toes, and I would have to put my heart on the line again. No, it wasn’t easy at all.

“You can touch or kiss me when you want,” he said. “You don’t have to wait for me.”

I shifted. For the briefest of moments, I thought—no, I can’t. You don’t belong to me. I would be kissing and touching someone else’s husband.

Maybe sensing my unrest, Manning put his hands under my jaw, lifting my face to his. I rose onto my tiptoes, and he nuzzled his nose against mine a few slow seconds before Hurricane Manning made landfall. Nothing felt more exhilarating than being whipped into a frenzy by his kiss, but his anxiety about being in public belatedly hit me. It almost felt gratuitous to be intimate outside the privacy of my apartment.

I ended the kiss but smiled. “Let’s go while it’s still early. Daylight is precious this time of year.”

“It’s only noon.”

“I know. I hope you have comfortable shoes on.”

We started in the theater district, zigzagging through streets, alleys, and avenues. We’d been here the other night, but this time I pointed out the plays I’d been to, those I still wanted to see, and the ones I’d give my left leg to score a part in.

“Do you sing and dance?” he asked.

“I’ve taken lessons for both, and I’m all right on the piano, but I don’t typically try out for musicals, which can be limiting. I like speaking parts, dramas mostly. It’s thrilling to be up in front of all those people.”

He looked up as we passed Carnegie Hall. “Have you done it a lot?”

“We had performances in school. Some of my friends are writers and have cast me in small productions. And then there’s auditioning, which is basically baring your soul on a stage so they can judge and reject you.”

He brought my hand in his pocket, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles. “What moron would reject you?”

I laughed. According to my more experienced peers, the brutality I’d experienced was simply a preview of what was to come. “You’d be surprised.”

“Have you tried out for any of these?” he asked about the flashing billboards around us.

Rejection wasn’t the easiest thing to admit when Manning had always known me as a type-A overachiever. “A couple, but I’ve never gotten a callback.”

“What about other kinds of acting, like in front of a camera?”

“Some of my friends are interested in that, but most of us, like me, want the stage.” I squeezed closer to Manning to let a dog walker by. I smiled at the fact that his hands and arms were tangled with leashes, yet he seemed in complete control of the five or six pups in his care.

“Should I be jealous of the guy or the dogs?” Manning asked.

I wrinkled my nose at him, and he kissed my forehead. “Dogs,” I said. “Always be jealous of the dogs.”

I took Manning along Central Park South, by the Plaza Hotel, FAO Schwartz, and down Fifth Avenue to see the holiday displays. The windows were decked with wrapped presents, shiny tinsel, and ornamented Christmas trees. Some featured toy trains and Barbie dolls, and others exquisitely beaded gowns, multi-colored sequined heels, and lush crimson velvet.

Everything behind the glass exuded warmth, even the fake snow. “What will our holidays be like?” I asked Manning as we wandered.

“However you want. We can spend it with your friends, or we can stay home on the couch watching A Christmas Story.”

I smiled a little. “The one with the boy who pokes his eye out?”

“Well, technically he doesn’t, but yeah, that’s the one. I used to watch it every Christmas with my family before Madison passed.”

My heart deflated. “Then we can watch it, too,” I said, squeezing his hand, “or we can start our own traditions. There’s lots of New York Christmas movies to choose from. Like Home Alone.”

He nodded gravely. “A classic in its own right.”

“What were your holidays like growing up? With Madison?”

“My parents always made a big deal of them. It wasn’t all bad all the time, not at all. We were a pretty normal family for the most part. Lots of presents, at least what they could afford, mostly for Maddy.” He surveyed the shops without giving much away. “She cared more about decorating the tree and wrapping presents for us, though. Usually things she’d made, like jewelry for my mom, or found.”

I rested my head on his shoulder, hoping to offer even the smallest bit of comfort. Losing a family member wasn’t just about their absence. The DNA of his existence had been altered. My sister was still alive, and yet my life had changed dramatically without her in it. It was especially hard around holidays, so I held Manning a little closer. “What was your favorite part?”

“The food, I guess. My mom would cook more than I could eat and that’s saying something.”

“I’ll cook for you.” After we walked a few blocks, I asked, “What’s Christmas like now?”

He cleared his throat. “Good.”

“I mean, I know what it’s like at the house. Mom puts on Christmas music twenty-four-seven and it always smells like cookies.”

He nodded slowly. “That’s right. Tiff and I go over in the morning and spend the day there. It took awhile for things to feel normal after you left.”

I was lucky to have made enough friends here that now I always had somewhere to spend the holidays, but that didn’t replace the warm, cozy family den where I’d grown up opening metallic-ribboned presents and drinking eggnog with nutmeg. Tiffany’s gifts to us were always wrapped sloppily, but she’d bounce up and down while we opened them, unable to contain herself.

“What kinds of things did you buy her?” I asked.

“What’s it matter?”

“You wanted me to know about your life,” I said.

“The usual. Jewelry, clothes. Things for the house or kitchen.”

“The kitchen?” I asked, remembering his comment about dessert after dinner. “Does she cook now?”

“Some nights. And she’s not half bad.”

I scowled. She couldn’t be a good chef. She didn’t have a culinary bone in her body, not like me or my mom. But she’d had years of feeding Manning, learning about what he liked or didn’t. That was time I’d never get back. My mind automatically drifted to the bedroom, where she’d also had time. “How was it with her?”

He kept his arm around me, his eyes forward as we navigated the crowded sidewalk. For a moment, I understood what he’d meant earlier about feeling as if people were looking at us. We were doing something wrong, and it seemed they could tell. “I didn’t mean you should ask about this stuff,” he said. “Things that’ll make you jealous.”

“It’s just food,” I said.

“You’re not asking about cooking anymore, but I know you don’t like to hear about that, either. You think I like imagining you feeding another man?”

“I didn’t, though . . . not on a regular basis, anyway.” My palm began to sweat in his, and I took my hand from his pocket. I could feel myself veering down a dangerously steep hill, but now that I’d started, I couldn’t apply the brakes. I’d been thinking—and trying not to think—about this since he’d shown up on my doorstep. “So you can ask me all you want about cooking for other men, and I told you about Corbin, too, so now I want to know what it was like for you and Tiffany, and I don’t mean in the kitchen.”

He blew out a sigh and shrugged. “It was fine.”

“Fine? That’s it?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I can’t tell you it was the worst thing in the world unless you want me to lie.”

I didn’t want him to lie, but I wouldn’t have minded hearing it was the worst thing in the world. “What was good about it? Is it because she’s experienced?”

“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?”

“You saw how I reacted on the beach that night. There’ve only been a few other times I’ve gotten that upset.”

“Tell me about them.”

“It mostly has to do with my dad.”

“And the time they sent you to solitary confinement.”

“And that.” He nodded. “If I let my temper get the best of me at any moment, it could change everything for me. I could go back to jail. Worse, I could hurt you.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Not because I thought he’d ever get physical with me, but because I could hear in his voice that he believed he could. “You wouldn’t,” I said.

“You don’t know that. I told you how it was with my dad. There was no telling what would set him off. And I’m the same, Lake. That was what landed me in SHU.”

“You never told me why you snapped.”

“I never told you to protect you from that world.”

“But we can’t have secrets from each other now, Manning.”

He pulled me close, kissing me on the lips. “Your safety and happiness will always be my priority.”

I read between the lines. He would keep from me the things that might hurt me. “I don’t want to be in the dark, Manning.”

He looked anywhere but at me. “Hmm.”

I didn’t think I could ever make Manning do anything he didn’t want to, which was why it was important he see me as an adult, not the girl on the construction site. “We’re going to be partners,” I reminded him.

“We already are. We have been. Don’t you know, no matter what was happening around us, that you were always in the center of my mind? That I would never do or say anything to let anyone hurt you?”

“Anyone but you. You hurt me most of all.” As I said it, I slipped my hand back into his. I wasn’t sure why, except that I knew this conversation was hard for him. Still, I couldn’t stop from pressing the wound. Maybe it was revenge, or maybe it was that my insecurities needed coddling. I didn’t think I’d ever tire of hearing his thoughts.

“I was selfish. I didn’t want to be away from you. I wanted to feel like a good man, and that’s how your sister made me feel.”

“And I didn’t?”

“You just made me feel good. So good, I thought it meant I was bad. How could I feel such a connection for someone I shouldn’t? Can you see the logic in any of that?”

I twisted my lips. What would have happened if Manning had not come into the house that day at Tiffany’s invitation, which later resulted in their first date? I’d been a child then, admittedly more naïve than most. I couldn’t have handled such a man as him, not like Tiffany. What if he’d done all the things I’d tried to get him to do, like take off my clothes in a truck while I was away at camp or kiss me on my sister’s kitchen counter while she slept in the next room? Would he still be here if any of that had happened? If not for Tiffany, would he have left for good to get away from his feelings for me?

We passed more beautiful, glossy stores. Whenever their doors opened, warmth seeped out. “I wish we could spend this Christmas together,” I said. “I’d cook you a turkey and you’d fix my heater. We could watch movies under the blankets and maybe fool around a little.”

He kissed the top of my head. “Not maybe. Definitely. Sounds perfect. Next year, Birdy, I promise you.”

I was stealing my sister’s husband, shattering her world so I could build my own. But my love for Manning was stronger than anything else. If I got to live eighty more years with him, I wasn’t sure I’d change anything about the past few that might’ve prevented that. And I understood why loving me sometimes made him feel like a bad person.

In that instant, it was true for me, too.