Night fell around us. I didn’t want to leave Big Bear. I was a little tipsy from the wine, heady from Manning, and after years of meaningless human contact, I just wanted to be held. “Was it always your plan to end the tour in the bedroom?” I teased.

“It’s not over yet.” He smiled down at me. “You didn’t say anything about the bed. Did you see?”

“My great bear.”

He turned me back to the footboard, then switched on the overhead light. “Look closer.”

Because the carvings were subtle in the warm wood, it took me a moment of squinting to notice the tiny bird perched on the bear’s back. He wasn’t looking over his shoulder at a tree. He was always watching, always protective of his . . . “Birdy.”

“And where’s she looking?” he asked.

“Up,” I said. “At the stars.”

I tilted my head back, half-expecting to see the universe right there on his ceiling the color of blueberries, but there was nothing.

“It’s on the headboard,” he said.

I wrinkled my nose at him, then went around the bed and moved one pillow. And then another and another. What I saw took my breath away—the night sky carved into his headboard. The constellations, the Summer Triangle, and both Ursas, Major and Minor—the great and little bears.

I’d been wrong earlier. The house wasn’t Manning in every way. It was us.

I put my face in my hands and released a torrent of tears.

“Lake.”

I shook my head. It was too much. “I can’t.”

“Is it too much?” he asked, reading my thoughts. “You know how I feel about you, don’t you?” I continued shaking my head. “If you don’t like Big Bear,” he said, “we can go somewhere else. We can go back to New York. You said you wanted to travel—we can do that, too.”

No, no, no. I wanted to be here. Right here. Home. For good. I couldn’t say it, though. It was too good to be true.

“Lake?”

When Manning got no response, he sighed and picked me up, lifting me into his arms like a new bride. “What would I do with top-of-the-line appliances?” he asked, carrying me through the house. At least I assumed that’s what we were doing—I couldn’t see for all my crying. “I thought for sure you’d figure it out as soon as you walked in the kitchen,” he added. “Did you see that cabinet in the corner? It’s for your special guest dishes. We can leave it there or put it in the dining area. That’s just one thing we can decorate and fill together.”

I’d never felt so overwhelmed, not even when I’d received my acceptance packet to USC, and even then, part of my tears were the doubts I couldn’t express with words. Tonight, I had no more doubts. Everything felt huge, but with Manning by my side again, and a career change in order, things also seemed as they should be.

I peeked through my fingers and wet lashes. Outside now, we headed for the small warehouse I’d noticed earlier. My cowboy boots swung as he carried me, and his heart beat near my cheek as I rested on his chest. There wasn’t much to the backyard, just a clearing before the forest, the pine trees making dark triangles in the moonlight. “What . . . what goes back here?” I asked.

“You tell me, Dr. Dolittle,” he said.

Finally, a smile broke through. “Animals?”

“If that’s what you call those rescue mutts.” He winked before he set me down to open the shed’s sliding barn door. “Here’s where I kept my sanity all these years.”

Manning’s workshop could’ve housed a small army. I stepped onto an unfinished concrete floor, sawdust under my boots. From sanders to circular saws to vises, the equipment alone intimidated me. Between the work benches, lumber, and planks and slabs piled in corners and against walls, it smelled woodsier inside than the forest behind it. “Where’s all the furniture?” I asked.

“I sold it.” He pointed to a few half-finished pieces, clustered in the center. “These are my current commissions, due next month.”

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.

He wet his lips. “Like I said, I built this to take you on the lake . . . the way I probably should’ve years ago.”

His large hand both warmed me and sent goosebumps down to my ankles. “You mean when I was sixteen?” I teased. “God, I’d give anything to go back to that moment just to tell your twenty-three-year-old self what you’re saying eleven years later.”

“I was a fool.” With a grunt, he pulled me hard enough that I had to decide if I was getting in with him or staying on dry land, where it was safe. “That side of the boat’s called the starboard,” he said. “Now climb over the starboard side and into my lap.”

“Manning . . .”

“This is it, Lake. I’m offering you everything I have. And I’m taking what I’ve always wanted.”

That was enough to get me in the boat. I held the front of my skirt and climbed in to stand between his legs.

Looking up at me, he said, “You know this sweater you’ve got on is see-through?”

“I had no idea,” I lied.

“Right. Spin around for me.”

I turned away from him to face the bow. He sat me on his lap and ran both hands up the inside of my sweater, lifting it until I pulled it over my head.

“Lake,” he murmured, discarding my bra, moving my hair over one shoulder. He smoothed his callused palms down my shoulder blades, my spine, massaging my back, my upper arms. “You’re shaking again,” he said. “Always shaking the first time.”

“Just with you,” I said. The light above the barn door clicked off. “It’s been so long.”

“I needed a woman’s touch. And you, you need a man’s touch, don’t you, Birdy?”

I shuddered, cold and turned on. He slid his warm hands around to my front and held my breasts. “I just need you,” I said.

“Is it over with him?”

“Who?”

“Whoever he is. Whoever has you right now. Corbin or someone else, doesn’t matter.”

I stood, the light came on, and I turned to straddle him. “Don’t you see, Manning? You’re the only one who’s ever had me. I tried. I dated, I had sex, I had boyfriends. I even had a marriage proposal. But you’re the only one who’s ever had me.”

“Christ, Lake. Give a guy some warning before you say that shit. Someone proposed?”

“I dated a guy from a hit TV show for six weeks, and he tried to whisk me off to Vegas.” I put my hands on his shoulders and lowered my voice. “I’ll tell you a secret. The more famous people get, the weirder they are.”

Manning gripped me under the ass, pulling me onto him until my skirt was around my waist. “I hate that you were around all those fucking weirdos without me.”

“At least I didn’t become one of them.” I smiled. “I don’t think.”

“You scared me earlier when you said you had a meeting about your contract. All day I was thinking you’d be tied to L.A. a few more years or that you’d get stuck in something you didn’t want. But I should’ve known you’d figure it out.” He wrapped his arms around me, holding me tightly to him as he looked me in the eye. “What do you want, Lake? I’ll give it to you.”

“Just to be here,” I said.

“If I proposed, would you say yes?”

Again, it was too much. I pushed at his chest, overwhelmed, but he kept me fastened to him. His heart beat strongly against my palms. Or maybe it was my own heart that was racing, vibrating us both.

“Would you?” he repeated. “I know you have obligations and work and travel and now school, but when it’s time, will you come here and be my wife?”

I couldn’t help that with those words, my mind went to his past. “Did you ever have anything close to this with anyone else?” I whispered.

“Never. You’re my first, Lake. If I had loved a hundred girls before you, you’d still be the first. I don’t know how else to describe it. You make me unafraid to face not just my mistakes, but my childhood home. I don’t know how to be a father after what I’ve lost, after the example I’ve had, but you make me want to try.” He squeezed my ribcage, dropping his forehead to my naked chest. “Because you never stopped loving me, I can forgive myself. I want you to be my wife, but I can wait, and I will, as long as it takes.”

He shifted me on his lap. I could no longer ignore the hardness straining against me, and my stomach tightened. I reached between us to open his belt. “You know it’s only ever been you.”

“Is that a yes?”

“When did you get so impatient?” I pushed his pants down and took him in my hand. “You wouldn’t touch me for six years, and now you can’t wait five minutes for an answer?”

“I’ve waited much longer, Birdy. You know that. A lifetime, it feels like.”

“Whose fault is that?” I licked my palm and closed my hand over his head to stroke the length of him.

He closed his eyes. “You know everything I built, I imagined fucking you in or on. Our bed. This boat. Every surface in the house I made to fit us.” He glanced down, and I watched him as he watched my hand around him. “Put me inside you.”

I lifted up, not bothering to remove my skirt. He pushed my underwear aside, and I took my time sinking onto him. I had to go slow. He filled me inch by inch, the stretch so exquisite that I could only drop my head back and beg the stars for mercy.

But mercy wasn’t theirs to give. Manning took my waist to guide me up and then back down. I removed his hands to see if he’d let me take charge. “Sit back,” I said.

He relaxed against the stern, stretching his arms along the sides. Slowly, feeling every sensation, I made love to him for the first time. He took off his shirt and I leaned on him to swivel my hips faster, my hands looking a doll’s, small and pale against his sprawling, tan torso.

“Fuck, Lake. Let me touch you. This is torture.”

Though I didn’t mind torturing him all that much, I consented. “All right, Great Bear. You can put your paws on me.”

I could’ve sworn he growled as he stood in one swift motion. With my legs wrapped around him, he stepped out of the boat and lay me on a workbench that seemed to be made for us, only wide enough for me and just tall enough for him. The wood’s roughened surface scraped against my back. After Manning’s restraint all these years, I welcomed the desperate way he grabbed my hips, his strangled groans. Manning fucked me like I hadn’t been fucked since New York, a mix of love and anger, adoration and profanity. He bent over me and took my mouth the same way, his fingers between my legs sending me to the moon.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he breathed.

I squeezed my arms around his neck as he rubbed my clit faster, with more pressure. “Now?”

His gaze burned. “I have always, from the day I saw you, wanted to know all your thoughts.”

I was exposed underneath him, flayed by his hand so many times over the years. “I think you feel so good . . .” I whisper-panted, “and so right . . . that I . . . can’t . . . stand it.”

I writhed under him as I climaxed. He held me to him with a hand around the back of my neck, breathing into my mouth. I felt the lock and release of his muscles as he came, too, the brokenness of his thrusts, and then the slippery way he filled me.

I ran my fingers through the sides of his hair as he hovered over me, staring while he labored for breath, looking almost pained. “Manning?” I asked, concerned.

“I love you, Lake,” he choked out.

Although it wasn’t the first time he’d said it, it felt that way all over again. I smoothed the droplets of sweat from his hairline, holding his stare. “I know.”

“Thank God. You had me for a minute there.” He kissed my forehead and eased out of me. Rounding the workbench, he sat me up to run a hand over my sensitive back. “You’re all red.”

“I’m perfect,” I said.

He hugged me from behind with one arm and urged my legs open to touch me. “What are you doing?” I asked, fascinated by the gentle way he massaged me.

After a few seconds, I felt a surge of wetness. His fingers came back slick. “You don’t know what this does to me. I could have you again right now just knowing you’re filled with me.”

My heart skipped a beat hearing the possessiveness in his voice. Protect, provide, mate. I hadn’t forgotten. “I feel the same.”

“But I keep forgetting to ask before I do that . . . are you on birth control?”

I relaxed against his back. “This time I am, yes.”

“Figures.” He nipped the shell of my ear. “We’ll have to do something about that.”

I rolled my eyes. “Manning.”

He laughed in my ear. “Too soon?”

I dropped the back of my head against his chest to look at him. “For a baby? I think so.”

He kissed the top of my hair. “It doesn’t have to be now. When we’re ready.”

He said it with such confidence, it was almost as if it were already true. Manning and I would be a family.

“Well, fuck.” He came back around the bench, buckling his belt. “I didn’t plan for all this. I thought I’d bring you here and convince you to give me a second chance. Now we’ve gone and had sex in a boat.”

I smiled, watching as he picked up my bra and clothing. “What was that you said earlier? All paths lead to here.”

He came and stood between my legs, tilting my head up by my chin. “Let’s go inside so I can make love to you properly, over and over until either the bed breaks or we do.”

“I don’t want to break the bed. I love it and plan to sleep in it for many years to come.”

He raised his eyebrows. “So you’re saying . . .” He dug his hand into his pocket, then got down on a knee and showed me the mood ring. Not only had he kept it all these years, but he’d had it in his pocket during our whole conversation. Just like that last morning at camp. “Lake Dolly Kaplan . . .” He took my left hand and slid the ring onto my fourth finger.

“Wait,” I said, incredulous. “I didn’t even answer.”

He laughed. “It’s just temporary, until I can find you the perfect ring.”

I bent over the bench, holding his face. “It is perfect,” I said softly. “Everything you give me is perfect.”

“So is that a yes?”

I sighed happily. “It’s not a no.” I looked him in the eyes, stripping away the playfulness between us so he’d understand I was serious. My great bear, my one true love, the rock I’d clung to in the angry ocean that’d brought us here, the one I feared wasn’t finished with us yet. “I love you.”

“Then come to bed with me.”

“I will. I just need a minute to myself.”

“Whatever you need, Birdy.” He kissed my forehead and took my things inside.

I looked at the ring on my hand as it fell over, top heavy. It was still a little too big, too clunky and inconvenient, just like my love for Manning. It was also a deep purple I’d never seen, and though I didn’t know for sure, I guessed that must be the color of happiness.

My legs swung under the bench as I listened to crickets chirp and frogs burp and owls hoot all around the woods until the shed light shut off again, plunging me into the dark. I wondered how far the lake was, and if Manning and I would spend summer days there, soaking in the sun, and each other, until night fell. Until the black lake water stilled and let the moon shimmer on its glassy surface.

I hopped off the bench and walked back toward the house, stopping where it was darkest—where the stars shone brightest. Wherever Manning went, I’d follow. If he wanted to live amongst the constellations, I’d move with him around an immovable universe, guided by starlight, and when we got separated, fate would light the path back to each other. Because you couldn’t move the stars—Manning and I were inevitable—and as I stood in awe of the infinite night sky, I thanked the heavens for that.