Alone in my apartment, my Calvin Klein gown draped over the back of my desk chair, heels discarded at the door and makeup washed away, I tossed and turned in the dark. I wanted Manning there, caging me against the mattress the way he had the cab. I needed him to make up for all the years we hadn’t been kissing the way we had hours ago.

I kicked off the bedspread and stared at the ceiling, restless, aching, lost. He’d sliced open a wound long bandaged, scarred though not healed, and now it wouldn’t stop bleeding.

Midnight became two in the morning, then four. I drifted in and out of sleep. I could have Manning, but he’d come at a price. Was I willing to pay? Corbin wouldn’t understand, and maybe Val wouldn’t either. My parents would never forgive me. Tiffany would be devastated. But after years of drifting apart from all of them, would severing those relationships hurt more than saying goodbye to Manning?

I forced myself to remember my sister, the good, the bad, and everything in between. The time, after she’d hit puberty, she’d pushed me out of her room while her friends were over, and I’d almost fallen down the stairs. The summer we were nine and twelve, and she’d carried me half a mile on her back because I’d sprained my ankle during handball. All the nights I’d sat across from her at the dinner table and shared an inside joke or called her annoying or let her use me as a scapegoat for whatever trouble she’d gotten into that week. The nights I’d lounged in her bed and watched in the mirror as she’d attempted bigger lips with the aid of liner or modeled clothing out of shopping bags, tags springing off her as she walked a makeshift runway.

I tortured myself with the memories but the instant that afternoon she’d sauntered up to Manning at the construction site came to mind, I lost my heart to my stomach. She’d swiped him right out from under me, and he’d let her. She’d already gotten more of him than she deserved. I could acknowledge the terrible thing I was doing to her, and how painfully I loved him, but I couldn’t think of them together so I didn’t.

A garbage truck growled and beeped down my street, stirring the peaceful night into a new day.

Regardless of the fact that I’d seen and wanted and loved him first, he legally belonged to her. She’d kissed and touched and made love to him first, but he actually belonged to me.

I didn’t choose her, he’d told me. He hadn’t chosen me, though. Could I get over that?

Give me a chance to erase both of them for us. Would he ever be able to?

I wasn’t sure, but what also echoed in my mind was what he’d said right before he’d finally put his lips on mine. In case this is the last chance I get . . .

The last chance. The end of us. Did I say goodbye to him for good? Or had my fate always been to get everything I wanted, just not the way I’d planned?

The excruciating idea that I might send him back to Tiffany, that I’d give her more of the time and love that belonged to me, was too much to handle. Unequivocally, without question or condition, I loved Manning and he was mine, and I didn’t want to wait any longer.

I sat up in bed, the room a dreamy white-blue with early dawn. Wrapping the top sheet around myself, I clutched it to my chest and went to the living room to dial 411. There were people I should’ve called first. Tiffany, to confess everything. Corbin, to prepare him for the blow. Val, to get her to stop me. Instead, I asked for the W in Union Square. When the front desk connected me to Manning Sutter, the line rang and rang until I eventually had to face the fact that he wasn’t there at six in the morning.

A pit formed in my stomach. I’d never asked how long his trip was. What if he’d only been here two nights and I’d missed my chance? Worse, what if something had happened between the theater and his hotel? As defensive as I’d been of my city, it was true—this wasn’t the safest place. I knew someone who’d been hit by a cab, and I’d read news stories about people falling onto subway tracks. A friend of one of my classmates had been mugged not far from the theater where Manning and I had just been.

I traded my sheet for the first things I found, baggy jeans and a white sweater warm and fuzzy enough to face a wintry day. I grabbed my purse and boots on the way, but I didn’t even make it into the hall.

Manning stood at my front door, still in his suit, his hair as disheveled as it’d been after a hot day on the construction site. I didn’t need to ask why he was there. By his hungry eyes, I knew the answer. He stepped into my tiny doorway and I flinched, my heart pounding, the silence growing thick between us as he dominated the space.

“I . . .” I choked. Overcome, I tried to tell him I’d been coming to find him. He was so large, so there, impatience rolling off him. I knew what he wanted, what I wanted, but faced with the reality of it, I wasn’t sure how to ask for it. “I called the hotel . . . I . . .”

“You better find your words, Lake, because I’m going to need to hear you say it before I take a step into this apartment.”

My chest rose and fell faster as I tried to catch my breath. The gap between us lessened, growing tenser. Hotter. He was here. He’d come for me. I just had to say it. “I thought about it all night. I thought about you.”

“And?”

“I know there’ll be consequences, but . . .” I bit my bottom lip. “I want this anyway. I want you.”

He kicked the door shut. My breath caught with its slam and before I could even exhale, Manning had my face in his hands, his mouth landing hotly on mine. He walked us backward while I tried to keep up, grabbing his shirt, touching his stubbled cheeks. I reached my arms around his neck, but he was so big—had he always been this tall?—that I stumbled. He caught me by the waist, pressing my back up against a wall.

I lost all sense of where we were in the apartment until he drew back. As he held my face, steps from my bedroom, there was nothing but the heated breath between our parted mouths, and then his thumbs as he grazed each one to the center of my bottom lip.

“Lake.” His voice was sweet and thick as syrup, all the intensity of the moment poured into my name. How could it not be that way? There were a million things I wanted to say and do. All that made sense right then was him.

“Manning,” I responded.

He touched my hair, gentle and reverential, then fisted the hem of my sweater, pulling it with a ferocity that made my insides tighten. “I’ve never done this,” he said.

My stomach was already flipping, my hands shaking, my thoughts giddy, so his unexpected words provoked a nervous giggle. “Done what?”

“I want to feel every part of you against me.” He returned his hands to my cheeks and pecked my forehead, then the tip of my nose. “I want to know all the ways you fit me.”

I tilted my head to meet his mouth.

“No,” he said. “Hold still.”

It was harder than it sounded not to move as he pressed his lips to mine, slow, damp, then kissed his way around my mouth, each contact growing more urgent. When his hips connected with my stomach, we each inhaled a deep breath. Manning was kissing me. The roughened mouth I’d dreamed about was opening me up. His solid, strong, slightly crooked nose pressed against mine. He made love to my mouth—that was the only way to describe it. Maybe he’d really never done this, because this wasn’t sex. It was an act of pure love.

His grip tightened and the kiss turned greedy. He became demanding, hard, almost angry. I was willing, soft, almost terrified. If he was as scared as I was, he didn’t show it. I tried to take his shirt off, but I couldn’t even get a button through its loop. His big body trapped me to the wall, and I felt nothing from the waist down except his erection against my stomach. Things suddenly became real—I was sixteen again and unsure I could keep up with such immensity. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I blurted.

“It’s me, Lake. Focus on me.” He took my trembling hands in his steady ones and moved them around his neck. With a hand under my bottom, he lifted me, and instinctively, I wrapped my legs around his middle. As he ground into me once, a need I’d never felt took over.

“Manning.” I didn’t know what else to say during the best moment of my life so I just let him kiss me dizzy. Except that wasn’t right, because I was kissing back, my own mouth hot and insistent, eager to consume him, to take everything I’d ever wanted. It got ugly, our noses mashed, teeth clinking, lips burning.

Manning held me so tightly, I didn’t notice we were moving until my back hit the mattress. With the urgency of his hardness rubbing my most sensitive spots, his hands everywhere all at once—my hair, my face, my hips and legs—my fear fell away like a robe, baring my naked self, flushed with acute longing. I bypassed his buttons, gathering the fabric of his dress shirt in my fists as I tried to get it over his head. He yanked it off by the collar and stood. Watching me from the foot of the bed, he undid his pants. “If only you could see yourself right now,” he said. “You are my fantasy come to life, you’re so . . .”

As he stripped down, my throat closed. His tender words couldn’t distract me. It was not humanly possible that penis would fit inside me. I scooted back on the bed and away from him until I saw it there in his face—he was afraid, too. Here I was, underneath him for the first time, when he’d fought so hard to keep me at a distance. No matter how many years had passed, or how much I’d matured, I couldn’t expect Manning to switch gears this fast. I knew him. Part of him would still feel like he was tarnishing something pure.

“Manning?” I said.

“You’re scared,” he said. “I’ll slow down.”

Now, the only thing that alarmed me was that he might change his mind. I reached out for him. “I’m not,” I said. “Not at all. I’m ready.”

“Are you?” he asked, staying where he was. “Nothing’ll ever be the same afterward.”

Words could not express my need for him. It would take more for me to break through this wall Manning had put between us, this sense that I was too pure for a man like him. So I channeled my inner-Val, since she was the most confident, experienced girl I knew. In the steadiest voice I could manage, I said, “I want you so much, Manning, please—I need you to . . .”

His jaw ticked. “Need me to what?”

My heart raced. I didn’t know if I was wet enough for everything standing in front of me, but I’d fooled around before and had definitely never felt this hot or horny or excited. “I need to feel you inside me.”

“Lake . . .” I could see his instincts warring. If his guilt won out, I’d die on the spot, either of embarrassment or sexual frustration, I was sure of it.

“It’s okay, Manning,” I said, a little more timidly than I meant. “You can fuck me.”

He closed his eyes, frowning as if the words hurt him, but it only lasted a second. With a flare of his nostrils, he grabbed my ankle and pulled me back down the bed. My sweater rode up to my waist, and he impatiently yanked off my jeans without even bothering with the fly.

He climbed over me, spreading my legs with his knees. “You know what you’re asking for, Birdy?”

I didn’t. I’d never been fucked. I’d never been made love to, either. But I was afraid if I told Manning the truth, he’d only see that sixteen-year-old girl in front of him and talk himself out of this. I was a virgin, and I was scared, but more than that, I wanted to feel every moment of this, to give us both everything we needed. So I bit my bottom lip and said, “Yes.”

I barely had time to appreciate the expanse of his chest before he was fully on top of me, his hands inside my sweater, his length against me, this time with only the thin layer of my underwear between us. I was dying to touch him, to take in everything that was happening, but things moved fast. Where did I put my hands? Did he want me to be loud, quiet, rough, gentle? What did he like?

Reading my hesitation, he said into my mouth. “You can touch me. I’m completely yours.”

“Where?”

“Any-fucking-place you want.” He cupped the back of my head in one hand and lifted my butt with the other. “Don’t you know how crazy you make me? You never understood.”

“I did,” I said.

“No you didn’t. Whatever torment you thought I endured, times that by a hundred. I wanted so bad to just . . .” From behind, he pushed aside my underwear and rubbed between my legs. Only then did I really feel how wet I was. His fingers slipped over me and then inside me, and I arched my back with a sudden gasp.

“I want to see you do that every day until I die,” he grated out.

Forever. He was completely mine, he’d said, and I was his. Emboldened, I placed my hands on his shoulders and held on as he touched me for the first time. His tenderness surprised me after years of suppressing his desires, but as I looked into his eyes, I read the heat there—the same suppressed fervor I’d seen in the foyer years ago. I didn’t want him to hold back anymore. “I’m ready,” I said.

“So am I,” he murmured. “I could spend the day exploring every inch of you, Lake.” He took my panties off all the way. “But before I do, I want to feel you in a way I’ve denied us for so long.”

My heart skipped. I wasn’t yet used to this side of him, the one who gave me what I asked for. Manning and I were about to have sex. Manning. Me. Sex. I had wanted it so desperately for so long—did I know what I was asking for? “Now?” I asked.

“Yes, now. You want to wait another six years?”

I tried to catch my breath. I needed to relax. This was Manning, not some guy I’d picked up at a bar. That didn’t help, though, because this was Manning. He could hurt me in so many ways, physically the least of them.

I spread my legs wider as he adjusted his hips and began to enter me. I lost my breath and didn’t hear anything he said after that. The pain was real. Everything wonderful about the moment for which I’d waited so long was reduced to the pressure between my legs, the feeling of being stretched wider than I was supposed to.

“Fuck,” he breathed, pulling up my top, exposing my bra to kiss my chest. “Are you okay?”

I couldn’t speak, so I nodded hard and focused on the weight of what we were doing—and Manning, real and solid on top of me. I dropped a hand onto the feather comforter, satisfied with the way it compressed in my fist. For years, all he’d done was hold back. I wanted him unbridled. I wanted him as hard and as fast as he wanted to give it to me.

“You’re so . . . Jesus Christ, you’re tight,” he said, sounding almost surprised as he slid partway out and pushed back in.

Why, if it hurt, did I want him to do that again? And again and again? His most exquisite agony felt better than any other touch I’d received. “Please, Manning,” I said. “Just do it.”

“Do what?”

Take my virginity. “I want you all the way in, right now,” I said, pulling on his hips.

He looked between us. “You’re ready for me, but you’re really fucking tight, Lake. I’ve never felt anything like it. If I thrust, it’ll hurt.”

After all the times I’d claimed to be a grownup, I couldn’t stand the thought that Manning might see me as a child. I looked into his eyes, thumbing the tiny scar on his lip. “I want all of you. Now. I can take it. Haven’t I waited long enough?”

“Look at you.” He kissed me. “You’re so fucking beautiful. So sexy,” he breathed into my mouth. “Relax for me and know that you are giving me the world right now.”

With his reassurances, I released the tension in my legs, opening wider for him. It wasn’t enough to make it feel good, but when he looked me in the face, his brows furrowing with his own pain or ecstasy, my world opened up as well. No matter what, I’d never stopped loving him for a second. “Please,” I whispered.

Manning kept his eyes on mine and thrust deep, ripping me open. “Oh my God,” I cried as a searing pain burnt a path all the way to my scalp.

“What? What happened?” Manning’s voice sounded distant. “Lake?”

It took me a moment to realize I was squeezing my eyes shut, one hand tearing at the bedspread while I nearly drew blood from his back with the other. He pulled away, but I scrambled to keep him there. “Wait.” I blinked his beautiful face into focus. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Keep going.”

“You’re sorry?” he asked, incredulous, his forehead wrinkling. “What was that? You’re stiff as a board.” He took my chin, forcing my eyes to meet his. “Tell me what . . .”

My heart pounded so hard, there was no way he didn’t feel it against his chest. I hung on to him, trying to quell my queasiness. Realization dawned in his expression the same moment I opened my mouth. “I’m . . .” I started. “I’ve never . . .”

“Shit.” He pushed up. “Shit, Lake.”

“No,” I said, trying to bring him back on top of me. “I don’t want you to stop.”

He got off the bed, going pale as he looked at the sheet and then down at himself. “You’re bleeding. You’re fucking bleeding.” He paced the room. “Oh, God.”

“I-I’m sorry. I just wanted it to be perfect.” Things had moved so fast. I didn’t care—I didn’t want to slow down. All my friends had lost their virginity in high school. I was the only one who’d held out and for what? At twenty-two, I still felt exposed and childish. I pulled the sheet around myself and sat up. “Please don’t go,” I said, hiccupping. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“Stay right there,” he said, anguish on his face. “Don’t move.”

He left the room. Mortified, I kicked the stained sheet away, hurrying to put my underwear back on. I pulled my sweater down as far as it would go, afraid he’d return and see the truth—as far as I’d come, in many ways, I was still that same, inexperienced sixteen-year-old girl.