I woke up to the moon coming through the window, lighting my otherwise dark bedroom. The first thing I felt was Manning pressed against my back. The second was a chill on any body part that wasn’t tangled with his. I did my best to turn and face him, but I had to go slowly, partly so I wouldn’t wake him but mostly because his arm was heavy on top of me, and I had to lift it with both hands in order to move. Once I’d turned over, I burrowed into him, pressing my chest and stomach and crotch to his body. I pushed one of my legs between his, lengthening the other against him. He was hot, and big, and with a little maneuvering, I could almost get every one of my body parts against him. Last was my face, which I rubbed against his neck.

“What’re you doing?” he asked, his voice heavy with sleep.

“Getting warm.”

“The tip of your nose is cold.”

I smiled against his throat. “Any part of me not touching you is cold.”

He answered by sliding a big hand down my spine. “What about this?” he asked, pulling me even closer by my rear end. “It’s not touching me.”

“It got you all day. It’s nighttime now.”

“Mmm, is it?” He twitched against my stomach.

Nerves and excitement buzzed in me. Sex with Manning was unlike anything I could’ve ever dreamed up. I was thankful for the few times I’d fooled around with Corbin and had dreaded sex enough to stop. I could see now that while I trusted Corbin, my friend, in every sense of the word, I wasn’t able to completely bare myself to him. There were times I’d told myself to just get it over with, and Corbin would’ve been happy to take my virginity, but I was glad I’d trusted my instincts. I’d saved everything for Manning, and he was worth the wait.

“I’ll do my best to warm you.” Manning rubbed my back, slipping his hand a little down the length of my thigh until the point where my leg was clamped between both of his. “If any part starts to get cold, tell me and I’ll put my hand there.”

“I can think of a place.”

He chuckled in my ear. “That is definitely not cold.”

“What’s it like?”

“Imagine the warmest, silkiest, tightest place you can be. It is, without a doubt, the best spot in the world.”

I held in a giggle. Warm and silky sounded nice, but I wasn’t sure about tight. Must’ve been a guy thing.

“Lake?”

“Hmm?”

“What’s that noise?”

I listened. Through the thin walls, my neighbors watched TV. Downstairs, city dwellers headed to and from dinner. There was the occasional siren. And then I heard it, the tiny and unfortunately familiar squeaking coming from inside the apartment. I shivered. “A mouse.”

“For fuck’s sake.” He sighed, and now what I focused on was the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. “Guess I’ll have to add that to my to-do list.”

“There’s nothing you can do. We get them now and then. Val and I just try to be vigilant about leaving out food and keeping the lid on the trash.”

“I’ll pick up some mousetraps.”

“To kill them?” I sat up, leaning my elbow on his chest. “I don’t want that.”

“These aren’t strays we’re talking about.” He yawned. “You got off easy with the scar that feral kitten gave you. Mice carry disease.”

“Do you know what happens if you trap them? They starve to death—they’re poisoned. Sometimes they chew off their own legs to get free.”

“Then I’ll get a top-of-the-line trap,” he said. “Death,” he sliced his hand across his throat, “in a snap.”

“That’s murder,” I screamed.

He laughed. “Murder? I love that you’re sensitive and humane, but it’s a fucking rodent, Lake. Where there’s one, there’re others.”

I stuck out my bottom lip. “But—”

“Gotta wipe ’em out, Birdy.”

I exhaled, tracing a circle over his chest with my fingertip. “If you do, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t want to see or hear about it. I’ll cry, I really will.”

“Say no more.” He moved some of my hair behind my ear. “What time did you say it was?”

“Late. We slept all day.” I checked the nightstand. “After seven.”

“I missed a meeting.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll have to reschedule it for tomorrow.”

My spirits fell a little. Nothing sounded more perfect than spending every minute of Manning’s trip right here in my bed, basking in six years’ worth of afterglow. I was supposed to work at the diner tomorrow afternoon, but it was a short shift. I put my face back in the crook of his neck. “Do you have to?”

“I’d skip it, but if I’m leaving my job soon, I need to make as much commission as possible before I go.”

Sleepy Manning had turned into Serious Manning, the version of him I was probably most familiar with. I caught the tension in his voice and wondered if money worried him. It didn’t need to. I had two jobs and had been taking care of myself for a while, and by the looks of his suit and cell phone and long-distance taxi rides, he did all right for himself.

“But after my meetings, I thought you could show me your New York. Give me something to look forward to. I’m moving from the glorious beach after all.”

All my warm and fuzzies returned. I tried to wiggle even closer, but every inch of me was already pressed to him. “My New York?” I asked.

“All I’m getting is that there’s a lot of garbage and pushy people. Questionable smells. But if you tell me it’s great, then I want to see it through your eyes. Can you show me tomorrow?”

I tried to think of what Manning might like about the city, but I came up short. There were buildings he’d surely appreciate with his eye for structure and carpentry, but was that enough? I loved the energy that coursed through the streets, especially around the theater district and Times Square, but I had to admit I wasn’t sure he’d feel the same.

“Lake?” he asked when I didn’t answer.

Was it fair to ask him to move here, a place that surely didn’t fit him? Wasn’t that what was bothering me about his suit and tie, his golf game, the cell phone . . . the fact that Tiffany and my dad were trying to force him in a box? I angled my face from his neck to look up at him, and instantly my skin cooled.

“Nose,” I said.

He stopped massaging my back and put his hand over my nose, but his palm was so big that it engulfed my entire face.

I laughed. “I can’t see.”

“Tell me what’s the matter.”

“How can I ask you to move? I can’t picture you here, but I don’t know what the answer is. I want to do stage acting, and Broadway is here, so I need to be.” I blinked a few times, and my lashes fluttered against his fingers. “If I hadn’t just spent four years taking out loans and working overtime trying to graduate, maybe we could talk about somewhere else, but not right now.”

He spread his fingers, creating slats so we could see each other. “None of that matters. Isn’t that what you tried to tell me that night on the beach?”

I flashed back to standing in front of Manning, pouring my heart out while my friends partied around the bonfire yards away. “They’re just dumb details,” I’d told him, to which he’d responded, “They’re life, Lake. Relationships, marriage, they don’t run on love alone.”

I hadn’t understood back then—I hadn’t wanted to. That was because I’d never had the real, pressing worry I’d be unable to pay a bill. I’d never sustained myself on dollar noodles four nights in a row or reused takeout cartons as dishes to save money or spent an entire winter day outside waiting for a five-minute audition. After a while of living without familial or financial support, I understood that those details didn’t just take care of themselves.

“I don’t want to send you back to her,” I said, “but I wouldn’t feel right making you come here. What if you get home, and . . .” It was too painful to form the words. Even thinking Tiffany’s name made my gut smart—both because of all the things he’d shared with her, but also because of how I was about to ruin her life, probably beyond repair. I pushed her out of my thoughts. “Never mind.”

He ran his hand down my face to pinch my chin, keeping my eyes tilted to him. “And what?”

“We’re having an affair, Manning.”

“I’m aware of that,” he said, “but I’m a little worried you aren’t.”

“I am.” I looked at his chest. “It’s just too hard to think about.”

“Do you think I’ll get home and want to stay? That I won’t come back? Because once I get on that plane Friday, I’ll be facing a shitstorm, and so will you. I need to know you trust me.”

I trusted him—didn’t I? I had the first day I’d met him, when I’d turned around and found my gold bracelet pooled in his palm. I’d given and given to him, even when he’d turned me away. Pushed me away. Forced me away. I supposed, though, my trust in him wasn’t complete. Not after what we’d been through.

“You’re quiet,” he said.

Manning had to be able to trust me, too, which was why I couldn’t tell him what he needed to hear, even though I wanted to. I would once I was certain beyond any doubt that he would come back to me. “I’m sorry.”

“I understand,” he said. “But there are two things you can trust me on, so can we start there?”

I raised my eyes back to his. “What are they?”

“I’m moving to New York. Don’t worry about how I’ll do it or whether I’ll like it. You’re going to show me around, and I’ll love it because—here’s the other thing you have to trust—I love you. Nothing matters more to me now than being where you are. I realize I’ve fucked up huge. I know I made mistakes. If you can tell me you believe that I love you, and if you can understand that nothing will keep me from coming to New York or wherever you are, then I’ll work my ass off to earn your trust back. And to be worthy of you, support you, make you happy. I can’t expect any of that without working for it, I just need you to understand those two things.”

“That you love me, and that you’re moving here.”

“Yes.”

For what felt like the hundredth time in days, I wanted to cry, but I sucked in a breath and focused on his words. Manning loved me. It wasn’t a shock to hear it, because I’d known it for so long. Maybe over the years I had doubted it or tried to convince myself otherwise, but I had always known. Certainly he’d known it, too, that he’d loved me, and me him, for a while.

I ignored the feeling that this, being in his arms and hearing these things, was too good to be true. We’d weathered the worst of the storm—now we got to live in the sun. There were hard times ahead, but it wasn’t too good to be true because we’d worked for it. We’d suffered and struggled and tried to stay away from each other and if none of that could keep us apart, then nothing ahead of us could, either.

“I understand,” I said. “I can’t just forgive it all because you’re finally here, but . . .”

He slipped his hand under my hair, warming the top of my spine. “I would never ask you to. If the roles were reversed, I don’t think I’d ever get over it. Not ever.”

If I thought too hard about it, I wasn’t sure I’d ever get over it, either. Would that mean I could never forgive him? If the answer was no, would I get out of this bed right now? That was one answer I did know. Wild horses couldn’t tear me away from him tonight. These few days were about us and it was time we deserved. If I went too far down the path of our past, I’d risk ruining something I had begged, fought, and sweat for, so I pivoted in the opposite direction.

“What will you do when you get here?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. The good thing about construction is you can do it anywhere.”

“You won’t stay in sales?”

He blew out a sigh. “Depends. I will if it’s the first job I find. New York is expensive, and if I’m going to support us—”

“I’ve supported myself for this long,” I pointed out.

“There’s no scenario I can dream up in which I’m not working as hard as I can to keep you comfortable. It’s what I need as a man, no argument. I know you can support yourself. It makes me proud that you do. It’s important to me, though.”

“Is that why you do sales?” I asked. “Because of the money?”

He seemed to think. In the corner of my eye, the digital clock by the bed changed to eight on the dot. “In jail, and after I got out, I was helpless. I worried my future was nothing more than hard labor. I don’t ever want to feel that way again.”

“Will it be hard to find work as a felon?”

“Of course, but this job I have now, it’ll help. I can show them my salary, my capabilities, and hopefully that’ll be enough.”

“But in sales, you never create anything. You sell other people’s ideas and things.” My leg began to sweat between his, but I kept it there. “Don’t you still want to help people like you used to?”

“You know I can’t.”

“I don’t mean as a cop. You can help in other ways, like building homes. Homes are important. You spend most of your life in one. I’d trust you to build my home.”

He narrowed his eyes at me and pinched my bottom. “Well, that’s not all that flattering. After this apartment, a clown car would be a step up.”

I stuck my tongue out at him. “You’ll be surprised how quickly you get used to it.”

“Yeah? I thought maybe we’d get our own place when I come.”

I shook my head. “I like it here. You can do what you want with your money, but I’ll pay my share of the rent, and this is what I can afford.”

“Well, then . . . a few repairs are in order. You won’t begrudge me that, will you?” As if Manning had planned it himself, my faulty radiator groaned in the next room. “Tiffany and I are remodeling, and I’ve hardly touched a tool. I’m too busy sitting in an office earning the money to pay for all the nice things we can’t seem to live without.”

“Manning.” I couldn’t bear it. I tried to separate his old life from this one, but I couldn’t. I hated that it meant I didn’t get to know about who he’d become over the past few years, but it was too much. “I don’t want that office job for you. I don’t care about money. I’ve lived the past few years without it. Do something you love.”

“I love work that gives me the means to make you happy.”

“And what would make me happy is to see you building homes or making furniture or whatever it is that satisfies you.”

He lifted his head to see me better. “Furniture?”

“You made that coffee table with Gary. The one I saw in the back of your truck? Remember, it was my eighteenth birthday?”

“Your eighteenth birthday,” he repeated, laughter in his voice. “Did you throw that in for good measure or what?”

I also smiled. Since the moment I’d met Manning until June ninth 1995, turning eighteen had been front and center of my world. “It was a big day,” I said.

“Yeah it was. I’ll make something small now and then, but mostly I’m too busy for furniture. Gary, he’s doing the same old thing he always was. Except that he got married. Did you know?”

Aside from Henry, Manning’s father figure, I guessed Gary was probably Manning’s closest friend. As proud as I was that I’d introduced them at that first camp meeting, I couldn’t help the way my heart pinched remembering that other life. “I haven’t seen Gary since the last day I saw you. The wedding.”

Manning put his big, bear hand over my hair and his lips to the top of my head. I let him kiss away the memory because tonight, in his arms, was possibly the best moment of my life and I didn’t want to ruin it.

“I did get to make a couple pieces for the house,” Manning said, “and I try to refurbish things on weekends, but it can be tough.”

“Then you can do it all here. Make furniture or build homes or fix my apartment, whatever,” I said. “It’ll be a fresh start.”

He grunted, thumbing the corner of my lips. “That’s my girl. Keep living in the clouds, and I’ll take care of the rest. What’s cold?”

I was all warmed up, but I wasn’t about to pass up an invitation to be touched. “My butt.”

He grinned, then took a handful of my backside. “Do you miss the warmth? The beach?”

I tried not to show that I did. I didn’t want Manning to think I regretted my decision to leave. I didn’t—it was what I’d needed to do at the time. Watching him marry Tiffany, going through the motions of giving a maid of honor speech, receiving congratulations, watching them dance at the reception—it’d been clear there’d been no other choice.

But at times, I did miss Orange County, more than I wanted to admit. My family, my past, my youth, were all there. I couldn’t bring myself to admit it, though. “No. I’ve had an amazing time here, and now that I’ve graduated, I’ll get to devote all my free time to finding work.”

“Tell me about the acting. Is it everything you wanted it to be? Do you love it?”

“It’s . . .” I chose my words carefully. Again, I didn’t want him to think I’d made any mistakes, but if I expected him to be honest about his work, I had to be as well. “I want to be able to tell you, Manning, but you can’t get upset or overprotective about it like you did with my job.”

He took a deep enough breath that I felt it through my whole body. “That means it’s bad.”

“No, not bad. It’s just so different from what I was used to. From what I thought it would be. It’s competitive and you have to have thick skin. Sometimes I’m outside in the cold waiting in line for hours or I’m running on nothing but coffee all day or I’m up until four in the morning memorizing lines. That’s just the start since I haven’t even been auditioning long.” The sad thing was, I enjoyed it. I was living a fantasy I’d started to develop my first year in college, when actors would come to our classes and talk about the struggle of their early days. And since I’d suffered for my craft with others who were in the same boat, I’d become close to my classmates fast. It wasn’t like the high school friends I’d had in Orange County. I hadn’t spoken to Mona or Vickie in a couple years. These were real friendships, like what I had with Val and Corbin, only my classmates and I shared the same weird, deep desires I did. I wasn’t going to feel bad about my career choice just because it worried Manning. “If you come here,” I said to him, “you have to be able to let me do my thing without getting upset.”

I felt his silence more than anything. When I checked his expression, he was looking at the ceiling. “The graveyard shift really bothers me, Lake. I don’t like the idea of you walking home in this city at that time. The rest of it, I don’t know, we can work it out. I can bring you food and blankets while you’re waiting. I can run your lines with you.”

“You won’t always be able to, Manning. Sometimes you’ll have to work or sleep or I’ll need to run to an audition right when I hear about it, even if we’re in the middle of something.”

He nodded a little. “I hear you. I’ll work on it. If your skin is thicker, I guess mine will have to be as well.”

“The city will do it for you.”

“Yeah?” he asked. “Is that what it’s done to you?”

There were plenty of memories to choose from, but there was no failure like the first. I’d moved here heartbroken, penniless, and lost—I must’ve ridden the subway to every borough at least once by accident—but the icing on the cake came right before my first semester. “You already know I’d been accepted to NYU. I deferred a semester. But I also had to apply for the drama school and undergo an artistic review. I was denied.” In high school, I’d always been so focused on the core classes like science, math, and English. Dad had never allowed me to consider my drama elective as anything more than a hobby. “I took general education courses my first semester and at night, I attended these acting classes in some basement. It was enough to get me in the following semester, but not enough to turn me into an actress.”

He frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“We had to do these workshops where we’d learn and practice technique. Well, at the end of my second semester, one of my professors kept me after class to tell me I was getting a ‘D’.”

“Excuse me?” Manning teased. “Lake Kaplan got a ‘D’? Have you ever scored a grade lower than a ‘B’?”

“No.” I smiled. “I was devastated. I could handle the written work and book study, but when it came to theater, I wasn’t a natural.”

“She who excels at everything,” Manning said.

“Apparently not. I’d never had a teacher criticize me, and here the professor had ‘firmly suggested’ I change majors.” I crossed my arms over his chest, resting my chin on them. “Not only that, but nearly everyone around me had been acting since they were children. The closest lessons I’d had were piano. I was the slow one in the class, and that was true up until graduation a few days ago.”

“Did you switch classes?”

“I wanted to.” I remembered standing in the registrar’s office during winter break, ready to give up. Val and Corbin had gone home for the holidays and I was looking at a Christmas and New Year’s by myself. I’d been in New York a year, but I’d still acutely felt Manning’s absence in my life. I was used to spending Christmas morning opening gifts with my dad and Tiffany while my mom prepared a three-course dinner. I’d had a wonderful life. I’d failed at nothing until I’d failed to win Manning, and after that, things had just fallen apart. Maybe the real me was a failure, and I’d been coddled my whole life, but the alternative was eating crow and majoring in something my dad would’ve chosen for me, like business. At the last minute, I’d turned away from the office and gone back to my empty apartment. “In the end, I decided not to. All I’d had left at the time was school. So, I repeated the class the following semester.”

“And?”

“I earned a ‘B’. After taking the class twice I was hoping for an ‘A’, but at least it was enough to move on.”

He craned his neck to kiss my forehead, and I felt his smile against my skin. “I still love you if you’re a ‘B’ student.” He snickered before I could protest. One single “B” did not a “B” student make. “So what changed after that?” he asked. “Or did it?”

“The next teacher I had worked one-on-one with me. She said she could see my pain when I was off stage, but for some reason I was holding back. She coached me to tap into that.”

“Into the pain,” he murmured, passing his hand over the top of my head.

“It helped. Sometimes I think of you, and her, and all that I’ve missed out on, and I put it into the craft. I’m still not great, but at least I’m learning not to hold back.”

“Lake . . .”

“It’s okay,” I said to his chest. “I needed something, and I had that.”

“Now you have me, too.”

I nodded slowly, unsure of when it would start to feel like that was true. Like Manning was mine. With him by my side, I thought I could work in the city’s sanitation department with a smile on my face.

“I’d like to meet your friends when I get back from California,” he said.

“They’re my family.” I looked up at him again. Family. That was one thing I’d been without for years and wouldn’t get back. My dad and I were at the bottom of a mountain neither of us seemed willing to climb.

“Does he ever talk about me?” I asked.

Manning knew exactly who I meant. He moved his hand to cup my face. “He misses you.”

“He said that?”

“He doesn’t have to. We all know he does.”

I guess Manning’s hand on my cheek was meant to soften the blow. I’d gone from being constantly under my dad’s thumb to not speaking to him once in over four years. Whenever Mom and I were on the phone, Dad was either “swamped with work,” “not feeling well,” or “on his way out the door.” Mom must’ve told those lies for herself, because the truth was obvious.

“You were the apple of his eye, Lake—of course he misses you. Pride is a fucked-up thing and you hurt his.”

“I had to go. I couldn’t stay there after that night.”

His arm underneath me tensed. “I know it isn’t fair to say, but it was hard for me, too,” he said.

“It didn’t seem that way to me.” I fell quiet remembering those moments at the altar, the way Manning had shaken Gary’s hand and smiled. “You looked happy.”

“That was intentional.” He stroked my hair. “I was terrified if you thought I wasn’t, or that I had a single doubt, you’d stop the wedding. I felt so sick that I could barely focus on what was happening around me. Even when I wasn’t looking at you, all I saw was you . . . and then I did look. You were crying, and I worried I’d made a huge mistake.”

Warmth prickled my scalp and finally, I felt not a bit of cold anywhere on my body. I was even sweating a little. “I would’ve stopped it,” I said. “I wish I had. All this could’ve been avoided.”

He shook his head. “I had to go through with it, Lake. I wanted it back then. Wanted a family, and to be accepted, and to do good and be good. I didn’t believe there was another way for me. I knew for sure I couldn’t be the man for you.”

He paused, gauging my reaction. It hurt to hear him say he’d actually wanted those things, but there was something to the idea that we wouldn’t be here otherwise.

“I figured once I married Tiffany,” he continued, “you’d go off to USC, graduate with a great job, meet someone smarter than me, more deserving, someone with the means to give you a great life. Never in my wildest dreams did I think, even for a second, I could be that man for you.”

“You were,” I said. “You are.” I angled up toward his mouth for a kiss, but he didn’t give it to me.

“Am I?” he asked against my lips.

“Yes,” I whispered. “I have a good life here, one that finally feels like my own. I’m doing what I want and having fun. That’s how I know I still need you. Without you, I could have all this and way more, and it still wouldn’t be enough.”

Finally, he let our lips meet, kissing me softly at first, and then with a little more urgency. Again, the stiffness between us begged for my attention. I went to reach for him, but he caught my hand and kissed my palm. “That can wait. I’ve been dying to know everything about the last four and a half years. I want to hear all of it.”

I understood too well that craving to hear every last thought his mind had held since I’d met him, just as long as it was about me—no one else. I wanted more about him, but so much of his life in California was made up of things I couldn’t bear to hear about. I whispered my next question, not even realizing I wanted to know. “Why didn’t you come sooner?”

“I couldn’t. It took me a year to make this trip happen.”

“And before that?”

“Parole. I couldn’t leave the state.” He looked out the window. “Your dad wasn’t able to expunge my record like I’d hoped. I think maybe he thought he could, but in the end, it was all talk.”

“And by then it was too late,” I said. “He’s such an asshole.”

He turned back to me. “He has a shitty way of going about things,” he agreed, “but he’s not a bad guy. Not really. His intentions are usually in line with mine.”

My head shot up. “You’re defending what he did? He pushed you and Tiffany together because he knew it would keep me away from you. Don’t you see that?”

“I saw it right away,” he said. “That first time he took me in his study and got me to agree to a summer wedding. I’ve spent a lot of time with him the past few years, though, Lake. You’ll be surprised to hear he and I are pretty close.”

I laid my head back down, concealing a scoff. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say any of that.”

“It bothers you?” he asked.

“Obviously. I would really rather you cut off all ties with him. Leave that dumb job and all of it behind.”

“It’s not going to be that easy,” he said. “I’ve gotta sell my half-finished house and hire a lawyer and God knows what else. Fuck.” He pulled the sheet off of us, disentangling from me.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I need a cigarette.” Seated on the edge of the bed, he snatched his suit pants off the ground and dug through the pocket. “This is the longest I’ve gone without one since I went to jail.”

I curled up on my side, watching his back as he hit the top of a pack of cigarettes on the heel of his palm. He peeled off the plastic. “Don’t,” I said. I had no handmade bracelet to offer him anymore, just a plea. “Don’t smoke.”

He glanced back at me, eyebrows drawn, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth like the day we’d met. “I won’t be long.”

“You’re leaving?” As soon as I said it, I realized why. “You still won’t smoke in front of me. I’m old enough to fuck, but not for secondhand smoke?”

He reached back and slid his hand over the curve of my hip. “Fuck, Lake? You think it’s safe to say that around me?”

From the heated look that one word got me, I figured there was a way I could get him to stay. “Every time you crave nicotine, we can fuck instead,” I said.

“You wouldn’t survive it,” he said. “I’m afraid you won’t as it is.” He pulled the sheet up over me just under my neck. “Stay warm. I’ll be ten minutes, max.” He stood to get on his pants without even bothering with underwear.

As he started for the door, I stopped him. “Smoke here. You’ll freeze downstairs.”

“Look, Lake,” he said, turning back. “It’s not about your age or being too innocent. I don’t want to ruin your crystal-clean lungs.”

“You did it in front of Tiffany, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, so what’s that tell you about how I feel? Smoking is a part of me, and so are you. It’s not easy keeping the two separate.”

I sighed. I could see him getting frustrated, so I dropped it. “Anyway, that wasn’t what I meant. I was going to say, use the fire escape.”

He looked past the bed, out my window. The metal landing was situated halfway between my room the living room and was big enough for just a couple folding chairs and a stool. “Is Val home?” he asked.

“I doubt it. She sleeps at her boyfriend’s place almost every night.”

Manning rounded the bed, and I turned on my other side to watch him. It could take me up to a minute to work the window open, and I usually had to get Val to help, but Manning pulled it up with ease and climbed outside. He closed it almost all the way, then tilted the chair to dump snow over the edge before he sat. He took up as much space as Val and me put together, his bare feet nudging the metal edge, his head bowed to avoid hitting the frame.

I could hardly believe Manning was sitting half naked on my fire escape. He looked out over the side, frowning down to the street. He smoked faster than I remembered, taking a drag every few seconds. He had a lot on his mind. So did I. And our conversation had barely even scratched the surface. It was as if we were making up for lost time while gliding past the very real, very scary details of our situation. But this apartment felt like a safe haven from all that. I didn’t want to think about what was to come. I just wanted to live in here with Manning for as long as possible.

“Lake,” he called, ducking his head to see me through the window. He’d lit a second cigarette. “It’s fucking freezing. Come warm me up.”

I couldn’t help the smile that broke over my face. My first ever invitation to be around him while he smoked. I sprung up from the bed, tugged on panties and a t-shirt, and went straight for the window.

“Uh-uh,” he said, stopping me. “Put some clothes on.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m more used to this weather than you are.”

“It’s not that.” Switching his cigarette between hands, he lifted the window with just one. “You look good enough to eat, and I don’t want anyone’s mouth watering for you but mine. Understand?”

The hair on my legs prickled as my face warmed. I understood. I didn’t want anyone else looking at him, either, but after all this time apart, I just wanted to hear him say it. “Explain it to me.”

Licking his lips, he looked me up and down. “I’ve spent years keeping my hands and thoughts to myself. I know what runs through a man’s mind when he sees someone like you. I’m going to spend my lifetime making sure anyone who crosses your path knows you’re mine. So hurry up, Birdy, I’m fucking shivering out here.”