Manning hardly moved an inch, arms at his sides. His gray hoodie hugged his biceps but opened as a breeze came off the water. My confession hung in the air between us, and then slowly, pieces of it caught on the wind, scattering away from us.

I’m all . . . wrong . . . without you.

Meeting Manning had taken me apart, and he hadn’t been around to put me back together properly. My limbs had been stitched on, my heart cut out of red construction paper, my cloth outside wearing thin. I wanted to be a real girl, but without him, I was just a bundle of body parts.

I’m in love with you.

I needed to hear it back.

Instead, Manning closed his eyes and asked, “Why are you telling me this?”

My paper heart tore a little. “Because I’ve never said it, and you need to know before you—”

“I do know, Lake,” he said loudly enough to make me jump. “You’ve told me. Maybe not outright, but some way or another, you’ve told me, and it hasn’t always been subtle. You told me that night in the truck. In the lake. On the horse.” The waves had nothing on him, the way he grew bigger, his voice booming. “You told me in the car when I picked you up from the prom. You told me on your eighteenth birthday. You seriously think I don’t fucking know?”

His anger vibrated between us, as loud as the ocean, as acute as the sharp pains in my heart. “You don’t know,” I argued. “You can’t know, or you wouldn’t go through with this.”

“I do know and I am going through with it.” His words, cold and hard, came down as if the sky stormed bricks. “You think I don’t know how you feel? You think I don’t carry the burden of our love on my shoulders just to keep it from crashing down onto you?”

What I wouldn’t give to bear that crash. Couldn’t he understand how badly I wanted that? That I could take on anything with him by my side? “I can handle it,” I said.

“I can’t, and I’ve told you that, but you don’t care how hard it’s been for me.”

“I don’t care?” I whispered. I hiccupped, my nose tingling. The threat of my tears only seemed to make him angrier as he thrust a hand in his hair. “How can you say that?” I asked. “You’re all I care about.”

“No, I’m not. You don’t care about all the ways I’m dying inside. It kills me to know I’ve made you sad and that this strains your relationship with your family.” He flexed his hands, his fingers curling, then reaching for the ground. “It kills me to know there are a million better men out there for you than me, including Corbin. If you cared, you wouldn’t be standing here right now, asking me to pick you when you know, you know I can’t.”

My mouth hung open. He was acting as if I was the selfish one, when all I’d done was love him and do everything in my power to keep it to myself. Or so I’d thought. “Why can’t you? Is it because of her? Do you love her?” One rogue tear escaped, sliding over my cheek. “Do you love her . . . more than me?”

He smacked his fist against his chest. “I am not the man for you,” he said. “I can’t give you the life you deserve.”

“You can.” I called on all my strength to inhale back my tears and show him he was wrong. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

“All right, Lake,” he said. “If you’re so sure, then tell me how it works.”

“What do you mean?”

“You want me to pick you? Fine.” He threw up his arms. “To hell with it. I pick you. What happens next?”

I shook my head slowly, my stomach fluttering. “I . . . what?”

He opened his arms, showing me his impressive wingspan. “Tell me what the fuck we’re going to do. We go back to the bonfire and what? You going to tell Tiffany the wedding’s off and I’m leaving her for you, or should I? Then what?”

I swallowed, my heart pounding at just the thought of telling Tiffany, at the pain I’d cause. Was I ready to do it right this instant? No, but I would find the strength—for him. “Then we be together.”

“So how exactly does it work? Do we go to your parents’ tonight and tell them the good news? Because if we don’t, Tiffany will. So we pack up your things and go . . . where?”

“I—I don’t know.” I could hardly wrap my head around what he was saying, because the details didn’t matter. We mattered. This love mattered. I burrowed into my sweater, suddenly freezing cold. “I’ll stay home, and you can go to . . .” He couldn’t return to Tiffany’s. As it was, she’d probably burn his things. “A hotel. Go to Gary’s.”

“What makes you think your dad won’t wring my neck before I walk out the front door? Why the hell do you think he’s so happy about this wedding?”

A wave crashed hard, and water slithered up around my ankles. Manning walked backward, up to dry land.

“It’s only a few months,” I said, pushing my feet through the sand, following him. “Then I’ll be in the dorms.”

“And me?” He fisted his shirt, right over his heart. “What will I do? I can’t live in a dorm.”

“We’ll find you an apartment in Los Angeles—”

“My parole mandates that I live within county lines.”

“Then I’ll drive back and forth.” I grasped at straws, feeling like I was losing a battle I’d always been so confident I’d win. “I’ll come nights, weekends—”

“Between classes, homework, exams—not to mention all the fun shit you’re supposed to do in college—you really want to be driving two hours each weekend to stay with your ex-con boyfriend?”

“Yes,” I said quietly. My hands began to shake as my dreams sifted through my fingers. I’d been holding on at any cost, but Manning insisted on smashing everything into smaller and smaller pieces until our future was nothing but grains of sand under my feet.

“Even if I could move to L.A.,” he said, “I’d have to find a landlord willing to rent to a felon, and then I’d have to come up with first-and-last month, security deposit, and rent each month.”

I shook my head hard. “We’ll find a way.”

“My savings went to the court, to some woman I supposedly traumatized when I was with you,” he said. “And your dad has a job for me. A good one, in construction.”

“My dad?” I asked. “Why are you bringing him into this? Who cares about him?”

“I do. I care, Lake.” Up until now, he’d been heated, but suddenly, his voice became grave. “I want the same things for you and Tiffany that he does. He’s not my enemy. In fact, he’s going to look into wiping my record clean. I want that so much, Lake, you can’t understand.”

“I can, because I want that, maybe even more than you.” I touched the base of my neck, my pulse thumping under my fingertips. “You aren’t the one who has to live with the guilt of knowing your hands are constantly tied because of decisions I made.”

“Exactly. I’m the one with the tied hands. You think he’ll do anything for me after this? You think he won’t spend every free minute he has scheming to get me out of your life?”

“We don’t need him.” Even as I said it, guilt panged in my heart. He was my dad. As much as he frustrated me, I loved him, and I cared what he thought. Manning was right—Dad’d never be okay with this. I hadn’t really considered that having Manning in my life might mean losing not just Tiffany, but my dad, too. “You’ll find another job.” My voice weakened. “Another apartment.”

“It’s not that simple, Lake. I have nowhere to live, no car, no money, my credit is shot and I’m on parole. I’m a criminal. These things matter.”

“No, they don’t. They’re just dumb details—”

“They’re life, Lake. Relationships, marriage, they don’t run on love alone. I tried to tell you that, I . . .” His throat rippled as he clenched his teeth. “My parents were as different as you and me, and they thought love was enough. My dad loved my mom so intensely, he sometimes hurt her. And us,” he added quietly.

My chin shook. He had to know we weren’t his parents. I did. He was my soul mate. Didn’t that mean we’d be together one day, no matter what? Wasn’t that the definition of a soul mate? Tiffany would always be able to find someone else. Her soul mate was still out there. But me? Manning? This was it for us. We could fake it all we wanted, but the truth was, there was nobody else out there for me, or for Manning. We needed each other. “You’d never hurt me,” I said. “And even if I thought there was a chance you might, I’m still willing to take that risk.”

“I’m not.” The way his voice broke squeezed my heart, sending more tears down my cheeks. “What can I offer you? How will I take care of us?”

“I’ll ask my dad for money,” I said. I never had, not in the way Tiffany did, but I could do it for a while.

“No.”

“But he gives it to you and Tiffany.”

He took a step toward me, seeming to double in size, and to my surprise, I moved back. “That’s different, and you fucking know it.”

“That isn’t fair.” I dug my toes into the ground, seeking comfort in the soft sand. “Why would it be any different than him giving you money to take care of Tiffany?”

“Because that’s Tiffany and this is you.” He gritted his teeth, looking up at the sky. “I can’t do that with you. I can’t expect you to understand, but I need to you to. I need you to understand this is best.”

“It’s not best, and I don’t understand how you can say it is.” I laced my hands over my heart. “You asked if I could go up there and tell Tiffany? I could. I would say goodbye to her, to my dad, for you. Don’t marry her, Manning. Be a man, and tell her you don’t love her.”

His neck thickened, veins rising from under his sleeves, cording his forearms. “Don’t tell me to be a man,” he said, his fists curling. “What do you think I’ve been doing? Why do you think I’ve been doing it? For you, Lake.” His body vibrated as he ran both hands through his hair, pulling. “You don’t know what you’re asking of me.”

“I’m asking you to walk away from all of this.” I’d never seen Manning so angry, but I needed him to see I wouldn’t break. I wouldn’t be pushed away. Instead, I stood taller. “I can be enough for you.”

“They’ll never forgive you.”

I stepped up to him, into the force field of anger pulsating around him. “I don’t care.”

He looked down his nose at me. “I’m not going to take your family away from you, Lake.”

“You’ll be my family.”

“You should have the world. Fuck the world—you should have the universe, the sky, and every star in it.” As close as I was, I could see every fleck of pain in his eyes, the frown lines etched in his skin, the anguish in his tensed muscles and jaw. “I can’t give that to you. I’ll never be able to. I’ve seen too much. Had too much taken away. I can’t be happy enough to make you happy, and I can’t provide for you the way you deserve. You’re at the start of your life, on your way up, and I . . .” He inhaled a breath through his nose, wincing like it pained him. “I can only bring you down.”

My tears fell faster now, but I wouldn’t lose hope. I couldn’t. Because there was something he couldn’t deny, and if he did, he’d be a liar. “Even if all that’s true, you’re forgetting one thing. You can love me more than anyone else could. How can you ignore that?”

He hesitated. “It’s not enough.”

It’s not enough. You’re not enough. I shook the crushing thoughts out of my head. “It is enough.”

“It’s not. I’ve seen it firsthand with my mom and dad—”

I got in his face. “I don’t care what you’ve seen. You’re making excuses.”

“Why would I?” he asked. “What makes you think I want it this way?”

“So you can be miserable! Because you think that’s what you deserve.” I wasn’t sure where it came from. Maybe I stunned us both because for a second, we each went silent. It all boiled down to the simplest equation—Manning thought I was too good for him, and that he was bad, and those two things were enough to keep him away. “You’re not bad,” I told him. “You are not your father.”

He stepped back as if I’d struck him. I hoped I had if it meant pulling him out of this nightmare. “You can’t say that,” he said. “You don’t even know him. You don’t know what he did.”

“He hurt your sister, your mother, and you. You have never hurt anyone, Manning.”

“No? I put my hands on you when you were sixteen. I fantasized about stripping you of your innocence when you were seventeen.” His already-dark eyes blackened like the sky. “I’m not sure I would’ve stopped that night in the truck if it weren’t for the cop.”

“But you did, even though I begged you not to.”

“Maybe next time, I won’t be able to. Do you see how worked up I get around you?” He pulled on the front of his t-shirt with a fist. “Do you see my anger, Lake? You’re going to tell me I’m not dangerous?”

“You aren’t dangerous,” I said, trying to keep any trembling from my voice. Like that night in his kitchen, his admissions kicked up my heart rate, but any fear I felt just made my toes curl. If this was a dangerous man, I more than accepted that about him. I wanted it.

“I would’ve killed that guard if I hadn’t been pulled off,” he continued. “I went to that same place my dad did. I snapped—and I could snap again.”

Something pulled deep in my belly. Manning didn’t just believe he was bad. He lived it. I could see it right there in his face, hear it in his words. He and I together would be explosive, and that was why he put distance between us. “Not with me, Manning. You don’t scare me, no matter how hard you try to.”

“I’m not trying to scare you—I’m trying to show you.” He began to pace. “I want to be a good man, Lake. I want to help people, not hurt them. I can’t do that for you, but I can for Tiffany. Getting lost in you could mean losing my control, too. I could do to you what my dad did to my mom and to—” He stopped and sucked in a breath, unable to say Maddy’s name. He didn’t need to. She was here between us, her presence strong like it’d been in the truck. “Always, in the back of mind, are all the ways I could hurt you just by loving you,” he said to me. “Not only because I come from a violent background, but because I’d be holding you back.”

In the distance, my friends hollered and laughed, probably taking beer bongs or fighting over the stereo. “That’s not true.”

“What can I offer you right now?” he asked.

“Love,” I said weakly, but I knew what he’d say.

It wasn’t enough.

His eyes darted over my face. “Do you want to keep up the same euphoric highs and crash-and-burn lows we’ve already put ourselves through the past two years? Because they’d only get more extreme, and that scares me. My greatest fear is becoming my dad. I can’t be the one who steals your future . . . or your innocence.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Okay. Maybe I can.” He squinted out toward the black horizon. “But would you let me?”

I opened my mouth to say, not only would I let him, but I’d beg if he wanted. Take me as I am, and we’ll figure out the rest. But the truth was, I didn’t know the rest. I couldn’t say with absolute certainty that we’d be okay. In my mind, the two of us were tangled sheets and big love and hours of tracing every part of the bodies we’d fantasized about. Where did school and money and work factor into all that? I realized that whatever guilt I felt when my family turned me out, Manning would blame himself. Whatever problems arose in our relationship, Manning would shoulder them, even though he’d warned me against them. And if we had those blow-out fights, and Manning did anything to say or hurt me, even by accident, he’d convince himself he’d become his dad. Ironically, in the end, it was me who could turn Manning into his father, and Tiffany who’d helped Manning believe he was a good man.

I didn’t know what to say but the only thing that made any sense to me. “You’re what I want.”

“But I can’t be what you need. Still, after everything I just said, knowing all the ways it could go wrong, knowing the man it would turn me into to love you and to ruin you . . .” He ran his hand over his face, as if forcing the words out. “If you ask me to choose you, I will—even if it could ultimately destroy me.”

I remembered the night we’d almost gotten caught in the truck, how childish I’d felt for how I’d acted. He’d asked me not to do it, but I had. He’d been led away in handcuffs, he’d stunted his future, because I’d wanted something and hadn’t considered the consequences.

“You don’t care how hard it’s been for me.”

Of course I cared. The only thing I wanted more than my happiness was his. A lump formed in my throat as everything I’d known to be true shifted. These past two years, I thought I’d been brave. Strong. Loved. I’d only been selfish to think Manning wanted me to fight for him, when instead, pushing him only hurt him.

I turned my head and tried in vain to hide the endless stream of tears streaking down my cheeks. My sister stood by the fire, arms curled around her waist, watching us. Tonight, he’d be walking back to her. I covered my face, my world crumbling.

Manning let me stand there and cry into my palms. He didn’t comfort me, and I finally understood how it would be unfair of me to ask him to. Through my fingers and the blur of my tears, I noticed my missing anklet. The bracelet I’d made for Manning had fallen off, probably with the licks of the ocean. It was done. We were done. Only my pain persisted.

Manning had once told me you couldn’t move the stars. I’d thought that meant our love was predestined, written in the night sky, sure as death. Behind my lids, I pictured the two stars and realized for the first time the permanent distance between them. And I accepted that there was, and always had been, a third star.

You can’t move the stars.

I had tried, and I had failed.