Something in the Way: A Forbidden Love Saga: The Complete Collection

by Hawkins, Jessica

  I pulled one pillow from under Manning and then another, tossing them on the couch as I kept my chin high. “So why do I have to be the one to bridge the gap?”

  “Because pride isn’t a good enough reason to ruin a relationship with the man who raised you—a man who only ever wanted what was best for you.”

  “I think you’re forgetting one thing,” I said, holding the throw closed with one hand as I deconstructed Manning’s bed of pillows—and our romantic night. “He doesn’t want anything to do with me, either. It’s not all my stubbornness.”

  “Your dad misses you.” He got up and pulled on his underwear. “I’ve been saying it for years. I’d never encourage you to reconcile with him if I didn’t believe that.”

  I turned to put out the fire, which I’d only done a couple times. I picked up the poker I’d seen Manning use and hesitated. He watched silently, which was almost worse than arguing with me. It was hard to ignore him when he wasn’t speaking.

  Finally, he came and took the poker from me. “I know how much his rejection hurts you, but I believe he wants to be back in your life as much as you believe he doesn’t.”

  “Then explain to me why he still hasn’t been able to pick up the phone. I’m finally on a ‘respectable’ career path by his standards. Why hasn’t that been enough of a reason to reach out?”

  “Let me ask you this,” Manning said, crossing his arms, “what could Charles possibly say to excuse his behavior the past decade and a half?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m sure that’s what he thinks as well. Like you, he’s convinced there’s too big a gulf between you.”

  “There is.” I picked up the dregs of our whisky. “I can’t even believe you’re bringing this up now. I was so excited to talk about us—our future—and now all I can think about is them. I thought you understood. I thought you were on my side.”

  “I’m always on your side, Lake, and that’s why I’m pushing this. Not because it’d make me happy, even though it would. It’s because I want you to be happy. You can’t hide the fact that you miss your family forever.”

  “I’m not hiding anything,” I said, turning to leave the room. On my way out, I added, “You don’t see me asking you to reconcile with your father so I can have a perfect wedding full of family fun.”

  As I said it, my throat thickened with the threat of tears. This was not how I’d anticipated the night would go. Now, not only was I embarrassed that I’d asked for a proposal I hadn’t received, but I’d also made a huge mistake by mentioning his father. I knew our situations were night and day, but I couldn’t help feeling as if Manning was siding with a man who would’ve preferred Manning and I never met at all.

  I was angry, but not with Manning. He and I were solid—we’d moved the stars on our own. Despite my dad. For more than a decade, I’d been without the man who’d raised me—he’d gone that long not caring to close the gap between us. He hadn’t congratulated me on my graduation from NYU. Hadn’t checked in on my life beyond whatever he got from my phone calls with Mom. He’d let pride get in the way of all of that and he’d missed too much of my life. He didn’t deserve to come in at the best part.

  “Lake,” Manning said from behind me as I set our glasses in the sink.

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose as I glanced out into the backyard. It was a command to turn around, but I didn’t want to face him after what I’d said. I should never have brought his father into this. He was a monster from his core. That wasn’t my dad, no matter how he’d hurt me.

  I turned to find Manning leaning in the doorway in his underwear, arms crossed over his oiled chest, hair sticking up in all directions. The man was equal parts sexy and cute and wholly impossible to stay angry with.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, deflating. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I know you didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I just don’t understand why this matters so much to you.”

  “One of the reasons I never touched you was because I knew it would ruin your relationship with your family.” His torso expanded with a breath, a frown on his face. “You know if you and I had gotten together, even if Tiffany hadn’t been in the picture, it would’ve created a rift between you and your dad. I can’t help feeling this is my fault.”

  “It isn’t, though,” I said.

  “Regardless if it is or isn’t, you and I are older now. We’re as much adults as they are. If your dad and I have been able to keep in touch, you and he should be able to at least try.”

  “But I’m happy, Manning. Truly happy—as happy as I could ever get. What gives my dad the right to skip all the hard and scary parts of my life and come in when everything is great?”

  “I already told you.” Manning crossed the kitchen and slid a hand under my hair, caressing my cheek with his thumb. “This isn’t about him. It’s about you. And us.”

  “Are we not okay?” I asked quietly. “Was I wrong to think everything was as close to perfect as it could get?”

  “Oh, Birdy,” he whispered. “You weren’t wrong. I wouldn’t change a thing about our life together.” He put both palms to my cheeks. “I guess part of me just wanted to give you what I don’t have and never will. Maybe, selfishly, I want those things back . . . a father, a sibling, even a mother. I don’t have them anymore, and it kills me that you don’t, either—because of me.”

  My heart dropped. I had been the selfish one, thinking this was only about me. Manning had needs that’d been easy for me to ignore. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I forget that you’ve lost not only your mom and dad, but mine as well. I know you had good times with your family until Maddy’s death.”

  “That was a different life. Maybe I need to let go rather than trying to get you to forgive them. It’s my own insecurities bringing all this up.”

  Having lost any sense of family as a teen, he reminded me all the time that I came first. Him and me, us—we were his priority. I leaned into his touch, sinking into the familiar roughness of his palm. “I’m your family.”

  “And I don’t want to wait any longer to make that official. I want you as my wife—now. I want you pregnant with my child—now.”

  The abruptness of his words caused heat to bloom from my chest to my face. A minute ago, I’d been concerned he was having second thoughts. Suddenly, we were talking babies? It wasn’t as if the idea of children never came up—it did frequently—but there was something extra arousing about his impatience. “You’ve said that before. Careful, or one of these days, you might wear me down.”

  He narrowed his eyes on my mouth. “You say that like it’s a threat.”

  “It is. There’s no reason we can’t start planning a wedding, but we’re definitely not ready for a baby.”

  “Remind me again why not? You graduate in less than six months. If I knock you up now—”

  I widened my eyes. “We won’t even be married by then.”

  He shrugged, slipping a firm hand inside the blanket and down my ribs. “So maybe your wedding dress is a little snug around the middle.”

  “Manning—”

  He groaned, walking me back until my ass hit the counter. “You have any idea what that image does to me, you as a pregnant bride?”

  Truthfully, it did things to me, too. For years, it’d been our plan to wait until I’d been working a year or two, but that didn’t mean I didn’t think about it all the time. “I’m supposed to start looking for a job soon.”

  “There’s always a reason for us not to be together, not to get married, not to have a baby,” he said, gathering up the throw to expose my thigh. “If we’ve done nothing else right in our lives, we have bad timing down to an art, so why fight it?”

  Manning’s fiendish need for a baby excited me, and not just because he was growing hard against my stomach. That happened whenever he went into protect, provide, mate mode. But tonight, his impatience made me pause. I needed to know there was no chance Manning needed a
baby to fill a hole left by both his family and mine. Manning would never accept an unfilled hole in my soul. I owed him the same. I could give him back a family he’d once had. If I was the only thing keeping him from them, I couldn’t be selfish any longer.

  Maybe Manning was right about this. He knew the true meaning of a bad father. I’d kept my dad at arm’s length for so long and for reasons I wasn’t even sure were still important to me. It was hard to hold a grudge when I had the life I’d always wanted. I could’ve grown up in a household like Manning’s. Instead, my parents had done nothing but try to give me every opportunity. As Manning held onto me, his trust in me as solid as ever, I had to admit I’d done wrong by him. I hadn’t thought of how deeply all of this impacted him. Not only did I want Manning to be a father, but I wanted him to have one, too. I hadn’t acted that way, though. I’d given Manning shit on more than one occasion for keeping in touch with my dad. For too long, I’d pretended as if their relationship was a problem, when the reality was, in Manning’s eyes, it was probably a gift.

  I sighed heavily, defeat working its way through me. Manning held me close as my body went slack. “What is it?” he asked.

  “My mom invited me for Sunday dinner recently.”

  “Me too,” he said. “She does every few months. You tell her no. I tell her no.”

  What was I thinking? I wasn’t sure. I only knew if I didn’t make a move now, it might be another decade before I worked up the nerve to see them again. And I wasn’t waiting that long to marry the man in front of me. “What if he doesn’t want to make things right?” I muttered. “What if I go there and my own dad can’t even look at me?”

  “Then I’ll make him look at you. Show him this has gone on too long. I will do everything in my power to mend what’s missing in your life, and if I can’t, you’ll have to be satisfied knowing it’ll only be you and me—but it’ll always be you and me.”

  I smiled a little. “I suppose I can live with that.”

  I’d thought many times about contacting my dad; I’d just never considered actually doing it. The thought terrified me, but Manning had given me so much over the years, I wanted to do this for him, and for our relationship. And, if I was honest, for myself. I missed my father, regardless of how he’d treated us, and I’d gone long enough on my own. Maybe that should have strengthened my resolve, knowing I could live without him, but I wanted my family back in my life. Not only my dad, but my sister, too, if she and I could ever move past the man between us.

  It was time to go home.

  4

  Standing before my parents’ front door, Manning and I were faced with a version of the same welcoming holiday wreath my mother had hung every year of my childhood—crisp greenery offset by a red, poufy felt bow. Like always, the cul-de-sac curved with neat lawns, and LED lights trimmed every roof, even weeks after Christmas. An ocean breeze cooled the back of my neck. Not much had changed in the years since I’d moved away, and yet, everything was different.

  Despite the temperate day, my hands reddened from a January chill—and from gripping the two containers of food I’d brought so I wouldn’t show up empty-handed.

  I didn’t even realize I was looking at the neighbor’s house Manning had helped build until he turned, too. “What’d we even talk about that day?” he asked, his eyes on the wall where we’d sat.

  “I don’t know. Little nothings.” I glanced up at him. “But at the time it’d felt like the world.”

  He rubbed the back of my neck, moving my hair aside. I’d cut it to my shoulders the week before. Being thirty-one and on my own for over a decade should’ve been enough to face my dad feeling like an adult, but I wasn’t sure it would be. I hoped looking the part would help him see I wasn’t the same girl who’d bowed to her father’s every demand.

  “I’ll go in first,” Manning said. “They’re expecting me.”

  “You and a date,” I reminded him.

  “I only said I was bringing someone to give your mom a heads up for the meal.”

  I’d been mentally preparing for this for weeks. As it had many times over the drive from Big Bear, my stomach flipped at the thought of walking in uninvited. “Okay,” I agreed.

  Manning raised his fist to knock, but I pulled his elbow back down. I glanced up at the second-floor landing where I’d sat through many sunsets, watching our neighborhood from the upstairs of the only home I’d known until eighteen. “What if they’re disgusted with us?” I asked. “Embarrassed? Maybe we should’ve called first.”

  “It’s not the kind of thing you say over the phone,” he reminded me. “And if that happens, what changes, except that we’re finally freed by the truth?”

  “My dad’s contempt is loud in his silence. It’ll be deafening in person.”

  “Give him a chance.” Manning kissed the top of my head. “If he can’t accept it, you don’t lose anything.”

  “You do,” I said.

  “You’re more important. If he can’t accept that you and I are sincerely happy, then I gave him too much credit.”

  I turned my entire body to him, hugging the Tupperware so tightly to my stomach, the plastic edges pressed through my sweater. “And what about Tiffany?”

  “At least we know what to expect from her.” Manning and I had been over this several times, but he patiently walked me through it again. “She’ll make it about her, and there’ll be a scene. But when she finds something else to be annoyed over, she’ll move on.”

  I shifted between feet. If I was an expert in anything, it was the drama that turned Tiffany’s world. The difference now, though? I wasn’t an innocent kid enduring her sister’s overdeveloped sense of teen angst. I’d crossed lines and made decisions knowing they’d hurt her.

  But I was also older and more adept at taking shit. I was steeled by the knowledge that nothing Tiffany said or did could deny or undermine the love between Manning and me. Compared to my dad, the approach of Tornado Tiffany actually felt manageable.

  Manning knocked firmly, then let himself in. “Hello?”

  Once he’d disappeared into the house, I stepped through the open door. Even the warm embrace of home and the festive pine-needle air couldn’t strip the tension from my body.

  It didn’t help that the first door off the entryway shut off my father’s study. I could picture him at his desk, doing whatever it was he did in there. Where the study had once held an air of mystery and the forbidden, I no longer cared about it. He’d probably made calls to his mistress in there, corresponded with his friends at the Ritz as he’d arranged the wedding for one daughter and the downfall of his other. Maybe he’d even used his power and influence to get me into USC instead of letting me do it myself—I wouldn’t put much past him.

  I tiptoed past, trying to quiet my boot heels on the tile. Mom had ripped up the carpet on the stairs to the second floor. More wreaths and poinsettias decorated the house. In the TV room, a real tree stopped a foot beneath the ceiling—it was still full and deeply green, not to mention weighed down with a mixture of expensive glass ornaments and colorful sentimental ones.

  The turkey-in-the-oven aroma and deep register of Manning’s voice called me to the kitchen like a siren song, but I stayed quiet and out of sight.

  “It’s been so long since you came by,” my mom said. I had to lean forward to listen, her voice soft enough that I assumed she and Manning were hugging. “I left all the decorations up for you. I wasn’t sure if you’d spent the holidays with anyone.”

  “Thank you, Cathy.”

  “Although . . . well, I haven’t mentioned anything to Charles or Tiffany because they’ll call me silly. When you said you were bringing a date, I just couldn’t imagine you’d introduce us to anyone. It’s not the kind of man you are, mixing your two lives. Unless those lives are already . . . mixed.”

  “Cathy,” he said.

  “Am I right?” she asked. “If not, it’s okay. I want you to be happy, Manning. But I miss my baby and sometimes I lie awake at nigh
t wondering if you’re the only person who could bring her home.”

  Chills rose over my skin despite the weight of my sweater. Although this hadn’t been my home in a while, it felt nice to hear her say that. No matter what had passed between all of us, I could never erase the happy memories I’d made in this house.

  “I know you and Tiffany divorced,” Mom continued, “but you’re family. We’re your family. So tell me we haven’t seen you in years because you’ve had a very good reason to stay away.”

  “It’s a good reason, ma’am,” Manning said, and I heard both the pride and emotion in his voice. “The best. Almost as good as why I came back.”

  That was my cue to enter a kitchen I hadn’t stepped foot in for years, but where I’d eaten more meals than anywhere, had learned to cook, and had spent countless hours on homework. Some days, between school, Dad’s work, Mom’s real estate appointments, and Tiffany’s social life, the kitchen table was the only time all day I’d see my family in one place.

  Still, my feet were leaden in my boots—and my mom was supposed to be the easiest part of the day. I peeked into the kitchen and caught sight of Manning’s back. Knowing he’d be by my side gave me the courage to do it. I walked in food first, holding out the containers of pie and tamales I’d brought like a shield.

  Manning turned at my footsteps, revealing Mom behind him. I realized in that moment that I’d expected to see the same woman who’d raised me—after all, she sounded the same and treated me the same over the phone. In a cardigan and cigarette pants, hair done in a long bob, her style hadn’t changed, but it took my brain a moment to close the fourteen-year gap between us. She was thinner, the angles of her jaw and curve of her cheekbones more pronounced.

  Her eyes, the same family of blue she’d passed on to Tiffany and me, filled with tears in an instant. “Lake?” she nearly whispered.

  My voice broke. “Mom.”

  She came and hugged me around the food clutched in my hands, not even seeming to notice it between us. It was hard not to fall headlong into her familiar scent, a mixture of lemon dish soap and Chanel No. 5.