"I . . . it . . ."
I leaned in a little. "What?"
"Never mind. Just don't dress like that."
"How am I supposed to know what you mean if you won't tell me what you didn't like?"
His demeanor shifted. With the set of his jaw came the same white-hot glare from earlier. It could've been passion as easily as it could've been hate. I was upsetting him, but I wasn't sure if that was good or bad. "I didn't say I didn't like it." He spoke slowly. "I said I didn't want it."
"Doesn't it matter what I want?"
"No."
And wasn't that the truth? It was a good thing I wanted to go to USC, because it wasn't like I had a choice. Dad would've made sure of it, just like Manning made sure I kept my mouth shut about his case, dressed like a pre-teen, and stayed away from him. I had no input about anything, and I was beginning to wonder if eighteen was just another number or if it'd actually mean a shift into adulthood. "I'm not sixteen anymore, Manning. I don't even feel sixteen. You got older in there, and so did I."
"Yeah? Did you?" he asked. I couldn't tell if he was joking, and for a blissful moment, we'd turned back time. The weeks before his arrest, I'd lived for those moments when he'd teased me in his own subtle way. "Tell me, what'd you do while I was away? How'd you spend your days?"
"I told you everything in my letters."
He frowned a little. "I want to hear it from you."
"I ran a lot," I said.
"Why?" he asked.
There came a certain kind of peace once I pushed past the pain, the wheezing, the sweating. I had yet to find anything else that had gotten me there-except maybe the beer and joint I'd had with Corbin. "It helped."
Closing his eyes, he said, "Me too."
"You run?" I asked, straightening my back. We could run together, me and him, it could be our thing. He couldn't say no to it, because it was something innocent and good.
But then he blinked a few times. "Nah. I mean physical activity. Labor. It helped me, too."
"Oh. What else did you do? What else helped?"
He shook his head and trailed his eyes down my arm. "How'd you get the scar?"
"You know how."
"No, I don't, because I didn't read your letters."
My heart fell. "You never got them?"
"I got them. I just didn't read them."
Of all the scenarios I'd considered, that wasn't one of them, especially since I'd have done anything to read even one letter from Manning while he'd been away. I'd spent hours of my life writing them, one of the only things outside of running that'd kept me sane. "Not even one?"
"You wasted your time."
"Maybe I did," I said, "but time never feels wasted on you."
He swallowed, turning his face up to the sky. I loved when he did that, not just because the stars were ours, but because he exposed his strong, veiny throat to me. It made him, a man with callused palms and overpowering strength, seem vulnerable. "It was too hard." He spoke quietly. Maybe it was easier for him to say when he didn't have to look at me. "I wanted to, but I couldn't."
Though it hurt that he hadn't read them, I understood. If he'd ever written me back, a letter from him would've been salt in my open wounds. A sting I would've welcomed, but painful nonetheless.
I wanted to look at the stars with him, but not as much as I just wanted to soak him in. Still studying him like he might disappear at any moment, I asked, "What's up there?"
"Doesn't matter. I saw the night sky once the whole time I was in there." He inhaled through his nose. "It was only for a second, but you know what I saw?"
My heart skipped. Summer Triangle.
"Ursa Major," he said. He took a breath and looked back at me. "What gave you that scar?"
There was only one answer to that question. "A great bear." My great bear.
"Manning," Tiffany called from the house. "You out here, babe?"
He wet his lips. "Be right in."
He stepped back once then again. I put my fingers to my chin, attempting to hold on to the ghost of his touch. His eyes went to my mood ring. If he was shocked, he didn't show it, just looked at it for a long minute.
Then he turned and stalked back to the house. Back to Tiffany.
10
Manning
Starved. Even after a full steak dinner, that's what I was. I hadn't eaten nearly as much as I'd planned. I'd have to work my appetite back to where it'd been.
I drove Tiffany back to the apartment, taking in everything through the windshield. The one time I'd been outside in the past year and a half, it'd been because of a fire in one of the dorms. They'd handcuffed all the inmates on my floor with one chain and walked us out to a van to transfer us to a secure spot until it was taken care of. In solitary, I'd had a nightmare or two about being locked in a cell while the building burned around me.