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-"