"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."