Something in the Way (Something in the Way, #1)

by Jessica Hawkins

Saying you didn’t like music was like admitting you weren’t cool.

He could pick me up. He could throw me if he wanted to. He could probably put me over his shoulder and walk a thousand miles without running out of breath.

My urge to slide closer to him was as strong as my urge to jump down, run inside, and hide in the house where men like him only existed in my glossy magazines.

I was greedy. I’d spent a lot of time with him today, but I wanted more.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that even though I’d met Manning first, for some reason, Tiffany thought he belonged to her.

I had no idea what to make of Manning. He was hot and cold. Sometimes, I thought there was something between us, but then he went and treated me like a five-year-old.

“You don’t like to feel out of control. I’m the same, but you have to know when to let go or you’ll drive yourself crazy.”

The way he said my name brought me back to Earth. I thought I could be on a rocket to the moon and come crashing back in an instant when he called for me.

Lake was the only person I’d come across since Maddy who still hadn’t seen anything bad out of life. She was good. You could sense it just being around her.

Not yet jaded. She had dreams, and she believed they’d come true. She was easy to talk to, ambitious, thoughtful. None of that meant she was uncomplicated.

There were layers to her you might miss if you weren’t paying attention.

Maybe wanting that in my life, someone to look over, to shield from the bad stuff, was wrong considering she was sixteen.

To me, Manning seemed as untouchable as the glossy celebrities taped to Tiffany’s wall, so why did she get to touch him?

Being the center of Manning’s attention was as heady as I thought it would be, and I didn’t want to share the spotlight.

He wanted to meet my parents. And while I should’ve felt uneasy about it, the idea that Manning had any interest in my life had the opposite effect. It made my heart soar.

It seemed unfair that even though I’d seen him first, even though he was my friend, I had to savor my time with him before it was stolen.

I want to take care of you. I wanted to protect him. Comfort him. Feed him—as many servings as it took to fill him up.

Was Manning the type of man who’d keep special plates for guests? I couldn’t see it, but then my dad wasn’t, either, and he had them.

Manning was a good person. He took what my dad gave him, even though he didn’t have to. He put up with Tiffany. He brought my mom flowers. I hoped a small part of the reason why, or a large part, was me.

Family shouldn’t mean an automatic free pass to treat others like shit. At some point, you had to recognize people for what they were.

I’d seen too much and lost the goodness in my life young enough to understand nothing was fair. There were no guarantees.

Lake didn’t know that yet, and I wanted her to keep that innocence as long as possible.

When I had Manning’s attention, there was no room for anyone else.

In reality, Manning was the coolest person I knew because he didn’t care one bit about being cool.

“What do you think, Lake, that I can just pick you up in my truck and take you somewhere?”

Manning’s girl—I hoped someday I would be.

I always wanted him to be safe. Cared for, fed, happy. Maybe it was naïve, but I felt I could do that for him, even if it had to be from afar for a while.

He had no reason to worry about me. To keep me safe or happy. I didn’t owe him that either, but I’d do my best to give it to him.

“You make me smile, Lake. Nobody else does. How could I walk away from you?”

“I’ll promise you something better. Wherever I go, I won’t abandon you.”

If I had to be away from him a few years, if I had to make long distance phone calls or write letters—no cost would be too high to keep him in my life.

And maybe down the line, that would pay off. One day, he’d look at me and see a beautiful, sexy woman instead of the awkward, inexperienced teen I was now.

Maybe he didn’t know exactly what he felt about me, but he had some idea, and he expected me not to wonder about it.

One minute, I swore he and I had some unearthly connection. And then there were moments like this one, where I questioned how well I really knew him.

his t-shirt was soft under my bare arms. Based on what I’d heard from kids at school, this was the way I imagined it felt to be drunk or high, to reach a level of happiness and bliss that could only be achieved with help.

Was sixteen too young to fall in love? I might’ve thought so before Manning. Could he love me back, a man seven years older? I was sure if he did, he’d never admit it.

But I would wait for him. Even I understood that for a while, ours ages mattered. There was no right now for us.

Eighteen was a lifetime away. That was two more whole school years, another long summer. It was millions of breaths that would inevitably catch in my throat around him and thousands of pages read across so many books and hundreds of long, sun-soaked...

I craved that feeling of being needed again, of being held onto when she was scared. A hint of fear was good. It would keep her alert.

Lake was important to me in a way she shouldn’t be. Her naiveté about some things made me overprotective.

When she looked up at me with her huge eyes, waiting for my direction, I knew peripherally that I was in too deep.

I needed to pull back. But that look reminded me someone might depend on me again one day, and if things were different, Lake could’ve been that someone.

Time could be slow like that with her, and then sometimes it went by in flashes. Sometimes I just wanted it to stop and others, I wished it’d go by faster.

All I could think was that I’d spent twenty-four hours on a lake, underneath clear, endless skies, and yet I’d still never seen a blue the shade of her eyes.

I was sure the image of her looking up at me this way would be burned into my brain for as long as I walked this Earth.

But now, my body reacted only as a man. I wanted to wrap my arms around her front, pull her closer, let her feel what she did to me. I was losing control.

Where I wanted to be, one of the main reasons I’d come here, was where I could watch over Lake.

Someone else would be her first love. Some other man would be the first to cherish her. The first to ruin her. It couldn’t be me. It wasn’t so much the difference in our ages that scared me, but how much a person could change, could be changed, in only a couple years.

I was better than her at hiding it, but my reaction to her was the same. Physical. Powerful. Painful.

My world had been so dark before Lake. It worried me how far I’d go to keep that light in my life.