I lean back and look at him, my look so intense that when I try to drop my legs to the ground, he lets me.

“Chase?” he asks as the words clog in my throat.

“I’ve fallen for you too, Gunner. I’m scared to say it. To admit it. Because I don’t know how to deal with this feeling. All I know is when you walk into the room, I sit up a little taller, wanting you to notice me. When you leave the room, I can’t wait for you to come back. When I wake up at night, I feel safer knowing you’re close to me. And when I look across the breakfast table, I smile when I see you there.”

“That says a lot considering I’m a scary sight when I wake up.”

I shake my head and laugh, suddenly feeling more than shy as we stand on the sidewalk for the world to see. Although, it feels like it’s just the two of us.

“So what do we do now?” I ask.

“I get it. This isn’t you. This town. The single movie theater. The Center. You have your sights set on stadiums and neon lights. I admire that about you. You go after what you want and you have goals. A ton of goals that I’d have killed for when I was younger. If I had, maybe things might have ended up differently . . . but it didn’t, and I love my life, Chase. I can’t ask you to be who you’re not. I can’t ask you to stay when you have a whole goddamn world to conquer.”

I stare at him, at this incredible man, and wonder how my whole world just narrowed in such a short time and became solely about him. My world used to have no beginning or ending point but now when I look at him, he’s both of those to me.

But he’s right. Completely and utterly right. I have things to accomplish. The world to conquer, and I can’t do that sitting here in some small town in the middle of nowhere-ville.

But I don’t put words to my thoughts, to my concerns. I simply press my lips to his while figuratively burying my head in the sand.

“We’ll figure it out,” he says. “I’ve fallen in love with you, Chase.” He reaches out and touches the sides of my face, that shy smile of his owning his lips and my heart. “I’ve never said that to anyone before.”

He doesn’t wait for me to say it back. Maybe he already knows that I’m struggling with accepting the truth of it and kisses me.

And late at night when we’re lying in bed and I’m staring at the shadows dancing on the ceiling, I realize I made a huge mistake.