Page 95 of Hard to Lose

He stares at me for a bit longer before finally speaking. “This is crazy, and I don’t understand it whatsoever, but I’ve fallen for you, Chase. Fallen, when I’ve told myself it’s not possible to because I know you’re leaving and this will be over. But I promised myself after everything I went through, that I’d never leave anything on the table again, and so yeah . . . There you go.” He chuckles nervously, while I just stare at him through the mirror, trying to process words and feelings I don’t know what to do with either. He gives a shake of his head. “I’ll see you later.”

“Wait. What?” I ask as I spin around to face him. He can’t drop a bombshell like that on me and then leave. “Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Out? Why?” My voice cracks.

“Because this,” he says motioning to the two of us, “isn’t you. I know it and you’ve made sure to let me know it numerous times . . . so I’m going out to give you some time to come to grips with what I just said. I either just screwed up and you’re going to be gone when I come home, or you’ll be here and we’ll at least spend the rest of our time knowing where we stand.”

He strides forward with a purpose that was absent earlier and presses a chaste kiss to my lips. Without saying another word, he walks out of the house with a slam of the front door, leaving me behind, staring at where he just was.

And then I freak.

I can’t get to the door fast enough. His truck’s not there and I panic that he’s already left, but then I realize that he ran home so he has to walk back to wherever he left his truck.

“Gunner!” I yell when I spot him halfway down the block.

My feet move toward him as he stops. At first in a fast walk and then at a jog until I reach him and jump, wrapping my legs around his waist.

He laughs and staggers back a few feet from the impact as my mouth finds his again.

“This isn’t normal for me. I don’t do this,” I say in between kisses.

“Kissing someone on the sidewalk? Neither do I.” He laughs and then kisses me back.

“The person you’ve fallen for isn’t the normal me. Normally I’m Big City Chase in high heels and a million things to do and a stress level through the roof. This—being here—is a different version of her. You might not even like her for all I know.”

His laugh is muffled against my lips. “It sounds like you’re trying to talk me out of liking you, Kincade.”

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.

In the midst of the euphoria of feeling the power of love for the first time, I forgot that this can’t be real.

That this can’t happen.