Page 40 of Double Trouble

Because I’m in love with you. Because you’re more important to me than anyone. Because I don’t want to lose you, scare you, not be the exact person you need.

Her face falls, and she uncrosses her arms. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“I want to.” I do. “I just don’t know how to begin.”

“Were you this way with your past girlfriends?”

A smile plays at my mouth. “That’s actually a good place to start. Thanks.”

“I got you, boyfriend.”

That will never get old, and I try to relax into the couch, into our conversation, into her. “So…”Here we go…“I fall in love. Fast.”

She waits a beat, and when I don’t fill the silence, she prods. “Okay…?”

My head falls between us, and I let out a giant sigh. I don’t talk about Lydia. Or Hannah or Brielle or Candace even. There are more, I’m afraid to admit. More girls I fell hard for, that I blurted out love too quickly. “When a girl isn’t ready to hear those three words,” I say to our laps, “well, it pretty much puts the kibosh on the whole thing.”

Her brows pull in. “I would think that falling in love is never a bad thing.”

“Well, when it’s after two minutes…”

“Two minutes!”

“I told you… fast.”

She holds back a laugh and nudges my chin so I’m looking at her. “So, have you fallen in love with every girl you’ve been with?”

I nod.

“Even some you haven’t?”

I nod again.

“Were you in love with Candace?”

“Oh boy,” I say, heat building in my cheeks. “I thought so, yeah. She hung the moon and stars and all that.”

She gives me a playful frown, jutting her bottom lip out. “Yikes.”

A grin pulls at my lip, my gaze drifting over her face. She’s still here, in my lap. Still running her hands through my hair, still looking directly into my eyes. I told her, in not so many words, that if I’m not already in love with her, I will be, and I will be soon. And she’s still here.

I let my eyes fall shut, and I press my forehead to hers, relishing in the sweet scent of ice blue Gatorade on her breath. “I… I don’t want to chase you away,” I whisper. “Not you. I can’t…”

My sentence falls off into oblivion, but her fingers trail down from the back of my head to my jaw. She scratches my scruff with her short nails, embracing me in my very quiet admission.

“How about I let you know?” she says after a minute.

I pick my head up, locking gazes with her. “What?”

“I’ll let you know when I’m ready to hear it.”

She offers up a soft smile, and I’ve never felt more understood in my life.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” she echoes.

I almost blurt it out right then and there. In the span of one conversation, I’ve fallen deeper than I ever have, and I’m bursting to tell her. Instead, I take her by the nape of her neck and pull her toward me, pressing my lips to hers with such purpose that I’m pretty sure that even though the words weren’t said, she knows just how powerful my feelings are.

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