“I’m having a lot of fun with you tonight.”
“Me too,” he whispers back.
“I seriously don’t want tonight to end.”
“Me neither.”
“And I have no idea what’s going on in this movie.”
“Neither do I.”
“And I don’t care.”
My eyes float to his lips. It’s no surprise that our popcorn has gone completely ignored, except for the one or two initial bites we took at the concession stand itself.
And the boxes of candy? What candy?
All I know are his lips and his sparkling eyes …
And …
And the words that finally trouble their way off my tongue. “I really …reallywanna kiss you right now.”
“You sure?” he whispers, and his eyes are on my lips, too.
What a gentleman. Asking if I’m sure. Giving me this chance to change my mind, despite the obvious desire on his face for the very same thing I’m craving.
It only takes the slightest lean of my head.
Our shoulders press together.
Then our lips.
Chapter 10.
Chase
I’m not Chase Holt.
I’m just Austin, a guy who used to pine after his crushes in the back of a classroom, scribbling super bad poetry on the back pages of algebra books.
Young Austin used to dream of kisses like this.
He didn’t have a career or a following or crowds of screaming admirers. He had a backpack lined with sewn-on patches, a jacket two sizes too big, and an old hand-me-down pickup to get him to and from school that broke down more times than it didn’t.
And he’d walk the halls of his school with a lonely heart no one ever paid any mind to, keeping so many dreams inside it that it kept him awake night after night, aching with longing.
And that young Austin dreamed of kisses like this.
Kisses he thought he would never know.
Surely not in the back of a movie theater in a town he’d never stepped foot in until tonight.
With a guy as special, as caring, and as unfathomably perfect as Timothy.
Someone I might’ve needed back then.
Someone I didn’t realize I need now.