Page 73 of My Star-Crossed Summer

But mostly, it’s because I want them both and I’m not convinced I can have them.

He scoots his chair closer, then slides his hand over mine. “Why do you look for reasons to beat yourself up?” he says, his voice more tender than I’ve ever heard it. “This is the one thing I’ve never understood about you.”

“The one thing?” I ask.

“Okay, fair,” he says, trying for levity. “Maybe it’s just the biggest. You’re this brilliant, gorgeous, compassionate juggernaut of a human who’s completely fearless when it matters. You help people feel comfortable in their own skin. You inspire people to be better, dream bigger. You’re the strongest, most resilient person I know, and no matter how difficult things get, you never let them harden you. There’s not a single person on this earth I’d rather spend my summer with, and I just wish there was some way I could give you a glimpse of what I see when I look at you. And yet the things you tell yourself—” he shakes his head, “if anyone else said such mean things to you, I’d haul them out into the woods and leave them there for the coyotes to chew on.”

I blink at him, feeling something coil in my chest that I can’t ignore anymore. “Then why wasn’t I enough for you?” I ask. “Back then.”

His brows pinch together. “Is that what you think? How could you ever, in a million years, believe that’s true?”

My throat feels like it’s closing up, but I force the words out anyway. “Because that night on the beach. You let me go. You didn’t choose me.”

“Victoria,” he says, and the sound of my full name on his tongue makes me shiver. The way he drags each syllable out, like he wants to taste them—it turns those butterflies in my chest into a frenzy. “It was never because of you—it was all me. I panicked. I had these complicated feelings and was so afraid of doing the wrong thing.” He shakes his head. “When you kissed me that night, I nearly lost my mind because I’d been wanting you to do that forever. But I didn’t want to be deceptive. I wanted to break things off with Samantha first, before you and I took it any further.” He lets out a heavy sigh. “I thought I owed it to her to go on that trip we’d planned, to keep my word and somehowlet her down easy—but that was wrong. I was trying to do the right thing, but instead I wrecked it all.”

“What happens if I’m not enough for you now?”

He stares at me, and for the first time I can recall, Noah Valentine is speechless.

Or perhaps, he doesn’t have an answer.

“Vic, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. Why are you so afraid to believe that?”

My heart squeezes in my chest. He’s the best thing that happened to me, too.

He cups my cheek with his hand, then slides his thumb along my cheek. “Sweetheart, you’re it for me. I don’t know how else to convince you.”

All those feelings and worries I’ve pushed down are swirling in my head like a hurricane. Do I want this camp job because I truly love it, or because it allows me to be close to Noah? And if things between us were to fall apart, would I still want this job?

The thoughts are just too overwhelming. I want to believe him, but my brain won’t let go of this fear that he’ll decide he’s wrong and I’m not enough after all. It feels like the walls in this cabin are closing in.

“I just want you,” he says, taking my hand in his. “That’s what I know for sure. The rest, we can figure out together. If you want to take that job in Florida, then I’ll move to Florida. I go where you go.”

“How can you say that?” I shake my head. “You’re making this decision too fast. You’re not thinking this through.”

He shrugs, sliding his thumb over my knuckles. “I know what’s most important to me. I don’t need to think about it.”

“I need some space to breathe,” I tell him. “Some time to think about this.”

He draws my hand to his lips and says, “Then take it. I’ll give you all the time you need.”

His tenderness cracks my heart in half. He deserves an answer and I hate that it feels so simple for him and so complicated for me. As much as I want this to work between us, I can’t shake the thought that I’m letting my feelings for him affect how I feel about my next career move.

I hate that my instinct is to run from him. I’m tired of runningfrompeople when things get hard—I don’t want to make that mistake again. Instead, I want to runtowardmy new future because I’m excited about it. Instead of fleeing something out of fear, I want to chase something out of love.

I kept my old job because of my fear of how my parents would be disappointed, fear that I wouldn’t find a better job. I stayed with Theo because I was afraid there wasn’t someone better out there, or that the life he offered was the best I could hope for.

Now I see how wrong that was, and I don’t want to make that mistake again.

My heart wants Noah to be part of that future, but my brain’s busy telling me all the reasons it won’t work. With all of these thoughts buzzing through my head, I’m certain I’ll say the wrong words and wreck us in a way that can’t be fixed.

So I need to step back. Slow down. Breathe.

“I can’t talk about this anymore right now,” I tell him, standing. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He nods, following me to the door. “Let’s talk tomorrow night. When all the kids are gone and it’s just us.”

“I won’t have an answer by then.”

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