Dean loves her.
He loves her soft lips and warm heart. He loves her laughter and her voice when she sings along to the radio. Her jokes and cherry pie she makes just for him. He loves the way she says his name.
He loves her and that confession was the easiest one to make. He let the l-word roll off his tongue, he savored the gleam in her eyes as she took it in, the understanding of it. And when she said it back to him, something inside Dean came to life.
He'd never felt like this before. Cassie's his first love.
Only God knows how much Dean wishes she could be the last.
But his life doesn't work like that. They got a few weeks — call it a summer of love — but it's almost over now.
He'll always be the one who walked away.
But it could never last, could it? There's always another job, there are always miles to drive. Too many secrets. And when he hops onto the Impala and leaves Ohio behind, she won't even know why.
Unless—
Unless he tells her. Unless he breaks the family rule and tells her everything. About ghosts and monsters and the whole gig, the grizzly details of the kind of life he leads.
How does he even start? The scenarios he's run through in his head, they never end too well. This secret's not half as easy to verbalize as the I love you. She won't be smiling at him when he tells her he hunts ghosts for a living. Won't touch his hands when she learns the things he's done with them. Won't kiss his mouth that spills out all that crap straight out of nightmares.
And once he's done? Will she even believe him? Or will she call him a liar, a coward? Will he lose her?
Is it better to keep lying?
"Cassie?" Dean mutters, breaking away from her lips.
"Yeah?" She looks at him expectantly.
Dean inhales, slowly, memorizing her face like this before he ruins it all with his confession.
"There's something I have to tell you."
