Author's Note: Chapter 5! We're almost to the end! Please let me know what you think! :)

Chase POV

"Are you serious?" I all but shouted. I hadn't meant for it to come out quite so forcefully, but it matched the way I felt about what she'd said. "How could you even fathom that I had changed my mind? You know how I feel about you! Zo, I've been in love with you since the day we met. I thought we were past all this after the whole England ordeal."

Sat sat there, her head hanging while she played with her nearly empty mug of tea. I almost didn't hear her when she began to speak.

"Yes, Chase. I know how you felt… But this just hasn't felt the same for a while now. Practically since we graduated…"

Since we graduated? That was nearly four years ago! Why would she have kept this bottled up for so long, instead of talking to me about it? We've always told each other everything.

"You've felt this way for almost four years? Why is this the first time I hear anything about it?"

"Because, Chase, we've both been so wrapped up in what we were doing after graduation." She stood up from the bar and started pacing, an old habit of hers that only returned when she was really worked up. "I jumped straight into opening the boutique and you started your first writing job practically before your cap hit the ground. We had been so comfortable with 'us' all through college that I just assumed we'd find our groove in the world, together, soon enough. Just like we've always done."

Thinking about it as she said it, I could see what she was referring to. It was one of those pieces of our relationship that had never changed, even in the transition from best friends to couple. That was why we worked so well together.

"I figured it would take a little time with us both working real jobs, but soon, 'a little while' turned into a year, and then two years, and nothing ever got better. It was like we were just going through the motions. We weren't growing anymore." She stopped pacing and turned around to look at me. "I mean, we've been together since high school, Chase, and now we have been out of college for several years, and we're still just dating? If that's all this is ever going to be, then why do it anymore? If you don't want to spend the rest of your life with me, we need to move on. I want to get married and have a family one day, and for many years, I thought I'd be doing that with you, but if that's not what you want, then I have to move on so I can find a guy who does want that."

Her big brown eyes were boring holes in my chest, and her words were breaking my heart. How had I messed up so bad that she thought I didn't want to be with her forever? I finally set my mug down on the breakfast bar and walked over to her.

"Baby, all I've ever wanted, since I crashed my bike into that flag pole, was to spend the rest of my life loving you and making you smile. Obviously, I haven't always done a great job at the second part, but I promise you there hasn't been a single day since I was 13 that I haven't loved you. Including the last six months that I haven't seen you. And especially today, when I thought I may have lost you forever."

"Then why didn't you try to stop me six months ago?" She stepped back a little and threw her hands into the air. "Why haven't you called me more over the last six months? It's been radio silence for months, with only a little static before that. If you loved me, why didn't you say something the last time I was here, instead of just letting me walk away?" Her eyes were starting to shine a little, but she wouldn't let a tear fall just yet. She was too proud for that.

With a shaky voice, I tried to answer all of her questions with one sentence. "Because it was what you said you wanted."

I left her standing there in my living room while I walked back into the bedroom. I went straight to the table on my side of the bed—she hadn't slept there in months, but I still thought of the bed in terms of my side and her side—and opened the drawer. At the very back, hidden unless you knew it was there, was a small round box covered in black velveteen. I removed it from its resting place for the first time in years and returned to where Zoey was standing with her arms crossed.

"Clearly, I've messed up somewhere in this relationship if you believed, even for a moment, that I didn't love you anymore. Or that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life with you. Do you remember the day Michael and Logan ambushed me in our dorm at PCA, and you heard me confess my feelings for you over the webcam while you were in England?"

With a look that said "get to the point, Fuzzyhead," Zoey just nodded.

"When you told me you heard that, I replayed everything I had said in my mind and since then, I've never been able to forget it. I said, 'I was in love with Zoey before I hit the ground, and I don't think that feeling's ever gonna go away.'"

She smiled, just a little, but whether she was remembering that first day at the flagpole or my confession, I wasn't sure. So I continued.

"Big words for a 15 year old. But I assure you, even now, more than a decade later, the way I felt about you the day I hit that flagpole, the way I felt about you when I transferred to England to be with you, the way I felt about you the first time we kissed…that is exactly how I feel about you now. I am totally and completely in love with you, Zoey Brooks, and I always will be, no matter what you say or do. You are my soulmate."

She took in a deep breath and I noticed a couple tears rolling down her cheeks. It was time to prove that I had never stopped loving her. I finally revealed the box in my hand.

"I bought this the day you signed the lease on your boutique." Zoey gasped and my heart smiled at her surprise. "I hadn't decided when I was going to give it to you, but I knew one day I would need it. So I wanted to be prepared. The day I got the call about Moody's Point, I figured it was finally time. Maybe past time. I called Michael and we started working out a plan for the best surprise in the history of the world. But that plan fell apart the day you came here and asked to take a break."

I looked at her tear stained face and fell in love with her beauty for probably the millionth time since I had met her. I put the box on the breakfast bar, then stepped forward to take her hands in mine.

"Obviously, this isn't the right time to propose, so I'm not going to give you that box now. But I wanted you to know that a future with you, where we raise a family and grow old together, has always been my plan, Zo. And if you'll give me another chance to try this again, I promise I won't wait another 10 years to ask you."