Chapter 41 Chapter 41

Chapter 41 Chapter 41
By Monday, wanting to build something with Jaxon felt almost as frightening as wanting him had in the first place.
Because wanting a person was one kind of risk.
Wanting a future—any version of one, even the soft blurry kind—was another.
I carried that thought with me all morning.
Through calculus. Through English. Through Mrs. Hargrove handing back an essay with brilliant work written across the top in red ink. Through lunch, where Naomi spent seven full minutes trying to convince me that “romantic domesticity” was my natural evolution and I informed her I would rather be tax audited.
The trouble was, she wasn’t entirely wrong.
Not about domesticity. That word still made me itch.
But about the feeling.
The ease.
The way the Reed house no longer felt like borrowed air.
By last bell, my brain was overcrowded. Which was why I didn’t realize something was wrong until I saw Jaxon at my locker and noticed he wasn’t smiling.
Not really.
“Hey,” I said slowly.
“Hey.”
He took my bag automatically, but there was something tight in his shoulders. Something too controlled in his voice.
I frowned. “What happened?”
He looked down the hallway before answering. “Coach wants me to visit Halston State this weekend.”
I blinked. “For football?”
“Yeah.”
That should not have hit the way it did.
But Halston State was three hours away. Not impossible. Not dramatic. Just far enough to become real.
“Oh,” I said.
He watched my face too carefully. “That sounded bad.”
“No.” I shifted my books in my arms. “Just unexpected.”
He leaned one shoulder against the locker beside mine. “I haven’t said yes.”
“Because of me?”
The question came out sharper than I meant it to.
His expression changed immediately. “No. Because I wanted to talk to you first.”
That was somehow worse.
Because it was thoughtful. Because it was kind. Because it put me in the exact position I never wanted to be in—mattering enough that I could influence the size of his life.
I looked down at the floor. “You should go.”
“Mila—”
“You should.” I lifted my eyes back to his. “If you want to play football in college, you should go look at the school.”
He was quiet for a second. “I do want to play.”
“I know.”
The hallway had thinned around us. A couple teachers passed. Someone laughed farther down near the science wing. Everything felt too normal for a conversation that had suddenly become this loaded.
Jaxon stepped a little closer. “You okay?”
I gave a short laugh. “Apparently that’s our thing now.”
“It’s an important thing.”
I looked at him. Really looked.
At the tension around his mouth. At the care in the question. At the fact that he seemed more worried about my reaction than his own opportunity.
And some part of me went soft in a place that still felt new.
“I’m okay,” I said quietly. “I just… don’t like how fast the future keeps getting real.”
His gaze held mine. “Yeah.”
That one word carried enough truth to steady me.
Because he felt it too.
Not just me with my fellowship and applications and train-line maps folded on my desk at home.
Him too.
His future was coming at him just as fast.
That should have made me feel less alone.
It did.
A little.
“So go,” I said again, gentler this time. “And text me annoying updates.”
A smile tugged at his mouth at last. “Annoying updates?”
“Campus grass quality. Cafeteria ranking. Whether the football players look deeply underdeveloped compared to you.”
His smile widened. “That last one felt manipulative.”
“It was supportive.”
He laughed softly, and just like that some of the tightness left the air.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go.”
I nodded.
Then, because apparently I had become the kind of girl who said brave things in school hallways and then had to deal with the consequences later, I added, “You don’t have to make yourself smaller for me either.”
He went very still.
The words hung there between us, bigger than I had meant them to be and exactly the size they needed to be anyway.
“Mila,” he said, low.
I shrugged one shoulder because if I didn’t act casual I was going to combust. “You said it to me first. At the river. I’m returning the emotional maturity.”
Something raw and warm moved through his face all at once.
Then he reached out and touched two fingers lightly under my chin, tipping my face up just a fraction.
“That,” he said quietly, “was very unfair of you.”
My pulse stumbled. “Why?”
“Because now I’m in love with you in a hallway.”
The whole world stopped.
Actually stopped.
Not the literal hallway, unfortunately. Someone dropped books three lockers down. A door banged. Life kept being rude and continuous.
But inside me, everything went still.
I stared at him.
He seemed to realize what he’d said half a second after it left his mouth. Not because he looked regretful.
Because he looked exposed.
Like the truth had come out before he could package it more safely.
Neither of us moved.
Then I said, very softly, “You say impossible things.”
His eyes searched mine. “Yeah.”
I should have answered right then.
Maybe in another life, I would have.
But this was my life, and love was not a word I could lift lightly. Not because I didn’t feel things deeply enough.
Because I did.
So instead I reached up and touched his wrist where it still hovered near my face.
Not an answer.
Not not one either.
His expression gentled. He understood.
That somehow made it harder.
Naomi appeared at the end of the hall like a curse summoned by emotional sincerity. She took one look at our faces and stopped dead.
“Oh no,” she said. “What happened?”
I stepped back so abruptly I nearly hit my locker.
“Nothing,” I said too quickly.
Naomi narrowed her eyes. “That’s never true.”
Jaxon cleared his throat and took my bag back from where he’d been holding it. “I have practice.”
“No, you don’t,” I said automatically.
His mouth twitched. “Right. Habit.”
Naomi looked between us with growing delight and alarm. “Why do you both look like somebody confessed to tax fraud?”
I covered my face with one hand. “Please go away.”
“I absolutely will not.”
Jaxon laughed under his breath, and the sound broke the tension just enough for me to breathe again.
He handed me my bag, fingers brushing mine. “I’ll text you later.”
I nodded because I no longer trusted my voice.
Then he walked away, and I stood there in a suddenly too-bright hallway while Naomi stared at me like she had discovered live theater.
“Mila,” she whispered.
I looked at her.
And because she was Naomi and because my life had apparently become emotionally unmanageable in every possible direction, I said the only true thing I had.
“I think my whole body just forgot how to function.”
Naomi blinked.
Then she grabbed my arm and hissed, “We are going somewhere private immediately.”
As she dragged me toward the girls’ bathroom and my pulse tried to rewrite the laws of physics, one thought beat through me louder than all the others.
The future wasn’t the only thing becoming real.
Love was too.