Chapter 42 Chapter 42

Chapter 42 Chapter 42
Naomi dragged me into the girls’ bathroom like she was rescuing evidence from a crime scene.
The second the door swung shut behind us, she spun around and pointed both hands at me.
“No.”
I leaned against the sink, still gripping my bag strap too tightly. “That is not a sentence.”
“It is spiritually a sentence.” Her eyes widened. “What happened in that hallway?”
I looked at my reflection in the mirror and barely recognized my own face. Flushed. Wide-eyed. Slightly wrecked.
That felt accurate.
“Mila.”
I exhaled. “He said something.”
Naomi stared at me. “Obviously.”
I closed my eyes for half a second. “He said he was in love with me.”
The silence that followed was so complete I could hear a hand dryer kick on somewhere down the corridor outside.
Then Naomi made a noise like a tea kettle under emotional pressure.
“Oh my God.”
“Please stop making sounds.”
“Oh my God,” she repeated, quieter this time but somehow more intense. “And?”
I gripped the edge of the sink. “And I forgot how to breathe.”
“That’s fair.”
“I didn’t say it back.”
Naomi went still.
I looked at her in the mirror. “I couldn’t. Not because I didn’t feel anything. I just…” I shook my head. “That word is huge.”
Her expression softened immediately. “Yeah.”
I laughed once, weakly. “I feel like I failed some kind of romantic exam.”
“You absolutely did not.”
“It felt like I just stood there while he handed me his whole heart in a school hallway.”
Naomi stepped closer. “Mila. Look at me.”
I did.
“You not saying it immediately doesn’t make it less true later.” Her voice gentled. “It just means you take it seriously.”
That landed harder than I wanted it to.
Because yes. That was exactly it.
I wasn’t scared of the word because I felt too little.
I was scared because I felt enough to know it should mean something when I said it.
Naomi studied my face for a second. “Do you love him?”
The question should have terrified me.
Instead, it made everything go very quiet inside me.
I thought about the river. The porch. The assembly. The parking lot after homecoming. Pancakes for dinner. Lucy’s ridiculous little award wall. The way he never once asked me to shrink around his love, only to be more fully myself inside it.
And there it was.
Not sudden.
Not dramatic.
Just undeniable.
“Yes,” I said softly.
Naomi smiled like she’d been waiting for me to hear it in my own voice. “Okay.”
I let out a breath that felt shaky all over. “Okay?”
“Okay,” she repeated. “So now the question is just when you’re ready to say it.”
That was somehow both comforting and deeply annoying.
I looked down at my hands. “What if I took too long?”
Naomi leaned one hip against the sink beside me. “Then tell him that. Tell him the truth. He seems weirdly committed to surviving your truth.”
I laughed at that.
Because she was right.
Jaxon had never once demanded perfection from me. Only honesty.
That should have made this easier.
Instead it made me want to do it right.
By the time I left school, I was calmer on the outside and in complete emotional ruin on the inside.
Jaxon texted me twenty minutes after last bell.
sorry if I made that weird.
I stared at the message for a full thirty seconds.
Then:
you definitely made it weird.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
fair. you okay?
There it was again. That question. That care.
I sat on the edge of my bed and looked at the late afternoon light slanting across my room.
yes. just thinking.
His reply came slower this time.
okay. i can give you space.
just not forever.
That pulled a helpless smile out of me.
dramatic.
accurate.
I set the phone down on my blanket and fell backward onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
Yes.
I loved him.
That should have felt catastrophic.
Instead it felt like stepping into a room I had already been standing in for weeks and finally turning on the light.
The problem wasn’t whether it was true.
The problem was that saying it felt sacred.
And once said, some things changed shape forever.
By dinner, my mother had noticed I was barely eating.
“That boy,” she said, not even looking up from her plate.
I choked on my water. “What boy?”
She gave me a look. “Please. I am old, not blind.”
I put down my fork. “He said he loves me.”
Her face softened instantly.
“Oh,” she said quietly.
“And I didn’t say it back.”
That made her pause.
Not disapproving. Just thoughtful.
“Do you?”
I stared at the table for a second, then nodded.
My mother reached across and covered my hand with hers. “Then say it when it feels like a gift and not a panic response.”
My throat tightened. “That’s annoyingly wise.”
“It’s why I’m charming.”
After dinner, I sat at my desk pretending to work on calculus and accomplishing absolutely nothing. By eight-thirty, I gave up and opened the window to let in the cool night air.
My phone buzzed again.
Jaxon:
Lucy says I’m moping and it’s lowering morale.
I smiled in spite of myself.
Me:
she’s probably right.
Jaxon:
rude. also true.
I looked out into the dark street beyond my window, porch lights glowing up and down the cul-de-sac.
Then, before I could overthink it, I typed:
come outside?
His reply came so fast it was almost insulting.
already leaving.
Ten minutes later, I slipped out onto the porch in my hoodie and socks and found him standing at the bottom of the steps with his hands in his pockets and the kind of careful expression that made my whole chest ache.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
For a second, neither of us moved.
Then he asked, “Am I in trouble?”
That nearly made me laugh.
“No.”
“You sure?”
“No,” I admitted.
That got a small, tired smile out of him.
He came up one step, then another, stopping close enough that I could see the nerves he was trying not to show.
“I meant it,” he said quietly.
I believed him. That was never the question.
“I know.”
He searched my face. “And I know I kind of dropped it on you in a hallway like a complete idiot.”
“A little.”
“Yeah.”
The honesty of that made this both easier and harder.
I wrapped my arms around myself against the cold and looked at him. Really looked at him. At the boy who had once been part of everything sharp in my life and had somehow become the safest thing in it.
“I didn’t not say it because I don’t feel it,” I said softly.
His whole expression changed.
He didn’t interrupt.
Didn’t rush me.
Didn’t grab at the hope in the sentence.
He just stood there and let me have the space to finish.
“I didn’t say it,” I went on, “because I’ve spent too much of my life being told I should be grateful for scraps. And I never want to say something that big like I’m throwing it after somebody because they said it first.”
His eyes held mine, steady and warm and a little wrecked.
“Mila,” he said, barely above a whisper.
I stepped down one porch step so we were closer.
“I love you,” I said.
The night went still.
No cars passing. No doors slamming. No dogs barking down the street.
Just us. My heartbeat. His face changing all at once—relief, disbelief, joy so bright it almost made me laugh.
And then his hands were at my waist and mine were in his sweatshirt and he kissed me like he’d been holding his breath all day.
When we pulled apart, I was smiling so hard it hurt.
Jaxon rested his forehead against mine and laughed softly, the sound unsteady in the loveliest way.
“Okay,” he murmured.
I smiled. “Okay what?”
“I’m definitely not sleeping tonight.”
I laughed, and the sound disappeared into the space between us.
And standing there on my porch under a dark sky full of quiet stars, I realized love hadn’t become real when he said it first.
It became real when I was finally brave enough to say it back.