Chapter 43 Chapter 43

Chapter 43 Chapter 43
Loving Jaxon felt less like fireworks and more like waking up warmer.
That was the first thing I noticed the next morning.
Not the drama of it. Not some dizzy, cinematic transformation where the world suddenly gleamed with meaning and I developed the ability to tolerate mornings.
I still hated mornings.
I still nearly burned my toast because I was staring at my phone like it contained state secrets.
But there was something softer in me now. Something steadier. Like a knot I had been carrying for years had finally loosened just enough to let me breathe differently.
My mother noticed before I said anything.
She looked up from her coffee as I came into the kitchen and narrowed her eyes in that deeply unfair, maternal way.
“You told him.”
I paused with the jam jar in my hand. “Do you and Naomi share a hive mind?”
My mother smiled. “You look peaceful.”
That nearly undid me before school.
I dropped into the chair across from her and focused very hard on my toast. “I said it.”
“And?”
I looked down at the chipped plate in front of me, then back up. “And he looked like someone had handed him oxygen.”
Her whole face softened. “Good.”
I smiled before I could stop myself. “Yeah.”
By the time I got to school, I had already reread his late-night text three times.
still awake. still in love with you. rude of you to be this good at timing.
I had not answered because there are only so many emotions a person can survive between ten p.m. and midnight.
Naomi found me at my locker before first period and stopped so abruptly she nearly got taken out by a sophomore with a trumpet case.
“Oh,” she said.
I looked at her. “Why does everyone keep saying things like they’ve seen God?”
“You said it back.”
I leaned against my locker. “Do I emit a signal now?”
“Yes.” She clutched her chest. “It’s called being unbearably in love.”
“That is not a real diagnosis.”
“It is in literature.”
I laughed, and Naomi made the exact face of a woman who had just won a bet with fate.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Well what?”
“How did it happen? Where? Was there weather? Did anyone cry? If you say ‘on my porch’ without more detail, I’ll stop respecting you.”
I shook my head. “You were never going to stop respecting me.”
“That’s true. Now answer.”
So I told her. Not every second. Some things still felt too tender to hand over whole. But enough. The hallway. The panic. The porch. The way I’d needed to say it when it felt like mine and not borrowed from his courage.
Naomi listened with both hands over her heart like an idiot.
Then she sighed. “I hate men, but this is unfortunately exquisite.”
“That feels contradictory.”
“It is. I’m evolving.”
The first two periods passed in a blur. I took notes. I answered one question in English. I did not, however, retain much, because my brain was full of one thing only: seeing him again after saying it.
That was suddenly terrifying.
Not because I regretted it.
Because it was real now in a way that made me feel newly shy.
Which was ridiculous. I had kissed him in hallways. I had held his hand in car parks. I had survived homecoming.
And yet when lunch came and I spotted him across the cafeteria, my stomach dropped like I was at the top of a roller coaster.
He saw me at the exact same second.
Everything in his face changed.
That still got me. Every time. That shift. That immediate, unmistakable warmth, like some part of him had been looking for me before his eyes confirmed it.
He stood.
Naomi saw it happen and slapped my arm. “Oh no. There he goes with his entire face again.”
“Please stop narrating my life.”
“Never.”
Jaxon crossed the cafeteria and stopped beside me, tray in one hand, eyes only on my face.
“Hey,” he said.
It was just one word.
I felt it everywhere.
“Hey,” I said back, and yes, my voice was a little softer than usual, and no, I was not prepared to discuss that with anyone.
Naomi looked between us and stood abruptly. “I’m leaving because there is too much emotional eye contact for one lunch period.”
“You are so dramatic,” I told her.
“I’m so right.”
Then she vanished, leaving me alone with him and half the cafeteria pretending not to stare.
Jaxon sat down across from me this time, not beside me. Maybe because he was being careful. Maybe because he knew I still needed room in public sometimes.
That mattered too.
For a second, we just looked at each other like we had both forgotten how lunch worked.
Then he smiled, small and helpless and real. “You look pretty when you’re shy.”
I nearly dropped my fork.
“I’m not shy,” I said automatically.
His brows lifted. “Sure.”
“That was deeply unhelpful.”
“It was deeply true.”
I looked down at my tray because if I kept looking at him I was going to smile like an idiot in the middle of a cafeteria full of people who did not deserve to witness my joy.
Jaxon’s voice softened. “You okay?”
There it was again. The question that always steadied me.
I looked back up. “Yeah.”
Then, because honesty had become the only way I seemed able to do this with him, I added, “I just wasn’t prepared for it to feel different today.”
His expression gentled. “Different bad?”
I shook my head. “Different… bigger.”
He absorbed that quietly.
Then he said, “Yeah.”
Just that.
Agreement. No dramatics. No pretending he didn’t feel it too.
And somehow that helped most of all.
We ate slowly, talking in pieces. Lucy had apparently informed Mr. Reed that our emotional arc was now “stable but still highly observable.” Coach had rescheduled the Halston visit for Saturday morning. Naomi was, according to me, a public menace and, according to him, “kind of funny in controlled doses.”
When lunch ended, he stood and held out his hand for my tray. I gave it to him.
At the return window, our fingers brushed.
That tiny contact felt entirely different now too—not sharper, just deeper. Less question. More promise.
In the hallway outside, he slowed near my locker.
“Mila.”
I looked at him.
He didn’t say anything for a second, just reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear with a tenderness so simple it made my chest ache.
Then, very quietly, “Still awake. Still in love with you.”
I stared at him.
“You’re quoting your own text?” I asked.
His mouth tilted. “I liked it.”
I laughed helplessly. “You’re unbelievable.”
“Yeah.” His gaze held mine. “Still true.”
And standing there in the middle of a school hallway that used to feel like enemy territory, I realized this was what changed after love was spoken out loud.
Not just the feelings.
The air around them.
They no longer felt like something I was trying to protect from being noticed.
They felt like something strong enough to live in daylight.