Chapter 45 Chapter 45

Chapter 45 Chapter 45
Monday after Halston felt different.
Not bad. Not broken. Just altered in the quiet way things change once they’ve been named and measured. A place existed now. A real one. Buildings, fields, dorms, the smell of old books and bad choices, as Jaxon had put it.
A future with edges.
That was harder to ignore than vague possibility had ever been.
I was at my locker before first period, pretending to care about my chemistry notes, when I felt him before I saw him. That had become its own kind of habit too—my body recognizing him somewhere in the air around me before my eyes caught up.
“Hey,” he said.
I looked up.
He looked tired in that Monday way everyone did, but there was something else in his face too. Thoughtfulness, maybe. Or caution.
“Hey.”
For one second, neither of us moved.
Then he reached out, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and asked quietly, “You mad at me?”
I blinked. “What?”
His mouth tilted, but not into a real smile. “You’ve been weird since Saturday.”
That was fair. Annoying, but fair.
I shut my locker and leaned against it. “I’m not mad at you.”
“Okay.”
“You sound like you don’t believe me.”
He shoved one hand into his pocket. “I believe you’re not mad. I’m less sure you’re not spiralling.”
I laughed despite myself. “That is an incredibly rude level of accuracy.”
He stepped a little closer, lowering his voice as people moved around us. “So talk to me.”
There it was.
No pressure. No demand. Just that steady invitation to be honest instead of graceful.
I looked down at the strap of my bag. “I think Halston made everything feel less… pretend.”
His expression softened immediately. “Yeah.”
“And I know that’s good. I know it is. It just also made me realize this isn’t some abstract faraway thing anymore.” I looked back up at him. “You could actually go.”
He was quiet for a beat.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I could.”
Hearing it out loud in person hit differently than it had over the phone. Sharper. More solid.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I hate that my first reaction was fear.”
Jaxon’s brows drew together. “Why?”
“Because I want to be better than that.”
His voice came low and steady. “Mila, being scared doesn’t make you small.”
That landed right in the center of me.
Because it was the exact thing I kept needing to hear in different forms. That fear wasn’t failure. That loving someone and dreading what distance might do to it weren’t proof I was weak or needy or not built for bigger things.
I looked at him for a long second.
Then I said, “I don’t want us to turn into one of those tragic stories teachers tell in health class.”
His laugh came quick and surprised. “That is a terrible reference.”
“It’s accurate.”
“It’s not going to be a health-class tragedy.”
“You sound very sure.”
He took another step closer. Not enough to crowd me. Enough to make the conversation feel like ours.
“I am sure about one thing,” he said.
“What?”
“You and me.” His gaze held mine. “Distance, schools, timelines, whatever. None of that changes how real this is.”
My throat tightened in the worst, warmest way.
“You really like impossible declarations in school hallways,” I muttered.
“Only with you.”
Before I could answer, Naomi appeared like a curse summoned by emotional sincerity.
She took one look at our faces and stopped. “Do I need to leave or bring snacks?”
“Yes,” I said.
Jaxon said at the exact same time, “Snacks.”
Naomi put a hand over her heart. “It’s beautiful when love thrives in confusion.”
I rolled my eyes. “Go away.”
She grinned. “Never.”

Lunch was worse.
Not because anything happened. Because I spent the entire period too aware of Jaxon beside me, of the future sitting uninvited between us, of the fact that I loved him enough now to imagine missing him before he was even gone.
That was a terrible discovery.
Naomi, blessedly, got distracted by a feud involving student council and forgot to interrogate me. Jaxon, less blessedly, kept glancing at me like he was waiting for me to say more.
After school, I found him by his truck again.
“You have that face,” he said.
I opened the passenger door. “I’m begging everyone in my life to stop announcing my expressions like weather reports.”
He got in and started the engine. “No.”
“Rude.”
“Still true.”
We drove in silence for a minute before he said, “Come with me.”
I frowned. “To where?”
“You’ll see.”
That was how, twenty minutes later, I ended up sitting on the hood of his truck at the overlook just outside town, where the road curved up high enough to see the river cutting silver through the trees and half the valley spread below us in blue late-afternoon light.
The place was empty.
Of course he knew somewhere empty.
I looked out over the view. “This is suspiciously pretty.”
“That’s because I needed your brain to calm down.”
I glanced sideways at him. “That sounds fake-therapist coded.”
“I contain multitudes.”
I snorted softly.
The air was cool, smelling like dry grass and autumn. Jaxon stood beside the truck for a second, then leaned back against it next to me, arms folded loosely.
“I’ve been thinking too,” he said.
I looked down at my hands. “That seems risky.”
“Definitely.” His voice softened. “Halston felt real to me too.”
I turned my head.
He was looking out at the view, not at me. Maybe that made it easier.
“I liked it,” he said. “And that scared me.” He exhaled slowly. “Not because I don’t want a future. Because I do. But because the second I saw it, I also thought about whether you’d fit into it somehow.”
The ache in my chest changed shape.
Less fear. More something fragile and bright.
“Jaxon.”
He looked at me then. “I don’t need answers right now. I’m not trying to map out our whole lives at seventeen like a psychopath.” A small smile touched his mouth. “I just need you to know I’m not imagining my future like it exists without you in it.”
That undid me.
Not because it was some perfect promise. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be.
Because it was honest in the only way that mattered now.
Present. Real. Offered without pressure.
I slid off the hood and stepped in front of him before I could overthink it.
“You know what I hate?” I asked softly.
His hands came lightly to my waist. “A lot of things.”
I laughed. “True. But specifically? That you keep saying the exact thing that makes it impossible for me to stay dramatic.”
“That sounds like a compliment.”
“It’s not. It’s a warning.”
His smile widened.
I looked up at him, at the boy who had somehow become this steady force in my life without ever asking me to be less myself to keep him, and let myself say the truth.
“I’m scared of the future,” I admitted. “But I’m more scared of pretending I don’t want one with you in it.”
His whole face softened.
“Mila.”
I touched the front of his hoodie lightly, right over his heart. “That’s all I’ve got right now.”
His hand slid up, warm against my cheek. “That’s everything.”
Then he kissed me, slow and certain under the wide open sky, with the town spread out below us and all the terrifying, beautiful uncertainty of what came next still waiting.
When we pulled apart, I rested my forehead against his and laughed shakily.
“I cannot believe I’m having emotional growth on a truck.”
His laugh rumbled low and warm. “Yeah. That’s rough.”
But standing there in the fading light, with the future still complicated and love still asking hard things of both of us, I realized something had shifted again.
I didn’t need all the answers yet.
I just needed to stop being afraid of wanting them.